Automatic (John Murlowski, 1995)

E-mail? Dental scans? Self-healing automatons? Ponytail-sporting badasses wielding CornerShots? Annabelle Gurwitch playing a character with a Japanese surname? Either, I've totally lost control of my faculties or Automatic is the best movie ever. It can't be both, but I'm leaning towards... What's that? Ah, I see. Well, this is kind of embarrassing. I've just been informed that I have indeed lost control of my faculties. Which is a shame, really, because having control of my faculties was one of my strong suits. Nonetheless, this mid-90s motion picture does contain the things I listed at the start of this review. Sure, it's nowhere near as awesome as Nemesis (not much is), but this sci-fi action flick can hold its head high, as it poses some deep, philosophical questions. The most important being: Would Olivier Gruner have a film career if it weren't for cyborgs? Granted, I've only seen two Olivier Gruner films, this and the aforementioned Nemesis. But the fact that he plays cyborgs in both has lead me to believe that Olivier Gruner is the Laurence Olivier of cyborgs.

Now, you might think that calling someone "The Laurence Olivier of Cyborgs" would be taken as an insult. But that's not the case at all. You see, Olivier Gruner has very little in the natural charisma department (the shelves are bare). However, by casting him as cyborgs, having natural charisma is a negative, not a positive.

That being said, you can't make a movie filled with cyborgs with no natural charisma. Okay, that's not entirely true, as I've seen plenty of films that boast tons of charisma-challenged bores. But this is not one of them.

In a shrewd move, the makers of Automatic have surrounded Olivier Gruner's "tin man" with talented actors.

Along with personal favourites like, Jeff Kober (Demolition High), John Glover (Life on the Edge, a.k.a. Meet the Hollowheads) and Marjean Holden (Dr. Caligari), the makers of this film were smart to pair Olivier Gruner with Daphne Ashbrook, an actress who is not only leggy in all the right places (thanks to a short ecru skirt that is put through the ringer), but brash and plucky. I know, brash and plucky.

After kicking things off with a pretty decent fake-out (we're shown a family being attacked by bandits, but it's actually a slick commercial for a revolutionary new security system), we're whisked into the boardroom of Robgen Industries, the makers of 'Automatic,' a line of state-of-the-art robot servants who all look like Olivier Gruner.

Quickly looking over some of the people who at this board meeting, I can already tell that Dennis Lipscomb's character is going to be a toadying yes man and that Stanley Kamel's character is going to be an annoying thorn in the side of John Glover's Goddard Marx, the cheerful president of Robgen Industries.

On top of being a sycophant of the highest order, Dennis Lipscomb is also a scumbag. Asking Nora Rochester (Daphne Ashbrook) if she could stick around to work on an "important project," Dennis Lipscomb clearly has more than work on his mind. Yep, it turns out this so-called "important project" involves gratification-based relief for his unloved penis and nothing much else. Since overseeing the needs and wants of Dennis Lipscomb's penis isn't in her job description, Nora resists his attempts to mount her sexually.

While walking by Dennis Lipscomb's office, an Automatic named J269 (Olivier Gruner) hears the fruits of Nora's resistance. Asking Dennis Lipscomb if everything is all right, J269 is told to basically get lost. Which he does. But when Nora's screams grow louder, J269 decides to help her (he throws Dennis Lipscomb onto the floor). This, as you might expect, angers Dennis Lipscomb, who downloads a firearm from his desk. That's right, if you need something in a flash, whether it be a stiff drink or a gun, you simply ask for it and your desk will serve it up for you.

Anyway, J269 ends up killing Dennis Lipscomb during their confrontation. Informing the building's head of security (Troy Evans), that he had just killed Dennis Lipscomb, J269 asks that the authorities be notified. When Goddard Marx gets wind of what happened, he immediately goes into damage control mode. Since Automatic's aren't supposed to kill people, Goddard decides that both J269 and Nora Alexander need to be eliminated.

What transpires next are a series of poorly staged action sequences involving J269 and Nora trying their darnedest not to be killed by a gang of mercenaries lead by Jeff Kober, a "primitive brute" with a ponytail.

Wait a minute, I think I should clarify something. It's not that the action is "poorly staged," it's that their poorly lit. Seriously, the film is so freaking dark at times, I couldn't even tell if Nora's skirt was a grayish to pale yellow or a light grayish-yellowish brown. I mean, c'mon people, let's set up some lights.

Repeatedly stymied by J269, who is determined to protect Nora from harm, Jeff Kober calls in reinforcements. And would you look at that, one of these reinforcements is played by Marjean Holden. I liked the few scenes Jeff Kober and Marjean Holden had together, as their relationship reminded me of the one between Private Jenette Vasquez and Private Mark Drake in Aliens; except instead of "smart guns," they wield CornerShots.

I will say this, the Die Hard-ish scene in the elevator was well done. And, no, I'm not just saying that because we get some great shots of Nora's grayish to pale yellow/light grayish-yellowish brown skirt. No foolin' the scene is quite thrilling.

Meanwhile, while all this is going on inside, a reporter named Gloria Takamatsu (Annabelle Gurwitch, Pizza Man) is holding court outside with a group of protesters; Automatic's are not popular with the "unwashed masses." At first I was like, why do all the non-Asian reporters in this movie have Asian names? But then it dawned on me, they married Asian dudes. Either way, I love the fact that Annabelle Gurwitch plays a character named "Gloria Takamatsu."

I don't know what else to say about this movie other than it boasts some modestly intriguing ideas in the regard to the future; the ability to download objects directly to your desk is kind of cool. But as far as being a sci-fi action flick, I'd have to declare Automatic a mild, poorly lit failure.

Nemesis (Albert Pyun, 1992)

In a world where blood splattered walls and arterial spray have been replaced by sparky embers and frazzled circuit boards, Nemesis exists solely as pornographic wish fulfillment for those whose dream it has been to live on the fringes of society as a human-machine hybrid with conflicted loyalties. A Front Line Assembly album cover come to life, this cutting edge science fiction action flick will no doubt test one's tolerance for overlong shootouts, shoddy Germanic accents, and the act of diving off a cliff in a tropical setting. But those willing to look past its inherent wonkiness, the rewards are immeasurable; especially in terms of watching comely cyborg chicks in short skirts shoot automatic weapons at a wily French dude. A series of cleverly demented fire fights punctuated by William Gibson-esque dialogue and bluntly-worded one-liners, this film is a bouncy trip into the near future that will surely keep your gears oiled and your mind in a constant state of perpetual motion. If the expression "sparky embers" sounds familiar, well, that's because I also used it to describe the gun battles that take place in Radioactive Dreams, a post-apocalyptic adventure film from 1985. Which of course makes perfect sense seeing as that both are directed by Albert Pyun, the master when it comes to creating iridescent shootouts. (If I'm not mistaken, the gunplay featured in his version of Captain America were kinda sparkly as well.)

Anyway, taking spark-replete firefights to whole another level of... sparkiness, Mr. Pyun gets downright nutty with the pyrotechnics this time around. And what makes it so great is that he is completely justified. I mean, what do you think would happen if a room full of cyborgs started shooting metal projectiles at each other at an accelerated velocity? Exactly. The amount of sparks produced as a result of this bullet-fueled mayhem would be off the sparky charts.

Getting us from one spark-emitting encounter to another is the blank expression of Olivier Gruner, a Parisian kick boxer turned actor. Playing Alex, a L.A. cop in the year 2027, the monosyllabic tough guy is constantly being upgraded with mechanical parts after each assignment. These tuneups have become so commonplace, that he has started to worry about the structural integrity of his everlasting soul. At what point does he stop being human? Deep, mildly philosophical stuff.

Tired of hunting down cyber-terrorists and hackers, the conflicted cop moves down to Rio de Janeiro to start a new life as a black-market dealer of cybertronic doodads. The net may be vast and infinite, but this doesn't prevent his old employers from tracking him down. Forcing him to partake in a dangerous mission to locate a rogue agent named Jared (Marjorie Monaghan) in Shang Loo, Java, his bosses Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) and Maritz (Brion James) install a small bomb in his heart to ensure his cooperation. Upon arriving in Shang Loo, Alex quickly becomes an unwilling pawn in an epic battle brewing between humans and cyborgs. And since he's somewhere in the middle, Alex must choose which side he's on.

Helping him make his decision is a rebel leader (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a big-haired cyborg in a trench-coat (Deborah Shelton), and a limber rapscallion named Max Impact (Merle Kennedy). These three characters (especially the Lori Petty-esque Miss Kennedy) are essential to the non-shootout scenes, in that they utter the majority of the film's spoken dialogue. Don't get me wrong, he can blast his way out of an awkward situation like nobodies business, but my confidence in Olivier Gruner as an human actor is a tad on the sketchy side.

Strangely, Marjorie Monaghan is quite clumsy as an actress while in the flesh – though I did enjoy the shortness of her skirt (and the equally short skirt sported by her blonde friend, a leggy Marjean Holden)–yet, she was rather competent while compressed in the digital realm. It's weird how that happens.

It's true, I never saw Nemesis in its entirety before now, but the "cyborg fucking shootout" in the Shang Loo hotel has been in contact with my illustrious eyeballs on several occasions over the years. I first saw the infamous shootout on cable while volunteering over at a community centre for wayward she-male's with low self-esteem back in the mid-90s and more recently in an online setting.

However, seeing it in its proper context–you know, with the rest of the film in tow–has elevated it to a somewhat legendary status.

The sheer number of sparks employed during this sequence alone is enough to glorify it with exaggerated praise, the fact that Olivier Gruner escapes his hotel room by shooting his way through the floor–rendering a cyborg inoperative along the way–is what makes this scene the awe-inspiring spectacle that it truly is. Seriously, the person who came up with the idea of having him create his own personal elevator utilizing his guns is a freaking genius. And just the mere thought of Deborah Shelton exchanging an inordinate amount of gunfire with those two lumbering cyborgs, all the while, Gruner mows his way through the floor, never fails to bring a misguided tear to my eye.

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