Tag: 2018

The Witch Files

  By

★★★
“The Breakfast Coven.”

If John Hughes directed a film about witchcraft, it’d probably end up like this. For you have five stereotypical high-school girls in detention: Brooke the rich bitch (Ziolkoski); Greta the jock (Adrienne Rose-White); M.J. the timid mouse (Robinson); Jules the goth (Flatmo); and Claire the nerd (Taylor), who isn’t actually in detention, just doing a report on it for the school TV channel. [90% of the film is the ‘found footage’ she shoots of subsequent events, a conceit for which I usually don’t have much time… and here is no different, occasionally requiring pretzel-like contrivance.] Jules mysteriously triggers the fire-alarm to get them all out early. After she reveals this no big thing was part of her witchy skills, the other four enthusiastically agree to take part in a ceremony binding them together, into a coven.

At first, it’s remarkably easy: they basically just chant whatever they want, and it shows up. Life becomes a bowl of free designer clothes and undeserved ‘A’ grades. But, inevitably, there’s a price to pay, and the young women start to find that minor physical ailments are accelerating at a highly disturbing rate. [This is nicely tied into the historical portrayal of witches as wizened crones, explained as a result of the magical energy expended] While some of the girls want to stop their dabbling in occult practices, others have become addicted to their new-found powers and refuse to stop. Given the previous binding, this is a problem. Additionally, the town’s past offers a long association with witchcraft, and a recurring pattern of strange events, taking place every seventeen years. As in almost every American high-school horror film since Carrie, this builds to a showdown at a school party.

This over-familiarity is likely the main problem, with both characters and story-line coming over decidedly as nothing you haven’t seen before. Even if you never watched Charmed or The Craft (or Swedish take on the same, The Circle), the tropes in question will be entirely recognizable, and the film offers few if any surprises. Credit is due to the actresses, however, who take their two-dimensional characters and do a good job of bringing them to life. This keeps the film rolling along, when on occasion it threatens to stall out completely. Ziolkoski probably does best, helping the audience understand the allure of mystical power, though the entire ensemble gel together nicely.

In the end though, there isn’t sufficient here to set it apart from those which have gone before. It doesn’t help that the magical battles in the final third are well beyond the capacity of the budget to depict. The optical/digital effects unfortunately mostly feel like they were copy-pasted in from an eighties Full Moon Features project. There is one nice bit of vehicular mayhem, though even there, Final Destination did it better. If you haven’t ever seen a film about teenage girls and witchcraft, you could certainly do a lot worse. But there can’t be many of you out there.

Dir: Kyle Rankin
Star: Britt Flatmo, Holly Taylor, Alice Ziolkoski, Tara Robinson

The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion

  By

★★★
“Lucy  in disguise…”

The first in an intended trilogy, this stands on its own reasonably well, balancing between tying up the loose ends and leaving the future uncertain. The heroine is Ja-Yoon (Kim), who begins by escaping from a shadowy, quasi-governmental facility as a raw eight-year-old, despite being hunted by the woman in charge, Dr. Baek (Jo) and her minions. She is found by husband and wife farmers, and they adopt Ja-Yoon, who has no apparent memory of her early life as their own. Ten years later, with Mom suffering from Alzheimer’s, and the farm struggling financially, Ja-Yoon enters a nationwide singing contest. However, the resulting attention brings her firmly back on the radar of Dr. Baek and Nobleman (Choi), the other survivor from that night a decade ago. The not-so-good doctor won’t let Ja-Yoon escape this time.

After a messy opening, which establishes Dr. Baek as someone specializing in giving no damns at all, this certainly takes its time to get going. For most of the first hour and a half, it’s mostly Ja-Yoon and perky best friend Myung-hee (Go) interacting and progressing through the competition. Though when you hear her… ah, let’s just say “startling” and leave it at that, rendition of Danny Boy, you’ll wonder if perhaps she was selected as the Korean version of William Hung. Meanwhile, the villains are hovering nearby in ways which appear so obvious and suspicious, they would be rejected as painfully unsubtle by Auric Goldfinger.

Eventually, even they realize a more direct approach is needed, i.e. Nobleman storming the farmhouse and threatening everyone Ja-Yoon cares about if she refuses to co-operate. This proves successful, and she meekly goes off to see Dr Baek at her new facility. But as the title and the cover both suggest, Ja-Yoon might be quite comfortable, coming to terms with her inner superwoman. The final 30 minutes show her to be not so meek after all. The movie certainly makes up for lost time, with a slew of well-choreographed mayhem, as our heroine goes all Lucy on the asses of everyone within reach, now she’s using more than 10% of her brain. Or maybe all Hanna? For, in many ways, this is a cross between them, with the pseudo-scientific approach of the former, and the “innocent who strikes back” of the latter.

At more than two hours in length, it would probably have benefited from being about half an hour shorter. The entire “talent show” angle could have been covered just as effectively in about five minutes. And if the bad guys has been more direct, instead of opting for lurking and dropping ominous hints, that would have been a major time-saver as well. However, the twist near the end is handled effectively, and the resulting carnage is brutal and effective. I was left with more than slight interest in the next entry. It will hopefully provide more in the action department, and less in the way of poorly-executed exposition.

Dir: Park Hoon-jung
Star: Kim Da-mi, Jo Min-su, Choi Woo-shik, Go Min-si
a.k.a. Manyeo

At Your Own Risk

  By

★★½
“Reality bites.”

This is one of those films where the making-of is probably more interesting than the movie itself. For this was made for a thousand dollars, with the shoot consisting of two cast and two crew members, filming on property belonging to the director’s parents. This is what micro-budget film-making should be about: knowing your limitation, and working within them, so they don’t appear obvious. On that basis,it is s an impressive achievement, for it looks and sounds thoroughly professional, not least in capturing the scale of the outdoor environment in which it operates. Unfortunately, it’s considerably underwritten, and even at a terse 72 minutes, there just isn’t enough going on here.

Taylor (Santos) and Angie (Boylan) are running a struggling PR firm in Las Vegas – matters not helped by the secrets each woman is keeping. However, there is hope, in the shape of a potential new customer (Schroeder). He is running a high-end adventure business which sends customers into the New Mexico desert on a geocaching treasure hunt. But before giving Taylor and Angie the contest, he wants them to go through the process as if they were customers, in order to understand it better. They agree, and head into the wilderness. However, the further they go, the clearer it becomes that not everything about this “experience” is what it seems.

The problem is that for the great bulk of the film you only have the heroines wandering around the desert, from Point A to B… to C… to D… They chat, and the secrets mentioned earlier are revealed. However, we already know about one from the opening scene, and the other is severely lacking in impact. Meanwhile, there’s not enough of an antagonist. It’s clear that they are being watched, yet the observer is thoroughly passive, and all you really have as a result, is a very mild “women vs. nature” story, without sufficient threat to make you genuinely concerned for the safety of the lead characters. Throw in a broken leg, for example, and that might have helped generate the drama and tension which, as is, the film desperately needs.

. I didn’t mind the lead performances. Both portrayals manage to feel like real people, and I wasn’t left hoping a pack of hungry coyotes showed up and ate them. Given they’re on screen for almost every scene in the movie, that’s something of a feat in itself. We eventually reach a final reveal, explaining the reasons behind what has happened, though this provoked not much more than a shrug and a “Huh,” than any shock or awe. Indeed, it’s dragged out to such a point, it feels almost as if the footage was tacked on, purely in order that the film reached feature length. While there’s enough talent here I wouldn’t be averse to seeing what the makers create in future, this remains something I wouldn’t watch on a regular basis – even if condensed to an hour less commercial breaks.

Dir: John K.D. Graham
Star: Helenna Santos, Alexandra Boylan, Jeff Schroeder

Counterfeiting in Suburbia

  By

★★½
“Fake it till you make it.”

High-schoolers Reilly (Albuquerque) and Erica (Wallace) have discovered a way to literally print money, forging hundred-dollar bills. They then use these to buy high-end fashion, and sell these ill-gotten gains on to their schoolmates for genuine cash. The more cautious Reilly wants to stop, but realizes she can do good by helping Karen (Butler), her aunt and guardian, who is in financial trouble. So when Erica is insistent they expand, Reilly goes along with it, and they use the school’s art-class resources to up their game, laundering the fake money through foreign exchange stores. However, this criminal empire comes under threat, after art teacher Tim Sylvester (MacCaull) discovers what they’re up to. Because by chance, he owes a large sum of money to some nasty people, and starts a relationship with Erica, to make sure she’ll keep working for his benefit.  Worse still, the Secret Service have been alerted to the flood of funny money, so are also investigating.

I have… questions. What made R+E get into counterfeiting to begin with? For when the film starts, they’re already printing out the Benjamins on their home printer. And where do you get the special paper? While there have been cases of people using inkjet printers for this purpose, it seems these involved wiping $5 bills, then reprinting them with higher denominations. [Googling to find this out has probably got me on a watch-list…] And while the film makes the point, especially in high-end stores, that most purchases using credit-cards means assistants are less familiar with spotting fake bills, this surely doesn’t apply to currency exchanges? As a credible piece of scripting, this ends up skipping most of the necessary check-boxes, and I doubt it’s based as much on a true story as claimed.

It’s not entirely without merit though. The underlying idea – teenagers gradually getting out of their depth, and not realizing it until they are too far in – is a decent one. The contrast between the two leads is effective as well: Erica is perpetually touting them as being like Thelma and Louise, and is unfazed when Reilly points out how that ends. There’s also a contrast in motives between the girls – though you wonder a bit why they’re friends, given their divergent natures. Reilly is entirely selfless, and is using her illicit income for what she perceives as “good” [though never quite considers the negative implications of her acts]. Erica, on the other hand, is apparently doing it for the thrill or the LOLs, and you’re never sure quite what this loose cannon might do.

By coincidence, this was watched the same weekend as Body of Sin, and the two films are similar. Both focus on two young women of disparate characters, whose decision to team up and go over the border of legality has severe consequences. Both also have severe problems in the script department. Body was perhaps better technically, but this gets the edge – simply for the sheer uselessness of the only sympathetic male character, which may arguably be more feminist than anything the women do. While some way short of great, it just about passes muster, if you’re in an undemanding Netflix mood.

Dir: Jason Bourque
Star: Larissa Albuquerque, Kayla Wallace, Sarah Butler, Matthew MacCaull

Body of Sin

  By

★★
“Diamonds are clearly not forever.”

Erica (Kriis) is an attractive con-artist, who seduces married men in hotels, then drugs and robs them, knowing they’ll never be able to report the crime. She has just brought on an apprentice, Lauren (Patrikios), to learn the dubious trade, watch her back, etc. Their next score turns out to be the jackpot. as they discover the target was carrying a stash of diamonds with a seven-figure value. Absconding with their ill-gotten gains, the pair decide to lay low for a while, and head to Erica’s hideout on the holiday destination of Isabelle Island. They’re disturbed to read news reports that the target turned up dead in the room, and it quickly appears that the owner of the diamonds is closing in on them. But who is the threat? Local policeman, Mike (McCullough), for whom Lauren has a thing? Visiting boat-owner and part-time magician Tom (Berdini), with whom Erica has a fling? Or the creepy bald guy who arrives on the island and appears to be stalking Erica?

The performer who makes the best impression here is Tybee Island in Georgia, playing the role of Isabelle Island. It seems like a very nice place to take a holiday, picturesque and relaxing. Everyone else? Not so much. In particular, you could have Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, and they’d still struggle to do anything with a script which resembles French lace, in that it’s a lightly-connected series of holes. For instance, when robbing the target, Erica first comes across an empty briefcase, before locating the diamonds in a tube, hidden in the toilet cistern. Inexplicably. she still takes the briefcase – which, of course, turns out to contain a tracking device. For the film’s entire duration, people both good and bad don’t behave in ways that make logical sense, and Creepy Bald Guy is probably the Worst Stalker Ever, though in his defense, there does turn out to be something of an explanation.

The leads are decent enough. There’s a nice contrast between the utterly cynical and untrusting Erica, who believes she’s on some kind of crusade to punish deceitful men, and the more naive and open Lauren, who gradually becomes more appalled, the more she discovers about her partner. I’d far rather have seen this angle exploited, with the two women turning from Thelma and Louise buddies, into vicious competitors, battling each other for the diamonds. Instead, they literally stand around while the (eventually revealed) good guy and villain tussle it out, mano a mano, on the edge of a convenient cliff. No prizes for guessing how that ends. The other thing is, for a film basically predicated on sexual attraction… it’s  tame stuff. Given Kriis bears some resemblance to Penelope Cruz – though she’s Indian rather than Hispanic – this was disappointing. If ever you want proof that technical competence alone is not sufficient to justify a movie’s existence, this should be Exhibit A.

Dir: The Olson Brothers
Star: Elisha Kriis, Ellie Patrikios, William Mark McCullough, Riccardo Berdini

Girls With Balls

  By

★★★★
“Guess a new domain name is needed…”

Lurking behind one of the most cringeworthy titles I’ve ever seen, and a trailer that’s not much better, is a very pleasant surprise. Well, at least if you’re a fan of the “splatstick” genre, mixing over-the-top gore and comedy: Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead is the pinnacle of that genre. I certainly am, and consequently found this a real hoot. Girls volleyball team, the Falcons, are on their way home after their latest victory, when they end up diverted into a small town, populated entirely by inbred rednecks (or the Gallic version thereof). After an encounter in the hotel, they find themselves getting a night-time visit, and are soon being hunted down by the village’s residents. However, the biggest psycho may not be among the locals…

Afonso does a great job in depicting the heroines with broad strokes. You quickly establish the egotistical star player Morgane (Azem), up and coming star Jeanne (Daviot), nerdy M.A. (Balchere), etc. They’re all overseen by their distinctly non-athletic coach (Solaro), who treats them as if they were one big, dysfunctional family. Yet these internal tensions often threaten their literal survival. It was clear to me (if not many reviewers!) that Afonso is parodying the slasher genre: he takes it to such extremes, with the girls bickering over boyfriends even as their pursuers are mere feet away. That’s where this differs from the other “women’s sports team in wilderness peril” movie – yes, it’s a genre… well, there are two – Blood Games, which took itself seriously. He does an equally nice job with the villains. For example, rather than having hunting dogs, there’s one local who pretends to be a dog, playing the sound of hounds baying over a bullhorn.

It’s just one of the many times where this film subverts the audience’s expectations, not least in having heroines with their own set of flaws. Also included there is the country-and-western singer who hitches a ride on the team’s camper van, interrupting proceedings to offer sardonic commentary on proceedings. “The players on this team were all kind of hot”, he sings at the start, going on, “Another thing they have in common, is that they die before the end.” [Is he telling the truth? I won’t say…] Inevitably, of course, there’s a rather dumb scene where the girls use volleyballs to attack their enemies, and the climax doesn’t actually stick in the mind as well as many of the scenes which preceded it. The attack chihuahua, or the headless corpse that Just. Won’t. Die.

If you took this seriously, it would potentially be thoroughly offensive – though it’s entirely equal-opportunity in its approach there. Men, women, gay or straight: no-one here gets out alive. Just, for the love of all that is holy, skip the dubbed version on Netflix, and watch it subtitled. I caught a few seconds before lunging for the remote control, and my ears may still be bleeding.

Dir: Olivier Afonso
Star: Tiphaine Daviot, Manon Azem, Louise Blachère, Victor Artus Solaro

Amazon Hot Box

  By

★★
“Neither Amazonian nor Hot.”

Is it possible for a homage to be too accurate? This could be the problem here. It’s clear that Bickert has a deep affection for the “women in prison” genre – yet, again, possibly too much so. For this is less a parody or a pastiche than a loving re-creation, and doesn’t understand that a lot of these movies… well, to be honest, they suck. Badly acted, poorly plotted, thinly-disguised excuses for porn. And that’s the good ones. If you’re going to make a homage to them, you can’t do so with the knowing winks to the camera that we get here. Because the best examples – from Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS through to the glorious Reform School Girls – played it entirely straight. You may not take them seriously: but, make no mistake, they took themselves very seriously indeed, or at least gave that impression, and played it totally straight-faced. Here, it’s more like watching WiP cosplay.

Penny (Carlisle) is arrested while on an ecological mission in the fictional “South American” country of Rattica [quotes used, since the state of Georgia is a thoroughly unconvincing stand-in for anywhere Latin] and dispatched to the prison run by evil warden Inga Von Krupp (Church, sporting an accent considerably more Russian than German, though I suspect #ThatsTheJoke). There’s the the similarly evil inmate Val (Risk), and somehow, Rattica’s newly-instituted President, Jett Bryant (Bryant), is also involved. As is Agent Six (Jordan Phipps), a secret agent sent into Rattica to… Well, I’m not quite sure what her purpose is, because it’s one of the film’s numerous, largely uninteresting threads, which Bickert fails to weave into an interesting cinematic carpet.

Part of the problem is, the film needs to figure out where it wants to focus. Initially, it seems to be on Penny, but it seems to get bored quickly of her – I can’t blame it, to be honest, she’s blandly uninteresting – and drift onto Inga and her mad scientist collaborator for a bit. Then we get zombies thrown in, because…? Inga does at least have a midget sidekick, but like most of the cast, Church desperately needs to up her energy and intensity. All the bits lifted from elsewhere, e.g. the inmate standing on an ice-block in the middle of the dinner table, can’t conceal that this is largely bereft of its own ideas, and the execution is generally too limp to succeed. Even the gratuitous female nudity is severely limited. So what’s the point?

Oh, I know what they were trying to do. I’ve seen more than my fair share of these movies, to the point it’s a running joke in our household. So it isn’t a question of not getting it. I get it. I just don’t get it, in the sense of not seeing what the aim is here. For this plays like a third-generation, washed-out VHS copy of the movies it’s emulating. Why bother with this rather lame, tame wannabe, instead of the real thing?

Dir: James Bickert
Star: Kelsey Carlisle, Ellie Church, Tristan Risk, Jett Bryant

Miss Bala (2018)

  By

★★½
“Cultural appropriation”

As the lazy joke goes, I preferred this film the first time I saw it, when it was called… Well, actually, it was called Miss Bala then too, this being a remake in (mostly) English of the Mexican movie from 2011. Its remake status probably explains why both protagonist and cartel boss antagonist are American citizens: convenient to avoid those pesky subtitles, yet it also allows the director to avoid blaming poor, downtrodden Mexico – in an interview, she pinned the drug business on “American demand, and of course, American guns.” Calling that a gross simplification is an insult to gross simplifications.

It keeps a similar structure to the original, albeit with tweaks necessary to get a Yankee involved. Rather than a beauty pageant contestant herself, Gloria (Rodriguez) is a Los Angeles make-up artist visiting her friend in Tijuana. After witnessing a nightclub shoot-out after which her friend vanishes, and making an incredibly stupid decision to tell the first cop she sees about it (really, I’ve spent one weekend in Mexico and know better than that), she ends up under the thumb of Los Estrellas, a cartel run by Lino Esparza (Córdova) – hey, also brought up in America! After unwittingly dropping off a car-bomb that blows up a DEA safe-house, Gloria also ends up under the thumb of Brian Reich (Lauria), a federal agent who makes her operate as an undercover mole inside the gang.

When Chris discovered the director of this was responsible for Twilight, she paused and then asked with a concerned expression, “They’re not going to turn into sparkly vampires, are they?” Fortunately, they don’t. Yet the adjustment in story is almost as problematic, because it seriously weakens Gloria’s motivation to comply. Rather than having her direct family be threatened, it’s just some friend and her little brother; we’re given no reason to understand her desperate willingness to do anything to save them. There’s also the sudden transformation into a heavily-armed beauty queen at the end, where one quick session of “Fire at them from the pointy end” training apparently turns her into the evening-gown clad angel of death shown in the picture.

Hardwicke even complained the film’s poor reviews were due to male critics preferring the more passive heroine of the original. Uh, no. It’s more that the 2011 version didn’t go full Peppermint – and with less justification. It was because its original heroine was atypical which made it work better. The remake manages to reproduce the flaws, while weakening the best element: depicting the futility of struggling against immensely powerful forces on both sides of the law, which really don’t care, save for how they can use you for their own purposes. Depressing, maybe; yet it had a realism this version could use, wanting instead to be both empowering wish-fulfillment and gritty narcocinema. Hardwicke should have swallowed her faux-feminist outrage, and just given us 90 minutes of Rodriguez shooting shit up in a long dress.

Dir: Catherine Hardwicke
Star: Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Matt Lauria, Ricardo Abarca

What Keeps You Alive

  By

★★★★
“Predatory lesbian.”

In the modern, politically-correct era, it’s less common to see a film which has a sexual minority as an unabashed villain. Something like Basic Instinct got a lot of flak at the time, and would likely be rejected out of hand by gay-friendly Hollywood these days, as would Silence of the Lambs. So it was kinda refreshing to see a movie which brings us an unashamedly psycho lesbo in the form of Jackie (Anderson). Yet it’s not her sexuality which makes her evil, though she does feel she was “born this way” – or, as Jackie puts it: “It’s nature, not nurture.”

Certainly, the warning signs are there early, when she and her wife Jules (Allen) go for a first anniversary weekend in Jackie’s remote family cabin by a lake. Strike one: we rapidly discover Jackie is a fake name, something she hadn’t told her other half. Strike two: singing a song to Jules with lyrics like “There’s a demon inside / Blood, let it out.” Strike three: telling a story about a childhood hunting trip and a deer, ending in the line, “I just stood over it for the next 20 minutes and I watched the life slowly fade from her eyes.” If you’re not hearing alarm bells ringing loudly, you’ve clearly not seen enough movies. Jules, blinded by love, is about the only one apparently oblivious to the foreshadowing.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t stretch this out [the trailer, below, is similarly open about the dynamic here], and it’s not too long before Jules is propelled off a cliff to her apparent doom. Except, by the time Jackie meanders down to the foot, ready for a tearful call to the authorities, the body has gone. The fall wasn’t as fatal as intended, and the rest of the film plays like a two-person version of Revenge, with Jules deciding, “I’m not going to let you do it again.” For did we mention Jackie’s first wife? Or the childhood friend who ‘drowned’ in the lake? Because she certainly does…

Almost inevitably for the genre, some suspension of disbelief is needed here. The injuries suffered by Jules in the initial fall are all but forgotten by the end, and there’s other foreshadowing which seems less than subtle, such as the very obvious gun hanging on a wall And was Jules a failed medical student? There’s one line of dialogue hinting towards that, and it would go some way to explaining a number of things. Couldn’t it perhaps have been made clearer?

Yet these are minor issues, which certainly did not impact my sheer enjoyment of this very much. There are two excellent lead performances, in addition to solid work by Minihan, which cranks up the tension impeccably – a rowing race across the lake is a particular highlight. It all makes for a sharp improvement on the director’s previous feature, It Stains the Sands Red – which also starred Allen and put her character in similarly perpetual peril – and is a fine example of a B-movie that punches above its weight.

Dir: Colin Minihan
Star: Hannah Emily Anderson, Brittany Allen, Martha MacIsaac, Joey Klein

In Darkness

  By

★★½
“Hard to see the appeal.”

I literally had to check at the end of this, to see if M. Night Shyamalan had been involved. Because rarely since the likes of Signs – or, worse still, The Village – has a final twist so completely derailed a movie. As soon as it happened here, I was immediately listing off the scenes previously which now made absolutely no sense at all. While it’s hard to provide more information without massive spoilerage, it turned a film which was doing not badly, into one which is a poster-child for poorly-conceived ideas.

Sofia (Dormer, who also co-wrote the script with the director) is a blind piano player, living in a London apartment. One night, she hears an argument in the flat above, and its occupant plummeting to her death. Turns out the victim was the daughter of an accused Bosnian war-criminal, Radic (Bijvoet), a man with a murky past and present, whose asylum status is being challenged. The hunt is then on for a USB drive containing incriminating evidence of Radic’s business dealings, with a brother and sister pair of “security consultants”, Marc and Alex, (Skrein + Richardson) heading the chase. Mark saves Sofia from Radic’s thugs, who believe she knows the location of the USB drive. But what is their agenda – and what is Sofia’s? For, as gradually becomes clear, her presence in the affair may be considerably more than coincidental.

This starts off impressively enough, taking you into the world of a blind person living in one of the world’s biggest cities, with some particularly effective sound design. The script is very cautious with its release of information, depicting things that aren’t necessarily explained for some time. Who is sending Sofia notes in braille, that she burns after reading? Or what is the significance of her tattoos, which are not what you’d expect from a classical musician. It’s all quite intriguing, We’re deep into the film before her motives become clear, and it may be too late. For by that stage, we’re already passed the point where people are acting in ways necessary to the plot, rather than that make sense to the viewer.

It feels as if Dormer saw one too many of those awesome Korean revenge films, and decided she wanted to make one while on vacation from Game of Thrones [She, Skrein and James Cosmo, who plays Sofia’s mentor, have all appeared in that show]. She just apparently forgot, those inevitably possess a razor-edged script, in which what drives a character is always kept front and centre. Here, by the time you are given sufficient reason to care about Sofia, you have already waded through too many scenes that are dead weight. Sometimes, this is because you don’t have the necessary information yet; in others, it’s just because the makers thought they were needed. None of which excuses the revelation in the last shot; it’s been while since I’ve come as close to throwing something (remote control, coffee table, dog) at the TV set.

Dir: Anthony Byrne
Star: Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein, Joely Richardson, Jan Bijvoet