Category: Review

Madame Web

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★★★
“Adventures in Babysitting.”

Having read quite a number of articles on (p)reviews for this movie and now having seen it myself, I’m beginning to think you can buy negative reviews to torpedo product that might compete with yours. I’ve seen this before, e. g. when the press tore down John Carter so that The Hunger Games could become the defining blockbuster franchise of the decade. Or when it became very obvious Disney had ties to RottenTomatoes.com: the Internet may recall this as the “Great Captain Marvel online war” :) It seems this takes place in particular with comic-book or superhero movies not from Disney/Marvel. It happened regularly with the X-Men movies, when 20th Century Fox still existed as an independent studio. It happened when the – admittedly, very often not so good – DC movies came out: neither Black Adam nor Aquaman 2 were as bad as the reviews made them.

And now, it seems to happen with “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” (SSU). That the quality of these vary greatly is not in question. Of course they do. While the Spider-Man films with Tom Holland are beloved by fans, and seem to be well-regarded by critics, things don’t look so bright for the extended universe Sony is building. The first Venom movie with Tom Hardy was torn down by the media, but cheered by the cinema-going masses; the second was similarly split. Then Morbius with Jared Leto got almost entirely negative reviews and that trend continues with Madame Web. Things don’t look good for Kraven the Hunter, another entry in the universe due out later this year.

I’ll be honest and admit it: Madame Web is not a great cinematic revelation, it’s definitely not the “must-see” superhero film of the year and probably won’t blow your socks off. But – and this is where I feel I get justifiably angry – “not great” is not the same as “bad”. I’m coming to the conclusion you can’t trust sites like Rotten Tomatoes, and you shouldn’t read reviews before you watch. A movie review (and this counts for mine too) can’t tell if you will like a movie or not. Follow your instinct and make up your own mind, that’s my friendly advice to the dedicated film-goer. This is not to say Madame Web is perfect entertainment. But I will defend it against anyone saying it is a “bad” movie. You may call it bland, boring or mediocre if you like, but that’s not the same. I’ve seen enough bad movies in my lifetime to know, bad looks very different.

So, what’s up with Madame Web? The film starts in the South American jungle, where pregnant scientist Constance (Kerry Bishé) seeks a specific spider for its medical uses, but is killed by assistant Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who wants the spider for himself. Apparently – though it is never explained how – he uses it to become a wealthy and still astonishingly young looking man (this prologue happens in 1973, than jumps to 2003, so he should be around 60?). The so-called “spider people” can’t save Constance, who was bitten by a spider before giving birth, but give her daughter up for adoption.

Jump forward to 2003. Cassandra “Cassy” Webb (Johnson), Constance’s daughter, is a paramedic who saves lives everyday, but is strongly averse to emotional attachment. I wondered what she does in her leisure time – but then, the same could be said about me! After being drowned, dead for three minutes, and revived, she has visions which turn out to be clairvoyant; she can glimpse the future moments before it happens. After experiencing the death of a colleague, she realizes she can act to stop her visions taking place. [What a revelation!] While on a train she foresees the death of three girls, killed by a masked man with superpowers. She tries her best to save them; no easy job as she has to improvise and out-think her pursuer constantly, while taking care of young girls who don’t necessarily follow her orders. That’s the moment you realize this movie might be made with 30-year-old moms as its target audience, which is something I have not seen before on the big screen.. Kudos for originality, I think.

Some changes from the comics were obvious. I’m no expert on all things and characters around Spider-Man but last time I saw Madame Web, was a 90’s animated series where she was an old, blind woman in a wheel-chair, She controlled the web of time and sent ol’ Spidey on a mission. This film goes full circle, having Cassie at the end in a wheel-chair and wearing dark glasses – enough time to age, when she needs to appear in a Spidey movie playing 20-something years in the future. Also, the three girls who will be Spider-Women and -Girls of the future (played by Sweeney, O’Connor and Merced) are not really characters I know. Having had a thing for the Spider-Woman comic an eternity ago, I remember that Mattie Franklin was white and the niece of J. Jonah Jameson. Here she is black and her background has totally changed. I guess the aim is to be as diverse as possible.

I personally don’t mind a movie centered on female characters in the Spider-Man universe. Heck, for decades I’ve been waiting for a Black Cat or Silver Sable movie, though right now that prospect seems quite dim considering the reaction here. But having this movie precede the Tom Holland Spider-Man does give me the feeling this is another attempt to give a hero’s tale a backstory based on an earlier woman (as done terribly by British TV classic Doctor Who). That said, this movie is not “woke”. Yes, the villain is a man but there is no male-bashing or ridiculing, as has become so common nowadays e. g. by Disney. It just puts female characters at the focus of the story and that’s absolutely okay by me.

What did surprise me is the main protagonist. Madame Web is neither one of many charismatic villains the Spidey-universe offers, nor what I’d call a “hero”. Making her the center of the story is a gamble, with the need for a scenario where she becomes the main character. Which the screenplay does quite well, I’d say. It would have been easier to make a movie about the Spider-Women or Spider-Girl, but here we are. Also, the title character has no super-powers which are interesting to watch. She can’t crawl up walls, jump from roof to roof, or has super-strength. She can just see a bit into the future. That’s it, until the end when she develops the ability to be in several places at once to help her girls (yeah, it’s definitely a movie for moms!). It means the screenwriters really had to think hard to provide the necessary action. and have their protagonist use her wits to counter her opponent, who unfairly uses early face-identifying computer programs to find the three girls.

A word on the actors. Dakota Johnson (daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, granddaughter of Tippi Hedren) has long left the memories of her early Fifty Shades of Grey success behind her. She is a good, professional actress and I’ve never seen a bad performance from her. This movie is no exception. The “girl” actresses don’t register strongly here; their characters are hardly given much to do here, which can be considered a weakness of the script, except being kind of a pain in Cassie’s neck. Tahar Rahim as the villain, comes across a bit bland which might not be the actor’s fault – the character is just not very interesting. His main goal is to stop these girls, who may become dangerous for him later. Ironically, as Cassie realizes, it’s exactly this fear of the future which leads to his downfall here and now, at her hands.

Once again, I stress Madame Web is not a bad movie. It may be too long – though less than some of the bloated blockbusters Hollywood produces nowadays. It could have a more interesting villain, with better motivation. They could have chosen a more interesting main character. But if there is one real problem with all the new SSU movies, it is the lack of humor. A bit of it, integrated into the heroine’s or villain’s character, would go a long way in making a superhero movie a more entertaining product. But maybe that’s not the route Sony wants to go, perhaps to distance themselves from the style of Marvel. It would be regrettable: a surprise hit like Venom showed how that element is appreciated by audiences. If you give them drama, action and suspense, they must also have the chance to let go of the tension with laughter. An approach classic James Bond movies employed, to good effect, at the beginning of the action movie genre.

All in all, the movie, its direction, script, acting performances, etc., are solid. Not great. Also not terrible. It is an acceptable solid superhero comic-book movie, though the superhero thing comes across here as toned down. Just don’t expect the big typical blockbuster epic that too many people may nowadays associate with the genre. Who knows? If Sony continues in this manner maybe they can actually get their SSU to work for the large audience? If not, I imagine they can still put all of these newly released characters in the next Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland!

Dir: S. J. Clarkson
Star: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor

Lady Whirlwind Against the Rangers

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★★½
“Gal force winds.”

Not to be confused, in the slightest bit, with Lady Whirlwind (though both Tubi and the IMDb do, affixing posters from it to their entries for this movie), it is a straightforward slice of chop-socky – with all that entails, both good and bad. The plot is simple in comparison to some. Lin Jo-Nan (Shang-Kuan) is the daughter of a law official, who tries to stop the salt hijacking operations of notorious bandit, Chang Piao (Kurata). After he refuses to let the criminals go, he’s framed and arrested. Jo-Nan and her little brother, Shao Lung (Yeh), try to take revenge on the bandit, but end up getting their butts kicked, so another, more subtle plan is clearly required.

This involves both siblings dressing as the opposite sex, with Jo-Nan getting a job as assistant foreman of a salt company. She gets her boss. Ma Wen (Ma) to agree to take the fight to Chang Piao, and hijack a few of his salt shipments. That gets her promoted to chief foreman, and the disgruntled man she replaces is ripe for recruitment on to Chang’s side. The section thereafter is likely the weakest, as the movie drifts into broad comedy, after someone discovers Jo-Nan’s true gender, and falls for her. Of course, as is usual in these things, the heroine is hardly convincing as a man, and the plot basically relies on everyone accepting her preferred pronouns without question. Though she at least has a short haircut to help the illusion.

Eventually, the core plot shows up again, with Chang Piao putting into action a plan to kill Ma Wen with a booby-trapped sculpture. Can anything then stop him from taking over? Well, you will likely not be surprised by the answer to that particular question. Though, again, it takes a while for Jo-Nan to get back into the action, after a brisk start where it seems like every scene is another battle for her. The annoying kid also falls into the category of “Things I could probably have used less of”, right down to the inevitable urine-based humour. His kidnapping does kick off the final battle, with Jo-Nan riding to the rescue, and storming Chang’s villa, where she has the inevitable final fight against him.

The kung-fu on view here is generally fine. Polly has a no-nonsense style, which fits in nicely with the larger opponents she has to battle, and it’s also apparent she’s doing all (or close to all) of her own work. Disappointingly, she ends up needing help to dispose of the main bad guy, from an undercover policeman, and the ending falls rather flat, without her getting to batter Chang Piao into oblivion. As kung-fu revenge flicks go, the way this finishes falls into the kinder, gentler, “let the law punish him appropriately” category, and that’s disappointing. However, the biggest problem is the lack of Polly-action in the middle, and your attention should be forgiven if it drifts elsewhere.

Dir: Cheng Hou
Star: Polly Shang-Kuan, Yasuaki Kurata, Chi Ma, Hsiao-Yi Yeh

Giantess Attack vs. Mecha-Fembot!

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★★½
“The bigger they come…”

The first Giantess Attack! movie was an unexpected guilty pleasure: while obviously low budget, it had no pretensions and an undeniably goofy charm that, at least for me, helped paper over the cracks and microscopic resources. The end of it teased this very movie, and most of the main players have delivered on that promise. Can lightning strike twice? The answer is… not quite. Even at a crisp 67 minutes, it still feels like there is a lot of padding, with recycled footage and elements that go on, after their amusement value has expired. That said, it ends in another impressive giant battle, and still contains some genuinely amusing moments.

Frida (Riley) and Diedre (Tacosa) have split after the events of the first film: the latter has vowed never to become a giantess ever again, and has retreated to her “Fortress of Immeasurable Guilt” to build popiscle-stick models. Frida pays her a visit, and they end up in what can only be described as a cat-fight version of the famous brawl from They Live, over Diedre’s refusal to put on glasses. However, the main threat is the surviving Metaluna twin (Nguyen) from the first movie, who is plotting revenge on Earth. To that end, she kidnaps a scientist, miniaturizes him and forces him to make the mecha-fembot of the title, which goes on the rampage through LA. The only hope is our two heroines, though before they can save the city, the duo first need to reconcile.

There can’t be many movies which open with a Katey Sagal impersonator, but here’s one. It follows with a brutal parody of those cloying, guilt-ridden Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials, which is spot on, and resurfaces as a bit of a running joke thereafter. Then, however… the film kinda loses its direction and energy for much of the first half. The sequence where the scientist ends up in Metaluna’s lair, for example, is excruciatingly over-stretched. The same goes for Frida’s ascent up to Diedre’s fortress, where the sole element of humour is that she goes mountain-climbing in go-go boots. Some sequences definitely feel more aimed at the fetish crowd, of whom I am not one.

Once the robot is built – I confess, I did laugh at the supposed method of activation – and unleashed, things become a lot more fun. For we get what we came for, which is cheesy, OTT and completely ridiculous F-sized action. It’s a mix of model work, CGI and green-screen, all done with more enthusiasm than actual resources, yet remains the kind of film-making for which I have an odd affection. Much of Los Angeles is, indeed, destroyed, and our heroines are sentenced to 9,000 hours of community service as a result. Naturally, a third entry is teased, accompanied by the outrageously English accent of the eye-patch wearing “Nicky Fury”. Even if this sequel was a little weaker, I still cannot stop myself from looking forward to: Giantess Attack… In Space!

Dir: Jeff Leroy
Star: Tasha Tacosa, Rachel Riley, Christine Nguyen, Vlada Fox

Allies and Enemies: Fallen by Amy J. Murphy

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

It’s a little hard to explain the universe in which this takes place. Humanity existed. However, their encounter with other races proved problematic for a variety of reasons, and led to them being exterminated, a genocide that was partly collateral damage in a war between the human-adjacent Eugenes and the definitely not Sceeloids. The former have a severely class-based society, where the lower-tiers are bred specifically to be soldiers, for example. One such “breeder” is Sela “Ty” Tyron, though she differs from the rest of her platoon in a couple of important ways. Firstly, her son is part of her group – though he doesn’t know it, having been removed from her care on his birth. His death (at the very beginning of the book, so not much of a spoiler) causes Ty to question everything she has believed about society, and her place in it.

Then there’s her commanding officer, Captain Jonvenlish Veradin. While her absolute loyalty to him is one thing, Ty’s feelings go past that, even if she won’t allow herself to admit it. Veradin is suddenly accused of treason; while he refuses to do anything except trust in the process, she spirits him away from execution, to life as a fugitive on the run. The cause of the accusation turns out to be related to his sister, Erelah. She’s a scientist who has just made a discovery which will revolutionize faster-than-light travel. She and Jonvenlish share a secret, which brought them to the attention of Ravstar, the regime’s infamous black operations group, and its even more notorious commander, Defensor Tristic. She’s half-Sceeloid (which raises questions in itself) and has plans to use Erelah as a vessel,  whether or not the target consents. But doing so awakens some long-dormant talents in Erelah. Between those and Ty’s rogue military abilities, Tristic won’t find things going all her own way. On the other hand, Erelah and Ty have their own issues to work through, not least their conflicting ideas of what’s best for Captain Veradin.

This is… okay. The split focus is a bit rough, in that the switch from focusing on Ty to Erelah, is sudden and perhaps too long to work. The two stories don’t come together at all in the first third, and the unclear previous history turns out to be quite significant, to the point I wished it had been better explained. If the plotting is generally too murky for its own good, the characterization is well enough handled to balance things, or thereabouts. Ty, in particular, is a genuine bad-ass, whose loyalty is exemplary. If the action is limited in quantity, it’s partly because she’s so competent, the fights in which she’s involved tend not to last long. While it is enough to salvage this as a read, it’s not sufficient to get me more than slightly interested in reading further entries.

Author: Amy J. Murphy
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, as an e-book only (unless you fancy paying $59.99 for the paperback!).
Book 1 of 5 in the Allies and Enemies series.

The Secret Weapon

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★★★½
“Woo’s the boss.”

After enjoying The Kill List, I thought I’d dip my toe again into the new wave of Thai girls with guns films with this, and it’s another solid entry. As there, the main influence seems to be Hong Kong action cinema of the nineties; this in particular falls into the category of “heroic bloodshed.” But there’s a clear nod to Nikita as well. Joy Phaendin is a soldier whose father, Maj. Gen. Phaendin (Sawasdee), is a member of a special operations team, killed while on a mission. Filled with a desire for revenge, Joy signs up for the same unit, under the command of Maj. Gen. Nakhom (Midaim), and becomes a “Busaba” for the government. This is “A person without a name, without a face, without friends, without a history.”

Being one requires absolute obedience to three rules. #1: When accepting a mission, you have to complete it without any hesitation or question. #2: Do not leave any trace that will lead back to the organization. #3: If you need to give your life on a mission, you must do so. The training is particularly brutal. When it comes down to the final two candidates for the spot, they’re ordered to kill each other. Joy is saved here by the other girl, known only as #34 (Wongtipkanon), taking her own life, the two women having formed an attachment. Joy a.k.a. #29 is then tasked with taking out, one by one, the organization who were responsible for her father’s death. Or so her commanding officer says, anyway.

You will not be surprised to learn that this is hardly the truth, the whole truth or nothing but the truth. When she spots a tattoo matching her father’s on one intended victim, Joy realizes there’s more going on that she has been told, and pulls her shot. From here on, it’s a wild ride of betrayal, deceit and counter-deceit, as well as an awful lot of slow-motion – again, it’s clear the makers have seen a lot of John Woo films. A good rule of thumb is, don’t believe anything the film tells you. This is true straight from the off, with a fifteen minute sequence where Joy is playing the part of a property agent, that is not what it seems. 

Thereafter, much the same applies, and it does become a bit of a stretch. Having one character “come back from the dead” is pushing it; when it happens more than that, you’ll get a sad shake of my head. It’s a pity, since there is a good deal here to admire, such as its bleakly downbeat attitude which goes through to the rolling of the credits. Yoosuk is okay in the action scenes; she’s more than okay when being super-intense. For example, when marching towards the bad guys, spraying automatic gunfire, with the blood of someone dear, spattered across her face. Enthusiastic squibbing is the order of the day too, and I was definitely left interested in seeing further examples from this promising new source.

Dir: Nopachai Jayanama
Star: Pichana Yoosuk, Napassakorn Midaim, Wanchana Sawasdee, Ticha Wongtipkanon

The Kill List

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★★★½
“Dressed to kill.”

For a TV movie, this is very impressive. When you hear that phrase, I usually think of something which appears on Lifetime or, worse still, Hallmark. But it seems that Thai television is made of sterner stuff. This plays much tougher, more like something you might see on AMC or FX. The story may not be particularly original, but it’s done with enough style and energy to make for more than passable entertainment The heroine is Angie (Rittapinun), an orphan who was brought up by her uncle and trained as an assassin. Her latest mission involves the retrieval of a data chip which contains a list of all the members in the organization of which she’s part. In the wrong hands, it could be disastrous.

Except the mission goes wrong, and the chip ends up in the hands of a hooker, Nina (Pitaktrairong), whom Angie let live because she was reminded of her sister, not seen since the day their parents were killed. This gets Angie disavowed by the organization, and they send further killers after her. Meanwhile, detective Sam (Asavanond) is hot on the trail of Angie for all the corpses left in her wake. Policeman and hitwoman are – probably inevitably – forced to team up, because the conspiracy behind things has tentacles considerably closer to home than is comfortable for either of them. It all leads to a confrontation where the truth about Angie’s bloody childhood is revealed.

Yeah, there’s not a lot here which you won’t have seen done before. It seems to be inspired mostly by Hong Kong movies like Naked Weapon, and that’s certainly not a bad place from which to start. It is refreshingly free of romance: I kept expecting Sam and Angie to fall for each other, but their relationship is kept strictly professional. [Sam, instead, is heavily crushed on by a policewoman at the station] I was a little disappointed that the film does not follow through on the bleak tone for which it appeared to be heading. Too many people who are supposed to be dead, turn out not to be, though there is at least one fairly unexpected fatality.

The action isn’t bad, even if I was amused by the Imperial Stormtrooper level of marksmanship displayed, as a way of getting round the whole pesky firearms problem. Rittapinun snaps off some nice kicks, making an especially good first impression with some high-heeled kung-fu, aided by enthusiastic stuntwork from those she’s fighting. While there does appear to be some doubling for the more gymnastic moments, it’s done well enough to pass muster. An occasionally over-melodramatic moment or two don’t harm proceedings too badly either, and the makers keep things moving along at a brisk pace, with few pauses of excessive length. I found the performances hit their mark, even if there’s nothing particularly novel about the characters: cop who gets 48 hours to solve the case, troubled assassin with a heart of gold, etc. This is still pretty serviceable and I enjoyed it – though after Ninja: Prophecy of Death, anything would seem an upgrade.

Dir: Chalerm Wongpim
Star: Thikumporn Rittapinun, Sarawut Mardthong, Netchanok Pitaktrairong, David Asavanond

Air Force One Down

  By

★★★
“Presidential immunity.”

As we head towards the 2024 election, I’m forced to conclude that the most implausible element here is not terrorists hijacking Air Force One, or a lone Secret Service agent taking out scores of bad guys. No, it’s having a President under fifty: someone who can string coherent sentences together, parachute out of a plane without breaking his hips, and personally gun down an enemy or two as well. Yeah, that’s not happening anytime soon. Otherwise, this teeters on the edge of being as generic as its title. But it passes muster due to decent performances, especially from McNamara as agent Allison Miles, and well-managed action from Bamford, who has 30+ years experience in stunt work.

The plot unfolds after Miles is assigned to the plane on which President Edwards (Bohen) is flying to Astovia to sign an oil treaty. There are people, both here and in Astovia, who are very much opposed to the deal. In particular, General Rodinov (Serbedzija, whom I recognized as Boris the Blade from Snatch) has a plan to hijack Air Force One, and make the President change his mind. He reckons without Miles, and after a spell of “Die Hard on a plane”, she and Edwards parachute out. That isn’t the end of it, Rodinov capturing them, with the intention of using her as leverage against the President. Once again: he reckons without Miles. You would think the General would have learned by now.

Indeed, the whole “leverage” thing is dubious; if I was an evil overlord, I’d put a bullet in Allison’s head the moment I captured her. Maybe that’s just me. The plot hits all the obvious notes e.g. the scene where the President and his agent bond, with a little light sexual tension [an apparently unmarried President?] But Bohen and McNamara make their characters entertaining to be around. I’d vote for him, put it that way, while she has a laudably no-nonsense approach to her work, and life in general. She may have picked it up from her uncle (Hall), also a Secret Service agent, and a long way from The Breakfast Club.

The action certainly elevates things above the humdrum. Sometimes the camerawork is a little frenetic, yet the shots are surprisingly long, and tend to make it clear McNamara is doing much of her own work. The highlight is an extended “one take” (it’s not, but done well enough to pass muster) in which she breaks out of captivity, and makes her way through the complex, eliminating enemies in a variety of interesting ways. It will stick in your mind considerably longer than most of the plot-based shenanigans, albeit slightly diminished by Miles then having to be saved by the President. I’d love to have seen more of that style, because it’s genuinely innovative stuff. If nothing else reaches this level, the movie remains a decent piece of entertainment overall, where the positive elements counterbalance an uninspired storyline. 

Dir: James Bamford
Star: Katherine McNamara, Ian Bohen, Rade Serbedzija, Anthony Michael Hall
The film is released in cinemas today, and on digital from February 13.

La Madre

  By

★★½
“Is there such a thing as whiteface?”

I ask, because this film, made in Mexico City and starring mostly Mexicans, seems to be trying to take place in America. It’s not doing a good job of it. The heroine is Martha (Mazarrasa), a single mother running a shop in a border American city with the help of her two daughters, Eva (Reynaud) and Raquel. Then Eva is kidnapped by evil Mexican cartel boss, El Chacal (Guerrerio), and held by him, even after Martha pays the requested ransom. However, it turns out Mom has a hidden past, which gave her a set of special skills. With the help of sympathetic cop, Juan Cinderos (Dulzaides), she sets out to bring down his organization and retrieve her daughter.

It might have worked better if everyone has spoken Spanish, and they’d actually set this in Mexico. Not that Mazarrasa’s English is bad. It’s far better than my Spanish. But early on, she tells her daughters, “Our family has been in this [American] city for generations.” Yet she sounds like she’s still dripping wet out of the Rio Grande: “Ey neeeed tu dooo zees!” It feels particularly fake to me, since I’m married to a first-generation Hispanic immigrant, so know Chris and her siblings sounds completely indistinguishable from native citizens. Literally nobody in the film speaks without a notable accent: the closest is El Chacal, the character you’d least expect to know English. It’s all tremendously off-putting.

The rest of the plotting is similarly shoddy, in particular the way Martha is able to infiltrate El Chacal’s operations and get them taken down from the inside, in a way Paul and his pals have been utterly unable to do. I get that she’s operating outside of the usual legal encumbrances, but building her history and doing more than slapping a wig on her as a disguise, would have gone a long way to avoid my eyebrow entering “Oh, really?” mode. The way a random cop like Paul gets to take part in police actions South of the “border” – quotes used advisedly – didn’t help. All told, too many elements here seem to have wandered into this Tubi Original, from a script discarded by the Hallmark channel.

Yet it’s not entirely worthless, with Mazarrasa just about able to hold things together through a decent central performance. She had a long-running role in Camelia La Texana, so has a handle on the more soapy elements here, and is capable of putting over the raw emotion appropriate to the circumstances. The individual pieces could have been re-arranged into an effective combination. Perhaps if Martha had gone full Liam Neeson from the moment Eva was kidnapped, telling El Chacal, “You just messed with the wrong madre…”, instead of wasting time faffing around, naively trying to negotiate and pay the ransom. That is quite at odds with the street-smart, take no prisoners approach she later shows. Maybe her brains were in the wig as well.

Dir: Mitchell Altieri
Star: Tamara Mazarrasa, Giovanna Reynaud, Javier Dulzaides, Alex Guerrero 

Night Train

  By

★★
“Not trucking good.”

Danielle Ryan’s quest for a movie worthy of her talents meets another swing and a miss. I guess you have to give credit to this one: it is at least trying to go in a different direction, making the Mexican cartel the good guys. For as well as their… less salubrious activities, they’re shipping pharmaceuticals into the US, and undercutting Big Pharma, by selling them to the needy at lower prices. #SoBrave Needless to say, this can’t stand, so word comes down to FBI supervisor Connoll (Sergei), who puts agent Jaylynne Jackson (Baird) on the case. Except, you wonder how much he wants to help, since she is an alcoholic burnout, with PTSD resulting from her stint in the military.

The target is Holly McCord (Ryan), who might also be a vet – to be honest, my attention kinda lapsed. She is trucking the imported drugs to the distribution hub in Las Vegas, using her souped-up vehicle. But only because it gives her access to the medicine her sick son needs. Her contact, Renzo Romeo (Haapaniemi) was initially unconvinced, but McCord’s ability to get the job done showed him she isn’t just a girl – a point the film practically belabours. That, however, can’t stop Holly from getting ensnared deeper in the crime web, as Jaylynne closes in, both ends threatening to destroy everything Holly cares about. Which is basically her son, so she decides to make a break for the border with him and Renzo.

I’ll take misleading posters for $400, please, Alex. I am fairly sure – despite the attention thing mentioned above – that Holly never picks up a gun at any point, even during the final face-off with Jaylynne. Indeed, in terms of action, this is considerably more subdued than you’d expect. I was thinking there would at least be some hot car chases here, and the movie largely fails to deliver on that front either. It’s more of a thriller than an action film, and doesn’t work particularly well as that. If it had kept to the battle between noble criminal and ignoble cop, it might have worked, since both characters are interesting – even if Jaylynne would, in reality, have been tossed out of the FBI.

However, the film throws too much extraneous stuff in there which is either not needed, or plain bad writing. I mean, if you have to use a sick child as maternal motivation, that’s simply lazy. We also get Holly’s relationship with her father, Jaylynne’s PTSD, the creepy attraction the Las Vegas head has for Holly, etc. etc. When the two women finally meet in the desert, the battle-hardened FBI agent ends up falling to her knees and weeping, then letting Holly go, after a stern lecture from the smuggler. No, really. The words,”Who writes this crap?” may have passed my lips at that point. Some day, Ryan (and, indeed, Baird) will hopefully find a script that matches her abilities. Today is not that day.

Dir: Shane Stanley
Star: Danielle C. Ryan, Diora Baird, Paul Haapaniemi, Ivan Sergei

The Adventures of Shiela Crerar, Psychic Detective, by Ella M. Scrymsour

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

Detectives as protagonists entered the realm of English-language fiction in the 19th century, especially in its later decades, and quickly captured the fancy of much of the reading public. The earliest examples, such as Poe’s Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Chesterton’s Father Brown, find their adventures solely in the natural world. But it wasn’t very long before other writers took the basic idea into the supernatural realm, to create the figure of the occult or “psychic” detective, such as Flaxman Low or William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, a solver of mysteries that involve, or at least often involve, the weird and uncanny. Like their natural-world counterparts, the occult detectives in this formative era were nearly all male.

But in Shiela Crerar, the heroine of this six-story cycle originally published in The Blue Magazine in 1920, Ella M. Scrymsour (whose full name was Ella Mary Scrymsour-Nichol) created a distaff incarnation of this type of figure, who can hold her own with any of her male colleagues. I first encountered the character in “The Werewolf of Rannoch,” a story in a horror anthology I read back in 2020. (Prior to that, I’d never heard of the character or the author.) Guessing correctly that Shiela was a series character, I tracked this book down in the Goodreads database; and having gotten it as a gift this past Christmas, I was very pleased to finally get to read all of Shiela’s exploits!

Orphaned as a child, Shiela Crerar was happily raised by an apparently bachelor uncle, a Highland laird with a lot of lineage but not a lot of money. The Sight ran in the family; both she and Uncle John were strongly psychic (her gift –or curse– as she’ll discover early on, allows her to see ghosts, something most people can’t), and she shared in his interest in and study of the paranormal. She’s a kind-hearted, frank and down-to-earth young woman who loves nature and likes to read; she’s also one with considerable determination and a strong will.

His sudden death when she’s 22 leaves her the owner of his smallish estate, Kencraig, but it’s heavily mortgaged. Not willing to sell a place that’s profoundly dear to her, she rents it out on a five-year lease, resolved to find a line of work that will ultimately let her pay off the mortgage (while providing for her in the meantime). When nothing else offers, she hits on the idea of offering her services as a psychic detective. (All of this is presented to the reader in the first few pages of the first story, “The Eyes of Doom.”)

As we learn in the last story, “The Wraith [the back cover copy incorrectly gives that word as “Wrath”) of Fergus McGinty,” her mission takes her five years to complete. That she completes it isn’t really a spoiler; from the beginning, I think that most readers would surmise that she will. Her career as an occult detective involves her in some very intense and dangerous experiences, well titled as “Adventures.” Besides the ones already mentioned, the other stories are “The Death Vapour,” “The Room of Fear,” and “The Phantom Isle.”

Her clients are mostly well-to-do Scots gentry, and her travels will take her to various Highland locales, including the Isle of Skye and its environs. She’ll deal with mostly supernatural phenomena (one story centers around what proves to be a case of very grim psychic imprinting), including murderously vengeful revenants, a homicidal “Elemental,” and lycanthropy. The latter is explained here as astral projection, in which the sleeping werewolf’s astral self projects –sometimes unknown to the projector, but in some cases deliberately– and can take on the substantial form of a ravening human-beast hybrid.

Scrymsour’s tales are plot-driven, straightforward, suspenseful and intense, with a real sense of danger and menace. Her prose style is direct and (along with the relatively short length of the collection) makes for a quick read. Most of the stories involve a backstory rooted in fictional (but realistic) events in Scotland’s long and often bloody history, including savage clan warfare and the failed Jacobite rising in 1745 and its vicious repression. I felt this exhibited some affinity to M. R. James’ “antiquarian” approach to the supernatural tale, which for me was a plus.

There’s some effective reference to Celtic and other occult lore. Scrymsour furnishes her heroine with a love interest introduced in the first story, Stavordale Hartland, so there’s a note of clean romance. If we picture the stories as taking place from 1915-1920, it’s not clear why Stavordale’s not in the military; but the Great War isn’t reflected anywhere in this corpus at all. Shiela packs a pistol and can use it effectively (the author describes it as an “automatic revolver,” which tells us that she knew virtually nothing about handguns!), but that plot element only appears in one story.

There’s not a lot of directly described gore here, but there is reference to mostly off-stage past grisly atrocities, and to present-day violent deaths of animals and humans, both adults and children; and in one case the murder of a two-year old child in real time, though it’s not described in detail and is over in four sentences. Unfortunately, Shiela’s heroic qualities don’t include quick reaction time; my biggest peeve with the book was that she failed to act in time to prevent this! Scrymsour’s characterizations are not sharp; Shiela is the best-drawn character, but Stavordale isn’t developed as much, and the chemistry between the two doesn’t come across as strong.

He also tends to address her with phrases like “little woman”, which I found irksome. But I didn’t find the message of the story cycle to be sexist; he wants her to give up her detective work and marry him, but she won’t do that until she completes her self-set mission. And though one reviewer holds the theory that Shiela’s psychic powers depend on virginity, so that marriage will destroy them, to my mind the conclusion of the last story suggests the opposite; Stavordale comes to realize that her Sight is a permanent part of her, whether she uses it to further a paid career or not.

Author: Ella M. Scrymsour
Publisher: Wildside Press; available through Amazon, currently only as a print book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.