Author: Jim McLennan

Playground

  By

★★★
“Further education.”

I’m a little surprised I hadn’t heard of this, considering it is based on a concept by Luc Besson. What we have here, though, is a feature-length version of what was originally a ten-episode web series. I presume it was intended for distribution on something like Quibi (remember that?), but I’ve not been able to find out where it previously appeared, if anywhere. Anyway, it recently popped up on Tubi, looking like a “proper” film, though still with the chapter headings. While touted as “an original idea” by Luc Besson, let’s be honest: if you chucked Nikita, Leon and Hanna into a blender, the resulting violence smoothie might well end up tasting not dissimilar to this.

Amy Seely (Holm) is a teen orphan in New York (though the series was made in France), whose father murdered her mother, then killed himself, and is not having a good time in the foster system. She is more than happy to take the route out offered to her by Father (Abkarian), even though that means attending The Courtyard, a school for teenage assassins. There, life is certainly cheap, with the mysterious powers that be who run it, taking advantage of the fact that nobody basically suspects children of being killers. However, Amy becomes privy to disturbing information, which suggests that the Courtyard might have been involved in her parents’ deaths, and begins to rebel against her own conditioning. Not helping matters: the facility is attacked, and the order comes from above to shut it all down.

After an impressive opening, where Amy ambushes a group of four thugs, by pretending to be the target’s daughter, this is… merely alright. It feels a bit too “young adult’ for my tastes, and spends an excessive amount of time within the Courtyard, dealing with what I am inclined to describe as Teen Soap-Opera Bullshit. For example, there’s a bitchy girl who takes an instant dislike to Amy, a cute boy that she kinda likes, and so on. Therefore, when her first mission goes awry because somebody sabotaged her gun, it leads to an additional helping of unnecessary TS-OB. I’d have preferred to see more of them operating in the real world, and suspect the webisode budget acted as a constraint there.

The structure is also a little odd as a result, because rather than building to an obvious climax, you have ten mini-climaxes, corresponding to the end of each episode. In some ways, this pacing has more in common with a golden era serial. I was quite impressed with Holm, who has potential, although it was a little odd having her first mission involving a paedophile, considering Besson’s own… um, very “European” history in the area of teenage attraction. It’s also eye-rollingly fortuitous how that mission provides her with the first evidence that the Courtyard may not be as beneficent as they claim. Still, it’s probably no worse than anything Besson has done in the past decade. 

Dir: Olivier Schneider and Pascal Sid
Star: Amalia Holm, Simon Abkarian, Melina Matthews, Ann Skelly

Inheritance

  By

★★★
“The family that spies together, lies together.”

Or, um, something, I guess. Maya (Dynevor) is at her mother’s funeral, when she gets a surprise, in the appearance of her long estranged father, Sam (Ifans). He wants to reconnect with her, and to this end, offers her a job with his real-estate company in Cairo. Despite qualms, Maya accepts, but not long after her arrival, Sam is kidnapped. To obtain his release, the kidnappers order her to recover a package and deliver it to them. Things turn out to be more complex than that, naturally, and the resulting trail takes Maya first to India, then on to South Korea, with various parties keenly interested in the outcome. She discovers the murky truth about her father’s business activities too.

While that likely won’t surprise anyone who has seen this kind of film, it does a good job of capturing the escalating sense of paranoia felt by the heroine. What is going on? Is her father a good guy or not? Who can she trust? [For the last, it’s unsurprising, and not really a spoiler, if you go with “nobody at all” there] The whole film was shot on an iPhone which is kinda impressive, because it looks surprisingly decent. It does add a hand-held immediacy to proceedings, and this helps in some sequences, such as when she is being pursued through the streets of Mumbai. Or is it Delhi? I’ll admit, it hard to keep track sometimes.

On the other hand, I tend to feel this should only be one trick in the cinematic locker, and because it’s used for the entirety here, its impact does tend to diminish. Fortunately, it’s considerably more stable than I expected, so I presume this wasn’t just the director waving it around by hand. Dynevor has to carry the film with her performance, and I did like the character arc. Maya starts off as a fairly nondescript party girl, who basically flings herself into hedonistic excess after the death of her mother, for whom she had been sole carer of late. But by the end, she has become hard-bitten and cynical, deception now coming as easily as breathing to her.

In its hand-held energy and globe-trotting shenanigans, it feels like it might inhabit a small, extremely cheap corner of the Bourne universe. However, I would definitely not expect any significant action set-pieces commensurate with that. While Maya does qualify here – she’s absolutely left to sink or swim based on her own abilities to escape perilous situations – it’s her instinctual smarts which are key to survival. You may be able to see where this will end up. In particular, there was one line which was absolutely an “Ah-hah!” moment for me in this regard. I wouldn’t say that destroys the film, since this is one where the journey is more interesting than the destination. This iPhone technique isn’t somewhere I’d like to live, yet it was an interesting place to visit. 

Dir: Neil Burger
Star: Phoebe Dynevor, Rhys Ifans, Necar Zadegan, Kersti Bryan

Steal Her Breath

  By

★★½
“Don’t hold your breath.”

I wonder if this film was made as some kind of bet. How many tropes and clichés can you fit into a single movie? It would make for a fun drinking game, though not one I would recommend, unless you have first checked the fine print on your health insurance. It focuses on two characters, though both of them are more like walking collections of issues. There’s a thief, Laura Nehls (Binger), who is seeking to liberate the NOX list, which is about to be sold on the black market. It contains “The true identities of hundreds of investigators, informants, and undercover agents.” Needless to say, the authorities are keen on this not falling into the wrong hands. 

Seeking to stop it is police detective Maxine Kämmerer (Lopes), a single mom whom we first see trying (and failing) to get some quality alone time in her shower, if you know what I mean. On her side is somewhat useless colleague Joachim (Hauber), of whom Maxine says, “Nobody likes you and nobody takes you seriously, because you’re a coward, corrupt, a grumbler, and a disgusting asshole.” These are the good guys, folks. The film isn’t really selling them. Mind you, just about every other man in this film is a bully or worse, up to the psychotic Laschla (Möller), one of the buyers of the file, whose hobbies include stringing women up and gutting them. 

An exception might be Laura’s uncle Dirk, though he seems to have some kind of terminal disease. Cancer. It’s probably cancer. So he’ll be abandoning her soon too. You won’t be surprised to discover that Laura and Maxine meet up, have instant sexual chemistry and decide to work with each other (more or less) to recover the NOX files. This happens after an surprisingly lengthy and surprisingly graphic spot of lesbian canoodling, finding in each other’s arms what they are unable to get from the male sex. There might have been a point where I would have appreciated this unexpected treat. But in this case, I was largely making “hurry up” gestures toward the screen. Though you won’t be surprised to discover that the sides disagree in terms of their commitment to the new relationship. 

From reading local reviews, the most memorable thing here seems to be the use of local Swabian and Saxon dialect. Needless to say, that’s an element which entirely escaped me, and there wasn’t much to keep me interested otherwise. Things unfold almost as you’d expect and, while both Maxine and Laura are characters with potential, the fact that chief antagonist Laschla looks to have strayed in from a bit of Euroschlock, Possibly involving gay vampires. It all unfolds in a plodding and predictable fashion, though it’s nicely photographed, and the leads stop it from collapsing entirely under its own weight. If you have a burning desire to see a German version of Bound, I guess this will satisfy the urge. 

Dir: Andreas Kröneck
Star: Luisa Binger, Christina Lopes, Harald Hauber, Oliver Möller

Girls In Prison

  By

★★½
“Better poster than a movie.”

This came out the same year as Swamp Women, with the Corman production beating this to the screen by a couple of months. Given the similarities in the plot, I have to wonder if the concept of the “mockbuster” pre-dates The Asylum. Though it’s not as if this is exactly a top of the line, Hollywood production, being distributed by AIP. You can probably tell from that gorgeous poster, which is a true work of art and, sadly, considerably more exciting than what this mostly pedestrian film has to offer. It begins with Anne Carson (Taylor) being sent to prison as an accomplice in an armed robbery, though she protests her innocence, and prison chaplain Rev. Fulton (Denning) believes her.

Key in the case against Anne was the unexplained disappearance of $38,000 in loot, which she says she simply walked away from. Needless to say, as soon as details of her conviction become known on the inside, a lot of people want to become her “friends”, not least queen bee Jenny (Jergens) and another cellmate, Melanee (Gilbert). After an earthquake hits the prison and throws everything into chaos, Jenny and Melanee make a break for freedom, dragging an unwilling Anne with them. On the outside, the other participant in the robbery, Paul, is equally keen to recover the proceeds, and is applying the screws to Anne’s father, using his as leverage so she will spill the truth to him.

Made in 1956, you can seem some of the standard women-in-prison tropes present, albeit inevitably in a diluted format given the time – the Hays code was still firmly in effect. Hence, the jail personnel are all nice, rather than abusive: the warden’s belief that Anne is not as innocent as she claims, is about as harsh as it gets (and, she’s not wrong…). There’s no nudity, naturally; any lesbian undertones are extremely implied; and the violence is limited to a couple of cat-fights. Though one does manage, with unerring accuracy, to make its way into a nearby puddle of mud. The main problem is pacing: while it starts and ends well enough, after the concept is established, little happens until the convenient tremor show up.

Certainly, nothing resembling the tag-lines takes place. I never did learn “what happens to girls without men”, not least because these are hardly girls, e.g. Jergens was aged 38 when this was released. The one man, presumably the Rev. Fulton, is not “against” the women, regardless of quantity, and even by mid-fifties standards, there’s little here to shock. Okay, expecting truth in advertising from an AIP movie is likely a stretch. But Swamp Women was rather more entertaining, realizing that it had to keep things moving forward to engage the audience. This knows the story has to go from Point A to Point B. It just doesn’t know how to make the journey more than marginally interesting, and to be honest, rarely makes much of an effort.

Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Star: Joan Taylor, Adele Jergens, Richard Denning, Helen Gilbert 

Torment

  By

★½
“Car trouble.”

I’m tempted to be very snarky, say something like “The torment here is entirely on the viewer’s end” and make that the totality of the review. However, that’s a dangerous precedent, one I don’t want to set. Before long, I’d be phoning it in, and churning out nothing but single sentence reviews. I would instead spend my time sitting on the couch, eating Doritos and scrolling idly on my phone, before dying prematurely of a heart attack, and turning Chris into a grieving cat lady. Do you want that to happen, Torment? Do you, really? However, it probably does say something that such morbid speculation is still considerably more fun than either watching or writing about this. 

It’s one of those films where the time-line is jumbled up. This kind of script requires a lot of writing rigour to work, and Leone doesn’t have it at all. Though I already had a sinking feeling with an opening title sequence which looks like it was made on Windows Movie Maker. And not a current version, either. We begin with a woman picking up another women off the side of the road, and the title card. We then get a woman leaving her apartment, walking down to the car-park, getting in her vehicle. She drives around. Fills it up with petrol. Drives around some more. Parks in a different parking structure. We’re eight minutes into a 73-minute film, and I am already checking out.

Turns out there’s someone locked in the trunk. Though do not make the mistake of thinking it’s the woman picked up at the beginning. Dear me, no. That sequence turns out to be the opener for the final part of the film, a bit of stalking of the hitch-hiker through the woods. It gives the strong impression of having been tacked on as emergency filler, after the sudden realization they had done with the main plot, and only had 55 minutes of material. That is mostly to do with the woman in the trunk, who is radio host Elaine Margo (Bird). She has been kidnapped by the mysterious driver (Cay), because… Uncertain. Elaine obviously has murderous secrets of her own, but how they impact her abductor is never adequately explained.

Instead, there’s a lot of driving. Which I get. it’s clear there wasn’t much money here, so the makers went with a concept that requires few locations, and a very small cast. But it doesn’t help that the two leads are similar in appearance, so when we get scenes outside the car, it’s often unclear who is involved in them. This is just another misstep in a movie which seems compulsively drawn to making them. You’ll reach the end – which is really the beginning – and will likely feel nothing more than bemused irritation at best. It almost made a nihilist out of me, because I was left questioning the point of this film’s existence, as well as my own.

Dir: Anthony Leone
Star: Amy Cay, Paisley Bird, Isabella Giardini, JD Isabelle

Buried in Barstow

  By

★★★
“Cliffhanger in California.”

Before we go any further, you need to know one thing: do not expect complete resolution. This literally ends with “To be continued…” One of the major plot threads is wrapped up. But another remains largely unresolved, and the final few minutes start off another, almost entirely new one. The original intent was for this to be the first in a series of made for Lifetime movies. But since this came out in June 2022, no further installments have appeared. Instead, you get something which is so abrupt, I started to look and see if the copy I was watching had failed to download completely. It’s unfortunate, because until then, it might be the best Lifetime TVM I’ve seen.

That begins with an opening caption: “This program contains strong violence. Viewer discretion is advised.” Ok, we are still talking about strong violence… by the standards of Lifetime TV movies. Do not expect founts of arterial spray and disembowelment. But it does mean that when someone gets their nose broken, there will be some blood. It’s surprising how a little helps there. The nose-breaking is delivered by Hazel King (Harmon), a single mother who runs a diner on the road to Las Vegas, and is fiercely protective of daughter Joy (Richards). So when Joy’s scuzzy boyfriend gives her a black eye, she isn’t standing for that. Or, as she puts it, “He raises a fist, I raise a gun.” Scuzzy boyfriend subsequently vanishes. 

Because, it turns out, Hazel is not just a momma bear, but a former mob assassin, who quit the job years ago. Of course, it isn’t that simple, and eventually her old boss, Von, comes calling. This being a Lifetime TVM, there is inevitably a romantic interest, in the shape of hunky dishwasher (!) and former heart surgeon (!!) Elliott (Polaha). However, this turns out not just to be purely for the obligatory sucking of face. Indeed, it’s integrated with surprising grace, tying in to Joy’s previous, but eventually discarded, ambitions in the medical field. Really, up until the final moments, this was almost indistinguishable from a “real” movie, in terms of plotting. Harmon’s performance, too, is polished and effective.

Never more so than when she’s going after scuzzy boyfriend, where there’s a genuine degree of intensity which I did not expect. I was entirely convinced she was both capable of murdering him, and had every intention of doing so. This all unfolds inside the first twenty minutes and, while we don’t get anything quite as effective thereafter, it makes an excellent impression, and establishes a great deal about Hazel as a character. It’s a real pity that we are now approaching four years since the broadcast of the film in June 2022, and there has not even been a peep about a follow-up. It’s a shame – both in terms of the concept not being developed to its potential, and because this, on its own, deserves to have received a better ending. 

Dir: Howard Deutch
Star: Angie Harmon, Lauren Ashley Richards, Kristoffer Polaha, George Paez

Tornado

  By

★★½
“That’s my father’s sword. Put it down.”

It’s a samurai film. Except, it’s a Western. Only, it’s one which takes place in Scotland. I trust that’s cleared up any confusion here. However, you will still need to manage your expectations, because based on both the poster and the trailer, it would be easy to go in expecting something action-packed. It is not. At all. That element is heavily back-loaded, to the final fifteen minutes. It does include one of the more imaginative and splattery kills I’ve seen this year. Probably a bonus half-star for that alone. However, it’s more a movie about mood, atmosphere and scenery than arterial spray. But I lived in Scotland. I already know it’s pretty.

This unfolds at almost the very end of the 18th century, when Fujin (Hira) and his daughter Tornado (Kōki) are taking their samurai puppet show around the Scottish lowlands. She comes into possession of some gold, which has been stolen from a church by a gang, led by Sugarman (Roth) and his son, Little Sugar (Lowden). They’re not happy, and pursue the caravan in which she’s travelling with her father. This leads to a confrontation in which Fujin is killed, albeit not before badly wounding Sugarman. Tornado flees into the forest, to regroup, and eventually plot her revenge against the robber and his pals, using the skills taught to her, to pick them off one by one on her way to the inevitable final confrontation with Sugarman. 

I respect what this is trying to do, and it’s certainly a combination of genres and settings which I had not seen before. Unfortunately, the execution is plagued with a number of missteps, which hamper the end results and negate many of the positive elements. Right from the start, we are thrown into the middle of things, with Tornado running from Sugarman and his henchmen. The film is curiously reluctant to tell us what is going on – or, more importantly, why we should care – being too leisurely to fill in the blanks. There’s also a cut-out between the gang and Tornado, in the shape of a kid who actually carried out the initial theft. Beyond giving the heroine ‘clean hands’, it’s an unnecessary complication. 

On the performance side, Roth is good value as ever in a villainous role: I was inevitably reminded of Rob Roy, where he previously played the bad guy in 18th-century Scotland. Kōki has rather more experience as a model than an actress, and director MacLean wisely keeps the need for actual dramatics to a minimum, opting to make her the stoic samurai type, so she’s good enough. It all looks quite lovely, so while you are waiting around for something much to happen – which will be the majority of the hour and a half – you can admire the cinematography and picturesque Scottish landscapes. It wasn’t quite enough for me. While possible to admire the intent, this is likely a case of “It’s not you, it’s me.” 

Dir: John Maclean
Star: Kōki, Tim Roth, Takehiro Hira, Jack Lowden

Woman at War

  By

★★★★
“Feel the electricity in the air.”

This was a real and pleasant surprise. I wasn’t even sure if this would qualify for the site, or if it would end simply being too gentle. Whole it’s not going to get any awards for hard-core action, it does fit in here. More impressively, it managed to make my empathize with someone whose views are ones I’d generally disagree with. It takes place in Iceland, where Halla (Geirharðsdóttir) is a middle-aged, single woman, waging a near one-person campaign of sabotage against heavy industry, mostly by disabling the power-lines which supply electricity to it, disfiguring the landscape and exacerbating climate change. It’s a game of cat and mouse, with the authorities keen to stop the eco-terrorist from dissuading foreign investors.

However, Halla has issues of her own, beyond the net closing in on her property destruction. A long-dormant adoption request is suddenly approved, and she can’t risk further criminal acts, as a conviction would bar her from proceeding. She intends to go out with a declaration of her manifesto, literally flung from the Reykjavik roof-tops, and a final act, stealing Semtex to blow up a key electricity pylon. Her accomplice, government employee Baldvin (Ragnarsson) is increasingly concerned about the “one last job” trope, and twin sister Ása (also Geirharðsdóttir), a yoga teacher, threatens to put a spoke in the adoption process too, by vanishing off to India for two years to live with her guru.

It’s charming, quirky and rather subversive, all at the same time. It could easily have toppled over into preachiness, but is leavened with enough humour to keep the messaging secondary to the medium. For example, there’s a poor Spanish tourist (Estrada), who is perpetually getting blamed for the attacks, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading to his tent getting SWATted. There’s also the soundtrack, which shows up on screen as a three-piece band, and a trio of singers, who play whatever music is needed to accompany the scenes. Every character is a pleasure, not least the farmer (Johanson) who becomes Halla’s leading accomplice. I will say, any wannabe eco-warriors might well get some helpful tips here, such as the best place to hide your explosives…

But it’s Geirharðsdóttir’s film, in both of her roles. She has a quiet yet absolute commitment to her cause, and it’s thoroughly convincing, even to someone like me who thinks “Earth First” means, “We can strip-mine the other planets later.” I still found myself rooting for her, as she scurried across the Icelandic moors, using low-tech means to counter the authorities with their drones and thermal imaging cameras. For what’s as much a comedic drama as anything, these sequences pack their share of tension, and I was left wondering how it would get resolved. It is a bit of a cheat – are the Icelandic authorities that incompetent? I’ll let it pass, since this demonstrates the way message movies should be executed.

Dir: Benedikt Erlingsson
Star: Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jon Johanson, Juan Camilo Román Estrada, Jörundur Ragnarsson

[A modified version of this review first appeared on Film Blitz]

Blood Star

  By

★★
“Neither protecting nor serving.”

I get the idea of what this is trying to do: really, be a female-centric version of The Hitcher. Though to some extent, that franchise went there itself, in The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting. Here, we have Bobbi Torres (Camacho) driving across New Mexico in her sweet muscle car, and when she stops for fuel, has an awkward encounter with Sheriff Bilstein (Schwab). Things get worse when she gets back on the road, and is quickly pulled over by the officer for speeding, which gets her a thousand dollar ticket she is unable to pay. Thanks to a prologue, we know Bilstein has a psychopathic fondness for tormenting and killing young women. This ain’t gonna end well.

It is one of those films where you can tell whether someone is good or evil by their genital configuration. Every man Bobbi meets is evil; every woman we see is part of an unspoken sisterhood. I sense the aim was some kind of riot grrrl agenda, but it manifests itself in some spectacularly clunky ways. There’s one conversation which is especially cringey, Bobbi trading abuse stories with a diner waitress, Amy (Brumfield). It ends in a manner that is clearly intended to be shocking, but I was more relieved the pair had simply stopped spitting out clichés. And I am fairly sure that getting jabbed with a syringe does not typically result in instinct heroin addiction, as alleged here. 

Nor does it help that Bobbi isn’t very likeable, the script mistaking smart-ass and mouthy as endearing. Schwab does better as the authority figure, exuding menace with every sentence. Though despite sharing a fondness for toying with his victim, the Sheriff is inevitably nowhere near as memorable as Rutger Hauer’s mythical road warrior. The agenda here is less interesting as well: I’ve seen a few reviews which compare this to the Wolf Creek movie, and I’d not argue – in part because I didn’t like that Australian road-slasher very much either [the TV series, however, is worth a look] The scales here are tipped considerably in favour of torture porn (albeit more mental than physical), with the inevitable explosion of Bobbi limited to the final fifteen minutes. 

There are some positives to be found, such as the impressively sparse desert landscapes (looks like California played the part of New Mexico), and Bobbi’s car, a 1977 Ford Mustang, which arguably has more personality than its driver. There’s a plot point established about it having a balky starter motor, but I don’t recall this being as crucial as I expected. I did like the sense anyone could die at any time, with a couple of deaths out of nowhere. It needs a heroine who is considerably more aggressive, except verbally, in the first half. Bobbi ends up being too passive for too long in the face of the Sheriff’s obvious threat, which belies the strong, confident woman the script wants her to be.

Dir: Lawrence Jacomelli
Star: Britni Camacho, John Schwab, Sydney Brumfield, Travis Lincoln Cox

Parse Galaxy Omnibus, Volume 1 by Kate Sheeran Swed

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Sloane Tarnish is not exactly your typical bounty-hunter. Indeed, she’s training for a medical degree when her shady uncle, Vin, talks her into helping out with a little job. Craving excitement, she agrees, and finds herself posing as the wife of a Fleet officer, seeking to intercept a data key with potentially very explosive information on it. A year later, Vin’s ship turns up without him on it, and she finds herself the new captain, leading the crew as they try to figure out where Vin has gone, and why he vanished. To fund this search, Sloane takes up the bounty-hunting mantle.

Given this is an eight-volume series (not including the prequel which forms part of this set), it’s no spoiler to say, this does not end with our heroine being re-united with Uncle Vin. But if that does not happen, quite a lot else does. Sloane gets embroiled in a fight for power between the two major forces in her part of the galaxy. There’s the Galactic Fleet, who keep the peace, and the Cosmic Trade Federation, who run commerce. But the Fleet appear to be attempting to consolidate power in their hands, and the data key Vin liberated may contain incriminating evidence to prove that. Or it may not. But a lot of people are very interested in Sloane’s efforts to locate it and her uncle.

Among them are Commander of the Galactic Fleet, Gareth Fortune. He’s the man from whom she took the data key in the prequel, but he becomes rather more sympathetic to her over the following two volumes. Fortune has problems of his own, because he is being set up as the man in charge of the planned galactic coup. To prove his innocence, needs Sloane to find proof of the real perpetrator. On the other hand, there is Federation Coordinator Striker, whose enmity towards Sloane is considerably more persistent. Especially after she rejects his offer of work, then turns around and employs the bounty target she was supposed to be delivering to him.

This appears to be on permanent offer as a Kindle freebie, and you certainly can’t complain about that price. Despite the prequel, it still feels like I was missing some information. For example, Sloane has apparently been outside this galaxy – to our one, for she brought back coffee to hers! However, this should not get in the way of the main plot which, although unresolved, is decent, and ends without excessive cliff-hangers. I liked the occasional moments of dry humour, and the heroine is a likable sort, if perhaps a little more passive than I would have expected. The burgeoning romance between her and Fortune is a little obvious too. It still made for a pleasant enough read, and I could see myself dipping deeper into the series, if my unread pile were not its inevitable self.

Author: Kate Sheeran Swed
Publisher: Spells & Spaceships Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Collects Books 0-2 of 8 in the Parse Galaxy series.