Tag: 2022

Lou

  By

★★½
“The family that slays together, stays together.”

A Netflix original movie, the first thing to say is: thankfully, this is not as bad as Interceptor. Mind you, few films with budgets measured in the millions are as bad as Interceptor. It did more damage to my perception of the Netflix brand than any other, to the point I was genuinely concerned about having to watch this, fearing it would be down at the same level. Certain elements are, most likely the script. But the presence of Alison Janney, single-handedly prevents the film from sinking, effectively acting as a life-belt for the less successful elements. It’s a shame the makers apparently didn’t realize what they had, and used the strength of its star better.

She plays Lou, a near-retiree who lives quietly on an island near Seattle. She has a tenant, Hannah Dawson (Smollett), a single mother of Vee (Bateman). But Lou is ready to check out of life entirely. She has a gun pointed at her own head, when Hannah rushes in, begging for help, because her husband Philip (Marshall-Green) – supposedly dead – has shown up and kidnapped Vee, in the middle of a ferocious storm. Fortunately, Lou has a history, which has given her the ideal set of special skills for the circumstances. She and Hannah set out through the rain in pursuit of Philip. Yet there’s more going on, with Lou’s history catching up with her, as well as the truth about her relationship to Hannah and Philip. 

The idea of Lou is a strong one, playing roughly along the lines of Liam Neeson in the Taken franchise, with a hint of John Wick. A grizzled veteran, who just wants to be left alone, who is dragged back into a life of violence: only, this time, it’s a woman, Lou being a CIA field agent, with 26 years experience, before leaving under murky circumstances. The rest of the story though? Oh, dear. The film staggers from ineptly-staged scenes of family bonding, to revelations that are more likely to provoke a snort of derision than a gasp of surprise. Lou vanishes entirely for much of the second half, and Hannah is simply not interesting enough to hold the movie together.

The action is fairly well-staged, though they don’t put enough effort into equalizing the fights. Lou’s opponents are all bigger and stronger than her, and there are times where the movie forgets this. However, Janney sells her persona so well, I was inclined to cut this the necessary slack. Director Foerster’s previous feature was Underworld: Blood Wars, and there’s a definite sense at the ending they want to turn this into a similar franchise. Despite the mediocre overall rating, there is plenty of potential in the lead character, and I would not be averse to more of her story. Let’s just hope they keep writers Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley in a remote cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest, and well away from any sequel’s script. 

Dir: Anna Foerster
Star: Allison Janney, Jurnee Smollett, Logan Marshall-Green, Ridley Asha Bateman

President and Kung-Fu Girl

  By

★★½
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist.”

On a trip to Thailand, businessman’s daughter Wen Wan manages to cause trouble with some rather unpleasant people, causing her father, Wen Ruhu to fear a revenge attack. He hires security consultant Liang Shan to protect Wan, but his business partner Li Kaishi, also sends his daughter, Xin You, as another bodyguard. Shan and You initially see each other as rivals, but as they get to know each other (and stop me if you’ve perhaps heard this before), eventually realize that they both want the same thing, to protect Wan. The sparks become more of the romantic kind, although it turns out that the situation in which they are involved is not as advertised, with envious eyes being cast at Liang’s company and its assets.

Firstly, I apologize for the lack of information on the participants. While in both Chinese and English, the opening credits list only the crew, not the cast, and the end credits (presumably listing the players) are only in Chinese. I found the names of two actors online, but absolutely no info about the characters they played. Nor is there an IMDb page for the movie: I’ve been watching a lot of Chinese films lately, and that often seems to be the case, especially with straight-to-streaming entries like this. Even the images I found for it, such as the one above, manage to mis-spell the movie’s own title. I get they really don’t care much about finding a Western audience, so I am just grateful the print has subtitles.

This begins brightly enough, though after the opening scene, I was a bit confused as to why Wan needs a bodyguard, since she seems quite capable of taking care of herself. [I must also say, for a supposedly Communist country, the luxurious lifestyle she enjoys looks much more like an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!] However, it’s clear that You is no slouch in the martial-arts department, though the editing here seems more intended to conceal than show off her physical abilities. Still, she looks the part and it seemed to have potential, with her and her male colleague fending off wave after wave of attempts at revenge.

Except it doesn’t happen. The film grinds to an abrupt halt in the middle, heading firmly for something closer to relationship driven soap-opera, complete with a soppy soundtrack. This sucks all life and promise out of the film, even if the two characters are rather more engaging than the whiny Wan. They’re trying, bless their hearts, it’s just not the kind of scenes I wanted to see: I generally prefer my kung-fu uncluttered with romantic tension (except for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, of course). There’s a brief burst of energy at the end, when all is revealed.  and did regain my interest, though even here You takes a bit of a back seat. It’s very much harmless fluff – I suspect it is the Chinese equivalent of a Netflix Original.

Dir: Feng Zhe
Star: Zhang Yigui, Xie Mingyu.

Fall

  By

★★★★
“Nope. NopeNopeNope. Nope.”

I never considered myself to be afraid of heights. I respect them, sure. But I am capable of going up the ladder to change that annoying smoke alarm battery without a safety net. This film though, literally gave me sweaty palms. It’s about climber Becky Connor (Currey) who lost her husband Dan (Gooding) in a rockface accident a year before, and has spiralled down into alcoholism and depression since. Her father (Morgan) gets her best friend Shiloh Hunter (Gardner) to intervene, and she convinces Becky the best thing is to get back on horse, with a climb of a two thousand feet tall, abandoned TV mast. 

The journey up is where the moist hands started. I don’t care how nice the views might be, I’m afraid it’s going to be a no from me, dawg. Adding to the fraught tension, is the focus by Mann on the decaying structure: rust, missing bolts and general creakiness. It’s like Final Destination: you know something is inevitably going to go terribly wrong, it’s just a question of when, and the specifics. It duly does, leaving the pair stranded near the top, on a platform about the size of our dining table, with no route down or way to call for help. The rest of the film is the struggle of Becky and Hunter (she uses her last name, or her social media identity of “Danger Deb”) to find a way to do one or the other. 

Most of it is well-written, with the two women using every bit of ingenuity, as well as both their physical and mental strength, in that struggle. While I was ahead of the plot a couple of times – some of the foreshadowing isn’t as subtle as it could be – there was one doozy of a twist near the end, that we definitely did not see coming. By the end, there’s no doubt Becky is an utterly badass, prepared to survive by any means necessary. My main complaint, storywise, was the clunky shoehorning in of a wedge issue to divide her and Hunter. This served no dramatic purpose, and had me rolling my eyes at the incongruity of it all. Hello: you are two thousand feet in the air!

Technically, however, it’s very well done, giving the viewer a real sense of what it must be like. If you are the slightest bit sensitive about heights, this film will find out, force its way into those cracks, and use them as leverage, to an almost queasy extent. I found it easy to believe they were genuinely up there, even if neither lead actress has quite the ripped physique of a real climber, someone like Slovenian Janja Gambret. I did wonder if it was potentially going to go full The Descent on us at the end, and embrace its inner bleakness. I won’t say whether or not it does. However, I suspect that the next time our smoke alarm starts to beep, its battery will have to change itself.

Dir: Scott Mann
Star: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding

Kimi

  By

★★★
“Blue is the warmest colour”

Angela Childs (Kravitz) is a computer programmer who fixes bugs on the new smart speaker “Kimi”. It’s a perfect job, as she suffers from agoraphobia but can work at home, interrupted only by occasional sex with friendly neighbour (Bowers). When she finds a recording she thinks is a sexual assault on a woman, she contacts her superiors, who don’t seem eager to contact the FBI. Angela experienced an assault in the past herself (causing her agoraphobia), and goes directly to an executive at the central office, Natalie Chowdhury (Wilson). What she does not know is, that her company is about to go public and the woman she heard, the lover of its CEO, is already dead. Not only are the authorities uninformed, her own company has sent hired killers on her trail, with state-of-the-art tech to locate Angela. She must leave her home, agoraphobia or not.

This movie got my initial attention when I saw the poster with a blue-haired Zoë Kravitz and the word “Kimi” over it – I originally thought that would be the name of her character. I don’t know if this movie was actually shown in cinema in the US (Jim: no, it went straight to streaming), here in Germany it ran in a few cinemas for about 2 weeks. In America it can be seen on HBO Max; here in Germany it is available on Amazon-Prime. This is good as there is – unlike the US – no German DVD release. I worried this would be another one of those “woke” movies: it’s not. Written by first-class screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible“, Spider-Man (2002), Indiana Jones 4) and directed by Steven Soderbergh, this movie proves to be very effective.

We see Kravitz living quite comfortably in her large flat and though she can only see her mother online and isn’t able to go downstairs to meet her friend for some fast-food in front of the door, she isn’t missing much. She more or less has everything she needs at home. In that respect the movie perfectly mirrors the situation many of us around the globe experienced during the lockdowns, when we were asked to work from home if we could. Let’s face it, quite a lot of people got used to this kind of situation, and companies could save a lot of money, not needing to have their employees actually in a dedicated working place.

Kimi indirectly discusses this attitude, but also seems to make a clear point that there is a need to leave your own four walls sometimes, because not everything can be handled from your laptop. That said, it’s quite disturbing how much can be done by digital tracking, and this results in a real “woman hunt” through the city, with Angela’s chances rising when she gets rid of her mobile phone. The world outside is frightening through her eyes: some people are out but it’s not too crowded until she gets into a demonstration. Most shocking is the way she is almost kidnapped there by the assassins, in broad daylight. I’d also like to mention the unusual but good and very interesting score by Cliff Martinez, such as when she escapes from the central office.

It is not until about an hour that Kravitz leaves her apartment. But ultimately her journey leads back home: in the end no one can help, not even a friendly stalker from across the street – only herself. The movie has been from time to time mentioned in comparison with Hitchcock’s Rear Window which I think is a bit too high praise. Other movies such as Blow Out (1981) by Brian de Palma, Enemy of the State (1998) with Will Smith and Gene Hackman, or the recent Netflix thriller The Woman in the Window (2021) with Amy Adams come to mind. The last one especially shares the basic situation of the protagonist with this, though Window is much less successful. Kimi is also part of a long line of what could be called “digital surveillance thrillers”.

David Koepp himself once wrote a similar movie: Panic Room (2002) in which Jodie Foster had to defend herself and her daughter from that location against burglars. But while in Panic Room the main idea was to escape and get help, here there is no more security outside. The authorities can’t (or don’t want to) help, and your employer or company have turned against you. It’s a subject Soderbergh has previously covered in Haywire or Unsane. So, while Koepp and Soderbergh don’t tell an entirely new story here, they have put it on a contemporary level. This works, giving a new coat of paint to the old thriller genre, that has become a bit stale and isn’t seen so often anymore. Modern Hollywood seems more interested in the newest superhero movie or the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster.

Kravitz gives in my opinion a very good performance. I’ve never been a real fan, though she seems to have had a breakthrough as Catwoman in The Batman (2022), opposite Robert Pattinson. Here, I can’t complain: I was convinced the heroine was both agoraphobic and quite stubborn. The other actors here are largely unknown, yet give good, fitting performances, and it all comes together well. There are some nice audio ideas in the movie; for example when Angela puts on her headphones everything becomes quiet. This is the same thing we do on a daily basis: just try to fade out the real world. Kimi seems to be saying that we maybe shouldn’t do this so often. We should go out and involve ourselves, and take a stand for things we care for. That’s not a bad message, I think.

Dir: Stephen Soderbergh
Star: Zoë Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson, Erika Christensen

Prey

  By

★★★
“Prey to win.”

The latest entry in the Predator franchise has resulted in sharply divided opinions, partly for reasons that I’m not even going to get into. And, for roughly the 11th millionth time, the reality lies somewhere in the middle. It is probably the best entry in the franchise since Predator 2. However, let’s be clear: Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf would also satisfy that criteria. So, let’s dig in. The year is 1719, and the Northern Plains see a new arrival, in the form of an extraterrestrial visitor, looking to test its mettle against any species unlucky enough to cross its path. They could be animal, or human – the latter include both French trappers and the local Comanches.

The heroine is Naru (Midthunder), a young woman who wants to join her brother, Taabe (Beavers), on the tribe’s hunting parties. He and the rest of the tribe are reluctant to let her, preferring to make use of her skills as a healer. However, after they encounter the Predator while hunting a mountain-lion, Naru sneaks off to hunt it on her own, seeking to prove her skills. It’s not long before it becomes clear she has her hands full, simply trying to survive in the treacherous wilderness, and avoid the trappers. Never mind taking on a vicious creature from another planet, in possession of technology far in advance of what’s available to Earthlings, and with a fondness for ripping spines clean out of their owners’ backs.

It’s certainly a fresh and original setting,  especially for a SF/action movie, and I’d say the makers deserve credit for using native actors across the board. I will admit to rolling my eyes at some of the early attempts to position Naru as a rebel, which felt severely like the imposition of modern traits onto a historical setting. “Why do you like to hunt?” “Because they think I can’t!” Yeah, you almost get killed. Twice. They have a point. However, once she leaves the camp and sets out on her own journey, the movie hits its stride. By the time the trappers find they are no longer the hunters, but the hunted, it’s clear Naru will need to think outside the box of standard tactics in order to win. You’ll probably have figured out the key, as soon as she mentions that a certain medicinal herb “cools the blood”…

I can kinda see why it went direct to streaming, since some of the CGI effects are of the low-rent variety, and I suspect it was a lot cheaper than the $88 million cost of its predecessor, The Predator. On the other hand, it doesn’t skimp on the old ultraviolence, and that’s the way a Predator movie needs to be. It has to be said, this seems a particularly dumb example of the alien species – fortunately for Naru. It never seems to see her as a threat until it’s too late, clearly being sexist as well as extraterrestrial. Maybe a future installment could feature a female Predator… With all of history now officially in play, the possibilities are almost endless. While still imperfect, credit is due to the makers, for taking a franchise that seemed potentially on its last legs, and giving it new life. 

Dir: Dan Trachtenberg
Star: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush, Stormee Kipp

The Princess

  By

★★★★
“Die Hard in a castle.”

Well, this was a surprise. I was not expecting too much, this being a movie released straight to Hulu or Disney+ (depending on your territory), and starring someone best known for rom-com franchise, The Kissing Booth. Actually, scratch the “too” from that sentence. I went in on the basis that I was contractually obliged to watch it, as the guy running this site. I say this, so you’ll understand how unexpected it is to be writing this: it’s the best action-heroine film of the year so far. This is just thoroughly entertaining, and as the tag-line above suggests, is as close as I’ve ever seen to a genuine, female version of the greatest action movie of all-time. 

The first half structure though, plays more like The Raid in reverse, the heroine having to fight her way down, floor by floor, from the top of a high tower. It opens with the Princess (King) ‐ and that’s her credited name – waking to find herself in a bed-chamber. She’s being prepared for a marriage she very much does not want to happen. Her father, lacking a son and heir, intended to wed her to Julian (Cooper) for diplomatic purposes. She jilted him at the altar, and he then staged a coup, seizing her family and planning a union by force. What he doesn’t know, is that the Princess had been quietly trained by family retainer Linh (Ngo) in fighting skills, and begins working her way down, to rescue her family and stop Julian. Guess he is going to have to “altar” his wedding plans, hohoho.

It’s the kind of film which will stand or fall on its action sequences, and the good news is, these are the movie’s strongest suit. Kiet had previously worked with Ngo on Furie: that was solid, yet it now appears his imagination was bigger than the resources available to him there. Right from the start, when the Princess takes out the two attendants sent to her chamber, the fight scenes are all inventive, well-executed and assembled in a coherent manner. Now, King is no MMA fighter. However, they’ve constructed a fighting style for her character based on speed and agility, rather than strength and power. Her holding her own against bigger (sometimes, far bigger) opponents feels credible as a result. 

This reaches its height in a glorious, extended sequence, with the Princess battling her way down the tower’s staircase. It feels as if it’s 20 minutes long, such is the energy contained in it. There’s even a beautiful moment of tension releasing humour, part of a running gag involving one of Julian’s minions who is too fat for all the stairs he’s ordered to climb. Nothing thereafter, including the inevitable fight against her wannabe husband, quite reaches the same heights. Glover is good value as Julian, staying just this side of a pantomime villain. As Die Hard shows, having a memorable antagonist is an important element. He’s not quite Alan Rickman – though who is? And I do have to question some of Julian’s decisions. 

I mean, if ever I become an Evil Lord, I will choose a more definitive method of execution for my nemesis than defenestration. And if I did chuck them out a high window, it would be on the side of the building over the cobblestone courtyard, rather than the one facing the water. Though I must give credit where it’s due, for his selection of a sidekick, in whip-wielding bad girl, Moira. Kurylenko has a track record of her own on this site, most recently in Sentinelle, and builds further on that here. On the other hand, the Princess’s father is a totally ineffectual pussy, when faced with the brutality of Julian and his crew. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It makes his daughter’s rebellion feel organic and legitimate, rather than some kind of obvious third-wave feminist statement. I’d rebel in her shoes too.

Speaking of which, my concerns this would end up being some kind of Statement Movie, largely proved unfounded. Indeed, some reviews criticized it for not being progressive enough. [Insert eye-roll] This is largely traditional fairy-story territory, except with a female lead who is capable of rescuing herself, rather than needing a prince to come to her aid. I would say some of the flashback scenes were superfluous, breaking into rather than enhancing the narrative progression. For instance, we know Linh trained the Princess; do we really then need to see it taking place as well? The R-rating, while welcome, seems a little at odds with the atmosphere too, which does feel quite Disney+. If you’re going R, embrace it in all its forms, I’d say. However, these are minor gripes, and this is one Disney princess I’m certainly happy to endorse. 

Dir: Le-Van Kiet
Star: Joey King, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, Veronica Ngo

Firestarter (2022)

  By

★★★
“The fire-devil is back!”

I must admit: While I always found the premise for Stephen King’s 1980 novel Firestarter interesting, I never read the book. 500 small-printed pages are just too much for me. The story itself shares some of its DNA with Carrie, with the difference that this here is about a younger child, not an adolescent, and instead of telekinesis the girl knows pyrokinesis, meaning she can create fire from nowhere and control it. It could be argued that King was just kind of re-using ideas from Carrie, making less of an effort to create something original as he did with other material. Opinions on the story seem to be split. Some think it’s a great novel, of the usual King quality; others think it’s a typical work from the time when King was writing as if he were on the run, and striking while the iron was hot (honestly, I don’t really see he has slowed down so much over the years).

Anyway, the novel became a 1984 movie, with all the qualities and flaws a Stephen King adaptation had in the 80s, featuring then-child star Drew Barrymore (gosh, I just realize while I’m typing that she is as old as I am!) a considerable ensemble of actors, a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream and – for its time – impressive pyro special effects. The film’s reception was lukewarm but it went on to become a success on VHS. In Germany, the title translates as “The Firedevil”, which in German means somebody who likes to play with fire. A sequel, albeit unrelated in story and without any King input, came out as as a TV miniseries in 2002 to similarly questionable results as far as fan opinions go. The main character was still Charlie, but now all grown-up. Strangely, the villain of the original piece was still alive there which made zero sense if you witnessed his demise at the end of the movie.

So here is the 2022 version, produced by Blumhouse, a studio with a very good reputation for first-class horror movies today, and also gave us great non-genre movies like Whiplash. Martha de Laurentiis, co-producing wife of the late Dino de Laurentiis (involved in a number of King adaptations in the 80s) has a producer’s credit, although she died last year at cancer. Akiva Goldsman who was chosen to direct the movie before being replaced, also got a producing credit, which doesn’t necessarily mean much nowadays.

The new Firestarter does its best not to just repeat the story beats of the 1984 movie, though by doing so is less close to the original King novel. The beginning of the movie shows young girl Charlie (Armstrong) in school being bullied by one of those ugly red-haired boys we all know from 1970s movies (nasty then, nasty now – talk about discrimination against red-haired children!). It reminded me quite a bit of Carrie, though it’s just a few scenes and serves little more purpose than to illustrate Charlie’s problems in general.

Her parents (Efron – suddenly grown up; wasn’t he just a boy yesterday? – and Lemmon) have been on the run for a long time: After being involved in an experiment that gave them paranormal powers,the secret government organisation that conducted these experiments, “The Shop”, want their child. Therefore – and a bonus point to the screenwriter for taking modern communication and tracking opportunities into account – they have been staying away from the Internet and mobile phones. I was therefore surprised when Charlie in a key scene of the movie suddenly came up with one.

These forces are on the track of the family again, after an outbreak of fire in school and Charlie burns the arms of her mother in a fit of rage. It’s funny to compare the latter scene in old and new movies. Nothing much worth mentioning happened to the mother in the original, but a great fuss was made about it. Here, she has what feel like at least second-degree burns, and the parents behave as if it were nothing in front of Charlie. Let’s go have some ice-cream! What kind of message is being sent to young parents, folks?

The Shop is now under the management of Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben), who send apparently disgraced operative John Rainbird (Greyeyes) to get Charlie back. She is seen by Hollister as having great potential, though original leader of the experiment, Doctor Wanless (Kurtwood Smith in a cameo), fears an unmeasurable threat from the girl’s potential when she comes into full control of her power. Charlie’s mom resists Rainbird and dies in the confrontation, causing father and daughter to go on the run, where Dad’s ability to influence people telepathically comes in handy.

They find sanctuary with recluse Manders (John Beasley), only to be discovered by the police and Rainbird shortly after. While Charlie gets away, her father is caught and is brought back to the lab. After training to control her powers in the woods, a scene that feels two minutes long, Charlie comes to free her Dad. Although “The Shop” does its best to get her under control, the girl prevails, burning all those who threaten her.

Firestarter is a strange beast with a difficult task: Retaining the core of the original story but not being to close too the orignal movie. Paying tribute to current political correctness, yet not changing the original material too much. For most of the time, they do fine, I’d say. Some changes did catch my eye: the conflict between the parents wasn’t there, as far as I remember, in the original movie. The mother wants Charlene to train so she can control her powers, the father would rather she suppress them, for who knows what may come out of them being released? In contrast, the original spent more time with Dad and daughter in the lab, the evil Rainbird slowly gaining Charlie’s confidence in order to kill her when appropriate. It went more for slow menacing tension – also the approach of King’s novel – while this plays more as a “fugitives-on-the-run” scenario.

But the biggest change is the John Rainbird. In the original, he was played by elderly over-weight “evil uncle” George C. Scott. In no circumstance would he ever have been considered a Native American. Here, he is played by Canadian and Cree actor Michael Greyeyes, though Rainbird in the books was Cherokee. Perhaps because Hollywood thinks it can’t allow villains to be an ethnic minority, the character is slightly changed: Rainbird works for the organisation, because it is suggested they are too powerful. He himself was betrayed by them, and seems to have been part of the experiment, gaining certain supernatural powers. Here, Rainbird helps Charlie, ready to accept his death. Strangely, she spares his life and while the building behind her burns, takes his hand and they walk away. Make out of that ending what you want: it’s definitely not King’s.

It seems a lot of critics disliked the new movie. As a whole I can’t condemn taking a different approach to the story. I’m not even sure if I would call the new movie “woke”, though it definitely has woke moments. Director Keith Thomas, does fine, I think. The movie is atmospheric, has more focus on the parents and their differences over how to raise their daughter, and there is some genuine tension, e. g. when Rainbird confronts Charlie’s mother. What really astonished me is the musci by John Carpenter and his son Cody. Yes, that Carpenter. I don’t know how they got him to do the music: he directed the King adaptation Christine in the 80s and was the original choice for that Firestarter, so that may have something to do with it.

What’s my judgement? The new movie isn’t bad. Acting-wise I’d even say it’s better; I especially prefer Michael Greyeyes’s performance to the ham-fisted approach of Scott. But if I had to chose… I’d stick with the original. That had the “oh, she is so cute” Barrymore factor and a really, really impressive cast, which this movie only can dream of. The pyro FX party at the end is much more impressive than the toned-down finale here. There is also the “zeitgeist factor” to consider. In 1984 you could still accept and be fascinated by the idea of a girl who can create and control fire. In 2022, with Pyro, Dark Phoenix or Sunspot doing similar or more impressive things, Charlie’s powers just aren’t as fascinating as they used to be.

Dir: Keith Thomas
Star: Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Sydney Lemmon, Michael Greyeyes

The Ledge

  By

★★½
“Falls off sharply.”

Despite the above, there are some strong positives to be found here. First off, the Serbian mountain landscapes are beautiful, and the cinematography does them justice. Free climbing, the focus here, is an innately tense pastime, with the risk of serious injury or death present at any second. Again, the photography gets this over well, with some of the shots capturing the heights involved, to the point of almost inducing vertigo in the viewer. Finally, Ashworth is entirely convincing in her portrayal of free climber Kelly. She has the right, well-defined physique, muscled particularly around the shoulders, and exudes a quiet confidence in her own abilities, which is what you would expect. That’s the good news. 

Unfortunately, there’s the rest of the film, beginning with a plot that would be overachieving if it reached the level of dumb, and is little more than a series of eye-roll generating cliches strung together. Kelly and her gal pal are prepping for a weekend’s climbing on the anniversary of a tragic accident which claimed the life of Kelly’s fiancé, just as he was about to propose to her. Four jocks roll up at the next cabin, and before you can say “date rape”, the pal has fallen off a cliff, and is finished off by the group’s leader, Josh (Lamb). Becky happens to video that, and as they chase her, starts climbing the rock face to escape. The only way out is up, except Josh and crew take an alternate route up. It leaves Becky stuck on a narrow outcrop, with bad guys above, and a thousand-foot drop below.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention the snakes, which according to the movie, are a bigger threat to rock climbers, than plummeting to your doom. Or the conveniently abandoned tent on the ledge, just a few feet below a far better site. The whole thing is littered with this kind of contrivance. Worse still is Josh – by which I mean, both the character, and the ridiculously hammy performance by Lamb. It comes over as a douchebag version of Ryan Reynolds, and could not be more an Obvious Psycho, if he had been running a motel and talking about his mother a lot.

Some scenes are effective, mostly the simpler ones, pitting Becky against the implacable combination of the rock-face and gravity. If only the makers had realized what they have, does not need to be dressed up in painful and artificial ways to generate excitement. All you need is some initial device to get Becky onto the wall; everything thereafter is needless window-dressing. This includes the back-story of Becky’s boyfriend, and the convoluted saga of Josh’s love-life off the mountain, neither adding an iota to the entertainment value. Ford also directed Never Let Go, which used its exotic location and isolated heroine to slightly better effect. But if I never see Lamb’s irritating hamminess ever again, I will be entirely fine with that.

Dir: Howard J. Ford
Star: Brittany Ashworth, Ben Lamb, Nathan Welsh, Louis Boyer

Interceptor

  By

★½
“Why Netflix is a joke.”

Two minutes in, Chris turned to me and said, “Is this an Asylum movie?” Oh, that she had been right, for the net results might have been more entertaining. This is truly the dumbest film I have seen in a very long time. It feels like a throwback in content to about thirty years ago, except with a script that makes your average Cannon product look like Citizen Kane. It’s set on a missile interceptor station in the middle of the Pacific, to which Captain J. J. Collins (Pataky) has just been assigned again. Barely has she dropped her bags off in her cabin, when word comes that their sister base in Alaska has gone dark, and terrorists have stolen 16 Russian ICBMs. Before you can say “shitty Die Hard knockoff”, trust-fund kid Alexander Kessel (Bracey) shows up, intent on removing America’s last line of defense. It’s up to J.J. and plucky SigInt guy Rahul Shah (Mehta) to prevent them – or the terrorists will have won, literally. 

Writer-director Reilly is, I believe, a popular author of thrillers. I say that, because there’s no evidence here he could write his way out of a paper-bag, with so many, painfully obvious plot-holes. The way the terrorists pointlessly go public with their theft. Kessel and his minions kill everyone on the platform except J.J. and Shahul, keeping them alive for no reason. The villain has codes which will sink the base, yet doesn’t use them until only 30 minutes are left. I could go on. It’s a parade of eye-rolling inanity, made worse by cringeworthy dialogue, such as the line shoehorned in to explain the lead actress’s heavy Spanish accent. The final nail is the irrelevant wokeness, from J.J’s sexual harassment past, through the redneck henchmen and her Muslim sidekick, to the female US President (who is completely useless, incidentally). If only Reilly had put as much thought into his script, as his virtue signalling. 

To be fair, I didn’t mind Pataky as a heroine, and the action is occasionally up to what I wanted. There’s a decent brawl with the female terrorist (played by stuntwoman Ingrid Kleinig), and a couple of imaginative deaths, including the novel use of a firearm. However, the rest of the performances are almost uniformly terrible, and the story had lost me entirely, well before the ridiculous finale. While Netflix Originals come in for a lot of criticism, I’ve enjoyed my fair share: The Old Guard was decent, and Extraction (starring Mr. Elsa Pataky, Chris Hemsworth, who cameos here) was as good as any action movie of 2020. Hell, I even enjoyed 6 Underground. So I’m no snob. This, however, was bad enough to have us reconsidering our subscription to the streaming service, once we polish off watching Stranger Things. With the price also increasing sharply, the reality is that you can find considerably better movies than this for free. Certainly, I’ve better things to do with my time and money. 

Dir: Matthew Reilly
Star: Elsa Pataky, Luke Bracey, Aaron Glenane, Mayen Mehta

Shut In

  By

★★
“Woman who talks through doors”

After Run Hide Fight, this is another film produced by political outlet The Daily Wire. This inevitably leads to reviews which are as much concerned with the leanings of the production company, which is annoying, albeit understandable. If the Huffington Post got into the movie business, I imagine the same thing would happen. But it also ignores the fact that you would have to look hard here, to find much indication of a political agenda. A considerably bigger issue is that it’s quite dull, with a heroine who spends much of the time living up to her apparent Native American name given above. Certainly, I hoped for more from this synopsis: “When a young mother is barricaded inside a pantry by her violent ex-boyfriend, she must use ingenuity to protect her two small children from escalating danger while finding an escape.”

The mom in question is Jessica (Qualley, the daughter of Andie McDowell), a recovering drug addict who is preparing to get out of town, and start a new life with adorable little moppet, Lainey (VanDette), and her toddler, Mason. Unfortunately, her plans are derailed by a troublesome door, and the arrival of her skeevy ex-boyfriend and father of Lainey, Rob (Horowitz), who is still very much under the control of his meth habit. Dodgier still is his skeevier pal, Sammy (Gallo, making his return to features after close to a decade), who has a very poor reputation, to put it mildly. An argument with Rob leads to Jessica being nailed inside the pantry, with her two children outside, Rob storming off promising to return when she has learned her lesson. Worse follows, with Sammy sleazing his way back. As a storm erupts, he poses an unspeakable threat to Lainey, who now also has to take care of Mason, under Jessica’s increasingly fraught instruction.

Especially in the first half, this means a lot of Jessica shouting through a door, and Lainey whining “I am hungry/am scared/need the toilet” in repetitive order. It gets old very quickly. Even though Gallo certainly makes for a slimy villain, the reality is that the film has locked itself in a confined space, along with its lead character. Neither of them are going anywhere for about the first hour. Caruso attempts to ramp up the tension by having everything threatening happen out of sight of both his heroine and the audience, but I never felt particularly concerned. This is a case where it felt like we needed a more direct approach to the threat. There’s also a weird religious subtext, which is neither prominent enough to be significant or objectionable. So I was left wondering what the point of it was.

Things do pick up, at least somewhat, for the final reel, where things are allowed out of the closet. Had the script worked on that basis from the start, this might have had a chance. Instead, it’s the very definition of “too little, too late.”

Dir: D.J. Caruso
Star: Rainey Qualley, Jake Horowitz, Luciana VanDette, Vincent Gallo