Author: Jim McLennan

Amy

  By

★★★
“What rules?”

It’s interesting to compare the approach taken in this biopic of aviation heroine Amy Johnson, made in 1984, with the one over 40 years earlier (and shortly after her death) in They Flew Alone, and note the similarities and differences. Both are relatively restrained in budget. The earlier one because it was a low-cost production, made during a war; the later one because it was made for television – and the BBC at that, never a broadcaster known for its profligate spending! As a result, both are limited in terms of the spectacle they can offer, and end up opting to concentrate on Amy as a character. It’s the cheaper approach.

This benefits from a little more distance, and doesn’t need to paint an almost beatific picture of its subject for patriotic propaganda purposes. It begins with Amy (Walter) already fully grown up and seeking to raise funds for her record-setting flight to Australia, despite only a hundred hours of solo experience. Actually, 102, as she points out to a potential sponsor, also delivering the line above. when it’s pointed out she’s not even supposed to be in the hangar. The film does a somewhat better job of capturing Amy in flight, with wing-mounted camerawork that’s an improvement over the obvious rear-projection used in Alone. Yet there’s still too much reliance on newspaper headlines, to avoid having to spend money, though there is some deft use, of what’s either genuine newsreel footage or artfully re-created, sepia facsimiles.

There is a similar focus on her failed marriage to fellow aviator, Jim Mollinson (Francis, who really does not sound Scottish at all), and he doesn’t come off much better than the character did in Alone. Jim is portrayed again as a drunken womanizer, though this version plays down the idea of him becoming fed-up at being overshadowed by Johnson’s exploits. It feels like there’s a slight hint of a romantic relationship between Johnson and earlier co-pilot Jack Humphreys (Pugh). There’s also a statement that she had an operation to prevent her from having children, which I had not heard before. But it does depict Amy as quickly becoming fed up with the endless appearances required by her Daily Mail contract post-Australia flight, which seems accurate: she was happier out of the public eye.

The biggest difference between the two films is probably the way they depict her death. This… simply doesn’t. It ends instead, in a 1940 meeting with her ex-husband, while they were both ferrying planes around Britain for the Air Transport Auxiliary. Barbs are traded, and Jim seems annoyed when a fan comes up seeking Amy’s autograph and ignoring him completely. She leaves for her flight, despite being told regulations won’t let her take off due to the conditions. “What rules?” she says, before a caption details her death in 1941. It’s understated, and that’s in line with the approach taken here – perhaps too much so. While I think it is slightly better than Alone, this feels mostly due to better technical aspects. I still can’t feel either film gave me a true understanding of what she was like, or what made her tick.

Dir: Nat Crosby
Star: Harriet Walter, Clive Francis, George A. Cooper, Robert Pugh

Chess Game

  By

★★★½
“Queen takes king.”

I had to work quite hard to see this: while it is on Tubi, the subtitles there were only in Spanish, and so not much help (I’m still at the “Donde esta la biblioteca?” level). Fortunately, it then turned up on Vudu, and I bravely made my way through their crappy interface and frequent adverts to bring you this review. It was worth it. This is a solid slice of women-in-prison action/drama from Brazil, though perhaps less exploitative than I expected (especially given the country’s history in the sub-genre!) . I mean, Marins is a former model in Brazillian Playboy, so you’ll understand I had… certain expectations. Fortunately, the rest of the movie proved more than adequate to hold my attention. 

After a welfare fraud is discovered, Guilhermina Dos Santos (Fantin) takes the fall and gets a 16-year prison sentence, while the real mastermind, Senator Franco (Calloni) escapes consequences. Three years into her sentence, Mina has become top dog in the facility. After her parole request is turned down, the Senator decides it’s best if she ceases to be a problem. He pays the warden (Andrada), who bribes an inmate to shank Mina. The attempt fails, thanks partly to the intervention of new inmate, Beth (Marins), and Mina decides she needs to escape. With the help of a friendly guard, this is accomplished, with Mina, Beth and Mina’s lieutenant Martona now on the outside, where her sister, Juliet, offers her assistance. Mina kidnaps the Senator’s son, to force him to pay her share of the fraud profits. Yet not everything is quite as it seems, as things escalate towards a confrontation in a hospital.

Fantin, in particular, makes for an excellent heroine, especially when establishing her bad-ass credentials. There were points where this felt like an entry in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series from Japan – albeit less in terms of style, than Fantin’s attitude mirroring that of Meiko Kaji, and in its fairly cynical view of society in general. The plot is nicely handled as well, with the title proving quite appropriate, as Mina and Franco seek to gain the upper hand on each other. [I’ve also read that “chess” is a slang term for prison in Brazil, adding another layer of meaning] These twists continue until the film’s final shot, literally. However, the film does suffer from some pacing problems, e.g. a lengthy sequence where the escaped women shoot pool, drink and harass a man, brings things to a halt, just when it should be accelerating. I also have some questions, such as in regard to security in Brazillian jails, where it seems remarkably easy for multiple prisoners to waltz on out of there, with the help of just one guard. It’s not the only example of slipshod plotting, and it’s likely these flaws which stopped it from achieving a seal of approval, as it still does a lot in its eighty minutes. 

Dir:  Luis Antonio Pereira
Star: Priscila Fantin, Carla Marins, Antonio Calloni, Tuca Andrada 
a.k.a. Jogo de Xadrez

The Lair

  By

★★★
“Russian about.”

There is a tendency for directors married to actresses to make them action heroines. This perhaps started with Renny Harlin and Geena Davis, but the most famous example is probably Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich (she was previously married to Luc Besson too). It seems that Marshall and Kirk may be heading that way, with her starring in his last two movies. First there was witch-pic The Reckoning, and now this, which blends elements from a number of genre films. Not the least of which are Marshall’s own Dog Soldiers and The Descent. However, you can also throw in Predator, Aliens and perhaps even Starship Troopers. The result is, obviously, derivative as hell – yet I can’t deny, I enjoyed it.

Pilot Capt. Kate Sinclair (Kirk) is shot down in hostile Afghani territory. While being pursued by insurgents, she stumbles across and takes refuge an abandoned underground base left over from the Soviet occupation in the eighties. What’s inside turns out to be very aggressive and unpleasant, and Sinclair barely escapes with her life. She finds refuge in a nearby allied base commanded by Major Roy Finch (Bamber), and her tales of Soviet engineered monstrosities meet with understandable scepticism. Until night falls, and the creatures emerge from their laur and go on the offensive. The next day, Capt. Sinclair and the survivors decide they need to go back to the Russian base and plant enough C4 to reduce it and its inhabitants to their constituent atoms.

The last Marshall film we covered here was Doomsday back in 2008. Since then he has honed his skills more in television; of particular note, a couple of episodes from Game of Thrones, including the spectacular “Blackwater”. He seems to have put the experience to good use here, with a fine eye for the fight sequences between the soldiers and the creatures. There are a lot of practical effects, and the Resident Evil franchise is another clear influence. I do wish the creatures’ talents had been further illustrated: for instance there’s one point where Sinclair is grabbed by a monster’s multiple tongues. I kept expecting this feature to return later; it never does.

There are, unfortunately, too many holes for this to be a classic, with a heroine whose behaviour falls  short of logical, or even making sense. I get the “no man left behind” thing, but dragging all your comrades back into danger, in order to rescue one person, is very different from going in alone (as Ripley does, to rescue Newt, at the end of Aliens). Some of the accents here are flat-out terrible: Bamber’s Southern drawl is the worst – were there no actual actors available from South of the Mason-Dixon line? – but Ockenden’s Welsh isn’t convincing either. I’m also impressed by the way Sinclair’s hair and make-up remain pristine through the entire movie, regardless of what grubby underground trench she has had to crawl through: I guess being the director’s wife has its benefits… As an entertaining B-movie though, I’ve no complaints, and if this couple want to continue down the Anderson/Jovovich road in future, I’ll be fine with that.

Dir: Neil Marshall
Star: Charlotte Kirk, Jonathan Howard, Jamie Bamber, Leon Ockenden

Dinosaur Hotel

  By

★½
“Should have gone extinct”

Roughly ten minutes into this, it was clear I’d made a terrible mistake. I’ve seen my share of wretched creature features in my time, and this is down near the bottom of the barrel. It does have an interesting, if totally ludicrous idea. Five women are invited to a remote hotel, to take part in a game-show, competing for a prize of £100,000. Among them is struggling single mother Sienna (Wunna) who, unable to find a baby-sitter, takes her two kids with her. As the cover ever so subtly suggests, the game has carnivorous dinosaurs roaming the hotel and grounds, and “winning” simply means not getting eaten. Naturally, Sienna’s two kids also disobey Mum’s instructions not to leave the room.

There are only two things stopping this from being any good. Unfortunately, those are the budget and a complete lack of film-making ability. Wunna isn’t bad, as the competitor on whom the movie focuses. There were points at which I found myself teetering on the edge of actually giving a damn about her, and the other women are competent enough to pass muster. However, it was a horrendous mistake to have Sienna’s two kids played, it appears, by her two real kids. Professional child actors are bad enough; amateurs like these (“What. Was. That?”)  are completely unwatchable. The Games Master (John) delivers his lines with more emotion, and he’s a robotic eye in the sky.

I suspect the two issues mentioned above interact with each other. By this I mean, the depiction of the dinosaurs is so inept, it hamstrings the director in terms of what he can do. Shot of extinct, hungry reptile. Shot of contestant looking terrified, and probably screaming. Thoroughly unconvincing shot of reptile eating contestant. Rinse. Repeat. There’s no sense of escalation or real development, beyond one of the competitors being a plant. Oops, I’ve spoiled it. Sue me. There’s a (rather unconvincing) gun found at one point, and that might have been an interesting way to develop things, with various “power-ups” being available. The writer couldn’t be bothered, apparently.

Mind you, the same goes for just about every other aspect of the script too, including the logistical one of how no-one has apparently noticed dinosaurs roaming rural England. As a result of this laziness and general incompetence, everything unfolds in utterly predictable fashion. The dinosaurs refuse to eat the children, and the film can’t even be bothered to play by its own rules. It has repeatedly been stressed that as far as winners go, to borrow a line from Highlander, there can be only one. Then, at the end… Nah, never mind. And that’s aside from the question of how the winner is going to get paid after the person running the event has been eaten. Oops, more spoilers. But if you still wish to watch this, after everything I have said above, a) I have failed at my job as a critic, and b) you deserve whatever results.

Dir: Jack Peter Mundy
Star: Chrissie Wunna, Chelsea Greenwood, Alexander John, Ruby Wunna

The Adventures of Maid Marian

  By

★★★
“How do you solve a problem like Maria-n…?”

The above rating reflects my deep-held tolerance for low budget cinema. If a film is made with heart, I’m generally prepared to overlook, to some degree, technical shortcomings. Both sides of that equation are present here, in a somewhat revisionist take on the Robin Hood mythos. This takes place after Hood’s original victory over the Sheriff of Nottingham, and he has now gone on crusade to the Holy Lands with King Richard. In their absence, however, the country has not fared well. Marian (Craig) has adopted another identity, and is hiding out as novice nun Matilda, though occasionally sneaks out to help poach from the rich, and give to the poor.

Richard dies abroad, and Robin (Andersen) returns, to find himself greeted warmly by Marian, who has been booted out of her religious order, and not-so warmly by the former Sheriff, William De Wendenal (Cryer), who still bears a grudge against the pair for their role in the loss of his title. Robin is captured and injured, leaving Marian as the only hope of rescue before he’s executed along with his long-time sidekick, Little John (Pellet). Naturally, she is more than up to the task, having both run with the outlaws of Sherwood Forest, and then had to fend for herself, during the three-year span when Robin was overseas. While Marian may be a damsel, she’s more likely to be causing distress, rather than being in it.

She’s certainly more convincing a hero of folklore than Robin, who looks barely old enough to shave, never mind lead a popular rebellion against authority. As a contrast, the last film I saw about the character returning from the Crusades was Robin and Marian, starring a very world weary and middle-aged Sean Connery. Andersen has none of that gravitas, perhaps deliberately to avoid taking the focus away from the heroine. Craig is fine, holding her own dramatically and in action, and occasionally better than fine, even if the ease with which she dispatches enemies close to twice her weight in sword-fights, is painful. In particular, their “armour” doesn’t seem to give them any protection at all: the slightest tap from Marian and they fold like cheap sheets.

As noted, you very much need to be able to look past what is, by and large, an exercise in running around in the forest. There are no bustling towns to be found here: I’m not sure there was ever a scene where the count of participants reached double figures. The buildings are unconvincing. and you never get any sense of this genuinely being the 13th century. However, it is played gratifyingly straight, since otherwise it’d have to compete with fondly-remembered nineties TV series, Maid Marian and her Merry Men (created by Baldrick from Blackadder). Yet it’s also so fast and loose in its cheerful disregard of historical accuracy, it almost plays as a dead-pan spoof. The ending is left wide-open for a sequel, and despite (because of?) all its flaws, I have a sneaking hope that comes to pass.

Dir: Bill Thomas
Star: Sophie Craig, Dominic Andersen, Bob Cryer, Jon Lee Pellet

Siren of the Muncy Hole, by James Halpin

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

The main theme of this book appears to be, “How far will a mother go, to protect her daughter?” Based on what we read here, the answer to that question appears to be, “Very, very far.” The heroine is Sherica Daniels, who initially appears to have somewhat lucked out and escaped a nasty and abusive relationship. Her husband, drug addict Roy, has just died following a pair of botched armed robberies. That should leave her and teenage daughter Ashlynn to get on with their lives. Not so fast. For it’s only a short while before Roy’s drug dealer, Tokie, shows up. He’s demanding Sherica pays her husband’s debt – and more, because he believes she knows where the unrecovered loot from Roy’s robberies was hidden. When she fails to convince Tokie otherwise, he abducts Ashlynn.

The police are limited in what they can do, for Ashlynn has substance abuse issues of her own, and tells the authorities she wasn’t kidnapped. Sherica knows otherwise. She sets out to track down and rescue her daughter, from a man who turns out to be not just a drug dealer, but also a pimp. Though how do you rescue somebody who doesn’t want to be rescued? Especially when you have no experience, few resources – though Sherica does have her late husband’s .357 Magnum – and your only ally is a gas station clerk, a refugee from the Yemen. The answer is mostly tenacity: the heroine simply won’t sit back and accept any other outcome, except for getting Ashlynn back.

The style here is occasionally a tad clunky. I found myself having to reread some sentences several times to figure out their meaning, such as, “After all, you can’t live your life thinking back about what you should have done if only you’d known something you could never have known in the first place. You just can’t.” Uh… Sure, I guess? Despite the cover, it is also very restrained on the action front. There is only one such sequence, and most of its content unfolds over little more than a minute in real-time. Though it is spectacularly gory, and partly makes up for in intensity, what it might lack in duration.

The book’s main plus point is probably the character of Sherica, who is not your typical heroine. Her situation largely sucks, mainly as a result of poor choices, yet Halpin still manages to make her sympathetic. The fierce devotion to her daughter, and desire to give Ashlynn a better life, goes a long way in this regard. While told in flashback, there are hints at the downbeat way things will turn out throughout and the significance – indeed, even the meaning – of the title only becomes clear at the end. I’m not entirely convinced a situation like this would [and I’m skirting spoilers here!] conclude in the manner described. Yet it’s just plausible enough, and this is more about the journey than the destination.

Author: James Halpin
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel

District Queens

  By

★★
“Queen of the East.”

The latest stop in our ongoing tour of female-driven urban crime movies brings us to the nation’s capital in Washington, where the police are celebrating just having taken down a leading light in the city’s organized crime industry. Now, they set their sights on a new target: the gang led by Racine Robinson (Vaughan) and her two daughters, Kat (Crosby) and Candy (Bethea). These might prove a tougher nut to crack, since the Robinson crew have a harsh, zero tolerance policy to anyone who messes with them in the slightest, yet also gathered local support during the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, Racine is so popular in the neighbourhood, a run for political office is not out of the question. However, she has rivals, who have more than a passing interest in seeing her taken out of the picture – albeit for very different reasons, in order to make room for them to rise up.

This is a real grab-bag of elements, ranging from those which work very well, to those which are almost unmitigated disasters. To start on the positive side, there’s a callous disregard for human life here that’s genuinely disturbing. Even if the CGI splatter is far from convincing, head shots abound. And unlike some entries, the women in this one have no issue getting their hands dirty, for even the most trivial of reasons e.g someone tossed water at them. The guns they tote on the cover aren’t just for show. There are plenty of strong female characters on both sides of the law, from the Robinson family through Police Commissioner Stallworth, to dirty cops who have no issue shooting someone in cold blood and planting a gun on them. Perhaps the most impressive is Jada (Simmons), who looks like she actually would pop a cap in you for looking at her the wrong way. Even if there are points where I wondered if I was watching a black Russ Meyer movie, there are worse things as influence.

These good points are, unfortunately, outweighed heavily by the other side of the scale. Some of them are par for the course, such as the way the movie appears a vehicle for the makers to tout their pals’ music, businesses or whatever, in a painfully obvious way. The shaky technical elements are also unsurprising, with a “police station” that is little more than empty rooms. Audio is, as usual, the main culprit: there are points where two sides of the supposed same conversation will sound radically different. The main problem though, is a script which has no idea of the direction it wants to take, once it has set out its pieces on the chess-board. Scenes happen, with little or no connection to each other, and supporting characters drift in, drift out or (more often) get gunned down, without ever establishing relevance. Throw in embarrassingly amateur lesbian canoodling, without delivering any actual nudity, and you have a film which swings wildly from “That’s actually well-done” to “How could they include this without cringing?” every couple of minutes.

Dir: Roosevelt Jackson
Star: Rochelle Vaughan, Kathleen Vaughn Crosby, Stacie Bethea, Sasheen Simmons

Asura Girl

  By

★★★
“There will be Blood“

This is part of the Blood universe, which previously gave us anime series Blood +: Episodes 1-25 and Blood: The Last Vampire in both animated and live-action versions. That’s small beer compared to the Blood-C segment, which began as a 12-episode anime show, subsequently becoming two manga series, a novelization, a stage play, and three live-action movies. The other two, set in the current day and entitled Blood Club Dolls 1+2, aren’t of interest here despite their title (and aren’t very good), since at least the first only includes a brief cameo by Saya, the heroine of the series. Her role here is considerably more substantial, and it’s basically a better production all round. Not least because most of it works reasonably well with no prior knowledge.

It takes place not long before the outbreak of World War II, in a small rural village, plagued by a series of mysterious deaths. Brutal military policeman Amakatsu (Furuta) is charged with investigating, blaming local communist sympathizers. However, two elements suggest otherwise. Firstly, the arrival of Saya Kisaragi, member of a vampiric race called the ‘Elder Bairns’, who hunts her own kind. Then there is the contraction of a mysterious blood-based disease of Ran (Aono), the sister to village resident Ren (Matsumara). He encounters Saya when she meets a police squad, and tries to rescue her. If you’ve seen any of the entries linked above, you’ll know that she isn’t a character exactly in need of rescuing.

Wisely, the film doesn’t stretch out the “who” aspect of the mystery, since it’s not exactly hard to guess. The “why” does turn out to be a bit more unexpected, and at the end, there are a few moments where it does feel like some familiarity with the world in which it works would be helpful. Generally though, it’s fine as a standalone piece. I would have liked to have seen more of Sana in action: after taking on the police, she takes a back seat to Ran and the struggles of the village to convince Amakatsu they’re not better off dead than red. However, it certainly qualifies for the site, with some solid sword-fights at the end, which make up for in very enthusiastic, crunchy sound design, what they may lack in explicit gore and impalement.

Outside of Sana, it is a bit bland in terms of characters. Ran doesn’t make much of an impression and, until the final third, neither does his sister. There were points where this reminded me of a Hammer film, albeit one obviously set in a different time and place, with the concept of a small village plagued by a terrible evil. Twins of Evil might be the closest, as it also had a strong authoritarian figure (played by Peter Cushing), who was correct about the presence of evil – just terribly wrong in regard to its source. Amakatsu doesn’t have anything like the same arc, though this remains a considerable improvement, in most ways, over the contemporary live-action film.

Dir: Shutaro Oku
Star: Ryūnosuke Matsumura. Kanon Miyahara, Kaede Aono. Arata Furuta 

Breath

  By

★★
“The hole story”

Lara Winslet (Daigh) is a vulcanologist, who is on the side of a mountain in Italy, taking samples, when the ground gives way beneath her, and she falls into an underground pit, damaging her leg in the process. Help isn’t going to come, so with limited resources (not to mention a count of functioning limbs that stops at three), she is going to need to cope with the situation on its own, and figure a way out of what could easily become a fatal scenario. Meanwhile, on the outside, her father (Cosmo) is becoming increasingly frantic. This is erhaps because if Lara doesn’t come back, he’s going to be stuck permanently with her kid (Di Mauro). That would be my reaction, anyway…

There may be ways to make this kind of thing exciting. I imagine 127 Hours must have been able to manage it, though not having seen it, I can’t be specific on the techniques it used. Breath could have used some help, as there isn’t a great deal of adrenaline pumping through the veins of this situation. To try and generate some, it keeps flashing back to sequences set earlier and off the mountain, covering things like Lara’s affair with fellow scientist Adam (Chupin), or her more or less abandoning her daughter for the sake of career advancement in the name of scientific discovery. While this does provide some fill-in colour for her character, we eventually go back to her sobbing in a literal pit of despair.

I can’t really complain about the performances, and the photography does generate a decent sense of claustrophobia. I get the message that there are times when you can’t rely on anybody else, and have (again, more or less literally) to pull yourself up. Though I tend to feel that most life-threatening situations like this require more than a stern self-talking to, in order to get out of them: that is, however, what we get here. Lara’s leg seems injured only when necessary to the plot, and while being buried underground does bypass the usual cellphone issue, I can’t help wondering why she didn’t lob it (and its GPS) out of the pit – the hole wasn’t that deep. Or eat the nutritious, if not delicious, snake sharing it with her.

In the end, it’s just too simplistic a story: it’s almost binary, with the heroine either being in the pit or out of it. A more stepped approach, e.g. overcome the issue of her leg; figure out the water situation; try and attract attention, etc. would perhaps have done a better job of sustaining interest. Hell, even her background as a geologist never comes in useful, and it could have been anyone ambling around that mountainside. There’s a near-complete lack of ingenuity needed. In the end, it purely comes down to brute strength, as to whether or not Lara can make it out. Dare I say it, this was hole-y unremarkable.

Dir: John Real
Star: Rachel Daigh, James Cosmo, Neb Chupin, Alba Di Mauro

Once Upon a River

  By

★★½
“Initially hits the bull, ends up firing blanks.”

Margo Crane (DelaCerna) has been brought up by her native American father, since her mother walked out on them several years ago. Under his guidance, they have become self-sufficient, and Margo has become a crack shot. However, her creepy uncle ends up having sex with the teenager, an incident for which she gets blamed, ruining her life. She resolves to apply her shooting skills on him, only for the resulting incident to become a tragedy. Margo strikes out on her own up the Stark river, in search of her absent mother. Doing so, she meets a variety of people, then has to try and reconnect with a woman who now has her own life, one not necessarily helped by the unexpected arrival of a teenager.

The set-up here is remarkably engrossing, creating an interesting selection of characters that achieve depth in only a few minutes. Well, except for Creepy Uncle, who is almost entirely obvious, from the moment he invites Margo on a “hunting trip”, and certainly well before he offers to teach her how to “skin deer”. The period up to the unfortunate turn of events could well have been expanded to an entire movie, rather than compacted into a terse 25 minutes. That’s all the more so, because once Margo hits the river, the film loses much in the way of narrative thrust. Certainly, her talents with a firearm become all but irrelevant, and the film instead gets bogged down in its own drama.

It instead goes further down the character-driven path, such as the old geezer whom Margo helps, or the young man she encounters who is rather more in touch with (read: gives a damn about) his Native American heritage. Though it’s hard to tell with Margo, due to her subdued nature: it’s not often that she says more than a sentence, and seems particularly adept (out of necessity?) at keeping her emotions in check. Which makes for an increasingly frustrating viewing experience, the equivalent of deciding whether to buy a house, without being allowed to enter it. Then there’s an abortion subplot, awkwardly shoehorned in, without any particular effect on Margo’s character arc.

It’s all especially annoying, since Margo is initially set up as being a decisive character. The encounter with her uncle could have been depicted in a way that turned her into a victim. Instead, it’s more the repercussions thereafter which are the problem, and cause her to resort to violent action. After finding her mother (Pulsipher), in particular, she never seems to find a purpose to replace her maternal quest. She’s like a dog that has finally caught the car it was chasing. “Now what?” is the resulting question, and the movie doesn’t provide enough of an answer. It ends up falling awkwardly between a number of stools, being not-quite a coming of age film, nor a social drama, and there’s no sense of resolution. If your reaction when the end credits roll is greater than “Huh”, you were more affected than I was.

Dir: Haroula Rose
Star: Kenadi DelaCerna, John Ashton, Tatanka Means, Lindsay Pulsipher