Tag: 2018

Mermaid Team

  By

★★★
“Ariel assault?”

This feel like it could easily have come out of the nineties, with the distinct whiff of a throwback to the golden age of Hong Kong “girls with guns” movies. That is, of course, not a bad thing. However, this is not really golden. It’s probably not even bronzey. High-quality PVC perhaps? I think the main difference is probably that the classics starred the likes of Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan and Yukari Oshima, who could kick ass in a convincing fashion. The actresses here are largely limited to gun-play, and most of them look like they would be soundly defeated by a stiff oncoming breeze. However, I can’t knock the production values here: this is slick, well-made and looks very nice.

The group of the title consists of six young women, under the leadership of Yang Yi/Moman (Xu) – the subtitles say one thing, the credits another – who go after drug dealers and related bad guys. It’s the usual group of individuals, each with their own special skills. For instance, Qi Xia (Zhou) appears to be the smart girl of the group. Well, she wears glasses and sucks a lollipop, anyway: her intelligence never has much relevance. Similarly, Sha Lv, which I have no idea how to pronounce, is the team’s sniper, and so on. None of them make much of an impression, save for Moman, who is also the one lucky enough to receive a dramatic arc, since her sister was killed during the escape of a captured villain. Or was she?

This runs barely an hour long in the version officially released on YouTube, – maybe there’s a director’s cut somewhere? There did definitely seems to be edits. It’s not so much slim as positively anorexic, with not much room for development of story or characters. Moman and her team work their way up the chain, with some light action, though there is a surprising amount of death on the way. Let’s just say, Mermaid Team will be placing a ‘Help wanted’ advert. I did like Zhu, who plays Mi Lai, a henchwoman to one of the bad guys, and has an appropriately wild-cannon vibe to her. I was hoping for a final battle between Mi Lai and Moman; however, this seems almost totally disinterested in hand-to-hand action.

Not that it’s by any means bad, just competently forgettable, with a lack of many memorable elements – in either good or bad direction. I don’t know what the budget was on this. I suspect, like many Chinese films, it was relatively small by Hollywood standards, yet Ma certainly does a good job of squeezing every ounce of production value out of the price, and the images pop off the screen too. I must confess though, given the title, I was expecting at least some aquatic shenanigans, but these mermaids remain resolutely land-dwelling. On the other hand, while Googling the title, I did learn there is apparently a World Mermaid Championship. Never say this site is not informative…

Dir: Ma Hong-Wen
Star: Xu Zi-Lu, Zhang Da-Ke, Zhou Jing, Zhu Jue

Ever After

  By

★★½
“Off-centre, not dead centre”

This is not your normal action heroine film. Nor is it your normal zombie apocalypse film. While it certainly nods in both directions, it seems entirely committed to going in its own direction. My mental jury is still out on whether or not this was a good thing or not. I think if I’d perhaps been prewarned what to expect, I might have been better equipped to handle this. It takes place after the outbreak of a plague, with the dwindling number of survivors now holed up in two cities: Weimar, where infection is an immediate death sentence, and Jena, reported to be trying to research a cure. 

The mentally fragile Vivi (Kohlhof) tries to do her part by volunteering on the fences surrounding Weimar, but a brutal incident on her first day sends her into a state of shock. She tries to head for Jena on the automated train which runs between there and Weimar. On it, she meets Eva (Lehrer), who is considerably more versed in the ways of survival. When the train breaks down, the two young women have to set off on foot across country. Which is where things get increasingly odd, as they bump into characters such as the Gardener (Dyrholm), who is running a market garden in the middle of the apocalypse. The zombies themselves also begin to mutate, such as the one on a wedding dress, whose face is half plant. Is nature healing? Or is a human apocalypse not necessarily such a bad thing from the perspective of the rest of Earth’s species?

There is a fair amount going on here to unpack, and it feels like the kind of party to which you have to bring your own booze. For the film offers no easy answers; indeed, I’m not necessarily certain what are the questions it is asking. At times it felt like there was a religious aspect with the Gardener being the snake in Eden. Yet at others, it is more about the different ways Vivi and Eva come to terms with the traumas they have experienced. Vivi shuts down, emotionally and mentally, while Eva adopts a hard shell, prepared to do whatever is necessary to survive. Also of note: there are almost no male speaking roles, though it’s subtle enough not to matter [The crew are also largely women]

There are still the required moments of threat, heroic sacrifice, etc. familiar from the genre. However, these feel almost perfunctory, as if imposed on the director in some kind of contractual obligation. The film might have been better to avoid the standard beats entirely, as these feel out of line with the rest of the movie. On the other hand, if it had gone full art-house, it’s possible I would not have bothered watching it, and almost certainly wouldn’t be reviewing it here. Still, it’s an approach to the zombie film I’ve definitely not seen before. Even if this wasn’t what I expected – or wanted, to be honest – that has to be worth something. 

Dir: Carolina Hellsgård
Star: Gro Swantje Kohlhof, Maja Lehrer, Trine Dyrholm, Barbara Philipp
a.k.a. Endzeit

Loss Prevention

  By

★★★½
“Missing this would be your loss”

After a series of recent films which… well, let’s just say, left a little to be desired, it was a real palate-cleansing pleasure to encounter this. Oh, make no mistake: this is no classic. But, considering the budget was supposedly under $20,000, this operates within its limitations very nicely. The makers sticks to what they can do, and what it does, it does more than adequately. In particular, the movie is populated with a good number of interesting characters, that are fun to watch. The central one is Nik (Uhl), a young woman who dropped out of college and is now scraping by, working behind the bar at The Soggy Weasel, the pub belonging to her father (former wrestler Snow).

However, her slackerish lifestyle is rudely interrupted when one patron drinks too much, and has to be separated from his keys. Unfortunately, the key-chain also holds a flash drive of industrial espionage data, which he was supposed to hand over to Boland (Wells), the operative of a rival company. Boland is unimpressed, and will go to any lengths to retrieve it, providing the bottom line is deemed sufficiently profitable. Fortunately for Nik, also on hand is Brooke (Albert), a thoroughly competent operative of the company who is the data’s rightful owner, and she takes on the defense of Nik and her father. Not that Nik is averse to getting her own hands dirty, as things turn out.

It does take a little while for things to kick off, as we get introduced to the characters. Nik is more than slightly sarcastic, so can only be respected as such, and also a thoroughly unrepentant lesbian – both combine in an entirely unrepeatable comment about breath mints. But Hollywood could learn a lot about depicting sexual identity from this, which makes absolutely no attempt at moral posturing in this area. Instead, it’s far too busy providing a fast-paced gallop around the city of Louisville, ending up in Brooke and Nik mounting an assault on the headquarters where Boland is holding her father hostage. Yet there’s a twist or two to come, with things not quite ending in the massive firefight you’d expect – another way in which this manages to confound expectations.

In its depiction of corporate warfare, this is rather sophisticated for a low-budget action flick. In particular, Boland’s actions are entirely determined by an accounting of the expected profits and loss. For instance, is it cheaper to buy someone off, or kill them, with all the resulting collateral expenses? It absolutely is not personal with him, just a question of what will balance the books most profitably. The same is true, to a slightly lesser degree, for Brooke – if I heard a late line of dialogue correctly, her surname in the film is Shields! This is an approach which plays into the unexpected finale, when Nik comes up with a solution which satisfies everybody. Well, almost everybody… This has not one, but two, action heroines who are fun to watch, and was considerably better than I expected

Dir: Brian Cunningham, Matt Niehoff
Star: Abisha Uhl, Al Snow, John Wells, Lauren Albert

Chained

  By

★★
“Puts the gang in chain gang.”

Jaz (Severino) gets arrested by the cops and hauled off to Rikers Island on… well, let’s say slightly bogus charges. Her long time pal, Trouble (Martinez) is on the outside and sets about raising bail for Jaz, by any means necessary. That involves putting together a crew of her own who will seize the opportunity to take over drug-running territory in part of their neighbourhood. Needless to say, this decision doesn’t come without perils of its own, both from the authorities and the others with eyes on the profits to be made. Jaz, meanwhile, is having to come to terms with prison life, and isn’t exactly making friends on the inside. Even when the money for her bond is raised, Jaz’s issues aren’t over. However, Trouble finds a solution, after discovering the cops who arrested her have a little side-hustle of their own.

Considering this was made for $15,000, it has its strengths, Most obviously, it feels authentic. The players here may not have much in the way of formal acting experience or training. But I sense they’re not particularly required to do more than be enhanced versions of themselves. The way they act, talk and behave seems legit. Admittedly, who am I to judge? I didn’t exactly grow up on the mean streets of New York. But I can still tell when there is Obvious Acting going on, and it’s a flaw you often see in this kind of low-budget enterprise. I didn’t have to endure that kind of fakery here, and on the whole, the individual scenes were generally fine.

What didn’t work, unfortunately, was the overall flow, with the various plot threads never coming together into a coherent and engaging narrative. I felt like it was taking place over the span of several decades, but there were points when this wasn’t clear. Any film which wraps up with a brief “Twenty years later” scene – in which nobody seems to have aged a day – is on shaky ground. There were also a lot of moments where the script outran the budget. The “police van” in the opening scene, clearly isn’t. Indeed, I genuinely LOL’d later, as the same interior shows up on a van, rented from U-Haul, used for a raid on another gang. If you can’t afford a police van, or at least a decent facsimile, don’t write a scene needing one. The police station and Rikers Island were also… less than convincing, shall we say.

It is likely a little over-stuffed too. For a movie running only 76 minutes, the story tries to cram a lot in, and some of the threads (such as a pregnancy) end up feeling like afterthoughts. More restraint in writer-director Cardona’s ambition would have been for the best. She’s clearly familiar with street life, its characters, and how they behave. When the story sticks to this, the movie is at its most effective, although there’s nothing particularly new or important being said. When it tries to be more expansive, though, the resources just aren’t there, and the shortcomings are painfully apparent.

Dir: Deborah Cardona
Star: Rosemary Severino, Sheerice Martinez, Tyhem Commodore, Lexie Jose

Brutal

  By

★★★
“Certainly lives up to its title.”

No-one does low-budget hyperviolence like the Japanese. Whether it’s pseudo-snuff like Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood, or more fantastical entries such as Mutant Girls Squad, there have likely been more memorable entries from that country than any other. Note my use of the word “memorable”, as distinct from “good”, since they aren’t the same. I’d be hard pushed to recommend this to anyone, unless I knew they were predisposed to microbudget horror of a particularly savage type. I probably won’t ever watch it again. But I have to say this: I will remember it. As will Chris, who came in for the denouement, and was literally jaw-dropped by what she saw. I’m not going to spoil it, so apologies if some of what follows is a little vague.

The film is divided into three sections, and after the first one, called “Man”, you’ll be wondering what the hell it’s doing here. For it is a look at the work of a male serial killer (Butch), who kidnaps and tortures women. That’s basically it, for twenty minutes, and the director believes in getting as up close and personal as possible here, with many of the shots being literally “in the face” of either perpetrator or victim. This certainly enhances the claustrophobic intensity, though I could have done without the shaky-cam attempt to establish its cinema verite credentials. “Do you understand what I’m doing?” he demands of his prisoners. Sadly, the correct answer of “No, because you’re a loony” is never given.

Things get more interesting and relevant in the second section, “Woman”, where the roles are reversed. An unnamed woman (Ayano) honey-traps men back to her room, where she kills them. She has a particular fondness for repeated and enthusiastic stabbings in the crotch, which had me shifting uncomfortably on my chair. She’s also rather more psychologically inclined, conversing with her victims, rather than interrogating them. Though eventually, she brings home someone (Nishina) who is aware of her murderous intentions, and is intent on stopping her. The result is a bloody battle – again, shot in close-up – which swings one way then the other, before our “heroine” [quotes rarely used more advisedly] eventually prevails.

This sets up the third and final act, probably inevitably titled “Man and Woman”, in which the two killers cross paths. She follows him to his flat, apparently aware of his tendencies – how is never made clear. Barely have they crossed the doorstep before battle is joined. And if you thought the previous fight was vicious… Hoo-boy. This ends in a double-whammy of revelations, which make sense in one way – they’re clearly perfect for each other – but count among the more batshit crazy things I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some things. While it is somewhat poignant, we know so little about any of the people involved (how could we learn much, given it’s barely an hour between opening and closing credits), the emotional impact is limited. Brutal though? Definitely.

Dir: Takashi Hirose
Star: Butch, Ayano, Takashi Nishina, Katrina Grey

Red Blade

  By

★★★
“Ninja family values.”

Poor teenage girl Mako (Ogura) is having a pretty crappy time of it. Her parents are feuding over money troubles, she’s getting bullied at school, and then, her father ends up arrested for fraud. But, just when things are their lowest, she gets a paper-cut. For reasons that are never entirely explained, this opens a portal through a storybook to a different world, which proves to be rather better. There, she becomes a ninja trainee, learning the skills under master ninja Saizo (Sakaguch), alongside co-trainees Hiro (Tsukimiya) and Yu (Hanakage). At first, things go very well, with her new talents helping her self-confidence and letting her handle the school bullies.

Then she discovers Hiro and Yu’s stories: they are orphans, training for revenge on Kansuke (Joey Iwanaga), the man who killed their parents. And, it turns out, he is also capable of existing both in this world and the “real” one. He has been duelling with Saizo for hundreds of years (in a thread not unlike another Sakaguchi film, the sublime Versus), and also has a hand in the misfortunes which have befallen Mako’s family. The question is, whether the trio of young women have the necessary skills to take down Kansuke, even with the help of Saizo. And if they do, what will that mean for the “storybook” universe?

This opens with close to a 10-minute, almost wordless fight sequence, in which Saizo takes on a slew of enemies (weirdly, I noticed their corpses seem to vanish after being dispatched, though this may just be because of the nature of this world). Things then go very much into a low gear as far as action is concerned. Instead, we have to deal with Mako’s domestic dramas and woes, then her training: and there’s a lot needed, as someone whose skills initially prove more a threat to her friends than her foes. Fortunately, time in this realm is independent of time in the real world, otherwise she’d probably middle-aged by the time she reached the necessary skills. It’s all pretty low-key, enlivened only by the trio’s first mission, to steal some floor plans. The fighting here is rather too informed by fast cutting and jerkycam to be of note.

However, it does redeem itself very nicely with the final battle against Kansuke and his many minions, which goes through a series of combinations, before settling down into Kansuke vs. Mako. This is really good stuff, and does a much better job of showcasing the skills of the various participants than the earlier action scenes, with Ogura standing out unexpectedly well. I will say, the ending has to be considered among the most abrupt I’ve ever seen, and is only slightly defused by the inclusion of a mid-credit sequence, tying up some of the loose ends. The script for this was written by Sion Sono, who gave us Tag. This isn’t nearly as good, yet the strong finish leaves me looking considerably more kindly on it, than it seemed I would at the half-way point.

Dir: Takahiro Ishihara
Star: Yûka Ogura, Kanon Hanakage, Himena Tsukimiya, Tak Sakaguchi

Lady Detective Shadow

  By

★★★
“CSI: Shacheng”

The heroine of this period piece us Sima Feiyan (Shang), a roaming law officer, currently in the process of tracking down a gang of four criminals. She successfully nails three in the opening sequence, and tracks the fourth to the city of Shacheng. There, she meets up with old friend Wu Jing Ping (Qi) and his son, Jingbin (Zhang R.B.). She gets diverted by the case of a missing person, which takes to a nearby inn, where a host of suspicious figures are gathering. Turns out, there’s a lost city reported to be accessible only once every 49 years, and treasure hunters are gathering for the chase. Unsurprisingly, this ends up being connected to the missing person, the criminal she seeks and even the Wu family.

While more or less shamelessly lifting elements from sources as diverse as Sherlock Holmes, Dragon Inn and Indiana Jones, as well as the TV show noted above, this Chinese TV movie does so with enough energy and invention of its own to make for an entertaining time. Sima is rather like the great detective, though this “Sherlock” is rather more pugilistic than Conan Doyle’s version – or even Robert Downey’s! She is able to look at a scene and “see” in her mind how things rolled out – hence the CSI comparison – and is accompanied by a plucky (but less talented) sidekick, Ye Zi (Zhang P.Y), basically the Watson to her Holmes. There’s no shortage of action, save perhaps at the end, which was a bit disappointing. Much running around a trap-laden underground complex (coughTempleOfDoomcough!), but not the grandstand climax I wanted.

Up until then, however, it has been genuinely a good bit of fun. It takes a little bit of a while for the story to settle down, yet when it does, it’s a genre mash-up that provides decent value, despite the occasionally ropey bit of green-screen work. Shang has just the right approach to the role. She portrays Sima as possessing a calm demeanour, even when provoked, and as someone takes her job seriously; that makes the viewer take events seriously as well. It’s Ye Zi who generally provides the film’s lighter moments, and gets shunted off to one side for the climax. The action is not bad. It does suffer a little from the hyper-kinetic editing, yet is still capable of being followed. There’s enough invention that the viewer should be willing to cut it some slack, and there certainly no shortage, which helps.

It feels like the pilot episode for a TV series, and does a solid job of establishing the general situation and the characters. This kind of “historical crime investigator” seems to be a mini-trend in the Far East, with franchises such as Detective Dee in China, or the Korean Detective K. This is the first I’ve seen which goes with a woman, and while not perfect, it’s sprightly enough that I’d certainly be interested in seeing more of its heroine.

Dir: Si Shu-bu
Star: Shang Rong, Zhang Pei Yu, Qi Jingbin, Zhang Ren Bo

Jesus I Was Evil

  By

★★★
“God told me to.”

While ultimately hamstrung, not least by its limited resources – this cost a mere five thousand dollars – it does what low-budget films should generally tend to do. That is, go where their better-off siblings dare not tread. In this case, that’s the forbidden territory of religion. Two young, female missionaries, Amber (Durand) and Martha (Crosland) are going door-to-door, seeking souls they can save and bring into the body of their church – clearly Mormon, going by the reference to Salt Lake City among other things, though operating under a pseudonym here! While their attractive shape proves successful at getting them in the door, the residents who don’t live up to the ladies’ high moral standards are in for a shock. For the two kill non-believers, with Amber in particular, having a zero tolerance policy. And she considers herself “saved”, basically giving her a free pass to do anything necessary in the name of the Lord.

Of course, inevitably there ends up being dissension in the ranks, when they encounter Christian (Price). For while he’s agnostic – and thus on Amber’s hit-list – Martha believes he’s a good person capable of being saved. His fate drives a wedge between the two women, and Martha has to decide what her faith really means, and whether loyalty to Amber is more important than her own personal convictions. Matters aren’t helped by the presence of an obnoxious Girl Guide (Welsh), also going door-to-door, selling cookies and crossing paths with the missionaries, or the creepy behaviour of the man in charge of the church.

It’s not exactly subtle, in terms of religious satire, with everyone in their group being portrayed as either a buffoon, hypocrite or flat-out insane. It’s a bit of a dead horse being flogged there. However, for the bulk of its running time, I found this surprisingly watchable. As you can perhaps see in the picture (right) Durand projects a vibe which reminded me of Katherine Isabelle. This is exactly the sort of wild-card personality you want for the role, and you could argue Amber is someone who is 100% committed to her cause. I guess in this light, you’ve got to respect that, even if the results are… a little excessive, shall we say?

It certainly doesn’t all work. There’s a subplot about Christian’s mother showing up, which doesn’t serve any purpose I could see. I was also a bit disappointed in the resolution of the Guide story-line, which everything indicated was going to go in a different direction. I was thinking (read: hoping!) for a hellacious catfight between Amber and her nemesis; instead, what we get feels almost as if they ran out of time and/or money, so had to wrap that thread up without enough of either. Yet for the price, hard to argue this isn’t good value. While not likely to change any minds, those with a suitably jaundiced view of religion going in, will likely get a good chuckle or two from its dark humour.

Dir: Calvin Morie McCarthy
Star: Airisa Durand, Melissa Crosland, Cameron Lee Price, Laura Welsh

Braid

  By

★★½
“Uncomfortably numb”

For most films. I’ve usually got a fairly good idea of what is likely to be the final review grade, inside about 30 minutes. It may drift half a star up or down, but it’s relatively rare for there to be more variation than that. This would be one such case, which started off as underwhelming, went through a brief surge of “Oh, yeah – I get it!” in the middle, before returning to the mediocrity from whence it came. At various points, this could have been anywhere between ★½ and (although briefly) ★★★★. Well done, I guess?

It’s the story of two young women who are drug dealers: Petula (Waterhouse) and Tilda (Hay), though the former’s name is pronounced as “PET-chu-la” rather than “Pe-CHU-la. Which irritated me, for some reason. Anyway, a police raid leaves them eighty grand in the hole to their supplier. To fix this little issue, they resolve to visit and rob a strange little friend from their childhood, Daphne (Brewer). After the death of her parents, this thoroughly weird girl lives in a decrepit old mansion where there is, apparently, a safe full of cash, hidden somewhere on the property. Finding it will require Tilda and Petula to play along with Daphne’s very strange games of “Let’s pretend”. These are carried forward from their childhood days together, and the dealers will have to become Daphne’s child and a visiting doctor respectively.

As things progress, we gradually discover more about the trio’s earlier relationship. During that time, Daphne fell from a tree-house, perhaps a factor in her current idiosyncrasies, shall we say. But it also slowly becomes apparent that her guests may not be entirely stable either, especially after a cop (Cohen) comes calling at the house in search of them. The question of who is using who becomes increasingly blurred, and Daphne’s unbreakable house rules also start to look very ominous:  everyone must play, no outsiders are allowed, and nobody leaves. This is a world in which everything is uncertain, both for the characters and the viewer, and the dilapidated nature of the property reflects its owner’s grip on sanity.

At its worst, this is self-indulgent nonsense, in near-perpetual danger of vanishing up its own tree-house. At its best – probably the sequence backed by “Largo al factotum” from The Barber of Seville – it showcases some gorgeous cinematography and captures a glimpse into what experiencing being insane might feel like. The balance, unfortunately, is tilted toward the former, and it doesn’t help that there’s hardly a sympathetic angle to be found for any of the characters. I get the feeling there’s some deep symbolism intended here, such as each of the women being intended to represent aspects of a single personality, i.e. id, ego and superego. There may in reality be three girls, one or even none: perhaps the entire world in a fabrication of Daphne’s young mind after her accident. I don’t know. But, guess what? I find it kinda hard to care either.

Dir: Mitzi Peirone
Star: Madeline Brewer,  Imogen Waterhouse, Sarah Hay, Scott Cohen

A Private War

  By

★★★
“You’re never going to get to where you’re going if you acknowledge fear.”

The profession of journalist is not exactly well-regarded by many people these days. So it’s nice occasionally to be reminded that they can still potentially be action heroes, risking their own lives in pursuit of the truth. In this case, it’s Marie Colvin (Pike), a foreign correspondent for London’s Sunday Times newspaper, who lost an eye while covering the civil strife in Sri Lanka, leading to a piratical eye-patch for the rest of her career. Most people would treat that as a sign from the universe to look into a change of profession. But Colvin was made of sterner stuff, despite a hellacious case of post-traumatic stress disorder, with which she largely coped by drinking heavily. So she and photographer sidekick Paul Conroy (Dornan) continue to venture into the world’s hot-spots, whether it’s Iraq, Libya or Syria. There, they expose the terrible human cost that the conflicts have on the local population, without apparent concern for their own safety.

It’s not a spoiler to say this doesn’t end well, for Colvin was indeed killed in Homs, Syria in a January 2012 explosion. And that’s kinda the thing which both drives the narrative and irritates the heck out of me. The film opens and closes with the quote from its subject at the top. However, to counter-quote her with Arthur Conan Doyle, “It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.” As depicted here, it seems as if the journalist almost had a death-wish, spitting in the face of danger long past what was prudent or even had much purpose. There’s little or no acknowledgement by Colvin that a dead writer won’t be able to achieve much. If you don’t get out safely to tell the stories you have gathered, what’s the point? You can argue, to some extent, it’s this and her other flaws which render its heroine human.

On the other hand, I found it extraordinarily hard to relate to Marie, with her choices and subsequent actions being so entirely alien to me. She insists on getting right to the core of suffering, even if this means asking its subjects brutal questions. Is this laudable journalism? Or a close cousin to the reporters who shove microphones at victims of tragedy and ask, “How do you feel?” Director Heinemann was responsible for the very good documentary Cartel Land, but seems to struggle a bit when he has to generate the narrative, rather than just recording it. We get only fragments that hint at Colvin’s character, such as a habit of wearing expensive bras, because she declares, “If anyone’s gonna pull my corpse from a trench, I want them to be impressed.” While there’s no denying the bravery of her chosen profession, or her qualifications for this site (albeit in the unorthodox wing!), and former Bond-girl Pike is excellent, I wasn’t left with any deeper appreciation of the why, rather than the how, of her life.

Dir: Matthew Heineman
Star: Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Tom Hollander, Stanley Tucci