Tag: 2021

Take Back the Night

  By

★★★
“A girl walks home at night…”

This is not exactly subtle in terms of its messaging, or the underling metaphor. But to be honest, I kinda respect that. I’d probably rather know what I’m in for, from the get-go, rather than experiencing a film which thinks it’s going to be “clever”, and pull a bait and switch. Here, even the title makes it obvious enough. The ‘monster’ here is sexual violence, and should you somehow make it through the film oblivious to that, you’ll get a set of crisis helplines before the end-credits role. However, it manages to do its job without becoming misanthropic, largely by having very few male speaking characters, and is adequately entertaining on its own merits, not letting the movie drown in the message.

Up-and-coming artist Jane Doe (Fitzpatrick) is savagely attacked one night outside the warehouse where she’s having her show. Though she reports it to the police, the investigating detective (Lafleur) comes increasingly to the conclusion that Jane is making up the story. This is partly because of her history of petty crime, substance abuse and hereditary mental illness; partly because what Jane describes, rather than a conventional attacker, is a monstrous, smoky and fly-blown apparition. Nor is Jane’s sister (Gulner) exactly supportive, even after the creature returns, looking to finish what it started. Jane discovers an underground network of survivors, and lore stating that only a bronze dagger, forged by a hunter, can hurt it. Fortunately, as an artist, she has a very particular set of skills…

The makers have made some interesting, and rather brave choices. Jane is the only character with a name, and she’s not exactly relatable in a conventional sense. I found it easy to dislike her influencer ways – she seems happiest when telling her sister of an upcoming TV interview about her ordeal – or the random sex she has minutes before the attack. One element of the message is very much that none of this makes Jane ‘deserve’ what happens to her, though the film ignores the counter-argument that when our actions have negative consequences, we can’t deny entirely our own responsibility. You go swimming with sharks, you might end up losing a limb.

There are points which do require the audience to stretch their disbelief more than the grounded tone of this should need. I’d also have liked to hear more about the network. Indeed, the film feels like it finishes just when it should be starting. An entity more interested in entertainment might have compressed what we get here into the front thirty minutes, and developed the notion of a crypto-cult of female vigilante warriors battling these creatures, with their bronze daggers from the shadows. That would, however, likely have diluted the message here and, make no mistake, that is what matters most to the film-makers. Regular readers will be well aware of my problems with cinematic soapboxes. While this does not avoid the resulting pitfalls entirely, nor is it a complete failure like some I’ve endured, and is certainly watchable. 

Dir: Gia Elliot
Star: Emma Fitzpatrick, Angela Gulner, Jennifer Lafleur, Sibongile Mlambo

The Novice

  By

★★★
“Rock out, with your cox out.”

Rowing is not a pastime to which I’ve ever given much thought. It’s the backdrop for this, and is based (to some extent) on writer-director Hadaway’s experiences of the sport at college. Her cinematic background is in sound editing, where she worked on films such as The Hateful Eight and – probably of most relevance here – Whiplash. The latter was a study of obsession in the pursuit of talent, and is echoed in the story here.

Alex Dall (Fuhrman) is the archetypal Type A personality, driven to push herself beyond what normal people would consider necessary. For example, she chooses her weakest subject of physics to be her college major, largely for the challenge. Similarly, she decides to take up rowing, and approaches this with the same, relentless single-minded determination and will to succeed. It’s not enough for her simply to make the freshman team. She wants to be part of the top-ranked varsity crew. And Alex doesn’t care about making friends in the process.

As such, she is a contrast to Jamie (Forsyth), another rookie, who joins the team at the same point. Her motivation is very different. She needs the scholarship that making varsity will bring, otherwise (in a rather snobbish plot-point) she will have to go to a less prestigious educational establishment. Inevitably, despite Alex and Jamie being initially friends, through the shared traumas of the hellacious training regime, their competition eventually puts them at odds with each other.

In another film, Jamie would be the protagonist, with Alex the nemesis who has to be battled. Here, though, the focus is on Alex, and the almost self-destructive way in which her obsession with being the best, wrecks every relationship she has, including that with teaching assistant Dani (Dilone). While her coaches certainly admire Alex’s unbeatable work ethic, the film also makes the point, quite forcibly, that in a team sport like rowing eights, other factors matter as much as, if not more so, than just talent. People skills are important too: for you do not necessarily have to like your team-mates, in order to become a cohesive unit. But you do have to respect them.

Hadaway’s experience is particularly apparent in the audio design, which definitely enhances the action oriented sequences, and the sardonic use of music such as Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry”. However, it does also appear she never met an opportunity for a montage she could turn down, and if you’ve seen any sports movies, you’ll know these are beyond cliche, even with all the director’s talents in the sound department. Alex is also not a very likable character: while that is clearly the point, it still has a distancing effect on the viewer. Part of me was subconsciously hoping for Alex to fail or even get struck by lightning (an apparently significant threat to rowers). The end does imply at least the potential for change in Alex is still there. Whether it will ever stick, I’m less convinced.

Dir: Lauren Hadaway
Star: Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Jonathan Cherry

The Female Hustler

  By

★★½
“The long climb up.”

This is another one in the apparently endless series of low-budget urban movies, which focus on crime in the black community. Though this does actually have a couple of wrinkles which make it stand out, if not quite enough to make it a success for a wider audience outside its community. Columbus, Ohio is the setting, where Princess (Godsey) is struggling to make ends meet. She’s relying on handouts from her dodgy brother, Dae Dae, to make rent, and also wants to get her best friend away from her pimp. Opportunity comes knocking, in the shape of an Uber driver, Omar (Campbell), who brings her on board in his business, which he tells her has almost unlimited upside and growth potential.

to the movie’s credit, this isn’t the usual drug-dealing we’ve seen so many times before. While the specifics were a bit vague, it seems Omar is working on white-collar crime, syphoning off company payroll. His associate on the West coast, the appropriately named Cali (Bosley), is planning a hostile takeover, and brings Princess on board. Omar gets wind of this, only for Princess to turn the tables, leaving her boss for dead. That brings us to phase two of the movie, where Princess is now in charge of a nationwide enterprise. However, to no great surprise, it is not as easy as that, not least because Omar is still alive, and unhappy about the situation, to put it mildly.

To start with the positives, Godsey is a good actress, and indeed, most of the cast are solid enough, when their performances are given room to breathe. The first half of this, depicting Princess’s rise to the top, may be small scale, but is effective. I do have some questions though: for example, the reason why multi-millionaire entrepreneur Omar is working as an Uber driver, is never convincingly explained. However, the budget here is entirely incapable of depicting the lifestyle of Princess once she has reached at the top. It needs yachts, big cars, lavish apartments, etc. and the film never delivers. It feels like she’s probably still living in the same crappy apartment she inhabited at the beginning of the movie.

That’s far from uncommon: I’ve seen many similar films whose ambitions did not live up to their resources. A bigger problem, however, is the soundtrack. It feels simply like the director left his Spotify account on random, with one of an endless selection of songs written and performed by his mates, blasting every three minutes. There seems to have been little or no attempt to choose the songs to fit the needs of the scene, and they are far more often a jarring distraction. Occasionally, we get some sequences where Campbell does exercise restraint, opting for stock music instead, and these are inevitably better. But I’m not averse to Campbell overall, who shows enough talent, along with his lead actress, that they will be worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Dir: Dom Campbell
Star: Courtney Godsey, Dom Campbell, Kenneth Bse Count Bosley, Vivica Cartier

Mayday

  By

★½
“Send help.”

Yes, this is one of those cases where the title is the review, because I suspect many viewers will be signalling enthusiastically for help before reaching the end. I would start off by saying something snarky, like “That’s an hour and a half of my life that I’ll never get back.” But this would imply the film actually held my attention for an hour and a half, which would.. not be entirely correct. I was in the same room where it was playing. My eyes were open. I am not prepared to commit to much more than that. I also note that at the North American box-office, it took a grand total of $4,382, including a whopping $209 over its second week of release. I trust everyone involved in the production learned a valuable lesson from this.

This is a “war of the sexes” picture thinly disguised as fantasy, which throws elements from Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lord of the Flies into a blender, in the belief that doing so makes for some kind of feminist statement. It doesn’t. Not even when you burden the cast with lines like, “You’ve been in a war your whole life, you just didn’t know it,” or “You need to stop hurting yourself and start hurting others.” It begins with downtrodden waitress Ana (Grace Van Patten) crawling through an oven in the hotel where she works, and emerging onto a vaguely WW2-era shoreline. There, she bonds with a group led by Marsha (Goth), who lure male soldiers to the beach using fake Mayday signals, sniping dead any who make it past the turbulent conditions. Because all men are predators who deserve to die, right?

It plays like an “Is caffeine-free Pepsi alright?” version of Sucker Punch, with Ana crawling into her own headspace, trying to escape the traumas of everyday life, in a world with repurposed characters. For example, Marsha is the same, reluctant bride Ana comforted in the bathroom shortly before her break from/with reality. The only element of interest was Ana’s refusal to go down the same murderous path of intent as her colleagues. though this does lead to a feeling the movie doesn’t quite know what message it’s trying to send. At least Paradise Hills, which occupied similar territory, had a gorgeous visual sense to paper over the weaker plot elements. Here, there’s no such distraction.

This is not quite the worst “young women trapped in a surreal landscape” movie I’ve ever seen. That would be the near irredeemable awfulness of non-GWG film, Ladyworld. However, that I found myself consciously comparing this to it, is not a parallel to any movie’s credit. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Ana’s eventual fate, it’s that the cure for what mentally ails you, apparently involves a psychotic break, along with some quality girl time spend living on the beach alongside a crew of Aileen Wuornos wannabes. I guess it probably works out as cheaper than therapy.

Dir: Karen Cinorre 
Star: Grace Van Patten, Mia Goth, Soko, Havana Rose Liu

Badland Doves

  By

★★
“When doves cry.”

I am contractually obliged to appreciate at least somewhat, any film made here in Arizona. This certainly fits the bill, having been shot at places like the Pioneer Living History Museum, Sitgreaves National Forest and Winters Film Group Studio. However, it is a fairly basic tale of two-pronged revenge, with significant pacing issues. The proceedings only come to life in the last 20 minutes – and barely that. Initially, matters are more than a tad confusing, as we jump about in time and space without apparent notification. But the basic principal is eventually established.

Revenger #1 is Regina Silva (Martin), whose family were killed by masked intruders. Following that, she got shooting lessons from a conveniently passing gunslinger, and set out to find those responsible, working as a saloon prostitute because it was apparently the best way to find them. Yeah. About that… Anyway, Revenger #2 is Victoria Bonham (Penny), who just so happens to be the madam of a brothel, also seeking justice after one of her girls was murdered. Coincidentally, Regina shows up, and they eventually discover they are both looking for the same person, Pete Chalmers (Johnston). However, his father (Greenfield) wields so much power in the town, his son is basically untouchable. Victoria wants to leverage legal means against Pete, while Regina prefers more direct action, and isn’t willing to wait around forever, while the wheels of the law grind slowly away.

If you were to summarize my reactions to this, the first ten minutes would be “What is going on?”. The next twenty would likely be, “Ah, ok. I know where this is heading.” After that, we get about half an hour of, “Is anything else of significance going to happen?”, then twenty of moderate satisfaction, as Chalmers and his forces go to battle with Regina and her allies. However, the action here is underwhelming, not least because it appears the bad guys have all the shooting skills of Star Wars stormtroopers, unable to hit stationary targets from about ten paces, in broad daylight (as shown, top). Pete is an underwhelming villain too: beyond “alcohol’s to blame,” it’s never particularly established why he attacked Regina’s family or killed Victoria’s employee. Motivation: it’s vastly over-rated, apparently.

The last five minutes do offer at least something unexpected, in terms of the mechanism by which revenge is achieved. It’s about the only novel angle the film has to offer, and you sense this is one of those cases where having the same person writing, editing and directing proved problematic. I’m not convinced the story can handle the two-pronged approach, with the script leaving both threads feeling in need of development.The dual female leads aren’t bad, though I was distracted by Penny’s accent, which sounds more Antipodean than Arizona. To be fair, it’s really not any worse than Bad Girls, the far larger budgeted “whores out for revenge” film. However, that is not exactly a high bar to clear. For passion projects like this, I have no problem forgiving budgetary restrictions, and to be fair, this looks and sounds decent. The plodding and meandering script, however, is much harder to see past.

Dir: Paul Winters
Star: Sandy Penny, Jessica Y. Martin, Manny Greenfield, Daniel Johnston
A version of this review originally appeared on my other review site, Film Blitz.

Black Medicine

  By

★★★
“The Hypocritic oath…”

I guess, at its heart, this is the story of two mothers. There’s Jo (Campbell-Hughes), an anaesthetist who has been struck off the medical register, for reasons that are left murky. She’s now practicing her healing arts on the underground market, from patching up dubious stabbing victims, to carrying out unlicensed abortions. Jo lost her daughter to meningitis, and has split from her husband. Then there’s Bernadette (Brady), a wealthy but no less murky character. Her daughter is dying, and in desperate need of a transplant. To that end, Bernadette has kidnapped a young woman, Aine (McNulty), with the intention of using her as an unwilling organ donor, and needs Jo’s help for the operation. But when Aine – who would be about the age of Jo’s daughter had she lived – escapes and hides in the back of the physician’s car, Jo is left with a series of difficult decisions.

Set in Northern Ireland, this is solid rather than spectacular. It has a good central performance at its core by Campbell-Hughes, who plays a complex and contradictory character. For example, Jo has a major drug-habit, yet remains highly functioning. [I’d never seen someone administer illicit pharmaceuticals through eye-drops before. Chris, apparently, was aware of this: I bow to her superior knowledge of such things, likely stemming from her life in eighties New York!] You sense the point that what she is being asked, and eventually ordered, to do has crossed a moral line in the sand, even if her recalcitrance is going to cause more problems. That’s because Bernadette is prepared to do whatever it takes to save her own daughter – something Jo was unable to do.

It’s the contract and similarities between the two women which keep the film interesting, both being utterly convinced their actions are morally justified, although the film-makers’ sympathies are clearly more with Jo. Less effective is the plotting, which feels far from watertight. Perhaps the biggest hole is the way in which Bernadette discovers Aine’s location, after the latter places a call to her boyfriend from Jo’s landline. Aside from being very stupid on Aine’s part, and not in line with the street-smart character to that point, I’m not sure I even know anyone who has a landline. Except for my father, and he’s 85. Jo’s ex-husband seems to exist purely to give Bernadette some kind of leverage, and generally, there are a number of unanswered questions whose answers I feel would have benefited the narrative.

Eastwood, making his feature debut, does have a nice style, depicting Belfast almost entirely at night, in a moist, neon-drenched way that lends it a certain exotic flavour. This would make an interesting double-bill with the similarly Irish-set A Good Woman is Hard to Find, which is also about a woman forced into an unwanted confrontation with the criminal world, by the sudden arrival in her life of an unexpected visitor. This isn’t quite as compelling, lacking the relentless sense of escalation, yet did still keep me engaged for the bulk of the running time, and offers an original scenario with effort put into developing both its heroine and the villainess.

Dir: Colum Eastwood
Star: Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Amybeth McNulty, Orla Brady, Shashi Rami

Shark Huntress

  By

★½
“Eco-garbage.”

I’ve previously talked about – OK, “ranted” may not be inappropriate – the perils of message movies. But I did wonder whether it was the specific content to which I objected. Would I dislike a film so much, if I was on board with its strident message? On the evidence here, I can confidently state: hell, yes. For this is painfully earnest and hard to watch, much though I agree with the environmental topic, that humanity’s use of plastics are threatening the oceans. An alternative needs to be found. By which I mean, I strongly suggest you find an alternative to watching this movie. The poster has clearly strayed in from a far more entertaining offering, and bears little resemblance to what this provides. 

The heroine is Sheila (Grey), who heads out to a Pacific island, after the disappearance of her mother. The body turns up, showing marks indicating she was eaten by a great white shark. Which is odd, since they’re not found within a thousand miles of the place. Sheila comes increasingly to believe the attack was not a natural occurrence, but engineered by “the plastic people” in response to her mother’s research, which threatened their business. She wants to kill the shark in question, but also expose the truth behind it, and make those responsible pay for their actions. To that end, she teams up with a group of like-minded ecowarriors, to investigate the company. Naturally, the target isn’t just sitting back and letting their nefarious machinations be exposed. 

There is the germ of an interesting idea here, along the lines of Moby Dick, only for it to be ruthlessly strangled in incompetent execution. Far too much time is spent pounding home the message about waste, which should have been used to develop the plot. There is no real antagonist, just an all but faceless corporation, whose actions make little or no sense. I mean, if you want to get rid of somebody, your plan is flying a shark thousands of miles, letting it go and… hoping it eats the target? Later, they’re quite happy to take someone out by more conventional means. Meanwhile, rather than being any kind of shark huntress, it takes Sheila over 65 minutes before she goes past her ankles, anywhere except a hotel swimming-pool for lessons in Diving 1.0.1.

I didn’t mind Grey, despite English not being her first language: there are occasional moments of effective emoting, such as her mother’s funeral. The photography is occasionally good, though the film desperately needs better colour matching. The problems are… everywhere else, such as a supporting character who literally says things like “thumbs-down emoji”. Or an ending of staggering abruptness, which involves a stabbing with a pen and a conveniently passing shark, while low-key elevator music plays in the background. I must admit, long before we reached that point, I was hoping the shark would bring in some of its mates, and consume everyone involved with this, in one giant feeding frenzy. Spoiler alert: no such luck.

Dir: John Riggins
Star: Katrina Grey, Dean Alexandrou, John Flano, Russell Geoffrey Banks

The Woman Who Robbed the Stagecoach

  By

★★½
“A tale of daylight robbery.”

There are a couple of points to note going in. This was one of “12 Westerns in 12 months”, a project run by the director during 2020. It also proudly pronounces itself as the first ever Western feature to be shot entirely on an iPhone. Both of these do lead to limitations. The sheer speed involved obvious has an impact, and I can’t help wondering if a more measured approach would have been better for the end product. As for the iPhone… Well, on the plus side it looked perfectly watchable on my 49″ television, especially the outdoor scenes. However, the indoor sequences seemed almost too crisp. Especially for a historical production like this, I felt I was expecting a softer look, and I found that a bit of a distraction throughout.

It’s the story of Pearl Hart, a genuine figure from Arizona history, who achieved notoriety by being involved in one of the last stagecoach robberies, at the very end of the nineteenth century (May 30, 1899, to be precise). The movie covers both her life leading up to that point, and the subsequent arrest, trial, acquittal, re-arrest, conviction, escape, recapture, eventual release – according to some, because she managed to get pregnant in jail – and final disappearance into obscurity. Actually, the script basically feels like they took Pearl’s Wikipedia page, and used that as a synopsis. You can virtually tick off the incidents mentioned in it, as they happen during the film. With the character such a blank slate, and so little verifiable information, I’d like to have seen Mills give us something not taken from the first page of Google results.

The positives are mostly from the performances. Mills pulls double-duty as Hart’s accomplice, “Joe Boot”, about whom next to nothing is known. That does allow some freedom, and Root is made into a European miner, who is largely obsessed with Pearl and prepared to take the fall for the robbery on her behalf. I did like Etchell’s portrayal of Pearl, a woman who has been fighting an uphill battle almost her entire life, and tries to make the best of her situation – often by morally questionable means, albeit out of necessity. The film also shot in a lot of the locations around where events took place, such as in Globe, with the Yuma Territorial Prison standing in for Tucson’s jail.

It’s unfortunate that the limited time and budget are often all too apparent. In particular, there’s next to no scope here, with Mills largely forced to keep the camera in close, to try and disguise the paucity of sets, or things like a lack of extras. It really doesn’t work, although it remains a story that should be told, and I’m glad to have heard it. But the almost throwaway nature of the production, combined with the rote nature of the script, does the larger than life character of Pearl Hart a disservice. They should have chosen to print the legend instead.

Dir: Travis Mills
Star: Lorraine Etchell, Travis Mills, Kevin Goss, Michael Estridge

Hell Hath No Fury

  By

★★★½
“Grave consequences.”

I’m quite familiar with the work of director Jesse Johnson, mostly through his collaborations with Scott Adkins, who is probably the best action star you’ve never heard of. Some of their movies together have been top-tier, in particular Avengement, so I was very curious to see what he’d do with a film which – according to the cover – has a female lead. Well, that is slightly misleading in that the heroine does take a back-seat as far the action goes. But there’s still easily enough to qualify here, and she’s definitely not your typical character in a war-time setting like this.

To be blunt: Marie is a collaborator with the Nazis who occupied France. In particular, she was the mistress of S.S. officer Von Bruckner (Bernhardt), until their relationship goes pear-shaped (to put it mildly), and she’s shipped off to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Three years later, with the Allies sweeping through France, she is released and returns to her home-town. They haven’t forgotten her collaboration, so she has her head shaved and a swastika painted on her forehead. Marie is rescued from further indignity by Major Maitland (Mandylor) after playing her trump card, telling him she knows the location of a cache of gold in a local cemetery. However, on arrival there, it’s quickly clear they’re not the only ones after it. The gravedigger wants in, and Von Bruckner is also on his way back, hoping to collect the stash on his way out of the country.

There’s something quite Sergio Leone about this. The cemetery treasure idea is clearly taken from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, along with the three-way stand-off at the end, and the way Marie tries to play the two sides against each other reminded me of A Fistful of Dollars. This isn’t as stylized, the cinematography is nowhere near as sublime, and it’s largely restricted to the single location of the cemetery. Yet it’s solid enough, and the lack of traditional “good guys” (or girls!) – another similarly to the spaghetti Western genre – is quite refreshing in the context. Everyone here is driven strictly by one imperative: getting the gold for themselves, by any means necessary: no-one is the slightest bit interested in returning it to its rightful owners.

Alliances are formed and dissolved as the Americans, French, Germans and Marie all look to come out on top, though there are nasty surprises for everyone as things unfold, and the Nazi forces arrive on the scene. This leads to an extended gun-battle around the tombstones, and eventually, the stand-off mentioned. I can’t say I felt the ending was entirely satisfying: it didn’t make sense, considering all that had gone before. Giving Marie more to do, rather than simply manipulating her way towards the gold, would have been nice. However, the journey to get there was briskly entertaining, and the freshness of the characters in this particular scenario, also helped sustain my interest with relative ease to the end credits.

Dir: Jesse V. Johnson
Star: Nina Bergman, Louis Mandylor, Daniel Bernhardt, Timothy V. Murphy
a.k.a. Ave Marie

Knucks

  By

½
“Knucks sucks.”

I’m tempted to leave my review at that. But there’s a famous quote by critic Roger Ebert, going off on Bruce Willis flop, North: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.” I was always impressed, and hoped one day to find a film capable of producing a similar reaction. This is… close. It is, let’s be clear, utterly terrible, with almost no redeeming qualities. Yet it’s either not bad enough, or more likely, too bad to generate such a reaction. That would be giving it more power and credit than this deserves. 

Why are we here? This is less an existential question than a desire to explain why I’m writing a review. It’s because of this synopsis: “Two women attempt to come up after beating their drug dealer to death.” That was good enough to get it on my radar. However, within a couple of minutes, it was clear I had made a terrible mistake, and was about to be in for the longest 66 minutes of my life. Here’s another quote, from the BBFC, explaining the 15 rating: “There are scenes in which a child is abducted by two men, but it is not clear what their intentions are.” The two words “not clear” are the best way to summarize the misbegotten art-wank which I endured, substituting pointless video manipulation for plot, characterization or any positive aspects.

It’s as if the makers had obtained a list of all the elements I despise most about pretentious movies, and had treated it as a request list. Random colour filters. Check. Strobe effects. Check. Shitty heavy metal soundtrack. Check. Obtuse dialogue. Check. Scenes unfolding in murky near-darkness. Check. Shaky, hand-held, extreme close-up camerawork. Check, check and, in no uncertain terms, check. The basic plot, and I use the word in its loosest way, is mostly ripped off from True Romance, with heroines and sisters Kathleen (Leidy) and Taylor (Harlan) attempting to sell a bagful of drugs obtained from the dead dealer, to someone who looks like a Kid Rock impersonator.

But this doesn’t really show up until the final fifteen minutes. Until then, we get meaningless flashbacks to their abusive childhood (of course!), in which their film-maker father seems to be involved in porn and snuff. I am not exaggerating when I say either of these would likely be more entertaining. Things come to a head, when the original owner of the drugs shows up, burbles threateningly for a bit, before keeling over. It ends in much the same way as the previous hour has unfolded: an incoherent mess. I was genuinely relieved by the short running-time, though if it had been much longer, it might well have been a rare cinematic “did not finish.” The terminally slow end credit crawl was easily the best thing about this. Largely because it indicated the end was mercifully nigh.

Dir: Gage Maynard
Star: Dasha Leidy, Hedley Harlan, Mindy Robinson, Alan Bagh