Tag: 2022

V for Vengeance

  By

★★★
“The Vampire Slayers.”

This is briskly entertaining, and feels like a female version of Blade, with an extra good-girl vampire as a bonus. Yet it’s definitely best not to pause and think about some aspects, because the story will likely fall apart under close scrutiny. Matters are complicated by a flashback-heavy structure, on occasion multiple levels deep, and an apparent desire to overstuff proceedings, at the expense of some elements. That said, it hangs together and is entertaining, mostly thanks to a likeable pair of lead performances. There is a decent quantity of hand-to-hand action, even if some of it does leave a little bit to be desired on the quality front.

Our heroines are Emma (Hudon) and Scarlett (Van Dien), sisters who were abducted from their adoptive parents, and turned into vampires by the evil Thorn. They eventually broke away from his control, and have just learned their third sibling, Kate (Dyer), is not as dead as they had long presumed her. Indeed, she has just succeeded in inventing a vaccine that can “undo” vampirism; it’s based on their mother’s research, a rare blood-type being the reason the trio were adopted. With the help of a bounty hunter called Marcus (Russell), they set out to re-unite with Kate, unaware that Thorn has similar designs on her, albeit for entirely different reasons. There’s also the Federal Vampire Control agency, who’d be more than delighted to see Thorn and/or Emma and Scarlett taken out of action.

Quite a lot of this which will be familiar if you’ve seen a reasonable number of vampire films, such as the tech’d up accessories, as well as the enhanced speed/power of the vampires. However, none of this is used to particular effect: the good old stake through the heart seems to be the most effective weapon. Similarly, the FVC seems little more than an afterthought, which plays almost no meaningful part in proceedings. Instead, this is at its best when going its own way. Emma tries only to feed on bad people, e.g. rapists, and there’s an amusing scene near the start with her increasingly less subtle efforts at entrapment falling on entirely stony ground. I’d like to have seen more of this tongue-in-cheek approach.

I did enjoy Hudon and Van Dien’s performances, which do manage to capture a real sense of sisterly love/hate. However, Marcus’s role is utterly obvious, and a later flashback shows he should definitely have been recognized by one of the siblings. Very convenient and selective amnesia is a wonderful cinematic thing, isn’t it? It’s this kind of sloppy scripting which stops this from potentially reaching the level of cult classic. The movie is nicely shot, and doesn’t look cheap, though the doubling for some of the stunts is occasionally a little too obvious. It feels as if it could have been a pilot for a series, although it’d need to find another Big Bad. A role-reversed version of Buffy, with the vampires doing the slaying, might have been fun.

Dir: Kelly Halihan
Star: Jocelyn Hudon, Grace Van Dien, Christopher Russell, Pauline Dyer

Infinite Storm

  By

★★
“An uphill slog.”

The “based on a true story” label covers a broad range of cinematic outcomes. However, a general rule of thumb is, the closer a movie stays to the facts, the less interesting the result will be. On that basis, I suspect this is a true and accurate deduction of the life of Pam Bales, and one particular incident therein. Because it’s largely lacking in excitement, and worse, seems to know it. Unless you have a fondness for watching someone trudge uphill for 30 minutes, then downhill for another sixty, I’d recommend giving this a pass. Despite some attractive scenery (Slovenia standing in for New Hampshire), there’s not enough to generate the necessary amount of drama or tension.

Pam (Watts) heads out on a solo hike of Mt. Washington. While she’s an experienced hiker, and a member of the local volunteer search and rescue team, she is still not prepared for the sudden change in weather conditions that descends, engulfing her in a blizzard. Managing to extricate herself from a crevasse into which she falls, she then stumbles across another hiker (Howle), ill-outfitted for the storm, just sitting in the middle of the trail. She has to try and negotiate a way down and off the mountain for both of them, a task made harder by her new charge’s odd aversion to being rescued. He won’t tell her his actual name, forcing her to call him John by default, and at one point deliberately plunges off a precipice.

There does turn out to be a reason for this suicidal behavior, which is fair enough. Less satisfactory, is the script’s decision to give us a back-story about Pam and her children. It feels as if they think simple heroism is not something a person – in particular a woman – can simply have; there has to be some more or less buried trauma in their past, to justify their bravery. I didn’t feel this added anything of real significance to her character – and worse, I didn’t care and, to be honest, found it kinda dull. It’s as if the makers didn’t have faith in the ability of their core story to hold the viewer’s attention. Sadly, I can’t argue with them on that point.

In particular, it doesn’t offer any particular progression. This is just Pam stumbling her way about, against the environment and the elements for an hour and a half. At the end, there’s a particularly “Eh?” moment, where a caption informs us that it only takes one person to change a life, not long after Pam has declared that the universe is an infinite storm of beauty. I’m not sure how the film got there from what it depicted over the previous ninety minutes. I always say that the vastly overrated 2001, is the only journey to the outer planets, which feels like it was filmed in real-time. Along the same lines, Infinite Storm is the only mountain climbing movie I’ve seem, which feels like it was filmed in real-time 

Dir: Malgorzata Szumowska
Star: Naomi Watts, Billy Howle, Denis O’Hare, Parker Sawyers

Avarice

  By

★★★
“An arrow-ing experience.”

I’m not 100% sure, but I suspect this may be the first film I’ve tagged as both in the “sport” and “home invasion” genres. It’s not a crossover you see every day. However, it is fair comment in this case, even if takes its own sweet time to get there. Kate Matthews (Alexy) has various bits of static in her life. Her husband, Ash (Ford), spends too much time at his Very Important job in high finance, rather than on their relationship. Daughter Susan is being a teenager. Kate just lost an archery tournament. Oh, and their house has been invaded by Reed (Nell) and her band of thugs, who are now intent on forcing Ash to transfer thirty million dollars into their offshore bank-accounts.

The early stages of this are more than a bit wobbly. We’re given no particular reason to side with Kate, whose issues seem very much of the type typically deserving the hashtag, #FirstWorldProblems. Having helped raise a teenage daughter myself, Susan’s behaviour is very much at the mild end. You have never truly parented, until you get a phone call in the middle of the night, telling you your offspring has been arrested. Slight sullenness isn’t cause for sympathy. On the other side of the coin, the villains seem to be hired for their muscles rather than their brains. More than once Kate is tied up and manages to free herself, which should surely be covered in Henching 1.0.1.

Reed is an honourable exception, being both competent and extremely ruthless: let’s just say, Kate’s family gatherings will not be the same size after this event. Once she begins to take charge, the movie shifts up a gear, and this is also around the point at which Kate’s pastime of choice begins to become relevant. To be clear, it does take about an hour for the first arrow to be fired in anger, and I was wondering, given the cover, whether this was going to be another case of archery teasing: all show and no bow. The final third does make an energetic attempt to make up for this earlier shortfall, and to quite satisfactory effect. Some of the subsequent pointy violence is rather effective.

This is especially the case when Kate, for justifiable reasons (again: think smaller family gatherings…) decides to take the fight to the invaders, and goes into the warehouse from which they are operating. While a bit contrived, this provides a fine location for a spot of stalk ‘n’ shoot, as she picks off the minions one at a time. If you’re hoping this is going eventually to lead to a battle between her and Reed, you will not be disappointed, and it goes to prove that a bow and arrow can be just as effective in close combat, if you are prepared to adapt. Mind you, I’d have dumped Ash’s sorry ass, since he proves to be less than useless. That’s just me though.

Dir: John V. Soto
Star: Gillian Alexy, Luke Ford, Alexandra Nell, Ryan Panizza

Reign of Chaos

  By

★
“Future schlock.”

There are spells where I find myself going through a stream of mediocre movies, wondering when I’ll see something genuinely good. Then, I stumble into the likes of this, which leaves me yearning for the heady delights of mediocrity. It was in trouble right from the start, with five minutes of opening voice-over that did nothing but leave me confused. Then again, if your story requires five minutes of opening voice-over in the first place, you should probably rethink your storytelling techniques. The same could be said for a post-apocalyptic scenario in which food is in short supply, yet black pleather cat-suits are apparently easily available, in a range of sizes to fit all needs.

A plague has swept the land, turning the bulk of the population into flesh-eating “Joiners”. That is not the worst of it. For it turns out, Chaos is harvesting souls to usher in an unending period of unimaginable torment. Perhaps one where pleather cat-suits might be slightly difficult to come by. Humanity’s sole hope is the three descendants of the Greek goddess Nike: Nicole (Finch), Lindsay (Wood), and Alina (Di Tuccio). They are brought together under the tutelage of Rhodri (Cosgrove), trained in the arts of battle and sent off to face Chaos in their pleather cat-suits. He turns out to be a pasty-faced baldie, like Voldemort with a nose, though the final battle is so underwhelming you may wonder if the final reel went missing.

Let me be clear: there is hardly an element of this which reaches even the level of semi-competent. The most obvious flaw is a world, supposedly collapsed into anarchy and… dare I say it, Chaos, which looks utterly indistinguishable from our current one. Lawns are well-maintained, there is not a broken window is to be seen, and the neighbourhood even has a well-stocked boxing gym open. It’s truly the least convincing apocalypse ever. Into this fit our trio of heroines, who are, similarly, the least convincing saviours of the world ever. Their combat skills are negligible, and I have to assume they were cast solely for their ability to wear a pleather cat-suit (something I allow they do better than I could). Admittedly, their performances are not exactly helped by having to deliver laughable lines, such as, “Goddess power, bitch!”

The above is written as someone who has watched and, indeed, made his fair share of poverty-row cinema. The number one rule of this is: just because you can write it on the page, does not mean you can film it. You need to be permanently aware of the limitations which your lack of resources impose, and operate within them. The makers here seem to have no such idea, writing their way into a corner which a hundred times their budget would have struggled to escape. Ambition is laudable. This instead plays like a child in a cardboard box making “Vroom! Vroom!” sounds, and does not a Ferrari make.

Dir: Rebecca Matthews
Star: Rebecca Finch, Rita Di Tuccio, Georgia Wood, Peter Cosgrove

Hunting Ava Bravo

  By

★★★
“No business like snow business.”

I do admire a film which does not hang about, and this certainly qualifies. We begin with Ava Bravo (del Castillo) removing a hood to find herself in a very remote, snowbound mountain cabin. A cassette player nearby has a message. She has been abducted by Buddy King (Blucas), a millionaire with a fondness for kidnapping trauma survivors and hunting them through the wilderness. There’s a snowmobile parked five miles North, if she can make it across the winter terrain there. To make it fairer, Buddy has only three bullets for his gun. Oh, and he’s going to be coming up from the basement in ten seconds. Safe to say, this is the kind of start that grabbed my attention. 

It does have some trouble living up to it, with rather too much slack in what follows, even if the running time is under 80 minutes. Things do unfold largely as you’d expect, in what’s another variation on the ever popular Most Dangerous Game concept. Seriously, there have been so many now, I feel I should add a tag for that subgenre. So, we get Eva getting the drop on Buddy, only to find his cassette message was not entirely truthful, and she needs to keep him alive if she wants out. The rest of the film is a struggle between the two of them for dominance, and we learn a little of their histories and what makes them tick.

It probably needs some tighter plotting, e.g. a third party (Medina) turns up when needed by the plot. Though this does get explained, it wasn’t entirely convincing. I have… questions. Let’s leave it at that. This also applies to the ending, where Eva’s geographic knowledge suddenly seems considerably better than it was. However, this is made up for with a decent pair of lead performances, and some sequences which are effective and tense. Del Castillo should be known in these parts as the star of La Reina Del Sur and Ingobernable. This is a bilingual performance, with a chunk of unsubbed Spanish, though it’s mostly cursing.  [Sometimes having a wife of Cuban extraction has its benefits. I’m now fairly fluent in certain phrases you won’t learn on DuoLingo…]

This does come to play in what’s likely the tensest scene. Ava and Buddy stumble across two Hispanic hunters, leading to them both trying to convince the hunters that the other is the dangerous psycho. He has the bruises to support his case, and she is carrying the gun. However, she has the language advantage. It’s a well-written, performed and staged sequence, and shows where the film could perhaps have gone. Moments like this were enough to get me over the less interesting bits of chit-chat, though Ava’s matter-of-fact description of her previous abduction and escape is chilling in its understated nature. If it’s all too uneven to be wholeheartedly recommended, I felt there was enough here to justify its existence. 

Dir: Gary Auerbach
Star: Kate del Castillo, Marc Blucas, Halem Medina

Emily the Criminal

  By

★★★★
“Parks and Illegal Recreation.”

For six months or so, our morning routine involved the consumption of an episode of Parks and Recreation with breakfast. Our favourite character on the show was Ron Swanson, but not far behind was April Ludgate, played by Aubrey Plaza. She was the mistress of deadpan misanthropy, delivering lines like “I’m just gonna live under a bridge and ask people riddles before they cross.” We’ve not seen her in much since the show ended, but the concept of April Ludgate, career criminal, was too delicious to pass up. So here we are, yet I must admit, Plaza is almost good enough to make us forget April. Well, except for one roll of the eyes, which was vintage Ludgate.

She plays Emily, a young woman saddled with an inescapable pit of student loans, for a basically useless qualification, and an unfortunate felony relegating her to food delivery work. A chance encounter brings her into contact with Youcef (Rossi). She earns $200 for making a fraudulent credit-card transaction on his behalf, and is offered the chance to earn ten times that, for a larger, riskier purchase. With regular employment clearly not the solution, Emily embraces her new, illegal career, working with Youcef, much to the disdain of his Lebanese brothers. As their infighting escalates, Youcef decides to cut and run, only to be beaten to the punch. Emily won’t stand for that: “You’re a bad influence,” says Youcef, as he and Emily prepare to rob his brother. He’s not wrong. 

On one level, Emily’s situation is a result of her poor choices. Running up eighty grand in debt for an art degree and committing felonious assault are both decisions she made, of her own free will. These have consequences. Yet I increasingly found myself rooting for Emily, and her refusal to be ground down by the unfairness of life, or those seeking to exploit her – both in the legal and illegal employment sectors. She possesses undeniable smarts, and a righteous anger at the undeserved success of those she sees around her. Her wants are not excessive, and her crimes are… if hardly victimless, non-violent. At least, if you don’t count those who try to take advantage of her. For Emily wields a mean stun-gun.

If the world won’t give Emily a chance, playing by their rules, she’ll simply make up her own rules. She’s not willing to conform just to become society’s victim, and in this, weirdly, it has elements in common with urban flicks like The Bag Girls. There’s also no sense of honour among thieves, though the authorities and police in this movie are notable by their complete absence. Certainly, the threat of arrest is never a consideration for Emily, or at least, doesn’t alter her trajectory. The ending is ambivalent, to put it mildly: crime appears to pay, though it seems Emily may be addicted to the adrenaline high as much as the ill-gotten gains. While the morality here may be questionable, Plaza’s performance still makes it more than worthwhile. 

Dir: John Patton Ford
Star: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Gina Gershon

Code Name Banshee

  By

★★½
“Daddy issues.”

This seemed considerably better in the trailer, which makes it look like quite an action-packed extravaganza. The reality is much less interesting, with a murky and confusing plot, and what action there is, is often filmed in a murky and confusing way. It begins with an agent, code name Banshee (King), quitting the government agency for which she works. The handoff of an asset went wrong: one of the colleagues involved was her father, who vanished entirely. The other was Caleb (Banderas), who went off the grid thereafter. Five years later, Banshee is a private assassin, but her latest job is interrupted by Greene (Flanagan), who wants her to give up Caleb’s location. 

Naturally, she won’t, and tracks down Caleb herself to warn him and his teenage daughter, Hailey (Davis) – as well as, hopefully, find the truth out about what happened to her father. Before she can do so, Greene shows up, with an apparently infinite supply of minions, who appear remarkably oblivious to concepts such as “taking cover”. To get to this point, you will have to endure a script that doesn’t bother explaining almost any significant point. I’m not sure why Greene is suddenly and energetically going after Caleb, half a decade later. Or why Banshee also waited so long to visit the only man who knows what happened to her father. Then there’s the facile ease with which she is able to track down Caleb, based entirely on a fragmentary conversation from a long time previously. Mind you, running a bar is not exactly what I would call “going off-grid”…

It is a bit of a pity, since I liked most of the characters, and the actors do a fairly good job of bringing them to life. King and Davis have good chemistry, and  Banderas brings an effective world weariness to his role, as a veteran who now just wants to be left alone. The highlight though, is likely Flanagan, who hits the right balance, creating a larger than life villain, without going too far into the chewing of scenery. The lack of apparent motivation – we never know who he’s working for, or why – does limit his effectiveness. 

The first bit of action may be the best elevator lobby fight since The Matrix, and does a good job of establishing Banshee’s credentials, even if there isn’t much else of a similar standard the rest of the way. Indeed, as far as Banshee goes, there’s not much at all, until Greene’s curiously incompetent henchmen start to show up at Caleb’s house, attacking in small, conveniently handleable groups. For… reasons, it’s largely down to Banshee and Hailey to hold them off, the latter proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So, two action heroines for the price of one. Yay. Just do not expect to learn the truth about what happened to dear old Dad, or you will be sadly disappointed. Actually, you may well be disappointed anyway…

Dir: Jon Keeyes
Star: Jaime King, Antonio Banderas, Tommy Flanagan, Catherine Davis

After the Pandemic

  By

★★½
“As generic as its title.”

A disease sweeps the planet, killing billions. The only ones with any hope of surviving in the outside world are the young, a small number of whom appear to have a natural immunity. Five years on, and Ellie is one of the few to have endured, scraping for a life among the leftovers of civilization. But she and the other survivors are the targets for the Stalkers: roaming groups of biohazard-suit clad hunters in white vans. They seek to capture the immune, for use in a project to develop a vaccine that can allow the elite to come out of their safe havens. While trying to avoid them, she encounters Quinn (Smith), another survivor with a wealth of knowledge, and a hard-edged approach to life. Initially, Quinn wants nothing to do with Ellie, though eventually realizes two heads can sometimes be better than one, in the never ending struggle to stay alive and free.

After the opening narrative, there’s a spell of over 20 minutes which are entirely dialogue free. It’s a brave choice, yet doesn’t hurt the movie, instead reinforcing the loneliness of the situation in which Ellie finds herself. I do have questions about so much time supposedly having passed. There are some suspiciously well-preserved corpses, and the world itself seems barely different from now, save for the shortage of people, without signs of decay. I was expecting more to be made of the youth element too, perhaps along the lines of Roger Corman’s cult flick, Gas-s-s-s, with a replacement culture having arisen to replace the geriatric one. Never happens: save for the age of the main characters, it’s irrelevant. 

The biggest issue, I felt, was there just was not enough going on here to justify the movie’s existence. After Ellie meets Quinn, the next hour largely appears to consist of them avoiding or running from the Stalkers. The pair of heroines are in severe need of some kind of goal, an end-game to which they are working, rather than, as it appears, merely basic survival on a day-to-day basis. The script seems to concentrate on the relationship between them, yet never puts in the necessary work beyond the superficial level. Why are the girls so different, given their similar experiences? 

While the performances are decent enough, the same goes for them: they get the job done, and no more. The occasional brief flashback proves almost aggravating rather than enlightening in this regard. Things do escalate down the stretch, with matters between Ellie, Quinn and the Stalkers coming to a head. Though if I was in charge of the last-named, I would have a quiet word about their collection protocols. Sloppy, and they pay the price. It is not quite enough to save the scenario. While you can’t point at much here that writer-director Lowry specifically does wrong, nor does he bring anything novel to the post-apocalyptic party, and neither is this done well enough to stand out from the crowd. Forgettably competent. 

Dir: Richard Lowry
Star: Eve James, Kannon Smith

The Woman King

  By

★★★
“Annalise Keating does not mess around.”

The above – though expressed rather more bluntly! – was Chris’s reaction to the opening scene, in which Nanisca (Davis) leads her female troops, the Agojie, in the ambush of slavers from the neighbouring Oyo tribe. The Oyo are rivals to the Kingdom of Dahomey, under King Ghezo (John Boyega), who relies on Nanisca and the Agojie to protect his territory, and it’s getting closer to all-out war. The Agojie get a new recruit, Nawi (Mbedu), whose father drops her off at the palace gate, because of her refusal to accept an arranged marriage. Nawi turns out to have a very close connection to Nanisca, but also ends up captured by the Oyo and needs to escape before being sold to Brazilian slavers.

I found myself disappointed by this split focus. Davis is great, commanding the screen in just about every scene, and looking every inch a credible army commander. Her physique is also impressive, considering she’s older than I am. The problem is, there isn’t enough of her, even in a 134-minute movie, and Nawi isn’t anywhere near as interesting. While Nanisca may be a fictional character (and I’ll circle back to this), she’s a unique creation. Nawi, on the other hand, feels like a lazy combination of tropes from other films. Never mind the training montage, I literally sighed when she goes back to help a struggling comrade in arms during her final test. The more I saw of her, the less interested I was.

The Agojie in general are an intriguing topic, and there has been some controversy over the film’s depiction of Dahomey. In reality, they were no less enthusiastic about slavery than their neighbours, and certainly didn’t limit themselves to captured enemy soldiers, as is kinda suggested here. However, I can’t say I was bothered. Heck, one of my all-time favourite films is Braveheart, which has only a tangential and tenuous link to historical fact. This deserves no less a pass. You have to accept that these days, you just couldn’t sell – to the audience or a studio – a film where slavers were the good guys. Or girls, in this case. Just do not attempt to pass this off as history.

While more accurate than Black Panther, which had its own female warriors, I’d say it is on a par with your typical Joan of Arc biopic, of which I have rather a lot of recent experience! Purely as entertainment though, it’s decent enough, with Prince-Bythewood possessing a good eye for spectacle. The various threads of Nanisca’s life are weaved together in a decent way, leading to a final confrontation that’s no less satisfying for being entirely expected [and reminiscent of another not-very-historical epic, Gladiator] However, at the macro level, it never quite meshed for me into more than a pleasant time-passer. Nanisca is a fascinating heroine, in need of a character arc. The problem is, Nawi is an interesting arc, in desperate need of a character. 

Dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Star: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim

Enola Holmes 2

  By

★★★½
“The fair sex is your department.”

I had forgotten how much I really did not like the original movie. It’s particularly hard to believe, because this sequel is a significant improvement in just about every way. Most of my criticisms from the review seem to have been addressed. For example, the most annoying character, Enola’s mother, played by Helena Bonham-Carter, is all but absent, and the second most useless role, aristocrat Lord Tewkesbury (Partridge), is considerably less irritating, serving an actual purpose. Sherlock Holmes (Cavill) is shown to be the great detective, familiar from Conan Doyle’s stories. Last but not least, Enola (Brown) is a more mature, less precocious character, and even her fourth-wall breaking seems more natural and less an affectation. 

The story is better too. It begins with Enola, now trying to make her own way as a detective, is engaged to look for a missing young woman, who has vanished from her match factory job, after purloining some documents from the owner’s office. Digging into this brings Enola into a web of corruption extending high up in the government, and eventually overlaps with Sherlock’s investigation into financial irregularities in the Treasury department. Enola finds herself framed for murder by the shadowy Superintendent Grail (Thewlis) of Scotland Yard, and has to avoid the authorities’ grasp, while working with her brother to untangle the web of intrigue. It doesn’t quite all work – the overlap with Sherlock’s case is never well explained – yet it is almost always interesting and entertaining. 

The biggest step up is likely Brown’s portrayal of the heroine. Two years is a long time for a teenager: we saw our own daughter go from a problematic 16-year-old to an 18-year-old human being, and much the same transformation has occurred here. Similarly, Enola now seems like an actual person, not the artificial character created for a book. Her relationships – especially with her brother, though also with Tewkesbury – reflect this, and seem like the kind real people would have. The near-absence of showboating feminist Eudoria Holmes helps, though there are still moments that may provoke slight to moderate eye-rolling. I’d say the finale at the match factory falls into this category, and is certainly unnecessary. 

The action feels at a slightly lower, or at least, less frenetic level. The main set-piece is Enola’s breakout from prison (this is also where her mum shows up, along with her martial arts teacher sidekick). It’s not bad, though does feel more like a duty, and an add-on instead of an organic part of the movie. The incorporation into the plot of an actual event, the matchgirl strike of 1888, is a nice idea, grounding the plot, though does become a vehicle for some obvious soap-boxing. “Radical” maybe isn’t quite the compliment the film thinks. In the main, however, this was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise, whose 130 minutes seemed considerably shorter. Bring on a third installment, and hopefully sooner rather than later. 

Dir: Harry Bradbeer
Star: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Louis Partridge, David Thewlis