Tag: 2009

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo

  By

★★★
“Cowgirls behind bars.”

Well, this is certainly the first film I’ve reviewed here which drops both into the “women in prison” and the “sports” category. It takes place in Oklahoma, where since 1940, they have been staging an annual prison rodeo event in McAlester. The competition takes place in an arena built just inside the walls of the State Penitentiary, and includes competitors from facilities across the state. In 2006, the event was opened to female inmates as well, and this documentary (while not absolutely focused on just the women, also including 13-year rodeo veteran and convicted murderer Liles) is about their preparation for the 2007 event, training on a rig pulled back and forth by fellow inmates, and climaxing with the event itself.

What stood out in particular was how normal most of the inmates seemed, though my perceptions there were likely skewed by the more, ah, dramatic depictions of life behind bars. You’d be hard pushed to pick the likes of Brooks, Witte and Herrington out of a line-up at the local PTA, though some of the stories they tell are startling – as much for the casual air with which they admit to dealing drugs or violent robbery. The rodeo gives them a bit of relief from the crushing boredom of life inside, though it’s very much a privilege. Brooks is kicked off the squad when caught in possession of contraband, reportedly unauthorized lipstick, an incident which also puts her release on parole in doubt.

While regular rodeo typically limits female involvement to the less dangerous events, such as barrel racing, there’s no such restriction here. The women inmates take part in bull and bronco riding, as well as the particularly fraught event called “Money the Hard Way”, where the first person to pluck a ribbon tied to a bull’s head wins $100. The beast is clearly no respecter of the fairer sex, sending both men and women into the air with a strictly gender-neutral approach. The comparisons of the event to gladiatorial combat seemed particularly apt here. Yet this feels more like a backdrop to the lives of the prisoners, and I found myself Googling their names in hopes of recent updates.

As with most documentaries, it’s not tidy, with loose ends a-plenty, and if I was both informed and reasonably entertained, I can’t say I reached the end with any life-changing revelations. It feels quite “safe” and conventional as a film of its genre, and Beesley clearly is not interesting in challenging narratives, least of all the self-reported ones of the women’s lives. While they do largely accept responsibility for their crimes, it’d be interesting to hear an outside perspective on those. Not mentioned in the film: the event was canceled in 2010 due to a state budget shortfall. It hasn’t returned since, mostly because the arena has now fallen into disrepair, despite support from the warden, local community and state governor for that. Whether it ever will is uncertain, leaving the documentary a record of an odd slice of Americana that may be forever gone.

Dir: Bradley Beesley
Star: Jamie Brooks, Brandy Witte, Danny Liles, Crystal Herrington

Jack Squad

  By

★★
“Considerably less would have been more.”

At 85 minutes, this might have been fine. For it’s a fairly simple tale, of three women who decide to escape their financial woes by drugging and robbing married men, banking on their victims not being willing to involve the authorities. While this initially works as planned, inevitably, they end up targeting the wrong guy, a minion of feared drug dealer Grey (Anderson). How evil is he? Grey appears to have an employee whose full-time job is to fan him. That’s some Evil Overlord style, right there. Grey doesn’t just want his stolen money back, he wants the trio to continue their activities – for his benefit. And that isn’t the only problem which the trio face, with Tony, the estranged other half of Dawn (Tares), unhappy at her having escaped their abusive relationship.

Somehow, in the hands of writer-director-producer Rankins, this uncomplicated story runs 128 minutes, which is way too long. If ever there was evidence that films sometimes need someone else to step in and say, literally, “Cut that out,” this would be it. You could go at the “director’s version” blindfolded, with a rusty bread-knife, hacking entire scenes out, attacking others with all the savage brutality of a starving man at a Vegas buffet, and would be incapable of doing any real harm to the end product. If you can’t see where half an hour couldn’t be excised, to the general improvement of the pacing, you’re not trying hard enough.

Which is at least somewhat of a shame, since this wasn’t otherwise as bad as I thought it might be. It is certainly an improvement over the director’s almost unwatchable, Chop Shop. The three leads are adequate, and the script gives them reasonably well-delineated characters. As well as recovering abuse victim Dawn, there’s fashion student Kennedy (Halfkenny), who has qualms about the whole endeavour. Though she’s also the one who triggers the escalating body-count, by robbing Grey’s underling. And then we have Mona (Williams) who develops a liking for the violence, and gradually becomes a fully-fledged psychopath. The three different personalities certainly provide plenty of scope for drama and conflict, as they try to figure out how to handle their increasingly untenable situation.

That said, some of the attitudes here are difficult to empathize with. For example, Kennedy ghosts the kind but poor fellow student, apparently preferring the lure of well-heeled “pharmaceutical” workers. And that’s how you end up in abusive relationships, folks, or having to chase down your baby daddy for child support, as recently documented in Sweet Justice. There’s also no getting over the low-budget approach, most obvious in “gunfire” which couldn’t be much more fake, if the people wielding the weapons were yelling “Bang!” and using their fingers as firearms. But the major problem is the one described above: a self-indulgent approach, almost as if Rankins believed everything filmed had to be included in the final product. When making a low-budget feature, like this, you may need to wear many hats. But that does not negate the need for external and neutral guidance.

Dir: Simuel Rankins
Star: Dawnisha Halfkenny, Onira Tares, Patshreba Williams, Benjamin Anderson

Sugar Boxx

  By

★★
“Is that a machete?”

I completely get what the director here is trying to do: make a homage to the seventies women-in-prison movies, made by the likes of director Jack Hill (who has a cameo here as a judge). The plot here, certainly, feels like it’s almost a straight-up copy, in particular from Bruno Mattei’s 1982 film, Violence in a Women’s Prison. Both have undercover journalists who get themselves sent to prison as an inmate, in order to expose the corruption of those running the facility. In this case, it’s TV reporter Valerie March (Anderson), who is asked to look into the dubious Sugar State Women’s Prison by the aunt of an inmate.

Naturally, it turns out the prisoners get sent there in order to become prostitutes for the warden, Beverly Buckner (Dona), who has a cosy arrangement with various suppliers to the jail. March, in her incarcerated alter ego, becomes part of the out-call service, though matters are complicated by one of the suppliers, chicken magnate Gilbert Sackry (Hunter), being the subject of one of her previous exposes. After tragedy strikes, the scheme is revealed, only for it to be swept under the carpet by authorities. March is having none of this, the system having failed to bring them justice, and with the help of former inmate pal Loretta (Brown, in the Pam Grier role) and a repentant guard, sets out to take revenge on Buckner and the rest of her cronies.

The films which inspired this were never high-end product. But in comparison to this, they are Avatar. The paucity of the resources here is all too often painfully obvious. The “prison” consists of a couple of tents in a field; while this could be a nod to infamous Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and his “Tent City”, the absence of… oh, I dunno: fences or bars, is glaring. In the early going, I was prepared to overlook this, since there’s enough energy (and, let’s be honest, gratuitous nudity) to sustain interest. As well as Hill, there’s a cameo by GWG goddess Tura Satana, also playing a judge; another Russ Meyer muse, Kitten Natividad, plays a prison guard, and is fun to watch in that role.

However, the previously mentioned tragedy flicks a cinematic switch. Valerie’s reaction to it is laughably bad, and she’s then taken to a “hospital”, which we only know is a hospital, because it has a large Red Cross flag tacked to the wall. As hospitals do. The lack of effort put in finally overpowered my goodwill, and there was little thereafter which proved capable of taking up the slack. It really needed more actresses capable of going full-throttle into their roles here. While Brown seems to have a decent handle on her role – even if she’s no Grier – Anderson is too anodyne to make the necessary impact. The further we get into the film, the less her ability to hold the audience’s attention, and interest withers and eventually dies, as a direct result.

Dir: Cody Jarrett
Star: Geneviere Anderson, The’la Brown, Linda Dona, Jack Hunter

Tomboys

  By

★★★½
“What happens in the barn, stays in the barn…”

Dark in literally every sense of the word, this Australian film unfolds in close to real-time. Five women, fed up with the abuse of a local sexual predator, kidnap him and take him to a building on a farm owned by one of them, to teach him a lesson. However, it’s not long before their revenge begins to go off the rails. Firstly, not everyone is quite as on board as with the plan. Kat (Day) is the most gung-ho, intent on exacting the most brutal flavour of retribution. But at the other end is Imogen (Hall): barely have things got under way, and she’s already having second thoughts, as the apparent weak link. Then, after the savagery has got under way, the women get a phone-call, from their intended target. Yep, they got the wrong victim. But is anyone really innocent? Or should they just do a twofer?

This certainly doesn’t feel it was made over a decade ago; its themes are right up there with a post-#MeToo world. On that basis, it was interesting to compare this to the woeful recent Black Christmas remake, watched the same weekend. which was also (at least in its early stages) about a group of women coming to terms with “rape culture”. Tomboys adopts a much more direct approach, yet is also rather more nuanced, offering a broader spectrum of opinions, even as it’s basically five chicks in a shed for an hour and a half. Which tells you a lot about the dismal failure of Christmas, I suspect. This, however, doesn’t shy from violence: not so much in an explicit depiction as in reactions and results, which are arguably just as horrific. You wonder how Cat could possibly justify the savagery in which she indulges. Then, towards the end, you hear her story, and it’s thoroughly ugly, repellent stuff. Never mind, Cat – please continue wielding that blow-torch…

However, I was irrationally annoyed by the cinematic style, with Hill pushing the camera in too close, and also keeping the lighting at the dimmest level. I get why he opted for this approach, to create a claustrophobic intensity. It doesn’t mean I have to like it, however. For some reason, I prefer being able to see what the hell is going on when watching a film, and there are times here when I simply can’t. [The still, top, is considerably more well-illuminated than 95% of the film] Not sure we necessarily needed five female characters, either; Cat, Imogen and one other would probably be enough. Yet this remains solid where it matters most, in the story and performances. There were sufficient twists to keep me engaged, and the main roles were well-differentiated, despite the limited setting. This could very easily be a stage play, albeit one harkening back to the days of Grand Guignol. It’s a production I wouldn’t mind going to see.

Dir: Nathan Hill
Star: Candice Day, Naomi Davis, Sash Milne, Allie Hall

Sweet Justice (2009)

  By

★★
“In need of significant support.”

Four women run a charitable agency in Texas, helping single mothers track down and obtain child support payments from deadbeat dads. However, they don’t limit themselves to the simple serving of legal papers. The women adopt a more… hands-on approach, shall we say, first luring their targets in with the promise of sex, then threatening them at gunpoint, to make sure they pay up. For obvious reasons, the cops soon take interest in this string of unusual armed robberies. Meanwhile, the city’s white mayor, is dealing with a domestic crisis of her own, thanks to her daughter having had a child by (gasp!) a black man.

Y’know, woeful though this is in many ways, I actually somewhat respect the intent and the topic: at least its heart is in the right place. It seems like I have seen a lot of female vigilante films of late, and too many of them seem to descent into undiluted man-hating. This does a better job than most of avoiding that. There are times when the agency’s female clients are actually wrong, identifying the wrong man as their “baby daddy”, and some men are actually trying to do the right thing as well, such as the father of the mayor’s grandchild. It’s all considerably more even-handed than I expected, and does a decent job of highlighting just how screwed-up the current system is, failing almost everyone involved. However, social commentary, no matter how well-intentioned, is generally pretty low on the list of things I’m looking for on this site.

It doesn’t help that the execution is laughable in most regards, with few of those involved in front of the camera giving any indication of being genuine professionals. To be fair, the actresses generally come off slightly better than the “actors,” who appear to be a selection of wannabe rappers. But the story is ridiculously implausible as well, and morally dubious, too: is armed robbery really an appropriate and measured response to failure to pay child support? You’ll definitely have time to consider such things, during the many slacker-paced scenes. The cops are spectacularly incompetent too, though this is stupidity necessary to the plot, otherwise the vigilante squad would be locked up inside fifteen minutes. This perhaps therefore deserves slightly more slack.

There isn’t even any particular escalation or closure to be seen here. The sole thread which gets properly resolved involves the mayor, who eventually comes to terms with her grandchild’s parentage, and quits the re-election race in favour of her family. That’s nice. The vigilantes just continue on their serene way, as if this were some kind of pilot for a banal TV series. It all feels less like a coherent or interesting feature film, than an excuse for the director to hang out with a few of his pals and some local musicians. To anyone outside that clique, there’s little here of interest, and it’s certainly as forgettable as its remarkably generic title.

Dir: Arthur Muhammad
Star: Tammy Thomas, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Shannon Ashe, Z-RO
a.k.a. Black Angels

Stripped Naked

  By

★★★
“Firmly dressed to kill”

Even if the film doesn’t quite live up to the title and poster, it turned out to be better than I expected… from the title and poster, to be honest. It has been my experience that, the more lurid the advertising, the more disappointed I’m likely to be. Films like this often don’t just fail to deliver on what they promise, they also struggle with basic aspects of film-making, like plot and characterization, providing a double-whammy of failure. While the former is true here (no-one, at any point, is ever stripped naked), the underlying construction proved to be solid enough to keep me watching and engaged, to a greater degree than I was anticipating.

Cassie (Allen) gets dumped out of the car after a bitter argument with boyfriend, Jack (Cor). Seeking help from another car, she finds herself in the middle of a drug-deal which goes horribly wrong for everybody else. This leaves her in possession of $90,000 in cash, and about the same value of meth, providing a potential way out of her job as a “professional undresser”, shall we say. However, Jack finds the money in Cassie’s house, which she shares with fellow dancer, Jade (Pirie), and the former owner of the money sends a hitman (Slacke, looking like a low-rent version of Bill Oberst Jr.) to recover it. It’s not long before the bodies start piling up, and Cassie realizes she has bit off more than she can chew.

From the sex-and-violence angle, this is remarkably tame. Despite being strippers, both Cassie and Kyle seems remarkably attached to their clothes. There is some secondary nudity from the background, but on the whole, the story could have had them be waitresses, without the slightest impact. It also takes Cassie a while to tap into the inner bitch she needs to be, for survival, but that does become an increasing part of her character as the film develops. One incident in particular had me remarking, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” There’s another interesting dynamic present, in the shape of Kyla (Cinthia Burke), one half of the sibling team who run the venue where Cassie works, and who turns out to have a murky past of her own.

It’s characters like these which make it work. Kyla and brother Howie (Linden Ashby), for example, are not your prototypical sleazy strip-club owners, being rather kinder than generally depicted. Cassie and Jade both have unexpected depths, too, though I do have qualms about the latter’s eyebrows, which have been tweezed into near-oblivion. Jack is probably the most underdrawn and, consequentially, least-interesting character. The plot unfolds along the lines you’d expect, though the final reel delivers some unexpected twists, and not everyone you think is going to survive, ends up doing so. Had this actually provided the heady mix of grindhouse elements promised by the title, poster and trailer (below), it could have been a classic, rather than the acceptable way to pass the time it turns out to be.

Dir: Lee Demarbre
Star: Sarah Allen, Jon Cor, Tommie-Amber Pirie, Mark Slacke

Life Blood

  By

★★½
“Still a better love story than Twilight“

There’s a fascinating idea at the core here. Namely, that vampires were created by God, in order to mitigate mankind’s sin by preying on the most evil examples of humanity. They’re effectively angelic enforcers. The potential in this is great. The execution, however… Well, it largely comes down to two such vampire/angels sitting around a gas station for the majority of the running time. This isn’t the only aspect which is poorly considered. It starts in 1969, when lesbian couple Brooke (Lahiri) and Rhea (Monk) are at a New Year’s party. Brooke kills a rapist, stabbing him (literally) 87 times, and the pair then flee. In the desert, they are visited by God (model Angela Lindvall), who makes Rhea into one of her enforcers.

However, Rhea insists Brooke gets the same treatment. You’d think God, with all that infallibility and omniscience might figure out giving such power to someone who just stabbed someone (I repeat, literally) 87 times, might not be a good idea. But, whatevs. The pair then lie dormant in the desert sands for forty years, because… Er, I dunno. Reasons? Eventually surfacing, Brooke revels in her new found abilities and quickly turns them to murderous ends, while Rhea tries to restrain her lover, being more in the “with great power comes great responsibility” camp. God, meanwhile, is apparently otherwise engaged, probably writing a monograph on free will.

After Brooke has offed her first victim, an unfortunately passing hitch-hiker, they hijack a camper and hole up in the gas station mentioned. This is necessary in order to avoid daylight, which in this version, still has that unfortunate effect on vampires; quite why God didn’t address that in her wisdom is also unexplained. There, they are eventually located by local police officer, Sheriff Tillman (cult legend Napier), who has followed the trail of mayhem. Rhea is going to have to decide whether to stand with Brooke, or go against her.

It gets some of the little things right, and has an off-the-wall sensibility that’s kinda endearing, and rather trashy. For instance the Sherriff’s favourite TV show is Chicks Chasing Chickens, which is exactly what it sounds like, and is the most amusing fake TV show since Ow! My Balls! God turning up in an seethrough nightie from Victoria’s Secret was also… interesting. Lahiri seems to be having fun with her role too, all lip-gloss and gleeful violence.

Unfortunately, Lahiri is flat-out terrible – with the emphasis on “flat” – and the plot doesn’t have a clue what to do with itself for the middle hour [It may be relevant in terms of the apparent lack of plot direction, the original title was the inexplicable Pearblossom, then became Murder World before settling on the eventual title]. The two leads lurk around the gas-station, bickering with each other and the cashier (Renna, who could be a low-rent version of Sean Astin), while occasionally offing people who show up. It’s far short of enough, and leaves almost all that potential, sadly unfulfilled.

Dir: Ron Carlson
Star: Sophie Monk, Anya Lahiri, Charles Napier, Patrick Renna

Wonder Woman (2009)

  By

★★★½
“A little short of truly Wonder-ful.”

Often forgotten in the critical acclaim for the live-action feature, is the animated film released by Warner Brothers in 2009. It wasn’t an enormous hit – plans for a sequel were scrapped due to its slow sales – but is worth a revisit in the the wake of Gal Gadot’s subsequent portrayal. There are some strong overlaps in the two films’ plots: in both, the crash-landing of pilot Steve Trevor (Fillion) kicks off the Amazons’ re-connection to mortal mankind, and Ares (Molina) is the common villain.

The most obvious difference is the time-frame; rather than the middle of World War I, this takes place in the present day. Additionally, Ares is initially in Amazon custody, escaping with the help of Persephone, an Amazon he has seduced to his side. Diana (Russell) is tasked with re-capturing the god before he can bring about  Zeus’s first goal is to remove the bracers, put on him by Zeus, which limit his powers. They can only be removed by another god, and he seeks the help of his uncle, god of the underworld Hades (Oliver Platt). That done, he raises an army, including the Amazonian dead, and attacks Washington, which causes the President to launch a nuke at Themyscira, believing it to be behind the attack. It’s up to Diana to stop Zeus, and to Steve to stop the missile.

There are chunks of this which are really good, not least the action. Those scenes had to be trimmed down to avoid an R-rating (rumblings of that version getting a release, have yet to be proven true), and what remains is beautifully animated, yet brutal at the same time. This perhaps reaches its peak with the battle through Manhattan between Diana and Ares’s warrior-son, Deimos (below), which for my money is the equal of anything in the live-action film. The relationship between Steve and Diana is another strong suit, helped by strong voice-work from both actors. I think the contemporary setting helps, too, avoiding the rather obvious gender politics angle shoehorned into the more recent film, in favour of more subtle consideration of such points [I was impressed that even the traitor Amazon is given a philosophical motive for her betrayal, and it offers pause for thought].

However, there are other aspects which seem very poorly thought-out. After defeating Deimos, who commits suicide rather than reveal anything, Diana gets a medallion off the corpse. Next scene, they’re sneaking into Ares’s lair. Uh, what? It feels almost as if there was a chunk missing, a feeling enhanced by the relatively terse 75-minute running time. Perhaps this also explained the whole “invisible jet” thing – something wisely abandoned entirely by the live-action film, since it never made much sense. Here, it shows up with no explanation, later firing invisible missiles.

The final battle also relies upon too much contrivance (oh, look: someone pulls a spell out of thin air to free the Amazonian zombies), though at least Ares here proves a worthy adversary, unlike in the live-action film, where he was close to the weakest link. Still, even if it’s perhaps aimed at a younger audience than your humble author, and was missing the sense of awe generated by Gal Gadot’s sword-swinging, this was entertaining and well-made. Worth a look.

Dir: Lauren Montgomery
Star (voice): Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Alfred Molina, Rosario Dawson

She’s Crushed

  By

★★½
“An object lesson about not sticking your dick in crazy.”

Playing somewhat like a more brutal version of Fatal Attraction, this sees Ray (Norlén) help out the girl next door, Tara (Dickinson) with some heavy suitcases she’s trying to move into her car. From this eventually stems a one-night stand between the pair, made all the more unfortunate by Ray’s girlfriend, Maddy (Wehrle) being stranded by the side of the road with a flat, while the pair do the dirty deed. Ray then discovers Tara’s darker side: and when I say “darker side”, I mean she makes Alex Forrest of Fatal Attraction look like a bunny-boiling beginner. With the aid of a condom from their dangerous liaison, she frames him for the rape/murder of his boss, forcing him to help her get rid of the body. And Tara is only getting warmed up. Wait until she gets her hands on Maddy…

Unlike Attraction, there is never any sense of doubt as to the woman’s sanity. Right from the get-go, it’s perfectly clear that Tara is barking mad, and likely already a killer; those suitcases mentioned above seem to contain the body of a previous victim. There’s some backstory about a severely-abusive father – one whose abuse of Tara continues right to the present day – and a mother in an asylum. It’s not really necessary, especially following the scene where we see her shaving her armpits with a carving knife. After that, very little more has to be said. Of course, she’s a relatively high-functioning psycho, in that Tara can come over as perfectly normal in everyday conversation. This, and her physical attractiveness, do make Ray’s interest seem somewhat plausible, along with the shrewish nature of his current girlfriend, although there’s so little build-up to Tara’s night with Ray, it’s a bit eyebrow-raising.

Indeed, events unfold in a way that’s rather too obvious for the first hour, with Tara alternating wildly between over the top Generic Loony (TM) and eye-blinkingly adorable, without any particular impact or development. Only after she kidnaps both the target of her affection and his girlfriend, does this achieve a degree of disturbing brutality, far beyond what Attraction depicted. And that’s exactly the territory which low-budget films need to inhabit, in order to succeed (or, at least, be memorable): where Hollywood fears to tread. If you’re not crinkling your toes up by the end of that sequence, you’re not paying attention. Does that 10 minutes justify the existence of the entire film? I’d likely need some convincing of that, and for a supposed military veteran, Ray finds it remarkably difficult to escape from the clutches of not exactly powerful Tara. At least, until the plot requires it, anyway.

Bonus points to the makers, for their use of videos on a Youtube channel, “taraiscrushed”, as a viral promo for the film telling Tara’s backstory, beginning more than three years before it was released. That’s planning ahead…

Dir: Patrick Johnson
Star: Natalie Dickinson, Henrik Norlén, Caitlin Wehrle, Keith Malley
a.k.a. Crushed

Diamond Dawgs

  By

★★
“Car trouble.”

It’s hard to believe a film rated two stars exceeded expectations, but when I saw this had scored just 1.7 out of ten on the IMDb, I was braced for something much worse. I mean, cross off the friends of the cast and crew who scored it a “10”, and 72% of voters have given it the lowest mark possible. Make no mistake, this isn’t great. It’s not even good. But this is not quite as irredeemably bad as that score would imply.

The story concerns the car thief gang of the title, including Ciara (Johnson) and Pretty (Manning), who work under the heavy thumb of South Central (Núñez). They target a party being held by rappers High Rollaz, not realizing the trunk of one car lifted contains the only copy of a master tape for the High Rollas latest album. The trio, led by Millions (Green), start to follow the Dawgs’s trail, only for things to get complicated when Ciara and one of the High Rollaz fall for each other.

Made in 2009, the production values here are shaky at best, with the video in particular not having aged well. You could likely record better quality footage on a medium-end phone these days, and the sound might well be improved, too. The story is woefully thin: there are scenes which either stay far beyond their purpose (unless that purpose was to showcase one of the rap songs on the soundtrack), or don’t appear to serve any purpose at all. The action, such as it is, is very poorly-executed: the Dawgs do very little actual crime after the opening sequence. Basically, rob the party and that’s it.

And, yet… On a couple of occasions, the film did surprise me. For instance, there’s one scene where South Central forces one of his minions to play Russian Roulette, and it’s genuinely disturbing. Núñez’s acting experience is apparent, and weirdly, his performance here reminded me of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s portrayal of Negan in The Walking Dead (which, obviously, it well pre-dates). There’s the same sense he’s entirely unhinged, and could go off into insane violence at any moment. We also get the Most Unexpected Star Trek Reference of All-Time, when a drug dealer says of his product that it will, “Get you high, like Captain Kirk… The young Kirk, the one getting all the alien pussy.” I laughed, anyway.

I’m certainly not the intended audience here, yet I can’t imagine even its target would be able to look past the shoddier aspects, despite what feels like a certain veneer of urban authenticity to the dialogue and characters. It plods on, entirely as you’d expect, to the final face-off, when the High Rollaz try to execute a deal with South Central and his crew, for the return of their tape. I sense the actresses here were chosen more for their visual appeal – it seems most of them were models – rather than their acting ability. Though since they get precious little to do here, it’s very difficult to tell whether or not they have any talent. They do nail the “looking pretty” thing, close to impeccably.

Dir: Chris Rogers
Star: Sherina Manning, Azur-De Johnson, Will Green, Miguel A. Núñez Jr.