Tag: 2019

Warigami

  By

★★★½
“Card sharks”

This feature-length entity is the omnibus edition of a series created for Canadian streaming service, CBC Gem. Originally 10 x ten-minute episodes, they’ve been combined into one entity, though the joins are still pretty visible. It is, however, a brisk and generally entertaining work, with a good twist to the usual martial-arts shenanigans.

Wendy Ohata (Piggford) lives with her grandfather, a martial-arts master who is the guardian of a scroll that potentially will confer great power on its owner. Wendy has never been able to tap into her talents, until one day she meets Vincent (Bradbury) and his pal Mark (Julien) – while they are burgling her house. Their choice was not a random one: Vincent felt a strong pull towards the house, and it turns out he and Wendy are long-lost siblings. More significantly, when they are within 50 feet of each other, they both become kami-jin. Those are people who are able to manipulate the density of paper at will, turn it into a lethal weapon in their hands.

Unfortunately, when these talents are used, they attract the attention of the villainous Teramoto clan, who want to use the scroll to return Japan to a more pastoral state, blaming technology for the evils of modern life. Their leading agent is another kami-jin, Sadako (Suzuki). She kidnaps Wendy’s grandfather and holds him hostage, demanding the scroll for his release. Can she, along with her new-found brother and his pal, locate the Teramoto lair, and rescue Gramps?

The show got my attention with an opening scene where Sadako is detained at the airport – it doesn’t end well for the agents trying to hold her – and didn’t let go for much of the way thereafter. This does a good job of balancing between the serious and the silly, no small task given the potentially ludicrous nature of the skill at its heart. About the only moment where it descends into full-on silliness is when Vincent dons a complete outfit of samurai armour made from paper – and even there, you can only admire the effort involved from the costume department. Wendy and Sadako make for a solid yin and yang at the center of things, with both acquitting themselves well on the martial-arts front. Director Lapeyre also deserves credit for not letting their talents be obscured by frenetic editing.

There are a couple of plot moments which have questionable plausibility: both the Teramoto lair and its underground entrance are discovered way too easily. And the ending is rather obviously pointing towards a sequel, though it’s one I’d be interested in seeing, and hopefully the makers are given the chance to deliver it. For, given its origins, this was better than I expected from a web series. That’s especially true for the way the talents of the kami-jin are portrayed, which varies from okay to flat-out impressive, on occasion. I was left with a strong urge to find a pack of playing cards and start working on my wrist strength.

Dir: Jason Lapeyre
Star: Emily Piggford, Kai Bradbury, Miho Suzuki, Akiel Julien.

Boudica: Rise of the Warrior Queen

  By

★½
“Boudica: The Moping About the Forest Years”

I try and not let my expectations influence my reviews: a movie deserves to be judged on what it is, rather than what I expected it to be. A film-maker usually doesn’t get to decide, for instance, the DVD sleeve. But when you invoke the name of Boudica in your title, this creates certain requirements with regard to your content, especially when combined with the words “warrior queen.” These are requirements which this movie is utterly incapable of meeting. Technically, the word “rise” is probably the only accurate element to be found, on the cover, which certainly counts as among the most inaccurate in recent memory.

At least it is set in Britain, during the Roman occupation not long after the birth of Christ. Boudica (Peel) is scheduled to be wed to the son of another tribe, to cement their anti-Roman alliance. But virtually on the eve of the wedding, her mother, Lucilia (McTernan) spirits her away. Mom, y’see, had gone through the whole arranged marriage thing to Boud’s brutish Dad, Scavo (Pengelly), and is damned if she’s going to let her little girl suffer the same thing. Quite why Lucilia has a Roman name is never explained. Anyway, they set up home in the woods, while Scavo and the husband-to-be roam the countryside looking for them. But one day, Boudica discovers an injured warrior (Cooke) near their home.

At no point does Boudica dress in the manner depicted on the cover. There is no castle to be seen: a mud hut is about it. There appear to be thousands of extras present, when I don’t think there was a scene where the count of players reached double digits. And I’m not sure where the “epic battle scenes” allegedly experienced by the “Geek Legion of Doom” (whatever that is) are. But they would seem to be full of shit, because they ain’t in this film. What you do get, is the sure and certain knowledge that whiny teenage girls bitching continually at their mothers is not a modern invention, and was in full effect in 47 AD. Boudica, of course, falls for the warrior, about whom Lucilla has qualms, causing the daughter to fling back her mother’s words about following her heart.

This soap-opera nonsense is, apparently, what is meant by a warrior queen rising. Who knew?

Based purely on content, this probably doesn’t deserve to be here, but it is technically about one of the most-renowned women warriors in history, so I feel under an obligation. For the first hour-plus, the closest we get to seeing Boudica in action is whacking a tree with a stick [I would at least have laughed, if she’d yelled repeatedly while doing so, “Why are you hitting yourself?”] Eventually, the warrior turns out not to be who he seemed – that’s a shock – leading to about the only sequence which could even remotely be described as the “passionate fighting spirit” claimed on the cover. Though you’d still need to be squinting from the right angle, to see even that. I strongly recommend you don’t bother.

Dir: Zoe Morgan
Star: Ella Peel, Michelle McTernan, James Cooke, Simon Pengelly

Riot Girls

  By

★★
“Two girls, one gun.”

After a disease has wiped out all adults, the town of Potters Bluff has divided into two camps, delineated by the river running through the town. On the west are the Titans, a quasi-fascist order of jocks operating out of the old high school and led by Jeremy, whose motto is “Strength, power, respect.” On the east are the free-spirited remainder, living under and protected by Jack (Bourgeois). However, after hijacking the contents of a Titan truck, Jack is abducted by them and held hostage. A three-person party sets out on a rescue mission: Jack’s sister Nat (Iseman), her best friend  – and painfully obvious lesbian, right down to the mohawk – Scratch (Kwiatkowski), and Sony (Friese), a former Titan who recently defected to the East, and whose inside knowledge is essential to their survival and the success of the mission.

This provides a slightly different twist on the usual post-apocalyptic scenario, though the idea dates back at least to Roger Corman’s 1970 film Gas-s-s-s, in which a deadly gas wiped out everyone over the age of 25. Canadian show Between also explored similar territory, and the conflict-driven nature here brings us almost into Battle Royale territory. Though it’s more of a team sport than an individual pursuit, and natural division instead of artificial construct. But I have to wonder, how did Potters Bluff reach this point? What’s the back story which saw, for example, Jack and Jeremy become leaders of their factions and implacable enemies? I suspect this may have been more entertaining than what we actually get. And why is the soundtrack apparently fascinated with hair metal songs from a long bygone era? [I’m pretty sure it shares one with the 35-year-old Return of the Living Dead…]

After a bright, comic-book styled opening sequence to set the scene, at first it seems this may be building and then subverting expectations. For example, when on a foraging expedition, Scratch is delighted to come across a vibrator… But in a twist, her interest is purely for the batteries it contains. However, the further on it goes, the safer and more predictable everything seems to become. The hurdles Nat, Scratch and Sony have to overcome on their journey, are precisely the ones you’d expect (although there is one eye-poppingly brutal head-shot), and it all inevitably leads to a confrontation with Jeremy and his troops in their high-school gymnasium.

Most irritatingly, it ends up getting too bogged down in class and gender politics. The Titans are largely defined as the bad guys almost purely because they are white, straight and male. Meanwhile, it’s “diversity = good” for the Eastsiders – even if its tenets like affirmative action are a civilized conceit, which wouldn’t last two days in a proper apocalypse. Consequently, it’s absolutely no surprise Nat and Scratch end up as An Item – not minutes after the former has spurned a heterosexual advance, and while Nat’s brother is still in the clutches of his enemies. I guess, for some, the line between free love utopia and devastated dystopia is severely blurred.

Dir: Jovanka Vuckovic
Star: Paloma Kwiatkowski, Madison Iseman, Alexandre Bourgeois, Ajay Friese

Satanic Panic

  By

★★★½
“Good girls go to hell. Bad girls come from there.”

It’s the first day as a pizza delivery gal for Samantha Craft (Griffith), and things aren’t going well, with no tips being received. When given the chance of a delivery to a rich neighbourhood, she pounces – only to find herself getting stiffed again. This time, she sneaks in to demand her gratuity, which drops her in the middle of a satanic ceremony overseen by coven head, Danica Ross (Romijn). They’re attempting to summon Baphonet, but have hit a snag. Their intended vessel, Danica’s daughter Judy (Modine), no longer qualifies as a virgin, so Sam’s presence is highly convenient. For Sam? Not so much. Though perhaps to her benefit, there’s a bit of a power struggle in the coven, with Gypsy (Myrin) fed up of playing the second satanic banana to Danica.

This is largely anchored by Romijn, from the moment we see her literally up to her elbows in a dead body, groping around for its soul. You might not realize how much she matters, until a moment where it looks like she has abruptly cashed in her chips. The sense of disappointment I felt was palpable, and it was a great relief to find this was a red herring. She hits just the right spot between coolness and insanity, and is a lot of fun to watch. Modine brings the moody teenager to the max, though you can see why finding out your mother intends to sacrifice you would make you a bit grumpy. She gets some deliciously foul-mouthed lines, such as, “They’re not going to stop until you’re strapped naked to a barbed-wire altar with the 15-foot beast of Gehenna and his double-pronged demon dong walking out of your cooch chute like it’s a revolving door of ground beef.” Towards more picturesque speech, as Reader’s Digest used to say.

In comparison to this mother-daughter pairing from (literally) hell, Sam is a little bland: likeable enough, yet needs a better character arc. The Sam we see at the end feels only slightly changed from the one being shaken down for a $5 “security deposit” by her boss at the beginning. Otherwise, it’s definitely a case of the bad girls also having more fun. There are nods toward social commentary: the war here is both class-related and generational i.e. boomer vs. millennial. Much the same goes for the gender depictions, where almost without exception, all the men are incompetent idiots. Yet this is all handled lightly enough to avoid being ham-handed, and any message remains subservient to the entertainment content, as it should.

Not skimping on the red stuff, it skews strongly towards practical rather than CGI, which is always laudable in my book. It builds towards a decent finale, even if not quite delivering the killer rabbit demon god for which I was hoping. There’s still enough here to make for a cheerfully bloody time, even beyond watching Romijn wipe the floor with her younger co-stars.

Dir: Chelsea Stardust
Star: Hayley Griffith, Rebecca Romijn, Ruby Modine, Arden Myrin

The Furies

  By

★★★½
“The Most Dangerous Game (mixed doubles edition)”

There has been a whole slew of films over the year which have been based on the theme of “hunting humans”. Initially, this Australian entry seems to be going straight down the same line. Kayla (Dodds) has an argument in the street with her best friend. After the latter storms off, Kayla hears her shout for help, but while investigating, is herself abducted. She wakes to find herself in a crate in the middle of some very remote woods. She discovers other women in the same situation, and that they are being chased by beweaponed, masked men with very unpleasant intentions. The area is ring-fenced with electronic barriers which block any exit: survival is going to require Kayla to tap into her inner savage.

All of which is largely as standard, save for some eye-poppingly intense gore. This starts early on, with someone losing the front of their face to an ax. Very slowly. [It was at this point I stopped the film until Chris got home, so she and I could watch it together. Yeah: our “date nights” are a little strange!] There were similarly impressive moments throughout, with a preponderance of practical effects, of which I’m always a fan. Anyway, back at the plot, the other twist also becomes apparent, in that the masked attackers are not operating as one. Indeed, the opening sequence makes clear that them attacking each other is also part of the “game”. And, it turns out, the same goes for the supposed victims. Not for nothing are the crates which hold them and the women labelled “Beast #X” and “Beauty #Y” as appropriate… 

This is a very smart move, adding a whole skein of twists to proceedings, and giving a set-up where Kayla doesn’t know who she can trust on either side. The resulting paranoia brings so much potential for conflict, it is actually a shame the angle doesn’t really blossom until the final third. It would have been more fun, and certainly more obviously “different”, if the ground rules had been established from the beginning. Perhaps with an induction video given by a hyper-perky presenter, as in Battle Royale. There’s definitely a sense of a bigger picture here, which is only glimpsed occasionally. Knowing more about it would have made for a different, and arguably better, experience. The same goes for the technological beats, which raise more questions than they answer.

Another interesting aspect is that there is not a single speaking role for a man in the film. That’s not something you see often, especially in the horror genre. Given the first time we see the heroine, she and her friend are graffiting “FUCK PATRIARCHY” on a wall, this is presumably not accidental, though the movie never puts the message ahead of its story. While men are seen and not heard, the movie makes it clear that women are hardly saintly creatures, inevitably relegated to the role of victim. It turns out, they can be just as malevolently vicious as men. And that, I feel, is true equality at work.

Dir: Tony D’Aquino
Star: Airlie Dodds, Linda Ngo, Taylor Ferguson, Ebony Vagulans

Immortal Wars: Resurgence

  By

★★
“Let there be light!”

First, the good news. Whatever the issue was with its predecessor in the lighting department, it has been corrected. You can actually see what is going on. After spending the entire previous movie peering into murky darkness, trying to work out who was doing what and to whom, this was a blessed relied. Now, the bad news: it still falls some way short of interesting, so merits a mere half-star advance. Indeed, if anything, it’s a bit more tedious, not least because it clocks in at 112 minutes, without having anything like 112 minutes of content.

It does carry on immediately from Immortal Wars, so you might as well consider them as one single movie – watching one or the other would not provide anything close to a complete experience. Heroine Trikalypse (Gerhardy) continues her revolt against the evil Dominion Harvey (Roberts), with the help of her fellow rebel “deviants” – those who possess special powers. Apparently, this involves her escaping from Dominion’s facility… purely so she can break back into it. Not sure what that was all about. It certainly explains the expanded running time, with a lot of traipsing about, both through tunnels and across the (mercifully, well-lit!) desert, as Dominion’s henchwoman Hart (Alayne) tries to stop them.

There is no shortage of action, admittedly. It just isn’t very well-executed action, and for supposedly superpowered mutants, they seem to keep forgetting to use their superpowers much. We also discover the whole “fight to the death” thing from the first film was more true in the spirit than the actual observance, with Trikalypse’s BFF Iro not exactly as deceased as we were led to believe. Of course, as the rebels fight their way towards the inevitable confrontation between Trikalypse and Dominion, there are casualties, though it would be a stretch to say that any of them provided an emotional impact.

It’s all very predictable, such as the way that Dominion, despite his claimed aversion to deviants, has his own platoon of them. Yet, for someone who supposedly rules the entire United States, he can only apparently command a couple of dozen people. His actions also defy simple logic. If ever I become an evil overlord, and know the precise location of a group of my enemies who are coming to attack me, I will not send out a henchwoman to engage in banter and hand-to-hand combat. I’m taking off and nuking the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…

And, again: Bill Oberst is listed second in the credits, yet barely appears. [He may not appear at all, but I did genuinely doze off for a bit in the middle, so can’t be 100% sure] At least this time, Lujan does have the good grace to provide something of a satisfactory conclusion: another area in which it does improve on the first part. Overall though, the plodding nature of the core narrative largely negates these improvements, and combined with the extended duration, you’re left with something which you need to be in a highly forgiving mood to sit through.

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Eric Roberts, Ben Stobber, Camille Alayne 

Assassinaut

  By

★★
“Over-stuffed to the point of bloat”

There are some very interesting ideas here. Unfortunately, probably too many of them. As a result, the end-product feels like a half-baked collection of semi-formed thoughts – none of which are explored to the extent they deserve. It begins with an apocalypse, apparently triggered in order to stave off an alien invasion. Fast-forward a few years, and we join Sarah (Hutchinson), one of four children who are shortly to be teleported to a space station orbiting around another planet, which is the target for future habitation, and where the President of Earth now resides. Except an alien sympathizer stages an assassination attempt, leaving the children dropped onto the planet’s surface, along with the Commanfer (Trigo), who had a role in the apocalypse seen earlier. But he ends up being taken over by a parasite which turns him psychotic and he begins hunting down the children. Who need to locate the President, who also crash-landed nearby, because…

Well, I’m still not sure about that. Or about a number of other things here. For the film seems to have the attention span of a goldfish, and ends up like an elevator pitch, hurling concept after concept at you, in the apparent hope that you’ll do the work of arranging them into something coherent and interesting. Because it appears writer-director Bolduc couldn’t be bothered. There’s no shortage of imagination here. Heck, you’ve got enough here for at least a trilogy of films, possibly more, covering territory from The Terminator to David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within. And I genuinely wanted to root for Sarah, a serious-minded and likeable girl, who is thrown in at the deep end, having not only to survive on an alien planet, but also keep the other three from bickering their way to death. While the alien planet looks suspiciously like Earth,  the effects are generally decent for the budget, save for one wobbly monster earlier on – and that’s in Sarah’s imagination, so probably deserves a pass.

But you’ll be left with far too many questions for this even to approach acceptability. Why does the terrorist set his bomb with a 15-minute delay? Why does the space station only seem to have a couple of escape pods? How can an alien fish parasite effortlessly infect and control a human host? Why does it want to hunt down the kids? What’s so important about this President? Is there any relevance to Sarah’s bed-ridden mother? How does this all tie together with the pre-apocalypse footage, where the Commander appears to play a key part in triggering Armageddon? There’s an apparently wilful failure to explain what is going on, which grew increasingly wearing on me, over even the relatively brisk 83-minute running time. In this aspect, it reminded me of another recent SF film with a teenage protagonist, Prospect. The two films’ directors should combine forces: maybe they could come up with one decent story between them.

Dir: Drew Bolduc
Star: Shannon Hutchinson, Vito Trigo, Jasmina Parent, Johnathan Newport

The Fatal Raid

  By

★★★
“Back in black”

“Guess who’s back, back again. Jadey’s back, tell a friend…” Okay, that’s as close as you’re ever going to get as a rap from me. But I was genuinely delighted to see this stared Jade Leung, who was perhaps the final top-tier member of the Hong Kong Girls With Guns club. I thought she had gone the way of Cynthia Khan and Yukari Oshima, vanishing off the radar entirely. It turns out, she had been making TV series and stuff. Leung returned to big-scale movies in 2016’s Special Female Force (review coming in due course), and followed up with this. It was, apparently, originally intended as a sequel to Force, though that notion appears to have quietly been forgotten, perhaps due to SFF‘s less than stellar box-office returns.

She plays Madam Fong, who was part of a botched clandestine operation by Hong Kong police in nineties Macao, which led to several deaths. However, due to the off-book nature of the op, this means no compensation could be paid to the officers’ families. This has sat very badly with another party to the operation, Inspector Tam (Tam), over the decades since. Finally, he gets the chance to do something, as Fong, along with policewoman Alma (Ho) and Interpol agent Zi Han (Lin) are sent to Macao to protect a high-ranking Hong Kong official. They come under target from a group of drug-crazed anarchists… yet there may be more going on to this than meets the eye.

It’s all kinda okay. The action sequences are solid, starting with a stakeout which turns hyper violent, and building through some severely intense gun-battles. There is also some flippy, spinny stuff which looks like a cross between lucha libre and MMA, and is rather impressive. The problem is mostly the stuff between the action, with a plot that doesn’t really make much sense, and characters that I frequently had trouble distinguishing from each other. Admittedly, the latter may partly be a result of the story’s failure to hold my interest. By the end, I was more or less checked out, only truly paying attention when the sound of gunfire brought me back in. To the film’s credit, there was quite a lot of that, and some seriously heavy weaponry to boot.

It was quite easy to see how it could have been a sequel to Special Female Force. That similarly opened with a mission that went savagely wrong, and also had a character who was the daughter of someone killed in the incident. But it definitely has a less comedic tone, veering considerably closer to the “heroic bloodshed” sub-genre. I must confess, it did get a bonus half-star for the very last shot, which, out of nowhere, promised a potential reboot of the Black Cat franchise. I likely got considerably more excited about that, than anything else this had to offer. Still, it was just nice to see Leung again, almost regardless of quality.

Dir: Jacky Lee
Star: Jade Leung, Patrick Tam, Jeana Ho, Lin Min-chen

Ready or Not

  By

★★★
“Samara saves the day.”

When I settled in to view this, I didn’t realize it starred Weaving, who was the best thing about the very entertaining Guns Akimbo. She’s also the best thing about this, and it largely solidifies my opinion that she’s one to watch in the future. By the end of this, her character has gone through an absolute meat-grinder of punishment, and she is literally drenched in gore. It’s all a very slight work, a comedy-horror that skews heavily towards the first of its genres, and is little more than a disposable bit of fluff. But I’m a sucker for a spot of wedding-dress mayhem – see also Queen’s High and Bloody Mallory.

Weaving plays Grace, about to be married to Alex (Brody), a son from the rich Le Domas family, who made their money in cards, board games and sports teams. The wedding is taking place at their immense country mansion, with his family largely looking down their noses at Grace, believing her to be a gold-digger. Family tradition has new members pulling a card with a game on it, which they must then play. Except, Grace draws “Hide and Seek”. Which means she gets to hide, and quickly discovers that if found, she’ll be killed. This is the result of a pact with the devil made generations ago, the source of the Le Domas fortunes, which on occasion requires a sacrifice. Tonight being that occasion, and Grace being that sacrifice.

The main problem here is, the family are so inept as to pose no credible threat whatsoever. They may have the benefit of numbers, and operate on home-turf as well. Yet they are, in fact, more of a danger to each other or their (rapidly diminishing number of) servants than to Grace. In their defense, it’s not often that their sponsor demands blood, so it’s not as if they’re experienced at ritual murder. Still, is a basic degree of competence too much to ask? Instead, they spend much of the night bumbling around and/or bickering with each other, and it’s not as funny as it thinks. I will exempt Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni) from this, who has both an appropriately brutal approach and a nice line in deadpan familial snark. e.g. on being greeted by a disliked relative, she responds with, “Brown-haired niece. You continue to exist.”

I get the feeling there is some class criticism going on here, albeit at a lower level than, say, Knives Out, so that can safely be ignored. For it’s the Samara show, and whenever we are watching Grace’s beautiful wedding-dress disintegrate into a blood-drenched mess, it’s an unexpected delight, especially since Alex is next to useless. I’m not sure I’ve seen such a character arc, going from victim to bad-ass so completely, since Evil Dead II. I also did enjoy the ending, which looked like it was going to zig, before zagging in no uncertain terms. While it would have been nice to see Grace administering the startlingly messy coup de grace, I’m okay with settling for what we get.

Dir: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Star: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O’Brien, Henry Czerny

The Kitchen

  By

★★½
“Rather over-baked”

Regardless of its flaws, this does at least show that comic-book adaptations needn’t involve superheroes and Thanos snaps. This is instead a crime story, beginning towards the end of the seventies in Hell’s Kitchen, a working-class area of New York. Following a failed armed robbery, the husbands of Kathy (McCarthy), Ruby (Haddish) and Claire (Moss) are sent to jail, leaving the wives to fend for themselves. To make ends meet, the trio begin to move in on the territory of local boss Little Jackie, who has been taking money from local businesses, without delivering the promised protection. When Jackie goes after them, he is killed by the women’s ally, Gabriel (Gleeson), who begins a relationship with Claire. But the husbands’ return to Hell’s Kitchen looms on the horizon, as the women’s growing power also brings them unwelcome attention – both from the authorities and the Mafia who dominate the city.

More than slightly reminiscent of Widows, this is considerably less plausible. The area at the time was controlled by the Westies, a powerful Irish-American group, and the film gives you little or no reason to believe why they’d roll over and let a bunch of amateurs – and women at that – muscle in and take over. In reality, I strongly suspect they’d be squashed like bugs at the first collection of protection money. One woman leading a crew might be possible (see Dangerous Lady for a good example); tripling down, as the movie does, stretches credibility to breaking point. It doesn’t help that there is only one decent character arc between them. That belongs to Claire, who goes from abused wife and perpetual victim, to the group’s enforcer under the tutelage of Gabriel. One of the film’s best scenes has him giving a lesson on dismembering a body to dispose of it. Kathy can’t watch at all, and Ruby is similarly appalled; Claire is entirely fascinated. It’s clear something has been awakened inside. And her incarcerated husband isn’t going to like it much.

It’s a shame she is largely relegated to the sidelines, being the most interesting of the trio – as well as the one most suited to this site, as the poster suggests. Instead, it’s mostly the blandly uninteresting Kathy who takes centre-stage. Even Ruby would have been an improvement, her black heritage adding an element of racial tension, with her husband’s family reluctant to accept her into their bosom. We’re also asked to accept them as heroines without explanation, ignoring the inherently scummy nature of the protection racket which they operate. But they’re nice about it, so that’s okay! Then again, I’ve never bought into the “They’re just taking care of their family” excuse, especially when, as here, efforts to get gainful, legal employment are all but absent. Berloff seems to be aiming for a Scorsese-like approach, down to the use of contemporary pop songs as a commentary on proceedings. While there are worse auteurs to ape, you’ll likely be left with little more than a desire to go watch Goodfellas.

Dir: Andrea Berloff
Star: Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, Domhnall Gleeson