From just about all I’ve read, the director seems entirely earnest in his desire to make a serious film about a serious problem, human trafficking in Central America. That the end result falls almost entirely wide of the mark is a bit of a double-edged sword. In terms of making its intended point, that it feels more like a B-movie from the fifties is a bad thing. But on the other hand, the serious film about the serious problem would likely be considerably less amusing.
Holly Drew (Shaw) runs a coffee shop in what I’m guessing is Portland, carrying on a family tradition of working with farmers in El Salvador: fair trade, ethical production, etc. Her daughter, Ally (Sweeney), is visiting the coffee farm there, somewhat reluctantly: some kind of college credit seems involved. Her stay is rudely interrupted when she and a local friend are kidnapped by Los Discipulos, a local gang. With the local cops worse than useless, Holly goes down there herself, and plunges into the underworld with the help of slightly sleazy but good-hearted Fern (Castro), on the trail of Ally before she can be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
A major problem here, is that Tracy clearly wants to be sympathetic to the locals. It opens with stuff about the civil war there causing a cycle of poverty and violence, etc. Yet in the light of subsequent cinematic events, this comes over more excuse than rational explanation. Because for the purposes of the film, modern-day El Salvador has to be depicted as a “shithole country” (to quote the current American President). Otherwise, where’s the threat to Holly and Ally? So for example: the local police are depicted as being thoroughly corrupt or entirely useless, and no-one beyond Fern seems willing to help Holly in the slightest. If you come away at the end doing anything except agreeing with Trump, you haven’t been paying attention.
The other big problem is character motivation, especially for Fern. He abandons Holly, right at her moment of greatest need… except he subsequently doesn’t. Neither his departure, nor his return, make sense, except that both are necessary for a film in which he’s a supporting character to the “relentless” mother. Similarly, the actions of Los Discipulos often left me scratching my head. They didn’t fit the likely behaviour patterns of the hardened criminals they are supposed to be – again, save for being required by the plot.
We’ve seen almost exactly this kind of “lost daughter” scenario before, in the decent Never Let Go and slightly less-decent Taken Heart. Whether due to the sense of (literal) deja vu, or just because the components aren’t as effective, this falls below the standard of either. Shaw’s performance is likely the only half-decent aspect, and it needs to be in the service of a more considered script. If I’d been making this, I’d have had Fern part of the notorious El Salvadorean anti-gang death squad, La Sombra Negra, and taken Holly down a darker path of vengeance. Sadly, what we have here is considerably more lightweight and predictable, and almost entirely forgettable.
Dir: Lance Tracy Star: Lauren Shaw, David Castro, Sydney Sweeney, Peter Holden
Having enjoyed the same director’s Women of Mafia, I thought I’d check out this earlier film, part of his Pitbull series, also about Polish cops ‘n’ criminals. Unashamedly populist, in its home country the featire set a record for opening weekend admissions by a local movie, and topped the overall box-office there for 2016. More surprisingly, it was also a hit when released in Britain, reaching fifth place at the box-office in its first week, due almost entirely to the Polish expat community there. ‘
It’s a similarly sprawling tale to Mafia – perhaps even more so – which covers a range of characters, on both sides of the law. Despite the title, disappointingly, the focus is not particularly on the women. While there are certainly no shortage of interesting female characters, as we’ll see, the central one is ‘Sugar’ (Fabijanski), a member of a biker gang who is tasked with a revenge hit on ‘Majami’ (Stramowski), a cop who shot and killed a fellow gang-member. However, Sugar ends up diverting into a convoluted scam involving smuggling fuel oil. I can only presume this scheme made sense to the Polish audience, because I had no real clue what was going on.
On the “tough woman” front, the focus is on two new recruits to the police force, Zuza (Kulig) and Jadźka (Dereszowska). It doesn’t take long after completing their training,. for the shine to come off, as they realize the harsh realities of law-enforcement work, and the inevitable moral compromise beneath the surface. These are exemplified in Izabela (Magdalena Cielecka), a cop who is more than prepared to bend the law in order to protect it, to put it mildly. Both rookie officers have their issues, in particular Zuza, who eventually ends up having an affair with Sugar, while his girlfriend ‘Drabina’ (Alicja Bachleda) is in jail.
Elements of all this work very well. The characters are strong, performances solid, I loved the purely pragmatic approach of the cops (needed to deal with criminals who hardly obey the niceties of polite convention either), and there are some fine moments of pitch-black humour. I was especially amused by the scene involving stepping in a half-dissolved corpse, and the subsequent discussion over protocol, whether or not the poor policewoman should keep her footwear, and forensic pathology:
“There’s the liver.”
“A liver’s that small?”
“It’s normal, but half is on your shoes.”
The problem is largely Vega’s failure to tell a coherent story. I wondered if this might be down to my lack of local knowledge e.g. the fuel scam, perhaps enhanced by not having seen the previous entries in the Pitbull franchise. However, reading some local reviews [all hail, Google Translate!] suggests it’s not just me, with this being a common complaint. I can’t help wishing the writer/director had actually delivered on the potential of his premise: while certainly an equal-opportunity piece, this still falls short of what I wanted. Perhaps Vega knew he had half-assed it, and that’s why he circled back around so quickly for the not-dissimilar Women of Mafia.
Dir: Patryk Vega Star: Sebastian Fabijanski, Joanna Kulig, Anna Dereszowska, Piotr Stramowski
It’s not often that a film cost less to make, than the television set on which I watched it. But it appears this was the case here, with the budget reportedly coming in at five hundred pounds. No, there’s not a “thousand” missing from that. £500. What you get is probably not too far from what you would expect for that – some of the aerial photography and locations do appear to represent good value for money. Budget isn’t the real issue here though. This British film’s main problem is the drastic shift in story for the final third, when it suddenly morphs, for no reason, from a SF/thriller, into a full-on zombie apocalypse which the makers have neither the budget nor the talent to depict.
The heroine is Kyra (Parkinson), who was captured while a toddler by Raven Health, who are intent on developing and exploiting her latent psychic abilities. Probably close to 20 years later, she is broken out of their facility with the help of an activist bounty-hunter, who sends her into the care of one of his proteges, John Northwood (Heath Hampson). But the company head, Raven (Richardson) won’t let his asset escape easily, and dispatches a hunter of his own, Max (Gardner), to bring Kyra back. After about an hour of the chase, Kyra shows up at a wedding just over the Scottish border in Gretna Green and turns the entire congregation into zombies with her talents.
What? Yeah, it was as abrupt as that, and the remainder of the film is your typical zombie bashing action. I do have to award a bonus half-star for the semi-automatic bagpipes, which double as a flamethrower. Laughed like a drain at that, and it’s the kind of dumb invention at which low-budget films can excel [see the early works of Peter Jackson for good examples] Unfortunately, the zombie effects and actors are awful; while the depiction of Kyra’s telekinetic powers is not exactly top-shelf, it’s somewhat hidden by the editing. If the randomly selected locals, pretending to be undead (or bad mimes, it’s hard to tell), had been also better concealed – such as behind a mountain – we’d all have been better off.
I substantially preferred the earlier sections. Parkinson is not unsympathetic, as the heroine struggling to come to terms with her powers (though if she has been kept locked up all the time, how did she apparently learn how to drive?), and Hampson comes over like a low-rent version of Liam Neeson. If the film had kept down that route, it would likely still not have been “great”, by any reasonable standard, but could certainly have been adequate. Instead, we’ve got something which looks almost as if it was slapped together from two entirely different films. Any redeeming qualities are largely trapped behind a severely questionable title (really, if you’re going to ape another movie, you can pick a far better one than London Has Fallen) and even more dubious cover artwork.
Dir: Sam Hampson Star: Tansy Parkinson, Heath Hampson, Tony Gardner, Ken Richardson
A painfully clunky mix of spy and crime thrillers, this really needs to decide which it wants to be. Alexandria Kingston – code name Griffin, in case you hadn’t guessed – was an abused child, with the good fortune to be rescued and brought up by Margaret Murphy, the head of Irish organized crime in Boston. Though to avoid Alex being targeted for leverage, she was never acknowledged to be part of the family. As an adult, Alex joined the CIA and became a top field agent, jet-setting over the globe on demand. But when her foster mother suffers a stroke, she returns to Boston to find herself in the middle of a war for control of the turf. The rival Killeen clan, sensing an opportunity, pounce. It’s up to Alex and her brothers to defend the family – and then take the battle to the Killeens.
It’s all utterly implausible. Apparently, the CIA don’t bother doing any kind of background check on their employees, and have no problem recruiting and giving security clearance to people with close ties to organized crime. Alex, meanwhile, wobbles uncertainly between remarkable proficiency and incompetence, as necessary to the plot. She can reel in a member of the Killeen family by simply ordering a whisky, yet this top-notch spy inexplicably can’t form sentences when faced with her former childhood sweetheart. I admit her latter burbling is actually kinda endearing, but c’mon: have some consistency in your lead character. And, of course, the Murphys are an almost saintly crime family. By which I mean, they still do prostitution and human trafficking, they just do them the right way. Yeah. About that…
This still might have made for an interesting detour in an established series, if we were already fully convinced of her talents as a CIA operative, with an unrevealed past. Instead, we get barely a handful of pages at the beginning to establish her credentials, with no real context: she exists in a vacuum. There’s also a fondness for the kind of florid consumerist prose I thought had gone out of style with Bret Easton Ellis culminating in this remarkably superfluous description of Alex’s perfume: “The sensuous bottom notes of Sri Lankan sandalwood and Indonesian patchouli were mixed with high notes of Bulgarian rose and citrus to add a feminine touch that was irresistible to the opposite sex.” I swear, I literally rolled my eyes at “high notes of Bulgarian rose”.
I can’t knock the action too much. There is a steady stream of set-pieces throughout the book, and MacDonald does describe these with a clear eye, and no shortage of savagery. [You wonder what, exactly, Boston law enforcement are doing while all this is going on, since Alex does not mess around, and the pile of bodies left in her wake is considerable. It just needs to be in the service of a much better constructed plot.
Author: Morgan Hannah MacDonald Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book Book 1 of 2 in the Griffin series.
Welcome to our sixth annual preview of what we can expect from our genre in 2019. The year just ended was relatively low-key, without the massive tent-pole of a film like Wonder Woman. The biggest success at the North American box-office was the Tomb Raider reboot, which was a commercial disappointment and finished 43rd on the year. There will still pleasures to be had, but they were more at the smaller end of the spectrum, such as Revenge and Raazi, as well as the small-screen delight of Killing Eve. 2019 though, should be considerably bigger, with the first quarter alone bringing two releases with a combined cost estimated as north of $350 million.
We start with one of those, and then cover another which is also a holdover from this feature last January…
Alita: Battle Angel (February 19)
Delayed twice from its originally-scheduled date of last July – that’s not normally a good sign. But escaping the Hunger Games which was the Christmas box-office for the much quieter February might have been very sensible: just ask Mortal Engines about that. After a shaky start with a first trailer that had everyone going, “…but those eyes!”, subsequent efforts have consistently improved, and by the last one, enthusiasm online seemed generally higher. With a $200 million budget, it needs to be huge for there to be any chance of sequels, and adaptations of Japanese comic-books have not done well previously. Fingers crossed producer James Cameron can sprinkle some of his pixie-dust on Robert Rodriguez.
Anna (TBA)
“I’ve a feeling this may end up drifting back into 2019″. That’s what I said last year, and I’m tempted just to copy-paste that entry. because we know precious little more about Luc Besson’s next film now, than we did last January. I suspect Besson has been a bit distracted, between rape accusations, sexual harassment claims by seven other women, and a $101 million loss for the first half of the financial year at his studio, EuropaCorp [thanks, Valerian!]. Anna was originally set for a January release in France, but has been pushed back to March 27, in part due to the company getting out of distributing its own films there. US distributors Lionsgate haven’t scheduled it yet. A trailer would be nice…
Atone (February 26)
Per Amazon, “Atone introduces us to the world of Laura Bishop, an ex-special ops soldier that has reluctantly settled into raising her daughter Kate… She spends her days in a security job at a place that she thought would not require much effort, a church. Until a team of highly trained and armed terrorists takes the church by siege. With the intent to simply report the incident to the cops, she starts to head to the police department when suddenly she is stopped as she notices her daughters bike lying at the entrance of the church… With special forces standing between her and her daughter, Lauras rage engages her past in special ops setting off a pitched battle that may kill everyone involved.” So… Die Hard in a church?
Captain Marvel (March 8)
This is an easy pick for top box-office GWG in 2019, as every Marvel Cinematic Universe film since Thor in 2011 – sixteen in a row, and counting – has grossed at least half a billion dollars worldwide. It sees Brie Larson play Carol Danvers, a.k.a. the titular superheroine. It will be Marvel’s first female-led film, which isa bit risky, considering the character is perhaps less well-known, lacking Black Widow’s audience in previous ensemble films, for example. It’s an origin story, set in the nineties, and tells how Danvers’s DNA was fused with that of an alien species, the Kree, and helps fend off an invasion of Earth by another extra-terrestrial race. It’ll be huge. But Ant-Man and the Wasp huge? Or Black Panther huge?
Charlie’s Angels (November 1)
Like Alita, this has been pushed back twice, originally scheduled for July and then September. Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska play the trio of crime-fighters, with multiple Bosleys, including director Elizabeth Banks, Patrick Stewart and Djimon Hounsou. This one will have to overcome the stigma of the 2011 attempt to reboot the show as a TV series, which was canceled after only four episodes had aired. Or indeed, the lacklustre Charlie’s Angels: FullThrottle, which failed to capture the same spirit of fun as the original movie. I’m curious as to how this is going to work in a post-#MeToo era, given the eye candy that has been an integral part of almost every incarnation, going back to the first TV series.
Crawl (TBA)
“A young woman, while attempting to save her father during a Catagory 5 hurricane, finds herself trapped in a flooding house and must fight for her life against alligators.” This stars Kaya Scodelario, and will be somewhat familiar territory for the actress, as she was also in Tiger House, playing a young woman trapped in a house who must fight for her life against robbers. Director Alexandre Aja’s break through film was the French Haute Tension, and also did remakes The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D.
Dark Phoenix (June 7)
Startled to realize this will be the twelfth film in the X-Men universe, if you include the Deadpool films. But it will be the first truly female-driven one – though you could perhaps make an argument for Logan at least being a two-hander. Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is ‘turned’ to the dark side after being blasted by radiation from a solar flare, and becomes Phoenix. She’s manipulated by an alien shapeshifter, played by Jessica Chastain, while the rest of the X-Men, including Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn) on the distaff side, try to reclaim their colleague. This has been in post-production for a long time, with shooting having completed in October 2017, and also had its release date moved back into 2019.
Fighting With My Family (February 14)
Telling the story behind WWE’s former women’s champion, Paige (Florence Pugh), who comes from a family of British pro wrestlers. Fun fact: I saw her mother wrestle, as “Sweet Saraya”, at Croydon’s Fairfield Hall in the late nineties. Mom here will be played by Lena Headey, with Dad by Nick Frost – both are well-loved here, and it’s an unexpected directorial effort from Stephen Merchant, whom we also like. I suspect it’s going to be very British and dry in its wit, but having seen the documentary of the same title, I’ve no doubt there’s plenty of material to be found in this dysfunctional family. However, films about wrestling have not tended to do well at the box-office. Anyone remember Ready 2 Rumble? Exactly.
Headlock (January 11)
I’ll believe this when I see it, considering how long it has been in production – it started filming in July 2014. For now, I’ll stick to repeating the IMDb synopsis – as last year! “After new CIA recruit, Kelley Chandler (Polish) is seriously injured during a mission, surviving only on life support, his wife Tess (Dianna Agron), a former CIA operative, becomes determined to find out what happened to her husband. As the details of Kelley’s last mission unravel, showing that his accident was an inside job, Tess puts everything on the line to keep Kelley out of harm’s way, even if that comes with dangerous consequences.”
I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu (TBA)
The fifth in the franchise, I’m not certain if this one will qualify for the site. We have revieweed the reboot and both of the sequels. However, the original was more rape than revenge, and this entry shares the same director, Meir Zarchi, and star in Camille Keaton. She plays the best-selling author of a book that recounts her rape ordeal and subsequent trial where she was acquitted of killing her attackers. Now living in New York City with her supermodel daughter (Jamie Bernadette), they are kidnapped and taken to a remote rural town by the revenge-seeking relatives of the rapists. Hence: deja vu.
Liberté: A Time to Spy (TBA)
“Based on true stories, the film tells the story of Vera Atkins, a crafty spy recruiter, and two of the first women she selects for Churchill’s “secret army”: Virginia Hall, a daring American undaunted by a disability and Noor Inayat Khan, a pacifist. These civilian women form an unlikely sisterhood while entangled in dangerous missions to turn the tide of the war.” We’ve written about Khan previously, and I’ve got a fondness for all the heroines of World War II. [I’m currently watching British TV series Wish Me Luck, which covers similar topics] Atkins is played by Stana Katic, who was in Stiletto, and Khan by Indian actress Radhika Apte.
Miss Bala (February 1)
A remake of the Mexican film of the same name, it does adjust some elements from the original. Rather than the heroine being a beauty queen, it’s a make-up artist (here, played by Gina Rodriguez) who is coerced in to working for the local drug cartel. Per the official synopsis, “Gloria must turn the tables on everyone to escape and finds a power she never knew she had as she navigates a dangerous world of cross-border crime. Surviving will require all of her cunning, inventiveness, and strength.” Which sounds more or less like the synopsis of 60% of the telenovelas I watch, though that is probably just me.
Monster Hunter (TBA)
Resident Evil may be done (for now), but Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich have moved on to another video-game property. She plays Captain Natalie Artemis, a member of a United Nations military team who fall through a portal into an alternate world where humans and monsters do battle. The skills she picks up there come in handy when the monsters come back through the portal to our Earth. With martial artist Tony Jaa as the male lead, the kick-butt here may be off the charts, and based on the pic above, it looks like Milla didn’t have to change much more than her socks from portraying Alice. Should be fun, though expect whining from the video-game fans about changes made for the movie.
The Rhythm Section (February 22)
Made by Eon Productions, the company who produce the James Bond films, this will star Blake Lively as Stephanie Patrick, “a woman who seeks to uncover the truth behind a plane crash that killed her family. Patrick was also meant to be on the flight. After she discovers that the crash was not accidental, she embarks on a mission to track down those responsible by assuming the identity of an assassin.” It’s based on the novel by Mark Burnell, which “is not a thriller about the hunt for a terrorist, although that is the path Stephanie takes, and it’s not a story about revenge, although justice for her family is her initial motivation. Rather, The Rhythm Section is the story of Stephanie’s attempt to reclaim herself.” Hmm.
Split Lip (TBA)
I heard about this independent effort through Chris, who works at a local film studio here in Arizona – the daughter of one of her clients there is the star, and does all her own stunts. Synopsis: “In the underground world of contract killers, mistakes cannot be tolerated. Set (Doreé Seay), a brutal mercenary with an icy exterior, finds out the hard way when one mistake sends her on a treacherous mission to clear her name. Hunted by her former mentor Karlton (DeJean Brown) and his roster of psychopaths, she forms an unlikely alliance with a mysterious stranger and his sister as Set races against the clock to out-wit and out-fight the dark forces gunning for her life.” I’m sold. Check out the trailer in the playlist at the bottom.
Untitled Terminator Reboot (November 1)
Probably one of the most frequent questions I get is why I haven’t written more about the Terminator films. It’s mostly because Sarah Connor is a supporting character in parts 1+2; only the third, with its female terminator as the antagonist really qualifies. I’ll still be interested to see what this reboot does with regard to the franchise. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton reprise their roles (albeit largely with a body-double for the former!), and it apparently ignores everything after Terminator 2.
Of course, any and all of the above is subject to change! But as and when they are released, you can expect coverage and reviews of them here in the coming year.
We watched this Spanish film, by coincidence, on the same night as Ocean’s 8, and the Hispanic entry came off as a poor imitation, even though it was made a decade earlier. A four-woman gang’s attempt to steal from Russian mobsters in Spain falls short, though only a single member of the crew is arrested. One of those who escape, Ana, marries Mexican drug-lord Felix (Yazpik), only to discover over the ensuing months, he’s an utterly abusive bastard. After she is pushed out of a car at high-speed, ending up in hospital, the other three, including her sister Aurora (Gil), the one who was caught, decided to take revenge on Felix. The plan is to start by stealing first his data then move on to his money, the loss of which will cause his new Korean partners to kill him. However, his right-hand man, Gabriel (Luna), begins to suspect the women – yet his qualms about Felix’s increasingly brutal ways help lead to increasingly split loyalties.
This isn’t as good as the above synopsis – or the German DVD sleeve on the right! – might make it sound. Instead, it’s a two hour-plus mess, with far too many scenes serving purposes that are either poorly explained or entirely non-existent. Aurora’s time in prison, for example, is virtually irrelevant, except for another scene showing what bastards men are [she is eventually released thanks to the provision of sexual favours to a corrupt judge; one of the themes here seems to be that men are degenerate sleazeballs]. And when the heist goes into motion, there’s absolutely no sense of structure, which would allow the audience to follow along. Why is that tunnel being dug? Does anyone know what’s going on? And then there are the “Koreans”, who are very clearly speaking Chinese. Not sure if this was casual racism, or just extremely sloppy film-making.
Despite the above critical evisceration, it’s not entirely without merit. There’s something of a Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese feel to this, not least in the conspicuous use of music to punctuate proceedings. That includes both usual Hispanic entries like Los Lobos, to entirely unexpected content, such as Patti Smith’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. Those inspirations are also reflected in Yanes’s unstinting eye for violence. The scene where Felix takes a hammer to the hands of a victim is nasty – yet necessary, bringing home beyond any shadow of doubt how evil he is. When things are in motion, Yanes seems to have a decent handle on how to shoot and edit things, and I liked most of the performances here as well, from a fairly well-known cast. It’s just a shame the script seems to consist of pages torn from a better movie, thrown up into the air and placed in random order. The struggle simply to follow what was happening, entirely sucked the life out of my initial enthusiasm for this.
Dir: Agustín Díaz Yanes Star: Victoria Abril, Ariadna Gil, José María Yazpik, Diego Luna
a.k.a. Just Walking or Walking Vengeance
Do not mistake the above rating for suggesting that this is a “good” movie. By most normal standards, it would hardly qualify. But what we have is a throwback to the glory days of exploitation, in particular Filipino women-in-prison flicks like The Big Doll House or Black Mama, White Mama. Here, schoolgirl Mallory (McCart) is sentenced to two years in Thailand juvenile detention after whacking a rich bitch classmate bully upside the head with a pipe (below). At first, the place seems almost like a holiday camp. Then, her guardian leaves, and Mall is taken out the back to the real facility, a cesspool of degradation and brutality, where the inmates are exploited in ways both sexual and violent.
All the tropes of the genre are there. A sadistic warden (Weiss, apparently delivering her lines phonetically – which is actually perfect for her emotionally-dead character). Gratuitous shower scenes. A predatory lesbian, Riza (Maslova), who is naturally the one whom Mallory must eventually battle in the prison’s fight club, a death-match with freedom on the line for the winner. A nice lesbian, Kat (Grey), who takes Mallory under her wing and trains her in martial arts, as well as engaging in a lengthy session of canoodling with her. No prizes for guessing this was the scene where Chris walked in. [I swear, my wife has some kind of tingly, Spidey-sense for sleaze…] A prisoners’ revolt. Cohn, who also plays Mall’s guardian, adds his own grindhouse spin too, such as the scene where she captures a rat and eats it raw, after the warden off cuts her regular food.
In case any of the proceeding is in any way unclear, this is not high art. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed this for its melodramatic excesses and unrepentant approach to wallowing in what many would term the cinematic gutter. [Wrongly, I’d say, although that’s a topic for a separate, five-thousand word essay…] It helps that the performances are mostly on the nose; I especially enjoyed watching Maslova, who positively slithers her way around every scene in which she appears. At first, I was inclined to dismiss McCart, who in the early going, appeared to have one expression: permanently aggrieved. Then I realized, if anyone has good reason to be permanently aggrieved, it’s Mallory, since she’s pretty much a punching-bag for life, from the first scene to the last. By the end, I was rooting for her, every punch.
I would like to have seen more of the fight club, not least establishing Riza’s bad-ass credentials, and having Mall take on others as a build-up to the grand finale. There are also some unexplained story elements too, such as the question of why Mallory wants nothing to do with her father. Yet this is the kind of film where such things as the plot matter little, if at all. I stumbled across this accidentally on Netflix and had a blast. However, more than for most movies I review here, that comes with this caveat: your mileage may vary.
Dir: Jared Cohn Star: Kelly Ann McCart, Kat Grey, Maythavee Weiss, Anastasia Maslova
Malorie Hayes (Bullock) is nervously heading towards the birth of a child, supported by her sister (Hayes), when a mysterious epidemic of suicidal psychosis breaks out worldwide. In the ensuing carnage, Malorie finds shelter in the home belonging to the acidic Douglas (Malkovich), whose wife dies trying to help Malorie, and a small number of other survivors. They figure out the epidemic is triggered by entities of some kind who are now prowling the planet – if you see them, you are overwhelmed by your worst fears and kill yourself. The obvious defense is not to make eye contact. Yet how do you survive in a world you cannot see? Especially when it turns out that those who were previously psychopathically inclined are immune to the effects, and are free to roam that world, with their sight intact.
The structure here is a bit problematic, bouncing back and forth between the early days of the apocalypse, and five years later when Malorie and two children are making their way down a river towards a supposed sanctuary. This both robs the early scenes of some tension, since we know who will and won’t survive, and eventually leads to a troublesome and unexplained leap: how, exactly, did they get from stuck in the city, to farming in the middle of a forest? However, it manages to get by, largely on the strength of Bullock’s intensity. This is apparent from the very first scene, where she’s instructing the five-year-olds on their imminent journey, in a thoroughly unmotherly manner.
If you’re looking for an explanation, you’ll need to look elsewhere, as the film never provides any. I’m not sure whether the book in which this was based was any more forthcoming [one thing I do know is, in the novel and not the movie, the sanctuary was populated by people who had deliberately blinded themselves] This isn’t necessarily a problem: indeed, it has been a genre staple going back at least to Night of the Living Dead, to present an apocalypse and its consequences without rationale. Yet, the specifics of the event here seem particularly contrived e.g. simultaneous parturition, and if you’re overly concerned with story logic, this may prove troublesome.
Fortunately, the performances help overcome this – not limited to, but certainly highlighted by, Bullock’s. Her gradual evolution from someone who isn’t certain she wants to be pregnant, into a fiercely protective mother (even to someone else’s kid) is nicely handled, and convincing. She gets particularly good support from Malkovich, playing the jackass character who appears almost de rigeur in any apocalyptic scenario. As many have noted (and the review tagline suggests), there is more than a little similarity to A Quiet Place; though I found that rather underwhelming, and the brutally internalized nature of the threat here seemed considerably more effective. The prospect of having to lose your sight is certainly scarier to me, and if far from perfect, I found enough cheap thrills here to make the time worthwhile.
Dir: Susanne Bier Star: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson
Not to be confused with RuPaul’s 2015 album (I kid you not), this starts off on shaky territory. I mean, a director who credits himself as “Spooky Dan Walker”, and three edgeladies as heroines, wannabe YouTube stars who think dropping F-bombs every second sentence is cool? I was thanking my lucky stars this had a running time of 76 minutes. This trio of urban explorers head off to an abandoned theme park in the middle of nowhere called Santa Land, only to find it not as abandoned as expected, with a giant horned monster, Grampus, roaming the area, operating as the devil’s Christmas ambassador to naughty children. Or adults, which is where Alexi (Klebe), Dahlia (Slaughter) and Sadie (Wagner) come on to its menu. Fortunately, Santa Land’s owner is there to help: who else but Mr. Claus (Bostwick) himself?
And that’s really where the film becomes considerably more fun. Because it plays fast and loose with the whole mythology of Christmas, depicting Santa as a hard-drinking, cursing biker who gave up the business because toys started being mass-produced. It’s a winning performance from Bostwick, who hand-waves away the girls’ questions about how he operated with increasingly irritated dismissals of “Magic!” This irascible charm seems to rub off on the heroines, who shift from irritating to endearing, and develop distinct personalities beyond their colour co-ordinated outfits and wigs, as they buckle down to fight Grampus and save… Well, less Christmas, and more the world in general.
It becomes increasingly self-aware as it goes on, poking as much fun at the world of Internet “celebrities” as endorsing it, e.g. the trio insist on taking selfies with the temporarily captured monster. There’s good support from Richard Moll as a local cop, and in particular, Diane Salinger as a local barmaid, who ends up playing a pivotal role, despite (or, more likely, because of) her clear aversion to the festive season. It all ends in a quite unexpected fashion which, if a bit too abrupt, fits nicely in with the slaying of sacred cows – or sleighing of sacred reindeer, perhaps – which has gone before. It certainly seals the three heroines as the pro-active leaders of the film, despite a shaky section in the middle where it looked like a boyfriend was going to end up saving the day. Not so fast, white knight…
I have to say, the Grampus suit itself is incredibly well done, a latex marvel that must have been hell to apply and perform in. While there are some elements which feel under-developed, such as the Ghoulies-like fur-balls which attack in act three, Walker keeps things moving at a brisk enough pace to get away with it most of the time. If not quite the silliest festive film which I’ve seen this year (that would, of course, be Santa Jaws), this deserves to be filed alongside other anti-Christmas movies, such as Gremlins. It’s no Die Hard, of course; then again, who is?
Dir: Dan Walker Star: Kristina Klebe, Susan Slaughter, Hannah Wagner, Barry Bostwick
From just about all I’ve read, the director seems entirely earnest in his desire to make a serious film about a serious problem, human trafficking in Central America. That the end result falls almost entirely wide of the mark is a bit of a double-edged sword. In terms of making its intended point, that it feels more like a B-movie from the fifties is a bad thing. But on the other hand, the serious film about the serious problem would likely be considerably less amusing.
Having enjoyed the same director’s 
It’s not often that a film cost less to make, than the television set on which I watched it. But it appears this was the case here, with the budget reportedly coming in at five hundred pounds. No, there’s not a “thousand” missing from that. £500. What you get is probably not too far from what you would expect for that – some of the aerial photography and locations do appear to represent good value for money. Budget isn’t the real issue here though. This British film’s main problem is the drastic shift in story for the final third, when it suddenly morphs, for no reason, from a SF/thriller, into a full-on zombie apocalypse which the makers have neither the budget nor the talent to depict.
A painfully clunky mix of spy and crime thrillers, this really needs to decide which it wants to be. Alexandria Kingston – code name Griffin, in case you hadn’t guessed – was an abused child, with the good fortune to be rescued and brought up by Margaret Murphy, the head of Irish organized crime in Boston. Though to avoid Alex being targeted for leverage, she was never acknowledged to be part of the family. As an adult, Alex joined the CIA and became a top field agent, jet-setting over the globe on demand. But when her foster mother suffers a stroke, she returns to Boston to find herself in the middle of a war for control of the turf. The rival Killeen clan, sensing an opportunity, pounce. It’s up to Alex and her brothers to defend the family – and then take the battle to the Killeens.
Atone (February 26)
Fighting With My Family (February 14)
We watched this Spanish film, by coincidence, on the same night as 
Do not mistake the above rating for suggesting that this is a “good” movie. By most normal standards, it would hardly qualify. But what we have is a throwback to the glory days of exploitation, in particular Filipino women-in-prison flicks like The Big Doll House or 
Malorie Hayes (Bullock) is nervously heading towards the birth of a child, supported by her sister (Hayes), when a mysterious epidemic of suicidal psychosis breaks out worldwide. In the ensuing carnage, Malorie finds shelter in the home belonging to the acidic Douglas (Malkovich), whose wife dies trying to help Malorie, and a small number of other survivors. They figure out the epidemic is triggered by entities of some kind who are now prowling the planet – if you see them, you are overwhelmed by your worst fears and kill yourself. The obvious defense is not to make eye contact. Yet how do you survive in a world you cannot see? Especially when it turns out that those who were previously psychopathically inclined are immune to the effects, and are free to roam that world, with their sight intact.
Not to be confused with RuPaul’s 2015 album (