Tag: 2015

Camino

  By

★★★½
“Flash, bang, wallop – what? A picture!”

caminoFollowing up on their successfully crunchy collaboration in Raze, director Waller and star Bell head into the jungle and back to the eighties – an era before cell-phones and digital cameras – for this story of one woman’s fight for survival against a band of Colombian rebels, led by Spanish immigrant, Guillermo (Vigalondo). In this case, the woman is Avery Taggart (Bell), a lauded war photographer whose latest mission is to cover the enigmatic yet charismatic Guillermo, whose mission initially appears as much philanthropic as military. Keyword: initially. For Avery stumbles into the rebel’s darker side, witnessing, and worse, photographing him carrying out a drug deal, then slitting the throat of an inconveniently-passing local child. Knowing this revelation would destroy him, Guillermo blames Avery for the murder, and sets out after her with his group, intent on preventing the incriminating film from getting out of the jungle. However, it won’t be easy: Avery has picked up a few survival skills from her life during wartime, and some of Guillermo’s foot-soldiers are unconvinced by his explanation.

I think the first surprise here is the opening chunk, before she goes into the jungle, which has Bell delivering the most intense acting of her career. Quite a discomforting performance too, it has to be said, and I did wonder if I was watching the right film for a bit. Fortunately, we’re eventually on the right track; nobody will exactly have rented this to watch Zoë emote in a hotel room, surprisingly impressive though it is. The action here is brutal: while the body-count is relatively small – compared, say to Raze – nobody dies quickly here at all, with demises which seem to stretch out forever. The peak is probably the first fight, in which Avery is stalked by Guillermo’s psychopathic lieutenant. This turns into a knock-down, drag-out brawl that is relentless and hardcore. Nothing after can quite compare, to be honest. The ending of the main story thread is, entirely deliberately, understated and almost casual, though a coda delivers a satisfactory payoff.

You do wonder how a photographer is able to do more than hold her own against jungle-hardened soldiers; I was half-expecting a further appendix scene where Avery turned out to be a CIA agent of some kind. [Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded!] Vigalondo makes for a decent villain, if a little too verbose; had this had actually been made in the mid-80’s, rather than just set there, it would have been a perfect role for Klaus Kinski, and Nacho puts over a similar mix of thinly-disguised psychopath. The jungle almost becomes a supporting character here, abetted by an unusual, crunchy yet chewy soundtrack from electronic project Kreng. The film might have benefited from some editing and the script an additional polish. But, as expected, it’s Bell’s show and she delivers the convincing mix of elegance and physicality we have come to appreciate, like a tightly-wound spring inside a camera case.

Dir: Josh C. Waller
Star: Zoë Bell, Nacho Vigalondo, Francisco Barreiro, Sheila Vand

Sweet Home

  By

★★★½
“Hogar, dulce hogar…”

sweethomeA straightforward yet effective cross between a slasher film and Die Hard, sees Alicia (Garcia-Jonsson) plan a birthday dinner for her boyfriend, Simon (Sevilla) in an almost deserted apartment building. However, she stumbles into a plot to evict the last remaining tenant… in a body-bag. Trapped inside the locked tenement, the young couple become the target, first for the evictors, and then their boss, the Liquidator (Tarrida), as they seek to cover the tracks of their murderous work.

Three sentences, and that’s basically the entirety of the plot covered, since most of the film is an extended stalk ‘n’ slash, with Alicia, in particular, seeking a way out. It’s absolutely her story, because Simon is wounded relatively early in proceedings, and ends up close to a non-factor in proceedings – for one reason or another. Even though there’s a sense of Garcia-Jonsson acting mostly in her third language (she was born in Sweden, most of her career has been in Spain, yet her dialogue here is mainly English), it doesn’t harm the film, because Martinez is a firm believer in showing, rather than telling. That’s just what something like this needs, with gratifyingly few pauses for exposition after things kick-off. In particular, things are ramped up with the arrival of the Liquidator, who disposes of bodies with the aid of liquid nitrogen and a hammer. This is about as wince-inducing as it sounds.

As well as a fairly monstrous villain, who is quite prepared to dispatch his supposed allies if they prove more trouble than they are worth, the main appeal is seeing Alicia use her wits to survive, clambering in, around and through the maze of corridors and service passages in the building, as she tries to stay one step ahead of those hunting her down. The claustrophobic setting, enhanced by a thunderous deluge coming down outside, which has cleared the streets of everyone else, generally work for the movie too. Reading other reviews, seems I’m not the only person to detect notes of John Carpenter, with this in particular evoking feelings of Assault on Precinct 13 crossed with Halloween. Though it has been a very long while since Carpenter has directed anything as shallowly entertaining as Sweet Home.

On the other hand. the floor-plan of the house, an important factor in proceedings, seems more than a little inconsistent. This may be less an apartment building, and more a Klein bottle, for there were times when I was thought Alicia was on an upper level, only for her to open a door and suddenly be back at ground level. However, if you’re prepared to let that aspect slide, along with the occasional moments of less-than-sensible behaviour (almost inevitable, given the genre), this is an energetic and enthusiastic romp, which will likely have you quoting various John McClane-isms over the course of proceedings. But it’s safe to say that Die Hard did not end in a climax which had Bruce Willis in the basement, unconscious, dotted lines drawn on his limbs, in preparation for easy separation by Alan Rickman and his hacksaw. More’s the pity, perhaps.

Dir: Rafa Martínez
Star: Ingrid Garcia-Jonsson, Bruno Sevilla, Oriol Tarrida, Jose Maria Blanco

Big Sky

  By

★½
“This sky’s gone out…”

bigskyHazel (Thorne) suffers from severe agoraphobia, which has left her trapped in her room, but her mother, Dee (Sedgwick) has finally succeeded in convincing Hazel to seek treatment. A ride is arranged to a treatment centre in the middle of the desert: to help Hazel cope, she’ll travel in the blacked-out back of the van, with her mother up front. However, on the way, the van is ambushed and another passenger kidnapped. The perpetrators, brothers Jesse and Pru (Grillo and Tveit), shoot everyone else to cover their tracks, but don’t notice Hazel in the back. Dee is badly wounded, and their only hope of survival is for Hazel to overcome her fear and head out across the wide-open landscape for help. However, the brothers have realized they left some loose ends, and Pru – who has significant mental issues of his own – is sent back to tidy up the survivors.

Cutting to the chase here, there is limited entertainment value to be found in watching someone stare and their feet and move, v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, through the desert. I get that they are struggling with their condition, but that doesn’t make it interesting to watch: I was painfully reminded of Roger Corman’s The Trip, one of the very few movies I have walked out on, which consists largely of watching someone else take drugs. I’m also a little bit unsure about what this is saying about agoraphobia. The film appears to suggest that all you need to overcome it, is sufficient incentive, and that feels a bit like somebody yelling “Cheer up!” at someone with depression. Credit for having a heroine with such an obvious disability, and Thorne does a decent job at making her a sympathetic LEAD, even if the reason for it also feels like it falls into the realm of cod psychology. Though probably not so much as Pru, whose issues, it turns out, were the result of being hit in the head with a garden tool.

The film is obviously trying to draw a line between him and Hazel, but the script seems to lurch between the two pairs of characters, as if unable to decide whose story it wants to tell. Things happen for no particular reason than because the film decides they need to, such as Dee finding a gun in the van, and the film crawls towards its obvious climax at about the same pace as Hazel crossing the desert. Quite how such an obviously half-baked script ever managed to make it to production, I’m not sure, but you’ll probably end up wanting to lock yourself up in a cupboard – or, at least, as far away from the film as possible.

Dir: Jorge Michel Grau
Star: Bella Thorne, Kyra Sedgwick, Frank Grillo, Aaron Tveit

Jessica Jones: Season one

  By

★★★½
“The Jones’ town massacre.”

jjones1A low-key take on the whole Marvel Universe, this takes place alongside the likes of The Avengers, yet almost separate from them. This means there are a couple of references to more high-profile superheroes (the battle for New York depicted in Avengers is called ‘The Incident’), plus nods to, and characters from, Netflix’s other Marvel show, Daredevil. Otherwise, this is its own creature, and likely the better for it. The heroine is Jessica Jones (Ritter, possessing an Eliza Dushku vibe), a private eye who has been gifted – or cursed – with remarkable strength. While this does occasionally come in handy, as we see in the first episode when serving a subpoena to an unwilling recipient, she’s well aware of the downside that her talent might bring; in the comics, but barely discussed in the show, she had a brief stint as a superhero, which ended badly. Now, she largely keeps it to herself, rather than running around the city fighting crime ‘n’ stuff.

jjones2Our story starts with her taking on what looks like a mundane missing person job, the parents of the girl in question having been recommended to her PI services. The disappearance turns out to have been engineered by “Kilgrave” (Tennant), the pseudonym adopted by a man with the talent of mind-control. Jessica crossed paths with Kilgrave before, having been one of those under his mental thumb. The experience left Jones with post-traumatic stress, but she believed she had seen the last of him – only to discover that not only is he still alive, he is perhaps even more obsessed with Jessica than he was. Fortunately, she isn’t alone, with help from her foster sister, Trish Walker (Taylor), now a popular radio host, and Luke Cage (Colter), a barman who, like Jones, has an abnormal ability he prefers remain private. However, how can you defeat someone who can take anyone, even your closest friends, and turn them against you as spies or assassins?

If you are used to Marvel movies, this is very much understated in comparison to something like The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, big, bombastic epics with a lot of things blowing up. It’s often easy to forget they share the same universe – but then, remember that “comics” aren’t a genre, they’re a medium. While the term “comic-book movie” has come to mean a certain type of film, the truth is the range actually includes titles as diverse as The History of Violence, The Road to Perdition and When the Wind Blows. It’s possible to imagine a version of Jessica Jones, with its heroine entirely free of all special abilities – you’d more or less have a modern noir, right down to the jazzy intro music and voice-over narration. Kilgrave would be harder, admittedly, since his powers are largely what he has allowed to define him, but perhaps he could become a creepy, stalkery ex-boyfriend.

Jones is certainly flawed, though how many of these flaws are the result of her first encounter with Kilgrave is uncertain, given the limited glimpses we get of her life before that. She now drinks heavily, can’t maintain a relationship with anyone, and is crabby and sarcastic. All told, not a very likeable individual, and this is reflected in the near-lone existence she has. As the audience spends time with her though, they grow to appreciate her better qualities, such as a ferocious loyalty which, once earned, is never lost. She’s relentless too: once she sinks her teeth into a case, you probably would have to cut off Jones’s head to get her to back off, though the pursuit of Kilgrave certainly has a significant personal element to it too. As well as strength, it appears Jessica has the ability to take damage and keep going; not just physical either, but also psychological and spiritual, because she goes through the ringer over the course of these 13 episodes.

However, she may still be overshadowed by Kilgrave, even during the early episodes where he is rarely seen. Unlike most traditional “comic-book” villains, Kilgrave has a philosophy that informs his actions, and even possesses a twisted morality of sorts. He wants, and indeed, is desperate for, Jessica to like him, without being compelled to do so through mind-control. Tennant is quite brilliant in the role: you’ll be astonished if you’ve only seen him in Doctor Who, less so if you’re aware of his excellent work elsewhere, such as in Broadchurch, or even as Hamlet. Kilgrave is a total dick, likely a clinical psychopath, with a short fuse. This may be close to the worst combination possible for someone given the ability to manipulate others like a puppet. However, Tennant manages to retain a good degree of humanity in his depiction of the character. Like many psychopaths, Kilgrave can be charming on occasion, and the differences between him and Jessica are not as obvious as you might think: they are both children of trauma.

jjones3Less effective, for me, were the supporting cast, and this aspect left the show short of “Seal of Approval” status [though I know many disagree]. The apparently obligatory, dysfunctional romance between Jones and Cage feels both too sudden and forced: I guess he needed to be established for his own, upcoming TV series, though I’ll probably not bother with it, any more than I did with Daredevil. Meanwhile, Carrie Ann Moss’s aggressive lawyer, oddly gender-swapped from the comic, never served any significant purpose over the course of this first season. More effective is the complex relationship between Jessica and Trish; one born of personal tragedies, on both sides, which still continue to resonate, years later. Still, I couldn’t help feeling that a 13-episode series was over-stretching the material; a few of the shows appeared a good deal more filler than killer, and I suspect a 10-episode order might have been better overall.

The other main weakness, to me, was some contrived plotting, such as the way in which an inexplicable immunity to Kilgrave’s powers becomes an essential part of the final arc. I can’t say if the comics dealt with it similarly, but for a series so grounded in gritty realism, suddenly to pull out something which felt more like a big lump of handwavey Kryptonite, was disappointing. Similarly, the final confrontation between Kilgrave and Jones also had the former behave in a rather dumb way, closer to that of a sixties Bond villain, than the smart and savvy psycho he’d been portrayed as over the previous 12 episodes. I guess you can take the television show out of the comic-book, but you can’t entirely take the comic-book out of the television show. Or something…

Those flaws noted, this is still likely the best action-heroine entry to come out of either Marvel or DC so far. The show has been renewed for a second season, although the time-frame for this is uncertain, and it may end up being queued behind other planned Marvel/Netflix series – not least The Defenders, their “low-rent” version of The Avengers which will team up Daredevil with Jones, Cage and Iron Fist. Additionally, the makers will need to figure out who or what will replace Kilgrave as the show’s “big bad”, a tough act to follow. If the future of Jessica’s day job seems highly uncertain at the end of this run, there are also hints that she is no longer going to  be quite the lone wolf operator that she was here, possibly building eventually toward that Defenders team-up. If not as jaw-droppingly good as some claim (“The best show on TV”?), its hard-boiled approach has to be commended, and is refreshingly unlike anything else available, from any source.

Creator: Melissa Rosenberg
Star: Krysten Ritter, Mike Colter, David Tennant, Rachael Taylor

Queen of the Desert

  By

★★
“Just deserts”

queendesertEccentric explorers with strong personalities facing the challenge of the wilderness is hardly uncharted territory for Herzog. Most famously, his pair of incendiary collaborations with fellow German, Klaus Kinski, Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, Wrath of God are both classics, so I had high hopes for this biopic about Gertrude Bell, who was, according to her Wikipedia page, “an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, spy and archaeologist,” operating in the Middle East during and after the first World War.

Daughter of an English baronet, she found the aristocratic English life stifling, and want to Teheran where her uncle was a diplomat. She fell in love with the region and its people, and spent almost the entire rest of her life there. It was a time of turmoil, as the ruling Ottoman Empire was collapsing, with other Western empires, including the British, seeking to take over the territory. In that setting, Bell’s expert knowledge of the region was invaluable, and she became an intelligence asset, working alongside T.E. Lawrence (Pattinson). better known as Lawrence of Arabia. But her personal life was more troubled; her father refused permission to marry her first love (Franco), who then committed suicide. After a long lay-off from love, she begins a relationship with soldier Charles Doughty-Wylie (Lewis) – who is already married.

Herzog’s work is at its best when he invests fully in it, such as Fitzcarraldo, where he told the story of a man who dragged a steam-boat over a mountain (for rubber plantation purposes), by actually dragging a steam-boat over a mountain – watch the documentary, Burden of Dreams, for more on this, and the psychological toll the whole production took on the director. Here, you don’t get any sense of personal cost; it’s probably the most slick and Hollywood film Herzog has ever made, and that takes away more than it adds. Kidman is decent enough, yet her depiction is likely too restrained. It peaks very early, with Bell’s barely-suppressed, seething hatred for the suitors who come to woo her in England, and there are not many occasions after, where you get any sense of emotion. The desert landscapes are impressive [not the first time Herzog has been there either; see his post-war documentary on the Kuwaiti oil fields, Lessons of Darkness], yet there’s only so often you can watch Bell riding across them while a vaguely epic score swells behind her, before the impact diminishes.

All told, you probably get a better insight into Bell’s life from reading the Wikipedia page mentioned earlier. The obituary quoted there is likely a better testament to its subject, than the two hours of scenic desert landscapes and unresolved sexual tension we get here:

No woman in recent time has combined her qualities – her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency – all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit.

Dir: Werner Herzon
Star: Nicole Kidman, Damian Lewis, James Franco, Robert Pattinson

Robot Revolution

  By

★★
“The revolution will not be televised.”

My heart sank when I saw the production company’s logo in the opening credits, as I realized this was from the same people who brought us Earthkiller, which… Well, wasn’t very good, to put it mildly. Four years and several features later, has Bellware and his micro-budget associates improved? Yes, actually, they have. Not that this is “good”, by any neutral standards, especially if you’re expecting anything like glossy, big-budget SF. However, it does seem more aware of its own limitations, and works within them a lot better than Earthkiller.

robotrevolutionIt’s set somewhat in the future, where Constable Hawkins (Logan) and her android partner have been ordered to pay a visit to the apartment of a researcher (Murphy), who is allegedly working on a weapon for a notorious terrorist. Unfortunately, the terrorist’s henchmen show up at the same time, and the weapon is activated. It consists of a swarm of nanobotz that can “hack” into anything containing electronics and control it. Which is unfortunate, since in this future, all adults have been implanted with an identification chip. Fortunately, the scientist has a somewhat effective countermeasure, but she and Hawkins still have to try and make their way out of the apartment, dealing with both the infected human residents and the automated cleaning robots, that are intent on preventing them.

It’s actually not a bad idea, even if derivative of Dread [which was, itself, derivative of a truly superlative Indonesian action film, The Raid] With just a single location, it’s a good setting for a low-budget film – except Bellware, for some reason, still injects repeated, really crappy CGI exteriors, and the static-laced camera shots, whether from the android’s POV or elsewhere, are also far too excessive. He should just have kept things claustrophobic. A bigger problem are the infected residents, who are about the least threatening monsters I’ve ever seen: a trickle of blood from the nose and five minutes of Zombie 1.0.1. training do not make you scary. [Indeed, it’s probably less horrific than their attempts at acting] The cleaning robot is far more impressive: in form and execution, it appears to have strayed in from a much bigger, better movie.

Logan, sporting a fetching eyepatch, for no readily apparent reason, isn’t bad, projecting a degree of no-nonsense competence appropriate to the character. However, in the film’s second half, it does degenerate into a long series of sequences in which people creep around corridors, that are neither as tense or as interesting as Bellware seems to think. Though I did appreciate the discussion on whether or not these should be considered as zombies, and whether shooting them in the head is the only way to kill them. If Earthkiller’s 1½-star rating was charitable, this one is perhaps a tad harsh, though my appreciation may in part be due to expectations that were not so much low, as subterranean. At this rate, by 2030 or so, Bellware might actually be making decent films.

Dir: Andrew Bellware
Star: Virginia Logan, Mary Murphy, Matthew Trumbull, Dirk Voetberg.

Ballet of Blood

  By

★½
“Bitchy ballerinas, being bitches.”

balletbloodWell, I will say this. If you start your film with a ballet class being interrupted by a former student, who rushes in – topless, for no readily apparent reason – and sprays the class with fire from her Uzi: you have my attention. Unfortunately, this early goodwill is utterly wasted, frittered away in a number of ways over the next 90 minutes that would be spectacularly impressive, if that were the aim of the film-makers. However, it appears their true intention was along the lines of, “Let’s do a micro-budget version of Black Swan, but one based on our obsessive watching of Suspiria, starring a cast of interchangeable Barbies rounded up from the strip-club nearest to the local community college.” Actually, that sounds rather more entertaining than this.

There are two intertwined threads here. One, is the aftermath of the shooting, carried out by mad dancer Nisa (Raye), which injured the school’s prima ballerina, Sylvie (Robinson). Nisa escapes, leaving the school on edge, and breaks her pal Ria (Knopf) out of the asylum where she’s being held – as, apparently, you are – in order to assist with an even more deadly assault. Meanwhile, the atmosphere at the school is becoming increasingly abusive and strained. Student Maren (Martinez) is disturbed to find that the novel she is writing is turning eerily predictive. Is her old typewriter somehow causing events to take place? Or is it all in her psyche?

There may be a bit of Showgirls, or perhaps cable series Flesh and Bone, to be found in here, Masters clearly having a fine appreciation of the trash aesthetic, which shines through in dialogue, particularly Sylvie’s, that is occasionally so dumb, it’s positive genius. The use of classical music for the soundtrack is not bad either. However, these don’t even start to balance the negatives: these begin with audio which often appears to have been recorded from the bottom of a nearby well, and continues into a slew of characters who look, sound and (fail to) act alike. This lends itself to viewer confusion, not helped by the fact your attention will likely be wandering to more interesting things – specifically, in my case, our cat playing in a cardboard box. There’s just too many scenes of the cast sitting about jawing tediously at each other, before Nisa and Ria kick things off.

Even though the grand finale is rather less than grand, the budget restrictions here being what they are, it does represent an improvement over the rest of the film, purely because something is happening. Quite what that something is, it’s harder to say, since this is where the giallo influence of Dario Argento really kicks in, meaning copious dollops of style, in lieu of substance. Except, Masters is not exactly Argento, and apparently forgets there’s more to creating cinematic style, than throwing a couple of filters on your lights. Much as I’m loathe to criticize micro-budget indie film, there just isn’t enough here to merit more than a clear warning.

Dir: Jared Masters
Star: Sydney Raye, Mindy Robinson, Marla Martinez, Jessica Knopf

The Circle (Cirkeln)

  By

cirklen

★★★
“Into every generation, half a dozen or so chosen ones are born…”

The first in an intended trilogy, based on a popular series of books, this is set in the fictional Swedish town of Engelsfors, where the high-school is rocked after a student commits suicide in the bathroom. At the same point, six female students start to experience strange events, hinting at undiscovered powers: one can move objects with her mind, another can influence people, a third becomes invisible. Turns out they – as well as the dead colleague – are proto-witches, one of whom will eventually develop into the Chosen One, who will save the world from her evil nemesis. However, said nemesis is not sitting around, waiting for thus development: that “suicide” wasn’t a suicide at all, and it becomes clear the remaining six are just as much in danger.

This starts off in highly-impressive fashion, setting up its premise with elegant style. The film looks great, makes excellent use of music, both original and adopted (the soundtrack is by Benny Andersson of ABBA fame, who is also one of the producers, and there’s a particular cool montage set to Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill), and the special effects are nicely understates: director Akin doesn’t throw them at the screen for the sake of it, he uses them to enhance the film’s atmosphere as much as for show. However, the second half feels unnecessarily stretched: this runs 144 minutes, and probably shouldn’t. Perhaps the process of adaptation from the book needed to be more ruthless; you get the sense the film is trying to juggle too many characters, simply because they were in the original source material. As a result, they all suffer since, even at its significant length, the film doesn’t have the chance to explore them in any depth: they remain not much more than stereotypes, e.g. the Goth, the slut, the bullied, the swot. Maybe they are leaving this for the subsequent entries?

However, it works well enough as a standalone movie – more Harry Potter than Lord of the Rings – and still continues to provide a sleek and shiny source of mainstream entertainment. There’s more than a hint of Buffy here, and not just in the “Chosen One” concept and high-school location, also the idea that Engelsfors is some kind of Hellmou… er, portal for evil, as well the Witches’ Council who try to run things. As yet, neither of these last two aspects have been explored much, and I sense they will likely come into play more, down the road. I also got a distinct hint of Eko Eko Azarak too. It’s probably true to say that you may get more out of this if you have read the books, which I haven’t; I suspect a remake is only a matter of time, likely bringing nothing of note to the party. Bit of a mixed blessing to see countries attempt to ape Hollywood so shamelessly: I can’t help preferring films like Let the Right One In, which do their own thing. This is perhaps just too slickly commercial for its own good.

Dir: Levan Akin
Star: Josefin Asplund, Helena Engström, Ruth Vega Fernandez, Irma von Platen

Jane Got a Gun

  By

★★
“The sixties called. They want their Western back.”

janegotagunThere have been no shortage of revisionist spins on the Western over the last few years, looking to drag the genre into the 21st century after it seemed all but dead. Just in the last four months, I’ve seen Bone Tomahawk, The Hateful Eight and The Salvation, and while their approaches have been radically different – as have the degree of their success – they are, at least, trying to bring something new to the party. Jane Got a Gun? Not so much, to the point that viewers may feel the urge to check they haven’t fallen through some kind of wormhole, back to the era of Bonanza and The Virginian.

The rural farming life of Jane Hammond (Portman) and her husband, Bill (Emmerich), is thrown into turmoil, when he comes home, shot multiple times. Turns out, he had a battle with notorious outlaws, the Bishop Boys, which ended with several dead on their side, and Bill severely injured. Worse follows in the wake, as John Bishop (McGregor) is on the trail, seeking revenge for his men. With Bill in no state to defend himself and Jane, she turns to former boyfriend Dan Frost (Edgerton, also co-writer on the screenplay), who reluctantly agrees to help Jane stand against the Bishops.

The results are so overwhelmingly bland, one suspects they’re a great deal interesting than the disastrous production, which saw original director Lynne Ramsay literally not show up on the set for the first day of shooting. It took almost three further years for the movie to be released – and they probably shouldn’t have bothered, since it was the lowest grossing wide opening weekend ever for the Weinstein company, then posted the worst second weekend drop ever for a 1,000-plus screen release. Though you can see why it flopped, it’s not a bad movie, just an utterly forgettable one, without a single particularly memorable character to be found. Portman – also a producer, which may explain some things – perhaps comes out best, although her performance consists mostly of setting her jaw and exuding steely resolve. It’s not complemented by the flashback structure used in the story, which is clunky at best, and results in a severe lack of narrative flow. What was the hot-air balloon about, for instance?

It’s even fairly retro in the way Jane leaves most of the fighting to Dan, at least until the very end, and the movie simply feels astonishingly safe, as if O’Connor was reluctant to take any risks at all, for fear of jeopardizing a production which had already gone very badly wrong before his arrival. But sometimes (and Apocalypse Now is likely the best example), film-makers just need to say, “Screw it”, and plunge on regardless towards realizing their vision. If the results may or may not be great, they’ll probably be less forgettable than here, and considering how long it took to arrive, it wasn’t worth the wait.

Dir: Gavin O’Connor
Star: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Noah Emmerich, Ewan McGregor

Hooker With a Rocket Launcher

Video

  By

promo6Some titles conceal their meaning behind layers of depth. Needless to say, this is not one of those – but it is, instead, one that demands your attention, and I was not surprised to hear that, according to its Canadian creator, Chris Greenaway,”The title definitely came first.” However, inspiration for this short came from a number of sources. Most obvious among those is Hobo With a Shotgun, the fake trailer originally part of the Grindhouse double-bill, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, before eventually becoming a real (and wonderfully trashy) movie, starring Rutger Hauer.  But Chris says the project additionally “drew inspiration from 80s ‘hooker movies’ such as Angel and Vice Squad. As Misty’s weapon of choice indicates, we were also heavily influenced by the awesome Cannon Films action movies of the 80’s like the Death Wish sequels and Delta Force.” I’ll pause here, for anyone of a certain age to sigh nostalgically.

Lead actress Adrianne Winfield needed no convincing, having worked with Greenaway previously: “Adrianne enquired about the role when I posted a casting call so I didn’t actually have to pitch it to her at all. She really liked the premise.” The actual production was relatively quick, just 2-3 evenings – one of those a reshoot day – with between two and four hours of shooting each night. Perhaps surprisingly (or not, if you have experience of how tolerantly placid our Northern cousins tend to be!), the film-makers didn’t have any problem toting large weaponry round the streets. “We had no issues with the rocket launcher because up close it looks VERY fake,” laughs Greenaway. “We also shot at night when most people were out of the downtown area.”

Chris came relatively late to production. Originally a writer, of everything from comic strips to travel articles, he transitioned into making films after returning home in 2006, after teaching English in Japan. He recalls, “I went through a number of training workshops, and worked as a P/A on a number of sets while making the transition into writing screenplays.” He has been making web series since 2008, with six to his name so far, as well as a host of shorts, and directed his first full-length feature, Witchstalker, in 2013, which was released by Screamtime Films the following year. His IMDb filmography reads like a love-letter to pop culture and bad film, with titles such as Beach Blanket Lucha, Ninjas of the Caribbean and Escape From Ridgemont High.

But what of Misty, whose armaments would make the residents of Sin City‘s Old Town deeply envious? “The reactions have been very positive from the get go. We’ve had several very positive reviews and feedback from my existing fans on Youtube has also been great,” says Greenaway, who would like to see Hooker follow in the footsteps of its Hobo predecessor, and blossom from a trailer into a full-blown movie. “We’re hoping to do a crowdfunding campaign to make it into a feature film. Once I’m done with a few other projects I’m involved in at this time, we can go all in with this!” We certainly hope that’s a project which comes to fruition – some day, we will get to utter the immortal line, “Play Misty for me…” Here’s the film, in its glorious, full 132 seconds.