Category: Review

Catwoman: Hunted

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★★
“A cat-aclysmic cat-astrophe!”

Catwoman: Hunted is a 2022 DC animated movie. Here is a little confession: Catwoman alone never worked for me. In combination with Batman, there is that special chemistry, a feeling that makes the character work but alone? Nope! Neither in the comics with her solo title, nor in a movie solely focused on her (Catwoman with Halle Berry still makes me tremble… but not in a good way!) does this character function for me. A burglar dressed in a cat-suit? No, actually that comes across for me as old-fashioned (do thieves that climb up houses still exist, today?). Strangely, whenever the character appears on the screen contrasted with Batman, it works.

Anyway, it doesn’t stop people from trying to give the most famous Cat-orientated character of the DC universe further solo adventures. In this movie, Selina Kyle appears in classical dress at some kind of cosplay event. Everyone is dressed either as a DC hero or villain: she is next to Batman villain Black Mask in her classic 1940s costume, only to later switch into her modern sexy suit and steal a diamond. Unfortunately, she is discovered and hunted by the Leviathan crime syndicate that set up the party. The diamond was Black Mask’s entry fee to the society. Catwoman is saved by Batwoman who kind of forces her to do… well, what? Kind of spying on Leviathan. Once again being discovered – for a thief she is really not that successful – she and Batwoman must face several opponents…

What sounds as if it could be an interesting story, turned out to be a very disappointing movie. I had to watch it twice because even though the film is a short 78 minutes, I almost fell asleep. The introduction to the story feels clumsily handled, scenes are overlong, and after we know where the story wants to go, the movie basically is a constant follow-up of fight scenes of Catwoman and Batwoman against a range of well-known and lesser known DC villains. These include Cheshire, Nosferata (one I had never heard of before, and I used to read DC comics quite regularly in my youth), Solomon Grundy and the Cheetah herself, Barbara Minerva who is Leviathan’s chairwoman, though Talia al Gul is managing everything from the shadows.

It feels as if someone threw as many characters, mainly female ones, into the script as possible, perhaps to hide the fact that Batman isn’t in the picture. But they don’t necessarily have the knowledge how these characters usually act. That may be partly the fault of director Shinsuke Terasawa (Wikipedia lists the movie as a Japanese-American production; maybe Warner’s wanted to save money?) but the script also has structure problems. What I’d call act one wasn’t finished until half the film’s running time was over. And the script doesn’t develop any further from this point on. You’re left to wonder what the big plan was, or what Catwoman was supposed to do, but this question is never answered. The remainder is a bunch of fight scenes, heaped on each other until this is finally over.

The script is by Greg Wiseman, whom I personally admire for his wonderful, unfortunately underrated, Disney animated classic series Gargoyles from the late 90s. He also was involved in animated series such as The Spectacular Spider-Man and Young Justice, a series that also has its fans, despite flying under the radar. But here he seems missing the right feel for the established DC heroes and villains.

Take the Catwoman of this film for example. We all know how this character should be played, though there are different interpretations of the character on the big screen over the years. This Catwoman comes across as downright awkward and arrogant to the hilt. We know of Catwoman’s erotic flirtations with Batman, but here she is “in heat” the whole time which just feels wrong. I know how it sounds but this Catwoman feels… well… oversexualized. And just because she has a thing for Batman doesn’t mean you just can switch this behaviour to Batwoman. Yes, we know Batwoman is nowadays a lesbian, since this side-character from the Batman comics of the 50s was resurrected in modern times. But that doesn’t mean that she must almost be seduced by Catwoman. Then Catwoman drops the ball again, as if the whole point of the scene was just about showing us how incredibly irresistible she is to everyone. Thank you very much, female self-esteem!

More than this – and difficult even for me, who usually accepts some very unbelievable things in story-telling – this Catwoman seems almost to have superpowers. I have no problem having her, teamed with Batwoman, fighting the assassin Cheshire, against whose poison she had earlier taken an antidote, or Nosferata, who reminded me of a female version of classic character Man-Bat. But the two fighting and beating 50+ assassins of the League of Shadows? No. Just no. Sometimes it borders on the ridiculous. When Catwoman shoves a bundle of explosives in Solomon Grundy’s mouth and tells us: “That’s all folks!”, I wondered who had the marvellously stupid and tonally deaf idea of referencing Porky Pig in a DC movie! It just feels tonally wrong.

Another ill-fitting decision is the score by Yutaka Yamada. Don’t get me wrong. His music will probably please you if you like jazz, but for a DC action movie it’s just the wrong choice. What almost – but only almost – saves the movie is the final chase when Barbara Minerva turns into an oversized version of her Cheetah personality and goes after Catwoman. For the first time in this movie you have the feeling Catwoman is in real danger. But this is too little too late. It can’t compensate for all the mistakes that had been made in the movie before.

Don’t take the above too hard; someone unaccustomed to DC or Batman comics might actually enjoy this. For me, someone who knows and loves the characters, it felt like a gigantic misstep by the creative team who made this film. And I still can’t help the feeling that it would have been a much better movie if Batman had been the main character, having to deal with an opposing Catwoman. The best thing here was a 40-minute extra on my Blu-Ray, about the history of Catwoman in comics, TV and movies. That was really interesting. The main feature… not so much!

Dir: Shinsuke Terasawa
Star (voice): Elizabeth Gillies, Stephanie Beatriz, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Zehra Fazal 

Hacked Into The Game, by Saul Tanpepper

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

The literary rating is mostly down to the sluggish way in which this gets going. Though having subsequently discovered this is the first in a fourteen volume series, it’s perhaps understandable if the author decided to slow-play things in the early stages. Still, as a standalone read, it definitely takes a while to get to the good stuff. By which I mean, human vs. zombie action. This takes place well after the zombie apocalypse, with the epidemic having been contained, and indeed, commodified, Zombies are kept in a formerly infected area of Long Island, now cordoned off to the public, where a company called Arc Entertainment allows the very rich to control them through implants, and fight to the (un)death.

There are other elements too, though these don’t have a significant role in this volume. For instance, everyone is mandated to have a “kill switch” fitted in their head, for use by the government if there were to be another outbreak. Or, after death, you can be resurrected as a zombie and conscripted into the military, or other public service. I presume these will come into play in later volumes. Here, it’s the story of Jessie Daniels and her friends, moderately disaffected young people who decide to break into the restricted zone on Long Island, for a variety of reasons, from boredom to a desire to hack the game from the inside. Needless to say, the expedition does not go smoothly.

As noted, it takes a while to get there. In fact, they don’t even reach Long Island before the 62% mark (all hail Kindle readers!), with much of the opening two-thirds taken up with interpersonal relationship, prep work for the expedition, or world building. It’s not dull, but for a franchise called Zpocalypto, I was expecting rather more… well, pocalypto, I guess. Or, indeed, more Z, with the first one we encounter in real-time, again, not showing up until they’re swimming through the tunnel to Long Island. To be frank, I was seriously wondering if this would qualify for inclusion here to the eighty percent (hail Kindle!) point, hence the low K-BQ.

However, it then goes from 0-60 in about two pages, and basically doesn’t let up thereafter. Jessie and her expedition “buddy” Jake find themselves cornered in a gas station, from which they first have to extricate themselves, reunite with the rest of their party, and head back to the mainland. None of which is easy. Fortunately, she had received some weapons training from her grandfather when Jessie was young, and that certainly comes in handy against the hordes of undead who have suddenly popped up. That in itself poses questions, which I imagine are answered… at some point over the thirteen subsequent volumes. Yeah. While I get the need for an author to pace themselves, Tanpepper (a fabulous pseudonym, incidentally) needs to do a better job of grabbing the audience’s attention out of the gates.

Author: Saul Tanpepper
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 14 in the Zpocalypto series.

Azrael

  By

★★★★
“Hell on Earth.”

If I see a more relentless and brutal film in 2025, I’m going to be quite surprised. This doesn’t let up, with people being eaten alive, impaled, decapitated and slitting their own throats when they realize the horror of… Well, let’s leave that to the film to divulge, shall we? I must say, you should probably read the first sentence of the Wikipedia synopsis, because there is a lot there, which the film does not explain. Admittedly, this is in part because it contains almost no dialogue, and there are a number of elements which feel near impossible to show, rather than tell. You don’t need to know them to enjoy this. But they will certainly answer some questions. 

What the film has is a mute woman, Azrael (Weaving) and her boyfriend,  Kenan (Stewart-Jarrett), getting captured by an equally silent cult in a forest. The time and era is uncertain, but they do have working cars, so it seems fairly contemporary. They want to sacrifice her to dark, humanoid creatures which inhabits the woods, but she is able to escape back into the wilderness. She attempts to return, so she can rescue her boyfriend, and encounters the group’s spiritual leader, the pregnant Miriam (Sonne). After failing to save Kenan, and narrowly escaping from the dark creatures more than once, as well as getting buried alive, Azrael vows to take bloody and fiery revenge on the cult, and also discovers the true nature of Miriam’s pregnancy. 

I don’t want to send Eva Green or Milla Jovovich out to the Sunnyside Retirement Home quite yet. But when they do decide go to the farm upstate, Samara Weaving might be best-placed to replace them. In Guns Akimbo, Ready or Not and now this, she has shown the ability to compel the viewer’s attention, even if the film might not be the greatest. She does it again here, despite doing the acting equivalent of having one hand tied behind her back, robbed of emoting with her voice. I can’t think of many current actresses who could pull such a trick off with such apparent ease, and help make what is admittedly a gimmick, feel surprisingly like a natural scenario.

She becomes quite the bad-ass over the course of proceedings as well. It’s not clear whether she was initially, since we get no real information regarding her previous history. But she needs to be, in order to survive against the monsters in the woods, who are among the creepiest things I’ve seen in a while. By the end, she’s enthusiastically hacking her way through what appear to be her former allies, although the ending is… ambivalent. I suspect there’s a lot of religious back-story here – Azrael is the angel of death in Islam [It’s also the name of Gargamel’s cat in The Smurfs, but that’s probably less relevant!] There’s scope here for an entire feature before this, plus likely one after, and I’d watch both. Just a shame it got buried on a second-tier streaming service like Shudder.

Dir: E.L. Katz
Star: Samara Weaving, Vic Carmen Sonne, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Katariina Unt

 

Star Trek: Section 31

  By

★★½
“Yeoh, thanks – but no thanks”

While I have seen all the movies, I’ve never particularly been a fan of the Star Trek universe. I leave that largely to Chris, who has been watching the show since the original series. That includes Star Trek: Discovery, the series from which this spun off, and I was… in the room when it was on. But I have been a fan of Michelle Yeoh since Yes, Madam – sorry, make that Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh, and did enjoy her evil turn as Philippa Georgiou, head of the Terran Empire in a parallel universe, who relocates to our universe. As this begins, she has taken refuge, out beyond the reach of the Federation, in a club apparently having a Fifth Element theme night.

Naturally, the Federation needs her help – in particular its shady operations department, Section 31. There’s a powerful artifact from her universe which could cause major problems in the wrong hands, and must be recovered before that happens. She teams up with a diverse group of misfit Section 31ers, including Quasi the Chameloid (Richardson) and Alok Zahar (Hardwick), to recover the device. If this all sounds rather like “Mission: Impossible meets Guardians of the Galaxy,” that is exactly how Yeoh described it. It’s about how Chris described it as well, after all was said and done. Originally intended as a series, the impact first of COVID then Yeoh’s rise to fame, led it to be compacted into a movie – the first in the Trek-verse not to be released theatrically.

Good thing too. For if I had seen it there, rather than at home, without specifically paying for it, I would have been more disappointed. It’s not bad, just painfully ordinary. The moral limitations of Trek may prevent it from truly being able to explore the darkness of Georgiou. Outside of an opening sequence, where we learn what she did to become Empress, and discovering she likes eyeballs in her martini like chewy olives, it feels more like Yeoh is cosplaying evil, rather than being it. Which is still fun to watch, although the shaky camerawork is clearly there to try and hide the fact that Yeoh is now in her sixties. Oh, she can still move. Just do not expect Crouching Tiger. 

Once you get pass her, the drop-off is steep. Contrast Guardians, which had a slew of memorable characters, all the way down to a walking tree with a three-word vocabulary. Section 31 has… a Vulcan with an Oirish accent. There is a reason for this, which does not make it any less irritating. I can’t really speak to how this all ranks as Trek, but going by what Chris said, she was not especially impressed. I can say that as an action, sci-fi, caper film, there’s not particularly much that I will remember a week from now. Not even the spectacularly stunt cameo at the end with an Everything Everywhere connection. The “straight to streaming” label is, sadly, entirely appropriate.

Dir: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Star: Michelle Yeoh, Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Robert Kazinsky

Lady Outlaw

  By

★★★
“I’ve seen crazy before… And trouble always follows crazy.”

This low-budget Western does a lot of things right, but is not able to tie up all the loose ends in the final act. Most of which are ends that never needed to be loose in the first place. It takes place in 1890’s Oklahoma, when the gang of George ‘Bittercreek’ Newcomb (Henry) is trying to head back home. The gang includes a female outlaw, Rose Dunn (Butala), who is perhaps a little more moral than some members of the gang e.g. Tom, played by veteran villain Michael Ochotorena, this time covering up his impressive face tattoos. The situation comes to a head after Rose rescues a saloon girl, Ellie (Mattox), who just shot a man dead.

This won’t be the last woman Rose ends up saving, much to the chagrin of George. For they have enough trouble as is, being hunted by the dogged Marshal Hixon (Gillum). In an effort to shake the pursuers off, George and Rose head into Apache country, meaning they now also must deal with both no water and bad water. This seems a sequel of sorts to Mauser’s earlier Lady Lawman, which I haven’t seen – its protagonist seems to show up in an end-credit sequence. On the evidence here, I might have to check it out, because this is a decent character-driven piece. Although certainly chatty rather than shooty, it is largely interesting, especially courtesy of Ellie. She brings every scene she’s in to life, dragging the rest of the cast with her, if necessary. 

In particular, it’s as a result of her efforts that Dunn herself comes to life, after initially seeming like a bit of a stilted character. This may be intentional, a necessary survival technique in the otherwise all-male gang. Ellie brings Rose out of her shell, and by the ninety minute mark, we’d had a good arc for her, creating a fully rounded heroine, and a decent story. The problem is, the film runs 110 minutes. After forgetting about him in the middle, the film suddenly remembers Hixon, having to wrap up his story-line in a sequence which feels like an afterthought. There’s then an extended ending, and it seems equally tacked-on and unnecessary. This is definitely a case where less would have been more. 

There are a few gunfights, which provide the bulk of the action. These are marginally competent, and rather static, consisting mostly of people standing around while popping off shots at each other. The best sequence, for me, was the battle between Tom and Rose, a nasty bit of ground and pound, where both participants know only one is going to survive. The limitations on this front didn’t impact my interest, and until the final section, the performances and well-written dialogue held my attention effectively. There’s a lesson to be learned here for other low-budget filmmakers. If your foundation is solid, audiences will be willing to forgive the limited resources. 

Dir: Brett William Mauser
Star: Stars: Lisa Butala, Christopher Henry, Nicole Mattox, Wes Gillum

On the Run

  By

★★½
“Sisters, doing it for themselves.”

I guess it’s equality at work. This film, written by, starring and directed by women, proves that they are every bit as capable as men… Of knocking out vaguely competent, forgettable, low-to-mid tier action films, anyway. #GirlBoss This is another in the ongoing series of Tubi Originals I’ve reviewed here, including Calamity Jane, Kiss of Death, and The Vigilante. There’s definitely a “Tubi type” at play, with content which tends largely to go down tried and trusted routes, rather than pushing boundaries. It’s likely somewhat unfair – though only somewhat – to describe them as tending to be slightly more edgy versions of Lifetime content, but… hey, at least I’m not comparing them to Hallmark movies.

This is another which offers passable entertainment, yet contains little that would ever merit a rewatch. It begins with a falling out between biker friends Vince (McCullough) and Rick (Clyde) over a scheme to steal drugs from a rival gang. Fifteen years later, Vince gets out of jail, and makes a beeline for revenge. For Rick testified against him, entered witness protection, abandoned his road life, and is happily married to Laurie, with two teenage daughters, of sharply differing personalities. “I’m gonna be a teacher like mom,” proclaims good girl Kayla (Masson), while bad girl Paige (Geare) is doing an unconvincing impression of playing guitar in her room, and wants to run off from Utah to New York to be in a band.

Such things take a back seat after Vince shows up and kills mom. Rick takes his daughters on the road, but the pursuit is inexorable: the tracking software her parents installed on Paige’s phone backfires there. We then discover that Vince’s goals are not limited strictly to payback, because – and this is so obvious it’s not really a spoiler – Paige is his daughter, and he wants a family re-union. Fortunately, “Aunt Steph” (Pamela Rose Rodriguez) is also on the case. For she is actually the US Marshal assigned to the family by the witness protection program, and likely represents the best chance at stopping Vince before he is able to split up the sisters and spirit Paige out of the country. Frankly, it’s as generic as the title, and only qualifies for inclusion here due to a somewhat rousing final twenty minutes.

The script is the main problem. I’m far from convinced the writers know how witness protection works, or law enforcement in general, e.g. Steph taking Kayla along with her to rescue Paige. The explanation for why she doesn’t call for backup is… unconvincing, and that’s being charitable. Similarly, Vince growls at Rick, “No one breaks the code,” but the ease with which Steph gets his location out of another biker would, um, suggest otherwise. There’s also gratuitous terminal illness, so maybe the Hallmark comparison wasn’t so far off. Fortunately, the performances aren’t bad. Masson and Geare are credible as siblings, and that goes a significant way to keep this just about watchable.

Dir: Traci Hays
Star: Sofia Masson, Taylor Geare, William Mark McCullough, K.C. Clyde

American Samurai

  By

★½
“Dollar-store samurai.”

If I’d realized earlier this was by the director of the underwhelming, non-GWG film, Once Upon a Time in the Apocalypse, I would likely have set my expectations considerably lower. This has much the same “running around the woods after civilization has collapsed” vibe, though I did see Willard has added some digital effects to enhance the post-apocalyptic atmosphere. It is likely an improvement technically, but there just isn’t enough going on here to sustain interest. In this version, the rich have abandoned the failing civilization on Earth and decamped in self-sustaining spaceships. Everyone else has been left to fend for themselves, and this includes the community here, who keep themselves to themselves, deep in the Oregon woods.

In charge of its security are Larkin (Hastings) and her acolyte, Alyssa (Fortuna). They go on regular patrols around the area, or when they get word of strangers who might pose a threat. On one such excursion, they meet Ryan (Pelfrey) who begs for their help, offering them tickets to space if they help him reach the take-off point. Alyssa wants to take him up on the offer, but Larkin over-rules her. However, they come across a couple of the elites, who have returned to Earth on a “hunting expedition”, and the encounter turns lethal. This puts them in the crosshairs of the accompanying, ‘enhanced’ bodyguard (Mann). It poses a dilemma, because the last thing Larkin wants is to bring the pursuer back to their settlement. 

The idea isn’t terrible. Unfortunately, the execution largely is, in a variety of ways. The most obvious one is the action. Using the S-word (incidentally, there is zero connection to the 1992 film of the same name, starring Mark Dacascos) sets… certain expectations in regard to your fight scenes, which Fortuny and Hastings are in no position to meet. Slowly and carefully waving swords about is not an acceptable answer, despite guns and bullets apparently (though not consistently) being in short supply. Too many plot threads never go anywhere of significance. These include both Ryan and his space tickets, as well as little girl Mary, back in the settlement, who is supposed to be in dire need of a doctor – though she looks pretty healthy to me.

Fortuny and Hastings aren’t terrible; the latter grew on me after a shaky start to her performance. Their two characters form a decent contrast, the cautious Larkin with the impetuous and more emotionally driven Alyssa. The individual scenes where they are talking with each other are okay. It’s just there are far too damn many of them, each bringing the film to a halt. Then, when we finally see the settlement, it looks like a well-maintained holiday camp, where a hippie festival is happening (fire dancers!). It’s salutary to contrast this with another recently reviewed low-budget slice of post-apocalyptic cheese, in Ride Hard: Live Free, which did a far better job of working round its limited resources, and retained my interest considerably better. Guess they don’t make apocalypses like they used to.

Dir: Nathan Willard
Star: Rosa Fortuny, Larkin Hastings, Rob Pelfrey, Mikel Mann

Wyvern Awakening, by Joanna Mazurkiewicz

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

There are reviews which are easy to write, because – good or bad – the subject generates a lot to talk about. This is not one of those. It’s a bland slice of semi-urban fantasy, which just… sits there, the literary equivalent of a bowl of vanilla pudding. It’s not good, nor is it bad enough to be memorable. It merely exists, remarkable mostly in how unremarkable it is. Put it this way, I finished it less than 24 hours ago, and I can’t even remember the heroine’s name, so little impression was made. Instead of writing, I find myself almost preferring the Star Trek musical episode Chris is watching next to me. And I don’t really like Star Trek. Or musical episodes. 

It starts off feeling like a Harry Potter knockoff. Heroine (checks notes) Astrid was orphaned after her parents were killed by a powerful mage, leaving her with a facial scar, when she defended herself with her own innate arcane talent. She’s then sent to live with some nasty relatives, who treat her badly, almost to the point of abuse. Yeah, it’s all very J.K. Rowling. She has a dream where she suddenly realizes the Mage was Duke Jorgen, the city’s ruler. She vows to take revenge, and fortunately, the Duke is having a contest to find a new assistant. Astri, who is the last of the wyvern shape-shifters, joins the competition and goes through the resulting trials.

Yet, the closer she gets to Jorgen, the more confused she becomes, because he hardly seems like the parent-murdering type. He is, of course, far too attractive to be evil. Read that sentence with as much sarcasm as you wish. So, if you want every encounter to be overflowing with unresolved romantic tension, here you go. The problem is, there’s no consistency in Astri’s approach. One minute, she is about to get all kissy-face with him, the next she’s leaving him to be tortured by rogue shifters. She’s supposed to be a strong, independent heroine, yet is frequently neither. And what are the rules of this contest anyway? They seem to be made up as the trials progress. 

There are some decent elements. I was amused by the her scabrous pair of pocket pixies – named Jetli and Lenin, because reasons, I guess. There’s also a sense of bigger forces at play beyond Astri’s personal problems. The last trial brings these particularly into focus. But the final revelation has been telegraphed from almost the very beginning, and is as thoroughly unimpressive as I feared. I suspect this might be aimed more at a YA audience. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, except there are YA books that can still work for an adult audience. Then we have this, which does not. To be honest, I suspect even my 13-year-old self might have found it severely deficient, in a number of areas. 

Author: Joanna Mazurkiewicz
Publisher: Self-publshed, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Mage Chronicles.

Ride Hard: Live Free

  By

★★★
“Daughter of Anarchy.”

I was a little nervous on reading the IMDb trivia section: “Three motorcycle clubs participated as extras and offered technical advice.” If this sucked and I gave it a bad review, would I get a visit from a group of annoyed bikers, offering me ‘technical advice’ with a wrench? Turns out I needn’t have worried. While low-budget by Hollywood standards, it has some interesting ideas, and the execution is competent enough to pass muster. The events here take place after the collapse of the United States, when everywhere West of the Mississippi has basically been left to fend for itself. In this part of Nevada, that means two biker gangs, the Skoners and the Gypsies are fighting for control.

A particular wrinkle: all guns were seized by the authorities shortly before things collapsed, leaving them highly rare. But while being chased by the Skoners, 12-year-old Zyra (Rhodes), stumbles across a cache of weapons and ammo in a caravan. The bikers, under leader Tank (Russo), want the guns very much. Zyra proves quite capable of using her new-found force multipliers, leading to a stand-off between the young girl and the motorcycle club. Complicating matters: the Gypsies get word of the cache from a disgruntled Skoner, and prepare to make their own move against Zyra. It’s all unexpectedly interesting, and is a bit different from your typical post-apocalyptic shenanigans. In its thoroughly unconventional heroine, I was reminded a good deal of Molly. 

The performances certainly help, and are almost all effective. Beyond Rhodes and Rivera, there’s good support from Sons of Anarchy veteran Rivera as Gauge, the area’s overlord, and Chaz as an acerbic radio host, who could win third place in a Danny Trejo lookalike contest. I also want to mention R.A. Mihailoff, Vanessa Dorrei and Juan Espinosa as members of the Skoners. They all manage to create well-rounded characters with admirable efficiency. What is a little confusing, is the whole thing appears to be told in flashback by an older version of Zyra. This never quite gels, in part because the film doesn’t bother to circle back to the “present day” at the end, and consequently leaves the audience somewhat dangling in the breeze. 

I did wonder quite how Zyra came to be wandering the Nevada desert by herself, and how she had survived to that point. A little more development would have gone a long way: it leaves scope for a prequel, along the lines of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. There’s no doubt that the “technical advice” adds authenticity, and it’s a rather more nuanced depiction of bikers than you generally get – especially in the post-apocalyptic genre. Although it doesn’t soft-pedal the violence necessary, it’s typically toward a specific goal, and as a result feels more like a case of ‘tough times create hard men’. Or, in the case of Zyra, rather tough little girls as well. I wasn’t expecting much here, and was pleasantly surprised. 

Dir: Tony Mendoza 
Star: Lainee Rhodes, Derek Russo, Emilio Rivera, Jeff Chaz

Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa

  By

★★★
“Top of the world.”

Reaching the summit of Mount Everest once is a remarkable achievement, done by only a few thousand people in history, with hundreds having died in the attempt. But what about climbing the world’s highest peak on no less than ten occasions? Such is the achievement of Lhakpa Sherpa, a woman from Nepal who had to overcome remarkable adversity in a number of ways to complete this feat. This documentary is the story, both of her tenth (and most recent, to date at least!) ascent, and of her life. It’s an impressive story of fortitude, though never really answers my most burning question. I can understand wanting to climb Everest once. But why do it so many times?

Lhakpa was born in 1973, and grew up when girls weren’t allowed to go to school. She carried her brother there, two hours each way, but wasn’t allowed to learn herself. This didn’t stop her from breaking with local tradition in a number of ways. She had a child outside of wedlock, and also became a mountain porter as a teenager, another position reserved for men – she cut her hair short, so her gender would be less apparent. In 2000, she became the first Nepalese woman to reach the top of Everest and survive. The same year, she met climber Gheorghe Dimarescu and the pair married in 2002. They climbed together, and had two daughters, Sunny and Shiny. But there was a dark side, with her husband’s vicious temper turning their relationship abusive, until she left him in 2012.

I do feel the film rather overplays this element of Lhakpa’s life. While it’s obviously significant, it almost seems to robs her of agenda, forcing the viewer to see much of the events through the lens of his behaviour. The structure may enhance this. Rather than unfolding chronologically, there are two parallel streams, one depicting her tenth attempt to reach the top, while the other slowly fills in the background of her life, and the two never quite seemed to mesh effectively for me. Her attitude in dealing with life’s obstacles is amazing, and leave a remarkable impression, such as how Lhakpa worked in a Connecticut supermarket, while raising her two daughters, before returning to her home country.

It does appear her profile has been raised by her remarkable, and largely under the radar, achievements. The documentary shows her finding a sponsor who will fund expeditions: I don’t know if she still works in Whole Foods! I hope not, because she deserves better, with the simple facts of her story being immensely empowering to anyone, and a lesson that any dream can be achieved. But I did not feel that this film really provided much more insight into the person, than a reading of her Wikipedia page would have offered. I was left with questions, such as about her first child, which the film didn’t want to address, and it felt like some outside viewpoints (even Lhakpa’s family) would have benefited the end product. It remains worth a watch: just don’t expect more than a surface portrait.

Dir: Lucy Walker
Star: Lhakpa Sherpa, Sunny Dijmarescu, Shiny Dijmarescu