Tag: 2020

Av: The Hunt

  By

★½
“Puts the turkey in Turkish cinema”

The palpable sense of disappointment I felt when the end credits rolled, was all the more striking, given the decent way this opened. Ayse (Koç) is enjoying a shower after some afternoon delight with her lover, when there’s a thunderous knocking on the door. It’s her thoroughly disgruntled ex-husband. In the resulting fracas, the boyfriend is shot dead, and Ayse has to leap out of a window, and go on the run. Friends and family disown her, as the ancient concept of the honour killing still holds sway in contemporary Turkey. She can’t even go to the authorities, since the ex-husband is a policeman. 

Ayse attempts to head to the big city of Istanbul, more secular and offering a chance to hide out. This plan is derailed when a routine traffic stop leads to her capture. She manages to steal a police car, thanks to the cops underestimating her – you’ll find that is a bit of a theme. However, it crashes in fog and she’s forced on the run again, this time into the wilderness of the forest. She is pursued there by her former husband and various relatives, including a teenage cousin. They feel, to varying degrees that her actions have brought shame upon their family, and that she must pay for that, with her blood. Ayse, has other plans, especially after she wrests a weapon from one of the hunters. 

It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen quite often before: a woman being chased through the wilderness, before turning the tables on them. When done properly, it can be highly effective. Examples of the proper execution – pun intended – would include Revenge or Arisaka. This, on the other hand, manages to get just about everything wrong. Part of it may be down to an overseas audience not being aware of the honour concepts, something the makers here don’t bother to explain. That’s forgivable. After all, it wasn’t made for us. But there are any number of other flaws, such as the ease with which she can best everyone in hand-to-hand combat. Or the lengthy, almost entirely pointless scene where Ayse tries to bribe a bus-driver to take her to Istanbul. 

These pale entirely beside the ending, which is solely responsible for losing the film an entire star. For, in general, it looks decent, with some impressive cinematography, such as the drone shot that follows Ayse as she’s fleeing the apartment, and pans up to reveal the city. Despite its flaws, we were probably looking at ★★½. And then, we weren’t. I do not know what the director was trying to say with the ending. If I had to guess, something like “I have no idea how to wrap things up, and frankly, am getting bored with the entire endeavour, so I’m just going to roll the credits.” Almost makes me want to recommend watching this, purely for how bad the finish is. There’s certainly not much else to justify the experience. 

Dir: Emre Akay
Star: Billur Melis Koç, Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Yagiz Can Konyali, Adam Bay

A Certain Scientific Railgun – T

  By

★★★
“Third time’s the charm?”

A lot has happened in the Certain Scientific universe since the second season of Railgun. There had been an OVA movie, which I won’t review here; it is less a Mikoto Misaka story, than a team effort across the different shows, with Index, Railgun and Accelerator working together to solve a case that was too big for any one of them alone. Mother show Index had a third season, whose story played in Russia, introduced an evil Misaka clone called “Misaka Worst” and dealt with the prevention of World War III. The villain of Railgun‘s second season, Accelerator, had become an unlikely anti-hero, now working on the side of the angels – though still nasty in his usual way. He had gained a sidekick, in the form of an underage Misaka Mikoto clone. Finally, our heroines also got a third season.

All of this, except the OVA, happened within one year! Obviously, this big universe  – dare I compare it now to the size of the Star Trek universe? – had attracted more and more interest and fans over the years, so creating studio J.C. Staff decided to come back and produce more. After all, the anime business is exactly that, a business, and like any other depends on its sales. With Kazuma Kamachi, the series creator, constantly tossing out new volumes there was no lack of new material. And after watching the new seasons, including the third season of Railgun, I can come to two main conclusions.

Firstly, I love this universe. I got so accustomed to it, its characters, their behaviour, the story-lines and so on, that I will always be here when new animated content for them comes out. Though I must confess, I have only made it through the end of the 7th volume of the Railgun manga. I haven’t much time on my hands, sorry! Secondly, while I love the anime series (and will always recommend the other shows to those who liked this), probably nothing will ever beat the “sisters arc” of Railgun – S. I’m sorry, but all the other story-arcs, as good as they may be, never come close to the emotional impact this specific story-line had on me.

That said, season T is still very good, manages to raise the stakes and is recommended entertainment, if you like this kind of anime show. Once again, new characters are being introduced, though quite a number of episodes were, to me, wasted on a story-arc that was not that interesting. It was a similar feeling I had when watching the “Febri story arc” of Railgun – S. In the end A Certain Scientific Railgun stays a mixed bag – although I would also say that about many shows, e. g. The X-Files. Naturally, your mileage may vary: you may like or love some aspects or episodes of a show and not be so interested in others, then someone else may see it totally differently. That said, let’s go in media res, shall we?

The first new arc deals with the “Daihasei” festival in Academy City – essentially a sports event, where the different schools compete with each other. Nice to look at, also very funny, but hardly life-threatening. Or so you may think in the beginning: these stories have a tendency to develop from harmless to world-endangering. For the kidnapping of one of the Misaka clones, as well as Saten investigating an urban legend, as she did in previous seasons, lead to something much bigger than anyone could have predicted. Newcomers to the series, include Shokuhou Misaki, another of those rare level 5-espers, who can control people and read their minds with the help of something that looks like a TV set. She seems to have a personal beef with Mikoto. Also new is Sogiita Gunha, whose special power is that “he has guts”; this may not sound much, yet he does some impressive things with it.

In the background, people are pulling strings, since obviously this event serves as a showcase for espers. The powers that be have realized, given the events of the previous two seasons, that espers aren’t as easily controlled and exploited as they hoped. As we know, Academy City is kind of a proving ground for these dark scientific forces. This all turns out to be a trap for our favourite railgun by evil scientist Gensei Kihara. This unscrupulous scientist seems to have been heavily involved in – or maybe even the catalyst for – the experiments that endangered the students of Academy City and our heroes in season one and two. But this is the first time he appears in person. With all his knowledge and abilities accumulated from his “test subjects” he is indeed a formidable threat.

His actions are directed against Mikoto, forcing her to become a “level 6”, something only one level 5-esper  – presumably Accelerator – would be able to maintain in stable form. It would cause the person that Misaka Mikoto is, to dissolve and vanish – but not before blowing Academy City to kingdom come. Our heroine finds herself helpless, and in order to be saved needs all her friends. That’s one of the things I love about the show: it’s generally a team effort. Even when you have a story arc like Railgun S, when Mikoto thought she had to do it all alone, she realizes it is good to have a little help. Everybody contributes according to his or her abilities to the bigger whole. Okay, Accelerator is absent, but he was probably too busy starring in his own spin-off series, A Certain Scientific Accelerator. And they are all so damn noble:

  • Touma, who never hesitates to put his life on the line for everyone, but especially for Mikoto,
  • Kuroko, who comes out of her wheelchair to fight a dangerous hench-girl
  • Mitori Kouzaku, who can create some kind of “evil clay doll” versions of herself and works for Gensei Kihara
  • Kongou, who ends up in hospital for helping Mikoto, and has become a cool, noble character compared to the arrogant school princess who arrived in season one
  • Shohuko Misuki, who almost loses her life – though less for Mikoto than saving the entire city.
  • Sogiita, who is such a cool, sympathetic hero, giving all he can. If he starts to bleed… well, he realizes he “just has to put some more guts into it”!

What results is a “three-front war” with all those different protagonists fighting to prevent the Gensei Kihara’s mad-cap evil plan. Saving the world – and Misaka – is not a simple thing, and as seems to have become a tradition for the series, after such an almost “overkill” arc, the next story it delivers is inevitably less interesting. It can’t hope to compete with what has happened before, though I personally have made my peace with this. After all the excitement, you can use something to calm you down. Unfortunately, those episodes feel like a chore for me as they come across like lacklustre time fillers. Again: I guess you have to eat the vegetables, too, after you had your T-bone steak!

Time is spent on the “Dreamranker” Indian Poker game cards arc. When put on your forehead, these can make you relive the dream whoever made the card has dreamed before. While the concept itself is interesting, not enough is done with it. After having saved Mikoto from becoming a level 6, this is just “nice”, and a little bland. For example, an entire episode is wasted on Mikoto and another girl seeking a card that is said to be “the bust-upper” –  that is supposed to do what the name suggests. Though, the story takes a curve (as it were!) with a mysterious girl Kuriby Ryouko making a human-looking machine to help her sick mother. It results in a clash not only between the girl and her machine, who wants to take over her life, but also Mikoto and a girl-gang called “Scavenger”. In the end it’s up for our favourite railgun again, to battle against the over-powerful android that threatens to destroy Academy City.

While the finale is again visually fulfilling and full of action, it can’t quite match up to the first story-arc. But then, Mikoto was more the victim of circumstances there, who had to be saved by her friends. In the second, it’s her fighting her own battles again. The last episode feels again like treading water after the big battle. So we get the usual “girly stuff” like villainesses undressing each other (face it, the show is not above the usual titillation!), girls lying in hospital, and the usual confusion with Kongou meeting one of the Misaka clones.

Overall, you leave the third season with a satisfied feeling of having had another good meal. You know what you came for, and you got it. I can’t watch the ending without being slightly touched, and feeling it was already a small miracle the show would come back after all those years. Now it’s over – or at least, in another hiatus until the powers that be decide the time is right for a fourth season. Until then, I  agree with Mikoto and her friends, when the show’s catchphrase is delivered: “There never is a dull moment in this city!” And they’re right; there certainly never is!

Dir: Tatsuyuki Nagai and others
Star (voice): Rina Satō, Satomi Arai, Aki Toyosaki, Kanae Itō

Guilt

  By

★★½
“Guilty of being kinda dull…”

This starts off strong, with an attention grabbing scene where a woman gets a visit from a plumber. She offers him a glass of water, and… Things do not go as expected. For the woman is Jessie (Shay), a psychiatrist on a mission. She has made it her purpose in life to punish paedophiles whom she feels have been too lightly punished by the law. The man is one such, and it does not end well for him. Specifically, he is stabbed, and buried in a shallow grave, deep in the Australian outback. Safe to say the film has got my attention. Unfortunately, it’s more or less downhill all the way from here.

The main problem is probably the script, which fails to build on this dramatic opening. For example, shortly after, we see a policewoman, Detective Swan (McKenzie) puzzling over the unexplained disappearances of a number of paedophiles, and it appears to be setting up a cat-and-mouse hunt. Except, she all but vanishes for the next hour, only reappearing significantly at the end. There’s also Jessie’s relationship with her younger sister. Or the hint that some kind of PTSD is responsible for Jessie’s vigilante activity – either connected to her own childhood, or perhaps her experiences in the military, where she served in the Middle East. None of these elements ever come together, feeling more like loose ends than coherent parts of the story.

Instead, she eventually kidnaps Grace (Flowers), a woman who helped her boyfriend to traffic in young children, but who claimed to be abused by him, and so was considered a victim as well. Similarly, if properly developed, this could have been a good source of tension. Was she actually an accomplice, just playing the abuse card? Again, the script seems almost to get bored with itself and drifts away to Vigilante Movie Cliche #45, where Jessie discovers that one of her previous victims was actually innocent. This triggers an existential crisis in Jessie, and she carelessly leaves her thoroughly incriminating diary for the receptionist at work to find, giving Detective Swan the break in her case she needs. Yeah, you’ll understand why I rolled my eyes a bit at that.

I did appreciate the effort to be nuanced. Given the topic of avenging angel versus child molesters, it would have been very easy to become a one-sided and shrill polemic (we’ve seen those in the past). Here, there’s a bit more subtlety, acknowledging that everything isn’t necessarily black and white. It’s also very female-centred, with almost all the significant roles going to women, and the individual performances are decent or better. But the lack of a compelling narrative sinks this ship, with it left feeling like a series of largely unconnected strands. Perhaps if we’d been brought along on Jessie’s journey, and saw how she became a vigilante, it might have been different? As is, there’s not even much resolution, and we are simply 95 minutes later in the day.

Dir: Karl Jenner, Lyndsay Sarah
Star: Janet Shay, Hayley Flowers, Mikaela, Franco, Kirsty McKenzie

Blondie Maxwell Never Loses

  By

★★★
“Miss-nority report”

This French film takes place a little way into the future, though society has undergone radical changes. Law enforcement is now privatized, with investigations contracted out to private investigators, who have to balance their costs in order to turn a profit on the cases they accept. One such PI is Blondie Maxwell (Langlart) – and to get the obvious out of the way first, no, she is not blonde It’s mentioned once, but never explained. She is currently on the trail of the terrorist Boloch, who has been mounting a campaign against Chronos Industry, the all-encompassing tech company, which is invested in almost every area of everyday life. The reward would go a long way to solving her perilous financial situation.

She gets a case to investigate the murder of an escort. It seems an open-and-shut case with the evidence squarely pointing at a journalist. However, something doesn’t sit right with Blondie, and the more she picks at the crime, the more it seems a set-up job. Even her getting the case seems suspicious, since authorities know she doesn’t have the resources to investigate it properly. The journalist claims the victim was actually his source, who was going to blow the lid of Chronos, not least a “dark” area of their network where murder for hire is bought and sold. Is he telling the truth, and what does this have to do with Boloch and his campaign?

As the tag-line above implies, this bears a significant resemblance to Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, with its tale of law and order run by technology. which someone on the inside gradually comes to realize isn’t as idyllic as it seems. This is rather less nuanced. At one point, a colleague of Blondie says, “Our job is to make the world safer. If that means sacrificing a little liberty, it works for me. It works for us all. It’s a choice we make as a society.” However, it’s clear Ivanowich’s sympathies are more aligned with Benjamin Franklin. This is very much a pre-liberty screed, though credit for being at least somewhat ahead of the curve with its concerns about artificial intelligence, an issue of increasing scrutiny in 2023.

Unlike Minority Report, it doesn’t have the budget to create a fully-fledged future society. This one looks like ours in almost every way, just with a few added bits of gadgetry, such as displays embedded into contact lenses. Maxwell’s main trait is her dogged determination to find out the truth, regardless of the personal cost, and she makes for an admirable heroine. As played by Langlart, she’s down to earth, though there were points where it seemed like the script had all but forgotten about Blondie. Either Ivanowich fell too much in love with the setting. or the story might have benefited from fewer characters and a sharper focus. Definitely not terrible though, and a good example of what can be done with imagination instead of budget.

Dir: Julien Ivanowich
Star: Léonie Langlart, Stéphane Dufourcq, Vincent Terrier, Boris de la Higuera

Meander

  By

★★½
“Tunnels of love.”

I guess, if you want to watch a woman crawling along a series of ducts for an hour and a half, this is the film for you. I’m afraid it’s just not a particular fetish I share, so the appeal of this is largely lost to me. Lisa (Weiss) lost her daughter in a tragic accident and has been plagued by guilt ever since. She wants to end it all, and to that end, is lying in the middle of the road, when she is convinced to accept a lift from passing drive, Adam (Franzén). Except, he turns out to be a roaming serial killer, who knocks her out. This is where it gets weird, since she recovers consciousness to find herself in a twisty little maze of passages, all alike.

They’re not quite all alike, to be honest. For they contain a series of traps, which have the potential to crush, burn or simply dissolve Lisa, as she makes her way through them, towards an uncertain resolution. She also encounters Adam, who appears to have been in the maze for even longer, and is no less of a threat than he was in the outside world. All this is, from a technical point of view, quite well handled. Indeed, considering the general lack of content, it is better than it might sound. However, the further into it I went, the more I had an increasing feeling that the story was not going to be able to stick the landing,

That certainly proves the case, with an abrupt resolution that is not much less contrived than “It was all a dream.” Oh, I guess it’s kinda clear what Turi is going for in general, though the specifics are vague, and some elements (like the apparent alien abduction elements) don’t mesh well with the intent. Let’s just say, it’s never a good sign when you Google the film, and the first suggestion in the “People also ask” section is, “What is Meander movie all about?” It’s fairly clear that Turi is using the genre as a metaphor for guilt; he has just buried the details too deeply for them to be of any use to the average viewer. 

In one interview, the director said, “There are clues in the movie, some of them so well hidden that I think no one will ever find them.” This begs the question: what is the freaking point, beyond allowing him to feel smug? It does seem part of a recent trend by horror film-makers to use the genre as a tool to address psychological or social issues. This is fine, until it interferes with and becomes more important than the story itself. When the message becomes the medium, you’ve crossed a line and it’s difficult to recover thereafter. Until the very end, I was hoping Turi was going to be able to pull back. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and you’re left with a film where only the last five minutes truly matter.

Dir: Mathieu Turi
Star: Gaia Weiss, Peter Franzén, Romane Libert, Frédéric Franchitti

The Kill List

  By

★★★½
“Dressed to kill.”

For a TV movie, this is very impressive. When you hear that phrase, I usually think of something which appears on Lifetime or, worse still, Hallmark. But it seems that Thai television is made of sterner stuff. This plays much tougher, more like something you might see on AMC or FX. The story may not be particularly original, but it’s done with enough style and energy to make for more than passable entertainment The heroine is Angie (Rittapinun), an orphan who was brought up by her uncle and trained as an assassin. Her latest mission involves the retrieval of a data chip which contains a list of all the members in the organization of which she’s part. In the wrong hands, it could be disastrous.

Except the mission goes wrong, and the chip ends up in the hands of a hooker, Nina (Pitaktrairong), whom Angie let live because she was reminded of her sister, not seen since the day their parents were killed. This gets Angie disavowed by the organization, and they send further killers after her. Meanwhile, detective Sam (Asavanond) is hot on the trail of Angie for all the corpses left in her wake. Policeman and hitwoman are – probably inevitably – forced to team up, because the conspiracy behind things has tentacles considerably closer to home than is comfortable for either of them. It all leads to a confrontation where the truth about Angie’s bloody childhood is revealed.

Yeah, there’s not a lot here which you won’t have seen done before. It seems to be inspired mostly by Hong Kong movies like Naked Weapon, and that’s certainly not a bad place from which to start. It is refreshingly free of romance: I kept expecting Sam and Angie to fall for each other, but their relationship is kept strictly professional. [Sam, instead, is heavily crushed on by a policewoman at the station] I was a little disappointed that the film does not follow through on the bleak tone for which it appeared to be heading. Too many people who are supposed to be dead, turn out not to be, though there is at least one fairly unexpected fatality.

The action isn’t bad, even if I was amused by the Imperial Stormtrooper level of marksmanship displayed, as a way of getting round the whole pesky firearms problem. Rittapinun snaps off some nice kicks, making an especially good first impression with some high-heeled kung-fu, aided by enthusiastic stuntwork from those she’s fighting. While there does appear to be some doubling for the more gymnastic moments, it’s done well enough to pass muster. An occasionally over-melodramatic moment or two don’t harm proceedings too badly either, and the makers keep things moving along at a brisk pace, with few pauses of excessive length. I found the performances hit their mark, even if there’s nothing particularly novel about the characters: cop who gets 48 hours to solve the case, troubled assassin with a heart of gold, etc. This is still pretty serviceable and I enjoyed it – though after Ninja: Prophecy of Death, anything would seem an upgrade.

Dir: Chalerm Wongpim
Star: Thikumporn Rittapinun, Sarawut Mardthong, Netchanok Pitaktrairong, David Asavanond

Run

  By

★★★½
“Meals on wheels.”

The title here is used ironically, because “run” is the last thing the heroine can do. She is Chloe Sherman (Allen), a teenage girl who has been plagued by medical issues since birth, requiring full-time care from her mother, Diane (Paulson). She’s partially paralyzed, unable to walk, and also suffers from severe asthma. Chloe is, however, awaiting the result of her college application, and is eagerly looking forward to starting a new, independent life, having been home-schooled by Mom, who is the very definition of a helicopter parent. One day, Chloe discovers some of her medication is in her mother’s name, and gradually discovers more evidence that something is very wrong with Diane. If her suspicions are right, the bigger question is, what can Chloe do about it?

This feels like it might have been a COVID-19 project, filmed during the pandemic. There is a limited cast, and the action mostly takes place in the Sherman house. That isn’t actually the case – it was filmed before that, though it’s planned theatrical release was cancelled due to the outbreak, and it ended up becoming a Hulu Original. As such, it plays quite well, with an enjoyably ludicrous approach that, on occasion, makes it resemble a Lifetime TVM. Albeit one that somehow ended up being made by proper film-makers, with a real cast and actual production values. For a smart madwoman, Diane is remarkably stupid. I mean, flat-out Googling “household neurotoxins” – not even bothering with an incognito window – is just silly.

The same goes for Chloe, who swings from whip-smart to panicky and useless, at the drop of some animal medication. I mean, there’s a phone in the house. Dial 911 and be done with it. However, I found it fairly easy to put such logical thoughts to one side, and just enjoy this for its pot-boilery goodness. Paulson is very good at this kind of role. I mean, there’s a reason nobody has appeared in more seasons of American Horror Story than her. Allen is solid too. Interestingly, she does actually use a wheelchair, which gives scenes like her crawling across the roof, to escape after being locked in her room, an additional intensity. She doesn’t seem to have appeared in any films since, which is a shame.

It’s sequences like that which merit its inclusion here, though we have covered similar territory previously with Wait Until Dark. The more hysterical tone in this case, means its closest cousin is probably something like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, a similar two-hander in which a controlling partner seeks to manipulate a relative. This is more physical than the mental gaslighting in Jane, with Diane realizing that she needs to control Chloe’s body first, in order to control her mind. Conversely, Chloe needs to liberate herself physically first. It’s all rather more nuanced than it initially appears, though works well enough on just a surface level too. It’s certainly a very different take on maternal love.

Dir: Aneesh Chaganty
Star: Kiera Allen, Sarah Paulson

Inmate Zero

  By

★★½
“Death sentence.”

Zombies and jail aren’t quite as new an idea as you might think. The Walking Dead had a major arc which took place at a prison, the facility’s fences now more useful for keeping things out than in. And back in 2005, The Asylum released the (surprisingly decent) Dead Men Walking, about a zombie outbreak at a maximum security jail. But this is, as far as I know, the first to combine zombies with the women-in-prison genre. Admittedly, it skews considerably more toward the former. However, there’s no denying its place on this site, with its heroine being ex-Special Forces soldier Stone (Chanliau), now held in a black site in the North Atlantic.

She’s there because she allegedly killed a US Senator and his family, whom she was supposed to be bodyguarding. While there is rather more to that story than this, it doesn’t particularly matter. What matters is that she’s now on death row in the women’s wing, awaiting execution. After being attacked by another inmate, she’s moved to the prison infirmary, where she’s joined on the ward by someone from a different area, where dubious medical experiments are being carried out. That person then dies. If you noticed the Z-word in the first paragraph, you will be utterly unsurprised to hear they do not stay that way, and it’s not long before being behind bars is probably the safest place to be, for both prisoners and guards.

On the plus side, you have the advantage of the occupants largely being the hardest of hardened or vicious criminals. These are people for whom human life is cheap, and so the action required to survive are not something over which much sleep will be lost. The brutality is well up to the standard you’d expect for the genre, and the effects seem mostly of the practical kind, which I always prefer over CGI. It’s a solid enough location, offering no easy way out, with the authorities hovering, and ready to wipe everyone out (as in Return of the Living Dead) should it prove necessary. The minor pieces are this in place for a decent enough entry, albeit one which missed the sell-by date on the zombie craze by most of a decade.

The problems, however, are in… well, just about everywhere else. The script is a series of cliches, joined with dialogue where cliched would probably be an improvement. The characters never get past stereotypes, whether its sympathetic guard Brooks (McGinley), queen bee Butcher (Joseph) or cowardly warden Crowe (Garda). The zombies probably show more depth, and their actions are largely limited to shrieking and gnawing on faces. The further into this you get, the more apparent it becomes that imagination stopped at the overall scenario, and does not extend to constructing interesting roles or giving them lines which could credibly be spoken by actual people. Been a while since I’ve seen a film with such a gap between the technical elements and the artistic ones.

Dir: Russell Owen
Star: Jess Chanliau, Philip McGinley, Jennifer Joseph, Jane Garda
a.k.a. Patients of a Saint

Run Sweetheart Run

  By

★★★
“/snorts in Lola”

If I were Ella Balinska, I’d be having a word with my agent. After seeing her major Hollywood career begin with the embarrassing failure of the Charlie’s Angels reboot, she then followed up with an even more dismal flop, the attempted reboot by Netflix of Resident Evil. Now there’s this, which eventually seeped out on Amazon Prime, in a re-cut form, almost three years after premiering at Sundance. This either doubles down on the loony feminist claptrap of Angels, or is a deadpan parody of that kind of nonsense. For the sake of my sanity, and for humanity in general  I’m going to presume it’s the latter, and the grade above reflects this. If it was intended as serious social commentary, slice the grade in half, and God help us all.

Cherie (Balinska) is a wannabe lawyer, toiling away in a Los Angeles legal firm, and suffering all the slings and arrows the patriarchy can hurl at a single black mother. In particular, her boss (Gregg) asks her to stand in for him and take a client, Ethan (Asbæk). out to dinner. He’s handsome, charming… and a demonic entity of some kind, who then proceeds to hunt Cherie through the LA night, after telling her, she’ll be free if she can last till dawn. Turns out she’s far from his first victim, and Cherie’s only hope of help is a mysterious woman called the First Lady (an effortlessly movie-stealing Aghdashloo), who knows a thing or two…

It’s a perfectly fine premise, and as well as Aghdashloo, Asbæk also seems to be in on the joke, over-acting enthusiastically and to good effect. There are moments when this is supremely self-aware, such as when Ethan follows Cassie into his house, then turns and gestures to stop the camera from following. Or the 72-point font exhortations to “RUN!” splattered on the screen at appropriate moments. Yet it feels as if Feste doesn’t understand the genre in which she’s operating. Horror is about confronting fears head-on (albeit in a safe environment), not avoiding them. By pointing the camera away, she’s missing the point. For instance, when Ethan reveals his true form, all we see is Cassie’s reaction, and Balinaka’s pulling of faces is nowhere near a good enough performance to sell it. 

Despite what I said above, unfortunately, it does appear the film intends its feminist message to be taken seriously, and at times this drowns the entertaining elements in cringe. Peak levels are reached after Cherie is rescued from an obnoxious alpha male at a party by three sisters, who unironically spout nonsense like, “We desperately need the female brain.” The whole movie is spattered with badly-written dialogue and action along similar lines, rather than letting its meaning flow naturally from events as they happen. Such moments derail what was a promising B-movie. Indeed, if it had been more Ethan vs. First Lady, with Cassie reduced to the annoying footnote she deserves to be, it could potentially have been a classic.

Dir: Shana Feste
Star: Ella Balinska, Pilou Asbæk, Clark Gregg, Shohreh Aghdashloo

I’m Your Woman

  By

★★★★
“Taking action”

Hearing that James Gunn, new head of the DC movie department at Warners, just recently announced David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan as the new actors to play Superman and Lois Lane in the next “Superman”-movie, I felt the need to find out more about these new actors. For Brosnahan I chose the movie I’m Your Woman, an Amazon Prime production from 2020. For one thing, she played the main role, and secondly a two-hour movie is much quicker to watch than a series like The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel. Sure, for that series she got two Golden Globes, one Emmy and two Screen Actors Guild Awards – but my time is a bit limited. Also, I prefer gangster movies over a dramedy show.

I’m Your Woman takes place in the 1970s. Although a year is never specifically mentioned, the dresses, suits, hair styles and the ugly interior design speak for themselves. Jean (Brosnahan) plays the wife of gangster Eddie (Bill Heck). She knows that he’s a gangster but not what he exactly does. In material terms, while there is everything that she could wish for, she is obviously unfulfilled, as she would have liked to have a child – but it didn’t work out. A big change in her life happens when Eddie one day brings home a baby, declaring that it is now theirs. Jean is more than a little over-burdened with the new task, for taking care of anything or anyone, least of all a baby, is something she never had to do.

Very soon her life changes even more dramatically, when one night Eddie doesn’t come home. Instead, she is given a large amount of money and told to go with Cal (Kene), a friend of Eddie’s. She is not told what has happened, so her subsequent escape and isolation in a foreign house remains a mystery to her for quite some time.  As one can probably already guess from the above, the movie is not excessively an action movie with a whole lot of bang-bang. That said, it nevertheless earns its place in the “girls with guns” category, even if this element shows up quite late in the game. For most of the movie, the heroine (and by extensions we, the audience) are left in the dark concerning the why, what and how. Only slowly are we given that information, with light eventually being shed on the background of what happened and the fate of Eddie.

I think this makes it quite an unusual movie as – in contrast to many other movies – we are not immediately brought up to speed with an info-dump, so that we tie ourselves emotionally to Jean. As a result, the fear and tension she experiences are really palpable to us, too. We don’t know who Cal is and why he is helping her, or why people are after Jean. In my opinion, the movie is particularly successful in showing a female perspective, as part of something that would otherwise potentially have been just an ordinary gangster story. In the beginning, Jean does whatever she is told, while at the same time also trying her best to be a good mother to the little baby, even if her knowledge in this respect is also just rudimentary.

It’s only when she realizes that, unless she leaves behind the passive role that she has occupied for such a long time and becomes active, the hunt for her will never end. After that, she is able to change her life and save her new found friends, including Cal and his family. In that respect – and I know how this sounds – this movie can actually be called an emancipation drama. For once this is real, in contrast to the kind of what many modern movies understand under that expression. Also, the story can be seen as offering a historical comment on 1970s paranoia, and in particular how everything seemed to be chaotic at this time. Jean has to come to terms with the notion that those people who try their best to protect her, might have just as little a clue as she has.

I liked this movie, filmed in Pittsburgh, very much. The inherent tension can be felt for the entirety of the movie and it always feels and sounds like the 1970s. Wikipedia tells me the movie was only in theatres very briefly before Amazon Prime released it online. Rachel Brosnahan gives a first-class performance here though the whole production is top-notch. I regret that, too often, quality content like this flies under the radar, while we are distracted with yet another of these big dumb blockbusters Hollywood is constantly pouring over us. I feel Brosnahan is an actress of whom I would like to see more. That appears not to be problem, with plenty more of her work apparently available on Prime.

Dir: Julia Hart
Star: Rachel Brosnahan, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Arinzé Kene, Jameson Charles