Author: Jim McLennan

Cry for the Bad Man

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★★½
“Play Freebird!!!“

Despite a very brief running time of only 70 minutes, this still manages to seem talky and overlong. That’s a shame, as it manages to waste a good performance from a genre veteran, playing an action heroine who is not your typical one. The former is Camille Keaton, who is having a bit of a B-movie renaissance in her career, forty years after starring in the notorious rape-revenge film, I Spit on Your Grave. And the latter? Well, Keaton is now in her seventies, but based on this, is still capable of wielding a mean shotgun. And clearly, of taking no shit from anyone. Indeed, you could almost read this as the sundown years of her Grave character, Jennifer Hills.

Though here, she is Marsha Kane, a widow who is faced with fending off predatory offers on her property from local ne’er do wells, the MacMohan boys: Wayne (Peeler), Derrek (Dooley) and Billy, operating on behalf of the family patriarch, Bill. He wants Marsha’s house, and is going to let a little thing like her complete disinterest in selling stand in the way. So he sends his kin to make not-so-subtle hints, knowing the local police are in the family’s pocket. When the threats don’t work either, the boys return at midnight for a more physical approach, only to discover quickly that Kane is more than able to fend for herself. However, her daughter (Konzen) shows up, offering the MacMohan’s potentially useful leverage against her mother.

The title seems to be taken from a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, about the firing of their manager, so I’m not sure of the relevance here. But what could, and probably should be a small-scale version of Assault on Precinct 13, fails to achieve anything like the necessary degree of tension. It instead, collapses in on itself, as the script prefers to concentrate on largely uninteresting chit-chat and extremely slow creeping down poorly-lit corridors. That’s when it isn’t blundering into plot-holes. For example, when the MacMohan brothers arrive for their midnite escapade, they’re greeted with gunfire, injuring one. The smart thing to do would be to back off, call their pals at the police station, and have Mrs. Kane hauled off to prison for attempted murder. Property secured! Meanwhile, on her side, why stop with one? They are literally standing in front of the door, arguing about what to do.

This wastes Keaton, who has a quiet strength about her, as well as hints of a past that were less than squeaky-clean. Though, again – who keeps a copy of their police mug-shot in a box of souvenirs? It also goes to show that action heroines come in more shapes and sizes – and ages – than Hollywood would perhaps recognize. Even when they had Helen Mirren in Red, she was still undeniably glamourous. That isn’t the case here, and it’s all the more refreshing for it. Just a shame it wasn’t put to the use of a considerably better storyline.

Dir: Sam Farmer
Star: Camille Keaton, Scott Peeler, Karen Konzen, Eric Dooley

Mrs. Serial Killer

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★★★
“The anti-Dexter.”

This is the kind of film which I’d say was enjoyable, rather than being good. Indeed, if you want an illustration of the difference between the two, this movie is a good example. Sona Mukherjee (Fernandez) is the wife of respected doctor, Mrityunjoy Mukherjee (Bajpayee). But their life is upended when the bodies of six, formerly pregnant, unmarried women are found on their property. Sona believes her husband was framed – possibly by police inspector and former boyfriend Imran Shahid, (Raina). She takes the advice of a dubious lawyer, who suggests that if the serial killer was shown to be still active, that would prove her husband’s innocence. So Sona kidnaps another expectant young woman, Anushka Tiwari (Khan) to provide a seventh victim. Only… well, Sona is a bit crap as a serial killer, and Anushka is a feisty little thing with a black-belt in taekwondo, pregnancy be damned.

I’m tagging this as horror and comedy, on the basis that it shouldn’t be taken seriously in the slightest. I’m fairly sure this approach is quite intentional, though with Bollywood, it’s rarely possible to be entirely certain. But there are just so many ludicrous elements, not least the central premise, that it definitely works best as a parody of lurid potboilers. For example, Indian police have apparently never heard of DNA testing, and feel that one body is pretty much as good as another. It’s also possible to trigger an immediate, devastating asthma attack, by crushing up flowers in your hands, and then blowing them in your target’s face. I thought that kind of thing only ever worked in a professional wrestling ring.

That all said, I still enjoyed it, not least for the way everyone takes it Very Seriously. It’s at its best when Sona and Anushka are facing off, the “killer” initially trying to convince her victim she has been captured by a man – an aspect as poorly considered as the rest of her plan. The contrast between the two make for amusing confrontations, such as Anushka spitting back, mockingly, “Trying to scare me with your psycho stare? I can do better. Here!” I was disappointed that they ended up taking a back-seat during the final act [for if her husband was not responsible for the six corpses… who was?] It’s still no less lurid, combining operatic music and disco lighting, in a basement festooned with a plethora of IV drips, for no reason beyond it looking cool.

It all ends in a final twist which makes about as much sense as the rest of it i.e. not very much. I won’t spoil it, but will tell you, it does not provide what I actually wanted to see, which was Sona and Anushka teaming up to go all Natural Born Killers on the real perpetrators. That would have been too much to hope for. Yet I can’t deny I was still amused enough, and wished Lifetime TVM were more like their South Asian counterparts.

Dir: Shirish Kunder
Star: Jacqueline Fernandez, Manoj Bajpayee, Mohit Raina, Zayn Marie Khan

Wrecker

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★★
“Runs out of road.”

This falls victim to the Spielberg Effect. By that, I mean, that any movie directed by Steven Spielberg will inevitably become the yardstick by which future entries of that kind are judged – typically, unfavourably. Killer shark films will be compared to Jaws. Holocaust epics to Schindler’s List. And the genre of movies in which drivers are menaced by unseen truck drivers? Expect comparisons to Duel. And in this case, they are entirely warranted. I guess if you’ve never heard of Duel, this might just pass muster. But you would still be better off watching it, than this lame imitation, which has a nice car (a Mustang) and some lovely scenery (I’m guessing Canadian). That’s all it can offer though.

Gal pals Emily (Hutchinson) and Leslie (Whitburn) are on a road-trip, when they go off-route – never a good idea to take a road labelled “Devil’s Pass”, but that may just be me having seen too many horror movies. On the resulting stretch of road, entirely deserted except when conveniently necessary for the plot, they become increasingly concerned about the repeated presence of a tow-truck, pulling a car, which appears to be stalking them. After a number of alarming incidents, they are driven off the road by the truck, and Emily gets knocked unconscious. She awakens, to find Leslie gone. Driving to find help, she is stopped by a police-car, only for the officer to fall victim to the truck. But at least Emily now has a weapon, in the shape of the cop’s gun.

This kind of thing can work. Spielberg’s not the only one to prove it; The Hitcher (the original version) also occupied similar territory, with an almost supernatural figure menacing a driver, for no real reason. That succeeded, however, based on Rutger Hauer’s villainous charisma. There’s nothing like that here, with the villain entirely unseen; the closest we get to any personality are glimpses of Satanic regalia dangling in the truck. That’s not exactly a lot on which to hang your movie.

The main problem, however, is a script which is ludicrous when it isn’t being entirely contrived. The notion that a Mustang – which we are shown can reach over 120 mph – could not simply zoom away from a diesel tow-truck if necessary, is the most obvious, yet perhaps not the most idiotic element. The ways in which the two women, and indeed, their pursuer, behave, are the kind of actions which would only be carried out by characters in a horror movie. Anyone sensible would seek sanctuary in the nearest busy area, and stay there until help arrives. Our couple do visit such a spot, in the shape of a diner, only to leave it after lunch and resume their journey, because… because the film demands they do. If you’re not able to tolerate such things, you’ll have to hope that the Rockies and an American classic sports car provide enough entertainment. For the plot and characters aren’t going to offer much.

Dir: Micheal Bafaro
Star: Anna Hutchison, Drea Whitburn, Jennifer Koenig, Michael Dickson

The Serpent

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★★
“You’ve got to tell him about the other bombs inside the kids.”

Wait, what? Other bombs? Inside kids? Less than two minutes in and I am already incredibly confused – because before the line above, there was no mention at all of bombs or kids. All we’d had is Detective Franklin (Wade) get a weird call at a shooting from someone promising to tell him the truth about what happened. He gets into his car, and Lucinda Kavsky (Skova) pounces from the back seat. Here is their exchange, in full.

“Who the hell are you?”
“Lucinda Kavsky, CIA. I will tell you everything I know about this case. Okay?”
“Well, hot damn if I don’t believe that story. How’d you get into this mess? Y’know, I think you’re going to have to contact Rodney Williams of the CIA, there’s no other choice.”
“I’ve already sent all the proof to him.”
“Well, you’ve got to tell him about the other bombs inside the kids.”

Yes, time of death is, exactly one minute and 58 seconds in. I have never seen a movie go from zero to completely inexplicable so quickly. A few seconds later, Franklin says, “Your explanation’s good enough for me.” No. It’s not. I can’t help feeling as if there was a large chunk of exposition edited out between the second and third lines, and the film never recovers. We do eventually discover that there is a plot to create bio-weapons by implanting chips of some (ill-defined) kind into kids. Kavsky stumbled into it when she took over a mission for a friend, and has been hunted ever since by those – both inside and outside the CIA – who are seeking to keep it secret.

It’s a straightforward story, and one which would have benefited enormously from a straightforward telling. Instead, we end up with what feels like a Russian doll-like series of flashbacks, including a five-year (!) period spent by Kavsky in prison. Quite what the bad guys were doing during all this time, is – like so much else – never explained. It makes about as much sense as the high numbers of British accents sported by supposed CIA operatives, not least Lucinda herself.

The action is no great shakes, except for one sequence where she is helping a doctor remove one of the chips from Avy (Heath) a subject she has rescured, when her phone is tracked to the hospital and an assault launched. The resulting battle is… Well, realism isn’t its strong suit, shall we say. But it’s done with enough enthusiasm to give it at least a fighting chance of overcoming any credibility issues. Otherwise, it’s about what you’d expect from a former model who is also making her debut as both writer and director. All credit to Ms. Skova, whose cheekbones alone should count as lethal weapons, for actually making a damn movie. But you’d have to be extremely charitable to consider this as more than entry level, especially when it comes to the script, which is simply far too serpentine for its own good.

Dir: Gia Skova
Star: Gia Skova, Travis Aaron Wade, Nigel Vonas, Violet Heath

Shadow in the Cloud

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★★★
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”

In 1943, an Allied supply flight from New Zealand to Samo gets a last-minute addition to the crew, Maude Garrett (Moretz) carrying a top-secret case whose contents must be kept upright. Her presence is initially heavily resented by the male crew, and things get increasingly edgy. The plane begins to suffer unusual mechanical problems, which leave Maude trapped in a gun turret on the belly of the plane. They’re apparently being shadowed by Japanese planes, even though they are supposedly out of the combat zone. Worst of all, both Maude and one of the crew members swear blind they have seen bizarre creatures, like winged rats, scrambling around the air-craft, like the fabled “gremlins” of wartime lore.

The first half of this is really good. It’s gripping, despite (or, perhaps, because of?) being set almost entirely in the gun turret, with a claustrophobic intensity that works, building to a sense things are imminently going to kick off. 

Then, we find out what’s in the case.

Oh. Is that it? Seriously?

I was expecting something which would tie together the various threads of the plot, including the extraordinary Japanese interest in the flight, and the gremlins. Maybe some kind of occult power device – after all, that was a known obsession of the Nazis, e.g. the Spear of Destiny. Sadly, it isn’t. Instead, it’s another strand, which doesn’t connect to any of the others, and indeed, appears to have strayed in from a soap-opera. Rather than uniting everything, the film thereafter continues to have a trio of separate, independent stories, that show up as necessary for the plot.

But I think the moment where all hope of this getting our seal of approval left the building, was when our heroine fell from the plane, only to be blown back into it without injury by the explosion of a Japanese fighter below. I’d seen that in the trailer, and hoped it seemed more plausible in the context of the narrative. I’m afraid it wasn’t. The unwelcome switch in tone continues, until the film ends with Maude chasing down and having a fist-fight with one of the gremlins, which comes out of nowhere in terms of her character.

Now, I wasn’t expecting an authentic period piece. The (rather nifty) throbbing electronic score from Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper is clearly designed to take you out of the nineteen forties. However, initially, it seems grounded, to an almost painful extent, as Maude has to endure banter which more or less starts at unpleasant. Up until the reveal mentioned above, it’s more gritty than fantasy, and works all the better for it.

Perhaps this is related to the rather unpleasant issue during production, when the writer of the original screenplay, Max Landis, was blacklisted after sexual abuse allegations emerged. Director Liang rewrote it, though Landis still gets a screen credit, and it does feel like two different films bolted together at the hip. I far preferred the first half, and the presence of Moretz, who is great as ever, is unable to hold things together. Much like the plane in which her character flies, the movie eventually falls apart and goes down in flames.

Dir:  Roseanne Liang
Star: Chloë Grace Moretz, Taylor John Smith, Beulah Koale, Nick Robinson

The Barista’s Guide To Espionage, by Dave Sinclair

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

Eva Destruction – and, yes, that is the legal name of the character – is an Australian expat who owns a coffee shop in Central London. But when we first meet her, she is making a hasty exit off a rapidly-exploding tropical island, somewhere in the Pacific. How she gets from point A to B, is the saga which unfolds in flashback over the course of this book, as she tells her history to the disbelieving American navy officers who rescue her off the island.

The key player in that, and Eva’s transformation from barista to secret agent, is her boyfriend Harry. For he actually turns out to be Horatio Lancing, a cross between Elon Musk and Edward Snowden, a hi-tech idealist with unlimited resources and an agenda. Initially, it’s apparently benign: applying pressure to governments around the world to “do the right thing” and act on behalf of the people they supposedly represent. But Eva eventually finds out, his end-game is considerably less altruistic. Due to her connection to Harry, she comes to the attention of the British intelligence services, who recruit and train Eva through unrepentant chauvinist Charles Bishop, in an effort to use their relationship to help stop Harry. And they’re not the only ones out to do so.

The resulting adventure globe-trots from London to Iceland and Prague, before ending on Harry’s secret island lair. By the end, Eva proves to be as capable of whipping up improvised munitions as a double-shot latte, even if her prowess with firearms allegedly comes mostly from the somewhat unlikely source of Virtua Cop II. She is, unquestionably, very much an archetypal Aussie girl, with all that implies – both good and bad. She’s brash to a fault, and can curse like a sailor, but is fiercely loyal to her friends. Interestingly, that applies even to Harry, with whom she stays well past the point I think I’d have noped out of there. She also suffers some angst, when Eva realizes she has abandoned all her feminist ideals for a jet-setting lifestyle and a castle, effectively becoming “an exceptionally high-priced hooker.”

It’s all entertaining enough, if thoroughly disposable and largely implausible, with the important people miraculously surviving against all odds. It is the kind of plot which is probably impossible to read with any seriousness, so it’s fortunate that the author and his heroine embrace this. Even if that does make it difficult to care, when it’s all being taken very lightly by everyone involved. Sinclair does have a good way with action, both in a hellacious chase through Prague, and the eventual, very Bond-like climax on the island. At least the relationship between Eva and Harry does go some way to justifying the “Before I kill you, let me tell you my entire plan” trope. I probably won’t be actively seeking out subsequent volumes. But I’ll tell you this: I wouldn’t mind a movie adaptation either.

Author: Dave Sinclair
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Eva Destruction series.

Bit

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★★★½
“The Lost Girls”

There are times when I am bracing myself, going into a movie. Here’s the synopsis for this one: “A transgender teenage girl on summer vacation in Los Angeles fights to survive after she falls in with four queer feminist vampires, who try to rid the city’s streets of predatory men.” Given my long-standing aversion to message movies, this seemed like 90 minutes of my worst nightmare. What had I let myself in for? But this proved to be surprisingly accessible – even for those of us who are neither transgender nor queer, and are enrolled in the Camille Paglia school of feminism.

It reminded me of We Are The Night, about a similar group of female “party vampires” who embrace a newcomer to their ranks. Though as the tagline above suggests, I guess both movies owe a large debt to The Lost Boys. To be honest, if I hadn’t read the synopsis, I wouldn’t know the heroine, Laurel (Maines) is intended to be transgender. There is discussion of some previous trauma before she leaves home after graduating, but it’s never her defining characteristic. Her new pals are relentlessly feminist, to the point of misanthropic. According to their leader, Duke (Hopper), the prime directive is: “You never, ever turn a man. Men can’t handle power. They have it already, and look what they’ve done with it.”  Yet her own handling of power is highly questionable: she admits to using it for “indiscriminate” killing, and compares their group to terrorists. By the end, Laurel is openly challenging that unbreakable rule – as she should.

Their two performance are the glue which holds this together, in particular as it depicts the slowly developing conflict between Laurel and Duke. The script also plays a part, revealing the truth about Duke’s origins and powers – and the more we learn, the more questionable the leader becomes. Yet there are also moments of dry humour, which stop this from becoming a grim fairy tale. For instance, Duke telling Laurel, “The first rule of Bite Club…” When this triggers little more than a derisive snort from the new recruit, one of her lieutenants pipes up, dead-panning, “Juggalos was taken.” This kind of thing fits in: I suspect in such a scenario, the vampires would not take themselves entirely seriously.

The flaws tend to be when the film does occasionally topple over into self-importance. The worst offender is probably Vlad, the master of their species. While the film opens with some snarky comments about Twilight, his performance is far more hammy than anything delivered in that franchise. There’s a badly underdeveloped plot about vampire-hunters, which is little more than “Boys are stupid”. I could also have done without a soundtrack which appears to be the writer-director’s iPhone on random, or the gratuitous Death Valley Girls concert [I can only presume they’re pals of his, given some free publicity in the movie]. All told though, this was considerably better than my prejudices would have had me believe going in. The lesson here appears to be, don’t judge a film by its synopsis.

Dir: Brad Michael Elmore
Star: Nicole Maines, Diana Hopper, Zolee Griggs, James Paxton

Getaway

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★★
“Witch, finder, general.”

This was likely not going to qualify for inclusion here, until a twist in the final 15 minutes. Up until that point, it had been a largely irritating saga, that was considerably more horror than action heroine – and not even good horror at that. I’m still significantly unconvinced about the quality, but must grudgingly admit, this was a twist which I did not particularly see coming (though there is a large clue dropped near the beginning). Three gal-pals, Tamara (Betham), Maddy (Taylor-Compton) and Brooke (Allbright) head for a weekend’s lakeside R&R. On the way, Tamara’s car runs out of fuel, and she encounters the local creeps, but eventually arrives, and joins the other two in scamming drinks out of horny guys.

However, the creeps are lurking, and a drugged beverage leads to Tamara waking, tied up in a farm outhouse. Turns out they’re not just creeps, but have a particular religious bent. They kidnap women, rape them, and then kill them so they can go to heaven and have “angel babies”, because… Look, they’re religious nutters, okay? Yet, that might be their fatal weakness, something Tamara can use against them, as she curses them, claiming to have occult powers. For if she is a servant of Satan, she’s hardly going to be capable of having those adorable little cherubs, is she? This is, actually, a potentially interesting aspect. However, it’s discarded in favour of the twist mentioned above, and even though it brought the film more into our wheel-house, I’m inclined to wish they hadn’t bothered.

The bigger problems start with the characterizations. The three girls are thinly-sketched at best: two are lesbians, because… well, presumably for the same reasons there is a pointless African-American sheriff’s deputy with a crush on Tamara. Not sure. None of the women seem very likeable, and indeed, I’d be hard pushed to tell you much about any of the trio as people: Maddy and Brooke barely serve any purpose, and the film might have worked better with Tamara operating as a lone wolf. The villains are equally shallow: the Wyatt Family from WWE exhibited more complexity and personality. And if you are hoping for gore or nudity, you are respectively going to be largely and completely disappointed.

It is one of those films where it reaches the end, and you find yourself wondering where things will go from there. Now that the little secret is out of the bag, any sequel would of necessity have to be completely different in its approach, yet that might prove to be more successful. However, it would have to work considerably harder to retain the viewer’s interest than the effort put in here. There were a number of occasions where I simply found myself no longer paying attention, and had to crank back the film a few minutes, just to be sure in my role as a conscientious film reviewer, that I had not missed anything. I hadn’t, and my suggestion is that you should probably skip the whole thing.

Dir: Lane Toran
Star: Jaclyn Betham, Scout Taylor-Compton, Landry Allbright, Lane Toran

2021 in Action Heroine Films

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Welp. I usually enjoy writing this article, looking forward to what action heroines we might get in the coming year. But after the past 12 months, you’ll understand if I’m a little gun shy – or, more accurately, girls-with-guns shy. Looking back at our 2020 preview, it seems like a document from a different universe. There were three “tentpole” action heroine films scheduled: one (Black Widow) was pushed back by more than a year; another (Mulan) skipped cinemas entirely in North America; while the third (Wonder Woman 1984) received a mere token release. This left Birds of Prey, with a worldwide gross of barely $200 million, as far and away the year’s top title. I did not see that coming.

It wasn’t a great year. The films mentioned above all had their various issues, as did Enola Holmes, The Rhythm Section and Underwater, while Gretel and Hansel failed to qualify here. The Serpent vanished without trace, and Run Hide Fight is MIA. Others followed Black Widow in being held back entirely, and we’ll get to those in due course. [By which I may well mean. “copy-paste their entry from 2020”] All told, the three best films released in North America last year weren’t mentioned in the preview: A Good Woman is Hard to Find, Guns Akimbo and The Hunt. There are still a couple I have yet to see – Monster Hunter and Promising Young Woman – but The Hunt was probably my favourite GWG film of 2020. I did not see that coming either.

Anyway, this train-wreck of a year has, obviously, derailed film production for a large part, and that simply means there are not as many entries available to preview. Quite what this will mean for 2021, remains to be seen, but I’m just glad I’ve got a backlog of reviews (we’re currently scheduling into June), as there may be a shortage of relevant product. That said, I’ve gone through the upcoming schedule of films listed in the IMDb as having a 2021 release date and which may end up getting reviewed here. As usual, everything is subject to change. Particularly if another global pandemic sweeps out of the wet markets in the Far East…

The Asset (23 April)

I found two rather conflicting synopses. #1: ” A hacker and her partners in crime accidentally steal millions from a crime boss, forced into hiding to train for their inevitable confrontation.” #2: “Two of the world’s best assassins, Rembrandt and Anna, must form an unlikely alliance when Anna’s mentor is murdered. They travel to Vietnam to find the killer.” Your choice. :) Given that Maggie Q is Anna (Michael Keaton is Rembrandt), and it’s directed by Martin Campbell, of Goldeneye, I am interested.

Black Widow (7 May)

Pushed back more than a year from its original release date, this is still likely to be the largest action-heroine film of the year – providing there are any cinemas left in which to show it. Obviously, any momentum for the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been halted; it’ll be close to two years since the last entry was released, Spider-Man: Far From Home. Having also been underwhelmed by this year’s “tent-poles”, my enthusiasm is probably toned down, to the point I may not bother seeing this in the cinema. This is, to an extent, because I’m simply out of the habit.

Gunpowder Milkshake (TBA)

Certainly possessing the best action-heroine cast of 2020 2021. Karen Gillan, Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, Lena Headey and Angela Bassett? Okay, you have my attention. A year has passed, and still not much more is known about this one. It got a distributor in February, but ten months later, we still don’t even have a trailer, even though the film’s entire worldwide rights have been sold. We do, at least have a synopsis: Sam (Gillan) was raised by crime syndicate The Firm, but eventually has to go against them, with the help of her mother (Headey), and friends known as The Librarians (Bassett, Yeoh and Gugino, pictured top).

Jolt (TBA)

I’ll just leave this synopsis here. “A bouncer with a slightly murderous anger-management problem that she controls with the help of an electrode-lined vest she uses to shock herself back to normalcy whenever she gets homicidal. After the first guy she’s ever fallen for is murdered, she goes on a revenge-fueled rampage to find the killer while the cops pursue her as their chief suspect.” Okay… Seems like Crank with a heroine, but since the heroine is Kate Beckinsale, I’m down.

The Matrix 4 (22 December)

Amazing to think it’s seventeen years ago we wrote Wholly Trinity, about the role of Trinity in The Matrix trilogy. Since then? Well, Keanu Reeves is now John Wick, Carrie-Anne Moss is 53, and the Wachowski brothers… aren’t. To be honest, the Wachowski’s post-Matrix work has been lacklustre; Speed Racer, for example, is flat-out unwatchable. I suspect Lana Wachowski (Lilly is not involved) will need to be as innovative as the original movie was, if this is to succeed. We’ll see if that’s the case, though since this is currently scheduled to be released on HBO Max.

Mayday (TBA)

A borderline candidate, which IMDb currently has filed under “Drama”. However, the synopsis makes it seem potentially of interest. “After a short circuit at her workplace mysteriously transports her to an alternate world, Ana meets a crew of female soldiers caught in an endless war. Along a strange and rugged coastline, men face the stark truth lurking behind damsels who appear to be in distress. Under the leadership of Marsha, Ana trains as a sharpshooter and discovers a newfound freedom in this uninhibited sisterhood. She soon senses she may not be the ruthless killer they expect, though, and time is running out for her to find a path home..”

Raya and the Last Dragon (5 March)

An animated film by Disney, here’s the plot: “Long ago, in the fantasy world of Kumandra, humans and dragons lived together in harmony. But when an evil force threatened the land, the dragons sacrificed themselves to save humanity. Now, 500 years later, that same evil has returned and it’s up to a lone warrior, Raya, to track down the legendary last dragon to restore the fractured land and its divided people.” Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in the Star Wars franchise, voices Raya. The trailer makes it look kinda fun; weirdly, it gives me an Aeon Flux vibe!

Resident Evil (TBA)

A reboot of the iconic franchise starring Milla Jovovich, there’s no details of the plot, but I suspect it will probably hew closer to the video games. The changes made i.e. Alice wasn’t a game character, was the most common complaint about the earlier movies by fans. But even without Milla, I still expect there to be plenty of female bad-assery here, with Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, and Hannah John-Kamen playing Jill Valentine. We’ll see where the balance landed between between them and male characters like Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy.

Run Hide Fight (TBA)

“17-year-old Zoe Hull uses her wits, survival skills, and compassion to fight for her life, and those of her fellow classmates, against a group of live-streaming school shooters.” Was screened in September at the Venice International Film Festival, and reviews were… not kind, though appeared largely informed by the viewer’s personal politics, reaching their nadir in this hysterically triggered entity. Teens killing teens has been a problematic topic for movie since Battle Royale, and it clearly doesn’t appear that has changed. Someone will release it, I’ve no doubt, but I suspect it won’t be theatrical.

Shadow in the Cloud (1 January)

I hadn’t even heard of this one until Dieter mentioned it to me. It stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a female WWII pilot, who is travelling with top secret documents on a B-17 Flying Fortress, when she discovers that the “gremlins” mentioned in propaganda films are thoroughly real. The trailer’s below, and it looks… Well, check out the scene where she falls out of the plane and then gets blown back into it by an explosion. I’m not sure whether to snort derisively, or be in awe at the maker’s sheer audacity. Either way, it certainly seems to be starting 2021 with a bang!

Till Death (TBA)

Megan Fox seems to be leaning towards the action genre of late – we recently wrote about her playing a mercenary in Rogue. This is perhaps a bit more plausible, but going by the blood-spattered Megan still, maybe not much less violent! She plays a woman who is “left handcuffed to her dead husband as part of a sick revenge plot. Unable to unshackle, she has to survive as two killers arrive to finish her off.” There would certainly seem to be plenty of potential for carnage here.

Zombinatrix (TBA)

From the potentially sublime to the utterly ridiculous (hopefully, deliberately). The synopsis, as submitted to the IMDB by lead actress and co-writer Bianca Allaine: “A Dominatrix is brutally murdered by thugs. Returning from the grave as Zombinatrix, she takes great pleasure in incorporating her sadistic S&M kinks into killing anyone crossing her path. After all, she is into whips and BRAINS.” If it isn’t getting Oscar consideration this time next year, I say we storm Hollywood. :)