Tag: 2023

Black Bags

  By

★★½
“Lost luggage.”

The first half of this is better than average, setting up an intriguing scenario that feels as if it might be going somewhere. Unfortunately, the second half manages to go almost nowhere, the hard edge honed to that point being severely blunted. We end in something which feels more appropriate for an “Aren’t All Men Bastards?” marathon on the Lifetime channel. It centres on Tess (Rulin), a pregnant woman returning to her new home in the countryside on the bus – her husband having forbidden her to drive. However, she ends up collecting the wrong suitcase, picking up an identical one belonging to another passenger. When she gets home and opens it, she finds a severed head. Worse, the case’s owner is now at her door.

This is Sara (Vandervoort), a black-gloved killer, who now wants – no, make that requires – Tess’s help to dispose of the evidence. Sara does have the courtesy to explain why she is carrying about a head. Eleven years ago, she’d had an affair with a married man, resulting in a daughter. The child now has leukemia, and she went to ask the father for help. It did not go well. But what’s also clear is that there is a good deal going on, to which we, the audience, are not privy. Tess’s husband seems sketchy from the little we have seen of him, and it gradually also becomes apparent that the switching of bags was no random accident, Tess being very specifically the target. 

It’s during the disposal things start going wrong for the movie. An abandoned factory, I can accept. One with an open vat of bubbling green stuff, perfect for dissolving heads? A little too convenient.  Then, let’s go get pie together! And tell the waitress we literally just got away with murder! It feels quite at odds with the smart person Sara had been – those gloves are there for a reason. The more we find out, the more it feels like the script is shooting itself in the foot, while simultaneously tying itself in knots. Which is quite an achievement, if you think about it. It also drops the twist we’ve been anticipating since the beginning, though your reaction may be more “Huh” then “Wow”.

In the end, the biggest problem may be trying to make Sara sympathetic. Once it’s been established that she flat-out decapitated someone, it’s always going to be a difficult road back, regardless of her motivation (and by throwing not just a child, but a sick one at us there, the script is guilty of trying too hard). It is both more plausible and entertaining when she’s behaving like Villanelle, than when Sara is trying to be the concerned parent. Unfortunately, it’s the latter which becomes heavily weighted as we reach the end, she and Tess eventually seeming to bond over motherhood. A particularly superfluous coda whacks another half-star off the rating, and solidifies the final score as below average. Bit of a shame.

Dir: Josh Brandon
Star: Laura Vandervoort, Olesya Rulin, Ryan Francis, Drew Pollock

Lamb Game

  By

★★★½
“Ribbons and bows.”

This kinda teetered on the edge of inclusion or not, for about 90% of the movie. The heroine is quite passive, and the action is largely handled by others. It’s still solidly entertaining, and is definitely upper-tier as Die Hard knockoffs go. But it didn’t have a sufficient action heroine quotient… until the very end. There, she finally gets her act together, and takes the fight to her opponents. Was it enough? I was still on the fence, until one bravura shot convinced me. It doesn’t necessarily make logical sense, sure. However, it was just so damn cool, I had no option but to stamp its card and allow the movie entrance through these hallowed portals.

It begins at a wedding, where Shirley (Hung) is about to get married. A gang of jewel thieves led by Di (Chan) shows up, and a firefight with the authorities breaks out. Her husband-to-be decides to have a go. It does not end well for him. A few years later, Shirley gets locked in the building where she works at an archery hall, during a typhoon. By chance, Di and his cronies are also there, working on another robbery. He’s not happy when he realizes Shirley has witnessed him killing his target, and sends his over-sexed brother and another minion to hunt her down. Fortunately for Shirley, another resident in the building is blind martial artist, Nan Ge (Cheng, who used to be married to Yukari Oshima).

This is supposed to be set in Hong Kong during the late nineties, not that any Western viewer could probably tell. But especially in the opening scene, at the wedding, it does feel like a throwback to the golden days of Hong Kong action cinema, before the British colony was handed back to the Chinese. There’s some glorious slo-mo, blood squibbing and gun-fu, that really had me thinking this might be an undiscovered gem. The rest can’t quite live up to the same, heady delights. Yet it’s still a nicely crafted piece of low-budget entertainment, with some particularly impressive photography, which seems to have strayed in from a much bigger production. The setting is cool too, although it appears nobody in Hong Kong has heard of “fire exits”.

Shirley does spend most of the early going running and hiding, with the most memorable bit of violence an encounter with a protruding nail. Eventually, though, Nan Ge is no longer around to protect her, because… of reasons, and she has to fend for herself. Shirley’s employment might be a factor there. It’s a shame, from our perspective, this took so long to show up, since there’s potential for a lot more. To be clear, I was still enjoying proceedings – just on a non-GWG level. When “Action Shirley’ finally does appear, it’s more like dessert than the main course. Go in with that as your expectation, and you should still find yourself enjoying the meal.

Dir: Huang Yi
Star: Lynn Hung, Ricky Chan, Mark Cheng, Zhao Jing Shu Yu

Redhead

  By

★★
“Better dead than redhead.”

Written, directed by, and starring husband and wife team Sam and Johnna Hodge, this is the kind of film it would be easy to deride as poverty-row garbage from the bottom drawer. There’s precious little plot, some of the performances are painfully amateur, and it seems to exist mostly as a show-reel for spraying around corn syrup with red food colouring in it. And yet… If Chris and I made a movie – something we have discussed – it might well end up being not too dissimilar to this. On the other hand, if we had a spare $55,000 lying around – the budget here, according to the IMDb – we’d probably go on a nice holiday instead. 

Autumn Blacksmith (Hodge) survived being abducted and tortured by infamous psychopath Oscar Sawyer (Stinnett), finally escaping after killing him. However, the experience left her severely traumatized, and the slightest unfortunate interaction with any man is sufficient to push her over the edge into a murderous rage. Cue the corn syrup. Rinse, repeat for 90-odd minutes, until the end credits roll. Occasional hallucinations of Sawyer returning from the grave to haunt her, and a brief attempt by her therapist (Holland) to check in, offer a small touch of variety. The West Virginia cops, led by Detective Rogers (Robinson), are not exactly Sherlock Holmes. Then again, locals are remarkably chill about Autumn’s spree. The bartender where she kills her first victim says of him, “He was always an asshole.”

I was reminded of Michael and Anne Paul, another husband and wife film-making duo. They made Roman’s Bride, where the red-headed wife also goes on a killing spree. I think that worked a bit better, because its lead actress had an innocence about her, that provided an interesting contrast to her savagery. Here, Autumn is more blatantly mad, to the point you wonder why any man would try to chat her up. As a viewer, you’re never brought along on the journey into insanity. The way some of the local community end up assisting with, or even active participants in, her murders could have been used to provide another twist to the narrative. Nah. Open another bottle of Karo instead. 

Technically, it’s okay: the camera gets pointed in the right direction, it doesn’t succumb to underlit scenes, and the audio is fine. The soundtrack, also by Sam Hodge (not a surprise), has a nice throwback vibe, sounding like it was ripped off an eighties video nasty. But there is no real sense of progression or development, and the ending feels particularly sudden, going to the end credits immediately after she has disembowelled her final victim, a peeping Tom. We’re very little forward from where we were after her first murder. A sequel is in production though, so it appears there was enough of a market for this kind of thing. Will I watch it? [Sighs heavily] Yeah. I suspect I probably will.

Dir:Johnna Hodge, Sam Hodge
Star: Johnna Hodge, Ashley Stinnett, Will A. Holland, Travis Robinson

Brave Citizen

  By

★★★½
“Bully for you…”

It appears that Korean educational establishments seem to have the same problems as Japanese ones – at least, going by the way they are depicted in the respective country’s movies. I certainly would not want to be a teacher in either country. Here, Mooyoung High has an award-winning anti-bullying policy. It’s a complete fabrication, as both staff and pupils are fully aware. The roost is run by Han Soo-kang (Lee), whose parents hold so much influence, he can do whatever he wants. And what he wants to do is run a reign of terror with his clique. He already drove a substitute teacher to commit suicide, and is now focused on subjecting Go Jin-hyeong (Park J-w) to daily torture.

Into the school comes replacement teacher So Si-min (Shin). Initially, she appears meek and submissive, to a fault. But her background is the complete opposite. She’s actually a former boxer, who missed out on an Olympic spot because… of reasons, shall we say, and is also well-versed in a number of other martial arts. When she sees Han brutalizing Go, she steps in, though manages to defuse the situation without violence – at least, initially. Since she wants to become a permanent member of staff, she can’t unleash her skills on the bully openly. So she dons a cat mask, in order to beat Han up. The resulting humiliation drives him mad, and he vows to find and defeat the kitty vigilante, by any means necessary.

There’s a good deal to enjoy here, in particularly the performances by leads Shin and Lee. The former captures a multi-faceted personality in So, who has a strong inclination towards justice, but is aware of the need for restraint – again, at least, initially. I enjoyed how the film is basically romance-free. She has a friend who is a cop. but there’s no indication this is anything but platonic, and the film doesn’t waste any time pretending otherwise. On the other side, Lee makes for an easily hateable villain. Han is entirely aware that he is untouchable by the authorities at the school, and struts about arrogantly, like a psychotic peacock. Right from the first scene, you’ll be very keen for him to get his just deserts. 

It does, probably, take slightly too long to get there. While there’s no romance, the film does tend to stray off into subplots that we could have done without. The main one is So’s strained relationship with her father, dating back to the Olympic try-outs where… yeah, I can’t say that aspect rang particularly true, or added much to proceedings. The action is moderate: the cat mask leaves me wondering how much of it was being done by the lead actress. But even if it wasn’t her, it’s still fairly well-handled. The story develops mostly as expected – if you’re anticipating a final face-off in which her real identity is exposed to the school, you won’t be far wrong. But it doesn’t feel clichéd, and most of the 112 minutes go by more than pleasantly. 

Dir: Park Jin-Pyo
Star: Shin Hye-sun, Lee Jun-Young, Park Jung-woo, Park Hyuk-kwon

The Last Exit

  By


★★★★
“Manson family values.”

Genuinely good Tubi Original shocker! Well, that’s a bit harsh: there have have been decent ones before – such as Lowlifes, which certainly has some DNA in common. But this is likely the best I’ve yet seen, anchored by an excellent performance from Richardson. This takes place on a dark and stormy night, in a remote Scottish farmhouse. Rose (Richardson) is taking care of her disabled husband, with the help of daughter Maisy (Soverall), where there’s a frantic knocking at the door. It’s two men, Matty (Cadby) and his badly injured brother, Jack (Linpow). Their car got into a wreck nearby, and they are in desperate need of help. Naturally, they aren’t innocent passers-by. 

No great surprise there, and it turns out they are fleeing from a robbery, with the intention of getting across the North Sea to Norway. However, there was a third member of the gang, who didn’t survive. He’s the son of the man who planned the heist: for obvious reasons is not happy about the situation, and ends up heading for the farm. However, that is not the biggest problem Matty and Jack face. For it turns out they aren’t the only ones keeping secrets, and they have just chosen the wrongest possible home to invade. Told you it was not dissimilar to Lowlifes.  The question of who are the villains here becomes a good deal less clear, the more we know about everyone involved.

To that end, much credit to the script, also written by Linpow in an impressive feature debut. It reveals the necessary information at the right pace, and just when you think you know what’s going on, it’ll throw another twist at you. Loyalties shift from scene to scene as the characters discover more about each other, or themselves, and the situation becomes inextricably messy. You know it’s going to end in messy violence, and the film certainly doesn’t disappoint there. The cast are all solid – though in the credits, I notice the production had a “sensitivity consultant”, which is apparently a thing now. I’d like to offer my services as a crass insensitivity consultant to any movies interested. My qualifications there speak for themselves.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. It is, however, Richardson’s movie, having the toughest arc to handle as she moves from caring and compassionate mother to… Well, I guess technically she is still a caring and compassionate mother. It’s just that, well… /gestures vaguely at the screen. The film opens and closes with meaningful quotes about motherhood and the emotions it can trigger. Although what transpires between them, makes them read in radically different ways. To that end, I was getting notes of French horror flick Inside, another story of maternal instincts gone horribly wrong, or Matriarch, also set in Scotland with visitors getting more than they bargained for. Yet despite the influences, this is its own creature, powered by Richardson, and is a solid thriller to the very last shot.

Dir: Matthias Hoene
Star: Joely Richardson, Neil Linpow, Sadie Soverall, Harry Cadby
a.k.a. Little Bone Lodge
[A version of this review originally appeared on Film Blitz]

Zero Hour

  By

★½
“It’s certainly an hour.”

Not to be confused, in any way, with Zero Hour!, the 1957 Canadian film which was spoofed mercilessly in Airplane! This unfolds mostly over one night in a high-rise, where Ida (Hoover) is the last person left in the building, having taken over from best friend Katrina (Dumont). She finds herself being harassed by a pair of masked figures, and simultaneously receiving messages on her phone and computer from her husband, Isaac (Groetsch). Which is perhaps even more disturbing to her, because Isaac was killed in the home invasion which opens the movie. So what’s going on? Has he become a ghost in the machine? Do they have cellphones in the afterlife? Or is there a more prosaic explanation?

According to what Isaac tells her, the people hunting her through the building are also those responsible for his death. The obvious question is why, and it’s in providing the answers that the script (also by Groetsch) falls apart. After the heroine has been chased through the building, eventually ending up in a roof-top confrontation, we get the first of a number of twists, and… Put it this way: I have questions. Lots of questions. Out of respect for the film-makers, I won’t spoiler it, because this is clearly a big part of the film. However, I don’t feel it makes very much sense, because the conspiracy required would need to extend far further than the handful of people shown as involved.

While you are still going, “Hang on, what about…” there, the film lobs another twist at you, then a third as we flashback to Ida and Katrina’s earlier conversation in a bar, which brings in Allison (Durham). After the credits, there’s even another scene which could be a fourth twist, I dunno. Or it might be Groetsch simply wanting to get in another drone shot. I remember my first drone shot. It was in a movie called Berkshire County in 2014, and was amazing at the time. Now? It’s very easy to overuse them, and Groetsch does just that here. He’s clearly going for a fluid style of camera, with it always on the move. But there has to be a point to them. Here, not so much.

This barely runs an hour between opening and closing credits (or, perhaps more accurately, opening and closing drone shots). That’s likely a wise decision, considering how much of this is Ida staring at her phone – and Goetsch needs to learn how to shoot text messages. I will say, I didn’t hate Hoover, who is fairly sympathetic, and does what she can with material which feels more like a rough draft of an idea, and in great need of external critical input. According to his IMDb, Groetsch has no fewer than eleven other films in various stages of pre-production (though some haven’t been updated since 2017 or earlier). The only way to get better is to make more movies. I hope he does.

Dir: Justin Groetsch
Star: Mikaela Hoover, Sarah Dumont, Justin Groetsch, Carrington Brooke Durham

Last County

  By

★★½
“Who’s home-invading who?”

I suspect the main problem here is a story which takes too long to get going. By the time things do kick off, my interest was already on… if not quite life support, it was likely seeing a doctor regularly. While things do then perk up in the second half, it feels too late. We begin with Abby Gardner (Ohm), a recovering alcoholic and mother to a young daughter, whose marriage falls apart after a car accident with the child in the back-seat. Her husband gets custody, and Abby begs for them to come visit her. Before that can happen, her home is entered by Bennet (Rand) and his wounded partner, who have absconded with a duffel-bag full of drug money.

The good news? It’s not long before the cops start to show up, under Sheriff Bill McLean (Campbell). The bad? They are far more interested in the loot than the well-being of Abby, Bennet or anyone else who gets between them and the hold-all. After an enthusiastic bit of rake-wielding (!), Abby goes from hostage to something closer to an accomplice. It’s a decision which makes her hopes for survival, and being re-united with her daughter,  significantly harder to achieve. The idea does offer an interesting (if highly cynical) twist on the usual home-invasion dynamic. Rather than fighting against the intruders, the home-owner ends up working with them, because they are now less of a threat than those supposed to protect her.

I did feel this switch in sides for Abby was a little too sudden. If she’d been given a darker past, then her siding with the drug mules would have been more credible: a fondness for booze did not cut it for me. I also never liked her very much. While it’s one thing to have a nuanced character with shades of grey (and that’s certainly the case with Abby), her maternal status was wielded like it trumped everything. Not for me, it didn’t. As a result, there were points where I almost forgot she hadn’t been part of Bennet’s crew all along. On the other side (literally), I appreciated how the cops ranged from almost honourable to entirely self-serving in their goals. 

I would say things escalate towards the expected face-off, in which Abby, Bennet and Sheriff McLean stand in a triangle, pointing guns at each other. But “escalate” may suggest a little more impetus than is actually present. It does remain watchable, with Ohm and Campbell delivering the best of the performances – you can see each figuring out their next move, like chess grand-masters. The ending, however, seems a little too convenient for its own good, and while I get that everyone may under-estimate Abby, that only goes so far. Technically, it’s solid enough. I was just never particularly engaged, and the innovation present in the concept doesn’t follow through to the characters. It’s going to be forgotten as quickly as its generic title.

Dir: Barret Mulholland
Star: Kaelen Ohm, Gord Rand, Nicholas Campbell, Keaton Kaplan

Choppa City Queens

  By

★½
“Black to very basics.”

We return to the prolific well of Jeff Profitt, last seen here with Keisha Takes the Block. And by prolific, I mean that the IMDb lists now fewer than thirteen upcoming projects he is slated to direct. Fortunately for my backlog, most of these do not appear to be candidates for the site: I do confess some curiosity as to what Trap House Pizza is about. Anyway, both Choppa and Keisha are among the six features he directed in 2023, a number he exceeded last year. Quality is clearly subsidiary to quantity, and this has much the same problems as the last film we covered here, In particular, it’s mostly talk and not enough action.

You have three friends: Leah (Robinson), Jada (Alysha) and Shanice (Collins), all of whom are out of work and seeking a way to make money. Leah literally stumbles across a cache of weapons belonging to gun dealer Ricky (Profitt), and convinces him to let her sell his merch in the ‘hood. For the “Choppas” of the title are Kalashnikov AK-47’s, the weapon of choice for the discerning gang-banger. After the initial sale goes well, Leah gets a bigger order, and has to ask for the guns on credit. Which is a problem, first when Leah’s buyer delays paying for the weapons, and then Shanice’s boyfriend Ray discovers what she’s doing, and decides he wants in on the action. That eventually leads to the only bit of AK action this provides.

The skeleton of a decent movie is present here. It’s possible to read the above synopsis and see how it could be done in an exciting manner. For instance, tensions escalate among the group as the lure of the profits from their new, illegal, but hopefully temporary business, drags them over to the dark side, when the trio only wanted to make a living. It’s a classic tale of the slippery slope into criminality, with the net of the authorities closing inexorably around the participants. Unfortunately, the resources here do not allow for anything like that. It’s telling that the women are buying just three (3) guns at a time, and there are absolutely no cops to be found here at all. 

Meanwhile, the script is strictly of the Point A to Point B variety, without real energy. The trio of lead actresses are okay: there are a few scenes where you can believe they genuinely are friends. The main problem on the performance side is Profitt himself, who is a contender for the world’s least convincing gun-runner. Used cars? Perhaps. Cellphones? Certainly. But now illegal firearms. He’s also very white, and I speak as someone whose skin colour is legally classified as “transparent.” If they’d made him an Aryan Nation type… that would have been a wrinkle. That, however, would be too much like hard work for a film which seems to be uninterested in anything except the path of least resistance to an underwhelming ending.

Dir: Jeff Profitt
Star: Tuckeya Robinson, Jasmine Alysha, Chanel Collins, Jeff Profitt

Imani

  By

★★½
“The Long Goodnight Kiss”

I’m not sure whether this is too long or too short for its own good. Could be a little bit of both. As the tag-line for this review suggests, it bears more than a superficial resemblance to a certain other action heroine film. Faith Newford (Hall) is your everyday, upper middle-class woman: married to a loving husband, physician Bryce (Shipp), with a young daughter, and running a shoe store on the side. Let’s not trouble ourselves about the mysterious amnesia, which leaves a large chunk of her past a blank slate. The problem is, Faith – or Imani, as she was previously known when she was a special ops soldier, is not supposed to be alive at all.

A blow to the head suffered during an abduction attempt triggers the return of her old skills, albeit at the cost of sending her on the run. Turns out she was in possession of information which could prove seriously detrimental to the political ambitions of General Michelle Dupree (Mirto). It’s why Imani and the rest of her squad were supposed to have been eliminated. If dodging Dupree’s goons wasn’t enough, there is another shadowy yet powerful group, who have an interest in Imani from the other direction, intending to use what she knows against Dupree. It’s all rather too over-complex, and I suspect they’d have been better off either simplifying the plot, or making it a mini-series. Hence my opening sentence.

The makers do get some things right, not least there has clearly been a decent amount of resources put into this. It doesn’t look cheap, and they also largely avoid most cliches of black action cinema. Though, inevitably, you still get drug dealers, rap music and The Man – or, in this case, The Woman – they are more incidental, and not the focus. Hall is okay as the heroine. If no Geena Davis, she generally acquits herself adequately in most of the action scenes, at least when she’s not trying to go toe-to-toe with obviously far larger and stronger opponents. For example, Raymond ‘Supreme’ Avant Jr (Lofton), who looks like he could eat Imani for breakfast, and pick his teeth clean with her spine. Yeah, their fight was a tad cringe.

At least the cinematic amnesia wasn’t too grating. For the movie simply has someone sit the heroine down and explain the past, rather than relying on the contrivance of her remembering it when convenient. Sometimes, simple is better. However, the film isn’t good at managing all the threads in the plot carpet, and it proved too much for my poor little mind to handle. I think my brain threw up a blue screen of death somewhere in the middle, during one of the more expository sections, about who was doing what to whom and why: my interest and attention never fully recovered thereafter. I did find the ending satisfyingly bleak – there’s always someone more shadowy and powerful than you – but I’d not call this more than adequate.

Dir: Mike Ho
Star: Brittany S. Hall, Demetrius Shipp Jr., Kris D. Lofton, Elyse Mirto

Sira

  By

★★
“Just deserts.”

Sira (Cissé) is a young African woman, travelling through the fringes of the Sahara Desert in Burkina Faso, on the way to get married to Jean-Sidi (Barry). However, their caravan gets involved in an incident with Islamic terrorists, which escalates into murder, with Sira being abducted by the terrorist leader, Yéré (Minoungou). He changes his mind, raping Sira and leaving her in the desert, because she is “not worthy” to die by his weapon. She survives, and stumbles across the terrorist camp, and takes shelter nearby, sneaking in to obtain food and water. After a group of other kidnapped women show up, to be used as sex slaves, Sira begins to put a plan in motion, with help from an unexpected ally.

Lured in by the poster, I was hoping for something along the lines of Revenge, especially in the wake of early dialogue about how the heroine had been trained to take care of herself by her brothers. But this is a very different kettle of fish. I have a bunch of questions, not least over the time frame involved. Sira is living in the rocks beside the camp for the better part of a year. It’s long enough, to go from not being aware of a pregnancy, to giving birth in the same rocks. While it’s certainly a memorable image to have her blazing away with an automatic weapon, her child strapped across her back… It doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

Yéré’s terrorists don’t appear to do anything much for the great bulk of the time either, except sitting around. They do eventually go out on an attack in the final twenty minutes, but the amount of terror they generate is minimal. Indeed, everyone does their share of sitting around since nobody seems particularly bothered by Sira’s long-term absence. The police, and the authorities in general, are notable by their absence until the very end. Though this may be an accurate assessment of the local situation; I can’t say. Jean-Sidi makes a half-hearted effort to join up with Yéré’s forces. The fact he’s a Christian proves a bit of an instant red flag there, and Yéré does not take kindly to the attempt. 

It’s only at the very end things crack open, with the terrorist camp proving to be unexpectedly flammable. It does offer a glimpse into a culture of which I had little experience or knowledge, and Sira is an interesting character, one whose resilience is remarkable, given the circumstances under which she has to operate. This was the first time Burkina Faso submitted a movie to the Oscars (it was filmed in Mauritania for safety reasons), and is technically decent. But for a film over two hours long, it’s in need of significantly greater narrative impetus. It has the shape of a thriller, yet definitely wants to be a drama. At least I get to cross another country off my map of world cinema.

Dir: Apolline Traoré
Star: Nafissatou Cissé, Lazare Minoungou, Abdramane Barry, Nathalie Vairac