Tag: 2024

The Matriarch

  By

★★★
“Puts the F in mother.”

I’m always amused when I check the reviews on the IMDb for a film, and they are almost all “Totally amazing!” or “Worst film ever!”. The former tend to come from the movie’s friends; the latter, from people miffed by the positive reviews, and seeking to counter them. The reality is usually somewhere in the middle, and that’s the case here. Given this was reportedly made for forty thousand dollars – and those are Australian dollars, which right now is about 67 US cents – it’s quite impressive, and certainly doesn’t look low budget, despite a cast of basically three and a single location. However, it’s a film where, if anyone had behaved sensibly, proceedings would have been all over in about ten minutes. 

This is the unfortunate story of Missy (Greenfield), a 13-year-old girl living with her dysfunctional, drug-addicted single mother Annette (Logan). Things go from bad to worse when her super-sketchy boyfriend, Trent (Sparnon), gets out of jail and moves in with them. He has… history with Missy, so she’s immediately on her guard, taking a carving knife to bed with her. Rightfully so, and Trent duly gets the punishment he deserves. Annette is none too happy about this, and decides that Missy needs to be disposed of as well. From here, things escalate relentlessly, as Missy tries to get out of the house of horrors, and her mother tries to prevent this, by any means necessary. Which includes a significantly escalating body count. 

You definitely will have to suspend your disbelief in a number of ways. Firstly, in accepting that Annette’s maternal instincts are so shallow, that her reaction to the situation, is to try and murder her own child. Then, most obviously, Australian cops are dumber than a eucalyptus tree full of koala bears. Because the ones that show up here, behave in a way which isn’t just in defiance of police protocol, it goes against all notions of common sense. There are times too, where it feels like Missy is actively trying to stay in the house, though given her young age, her idiocy is likely more forgivable. This runs through the heart of the film, to a point where it feels almost like a parody.

Fortunately, I didn’t find it too tricky to put aside such considerations and just enjoy the lurid pleasures this has to offer. It feels like an Antipodean cross between The Shining and Home Alone, combining the disintegrating mindset of the former’s antagonist, with the latter’s impromptu attitude to survival tricks. Greenfield is particularly effective, and I found it almost impossible to believe that this was her on-screen debut. She is highly convincing as she gets put through the emotional, spiritual and physical meat-grinder by her own mother. Creighton, also helming his first feature, shows a firm grasp of the basics, and you won’t find much slack present. However, I would suggest Jayden the director fires Jayden the writer for next time – or, at the very least, has a lengthy chat. 

Dir: Jayden Creighton
Star: Juliette Greenfield, Kate Logan, Andy Sparnon

Saint Clare

  By

★★½
“Burned at the stake.”

Bella Thorne’s struggle to appear in a film which reaches three stars on this site, continues unabated. While probably not helped by my tendency to confuse her with Kristen Stewart, that’s five attempts now. Although, for a minute here, I thought this might be the one where she finally cracked it, with a potentially interesting first half. But it could not sustain itself, and as the final credits rolled, and I saw Guinevere Turner’s name as the co-writer… Yeah, it all made sense. I mean, she wrote Bloodrayne. And I’m one of the few people who didn’t utterly hate that. She has… a certain type of script, shall we say, and leave it at that. 

Here, the heroine is Clare Bleecker (Thorne), a high school student – Thorne was 24 when this was filmed, so about that… – recently transferred in from the East coast after the death of her parents. She’s staying with her grandmother (De Mornay), and moonlights as a vigilante. We first see her allowing herself to get picked up by a sketchy driver, whom she strangles and stabs to death. The resulting police interrogation brings her to the attention of Detective Timmons (Phillippe). But Clare is undaunted, and proceeds to look into the string of girls who have gone missing in the town, crimes going back decades which have never been solved. When her friend Julianna (Rovaris) becomes the latest to vanish, Clare decides the time for passive investigation has gone. 

The early stages are, as noted, interesting enough to be intriguing. There’s a nice touch where her conscience is represented by regular visits from the ghost of one of her victims – albeit an accidental one. However, he all but vanishes after she discovers there’s a bigger problem in town than just random scum-bag men, and the film’s issues tend to multiply thereafter. It’s never adequately explained why Clare has gone all Death Wish in her teenage years, or the Joan of Arc inspiration. Perhaps the book on which the film is based, Clare At 16 (or, I guess, at 24), does a better job of that, but without a particular motivation beyond “Men are bad, m’kay?”, the flaws in plotting became increasingly apparent to me.

And others too, apparently: it took three years to get distribution. I do respect Thorne for trying, even if the results have been underwhelming, and would encourage her to keep trying. As I suspect I’ve said before: she isn’t particularly the problem here, so much as the material. There’s an entire thread about Clare trying to get a part in the school play which is spectacularly out of place. But Thorne’s post-Disney career has never exactly been one known for her making good choices: witness the whole OnlyFans debacle. I was more interest in watching Clare operate as a small-town version of Dexter, punishing the guilty while maintaining a facade of normality. The further this went, the more ludicrous this instead became.

Dir: Mitzi Peirone
Star: Bella Thorne, Ryan Phillippe, Joy Rovaris, Rebecca De Mornay

Sister’s Revenge

  By

★★
“The Harder They Fall”

This gains something for novelty value, coming from Jamaica – a country from which I think I have only ever seen one film before, reggae classic The Harder They Come. It’s also so obscure, there’s no listing for it in the IMDb. Unfortunately, despite being available to watch on Tubi, the presentation leaves a lot to be desired, particularly in the subtitles. The film’s dialogue is in a roughly equal mix of heavily-accented English, and Jamaican patois, often in the same sentence. It feels like the subs were generated purely by an audio to text application, so the English captioning is spotty and there’s no translation at all for the patois. As subtitles go, they’re basically useless.

I was still able to discern the plot easily enough, though details like the lead character’s name remain a mystery, in part because of the lack of other sources of information. I’m going to call her Sister (Francis), in line with the title. She is a soldier, who is also responsible for taking care of her 16-year-old sibling, Blessing (Wallace). Unfortunately, Blessing has just confessed that she is pregnant, and worse, there are two possible fathers. Sister is less than happy about this. After confronting the young men, and getting nowhere, she goes to the police and convinces Officer Dibble (Vassell) to arrest them. This lasts only until the mother of one, Sonia (Russell), bribes Dibble to let them go, having failed to bribe Sister to drop the case. 

It’s therefore up to Sister to make sure justice is served herself. She abducts one of the perpetrators, and makes him confess, an act which allows the case to go up above Dibble’s head. Sonia then pays Dibble more, to take care of Sister permanently, but her military training makes him no match. [To be fair, when he goes to see the men, he’s holding his hand-gun sideways, then tucks it into the front pocket of his jeans. Jamaican police are rather loose with firearms training, it appears]. She then repeats the exercise with Sonia, extracting a confession on video of her bribery, allowing her and Blessing to achieve closure, apparently deciding they will raise the child together. 

It seems very basic, though given the subtitle situation, this is no bad thing. The first half in particularly is very chatty, basically an extended series of conversations: Sister & Blessing; Sister, Blessing & Dibble; Sister & Sonia; Sonia & Dibble. Director Brown doesn’t seem to have a lot of shots in his locker, so these have to sustain on the acting, and that’s a mixed bag. Francis and Russell are the best, and the scenes between the two guardians do crackle, but Wallace is unconvincing, and I was never particularly on Blessing’s side. [The sex seems to have been entirely consensual] I’m reluctant to be too harsh, since the presentation certainly doesn’t help. Outside of being a groundbreaking curiosity, I’m not convinced there’s much of note here. 

Dir: Richard Brown
Star: Jessica Francis, Jayvia Wallace, Candice Russell, Andrew Vassell

Ghost Killer

  By

★★½
“Spectrally short of satisfying.”

By coincidence, I watched this after Baby Assassins 3, without realizing the star here plays Chisato in that franchise; the director here was also its action director. Discovering the overlap is a minor demerit against Ghost Killer, because it counts as something of a waste of her talents. It’s a lovely idea – if you’re just an action fan in general, then it likely scores half a star higher. However, specifically as an action heroine film, there is room for improvement. It begins with the assassination of an assassin. Hideo Kudo (Mimoto) works for a criminal organization, and his death occurs in somewhat murky circumstances. The spent cartridge used to kill him, takes on his vengeful spirit, and the casing is picked up by an innocent college student Fumika Matsuoka (Takaishi). 

After a period of mutual adjustment to being haunted and doing the haunting, Fumika agrees to help Kudo find out who was responsible for his murder, and take revenge. She is the only person who can see and talk to Kudo, and when she grasps his hand, that allows him to take over her body, with all the associated hitman abilities. Along the road to his vengeance, they will have to deal with a date-rapey triple tag-team, as well as another assassin in the same organization, a former student of Kudo, Toshihisa Kagehara (Kuroba). That pair’s relationship is a little fraught, even after Kagehara is convinced about the reality of what is happening. 

The first half of this is very solid, highlighted by the performance of Takaishi as both a college student and a vengeful killer – simultaneously, which makes it all the more remarkable. It means she has to be an expert fighter, and somebody who wouldn’t say “Boo!” to a goose, as her and Kudo tussle for control. I feel as if that enough would have been sufficient to propel the narrative of the entire film. However, it ends up diverting into less interesting Yakuza-based activities in the middle, and it almost becomes easy to forget that Kudo is dead. There aren’t really any surprises once the framework of the situation has been established, heading towards the eventual and predictable confrontation between Kudo and his killer. 

And that’s the problem. It’s between Kudo and his killer, not Fumika. It’s still “in her body,” and I enjoyed the scenes where Kudo is guiding her to hide – telling her when to go around a pillar, for example. But when battle is joined, the film shows Mimoto doing the fighting, not Takaishi. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a very good fight, and that’s why I’d say a general viewer is still likely to be satisfied by it. But I was looking forward to seeing the actress really getting to let loose. After all, having experienced the Baby Assassins trilogy, there’s no issue about her martial arts abilities. Seeing her largely sidelined at the end was a disappointing way to finish things off. 

Dir: Kensuke Sonomura
Star: Akari Takaishi, Masanori Mimoto, Mario Kuroba

The Partisan

  By

★★★
“Part-ially effective.”

We have written about some of the women who worked behind enemy lines for British intelligence during World War II. Names like Noor Inayat Khan, Virginia Hall and Vera Atkins deserve to be better known that they are. The attempts to tell their stories so far have been laudable attempts, but have left me feeling underwhelmed, with a sense they haven’t done their subjects full justice. This is another which I feel should be filed in the same box. The subject here is Christine Granville (Polanski), born Krystyna Skarbek, a Polish national who originally worked in her native country, organizing a network of spies and couriers, running information to then neutral Budapest. This included early reports foreshadowing Germany’s attack on Russia.

As with so much in the film here, however, the details are left frustratingly vague. The above paragraph tells you more of her time in Poland than the movie, which mentions a microfilm, but seems more concerned with Granville’s efforts to extract her mother out of Warsaw. It does, however, include an incident where she was being questioned by the Nazis, bit her tongue, allowing her to feign coughing up blood and convince the doctor she had TB, leading to her release. Most of the movie, however, is set during her time in southern France, later in the war. There, she worked with the maquis, the local resistance, in preparation for the looming Allied invasion. 

The best thing this has going for it is Polanski – yes, she is the daughter of director Roman Polanski, though has more of the luminous looks of her mother, actress Emmanuelle Seigner. Granville had a reputation as a hothead: Atkins called her “very brave, very attractive, but a loner and a law unto herself,” and Polanski’s performance puts all those aspects across very well. There are occasionally scenes which do capture the relentless tension of operating in a scenario like this too, where a single slip could mean death. For example, she tells a Gestapo officer she’s a teacher seeking employment – only for him to show up at the local school, forcing her to improvise during a conversation with the headmistress. More of this would have been welcome.

Instead, for whatever reason, the makers have opted to make their film at least somewhat non-linear, to no readily apparent purpose. There are points where it becomes impossible to tell when or where you are. A straightforward adaptation of her life would have been perfectly fine, including the several occasions on which she was treated badly by her employers. According to Xan Fielding, an operative she had saved from execution, “a few weeks after the armistice she was dismissed with a month’s salary and left in Cairo to fend for herself.” Even more tragically, she was murdered in 1952 by a lover she had rejected. Again, little of this is mentioned here, beyond being whizzed past in a final caption. Once more, this is a heroine who deserves a great biopic, rather than one merely good enough. 

Dir: James Marquand
Star: Morgane Polanski, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Frederick Schmidt, Piotr Adamczyk

Sayara

  By

★★★★
“Turkish delight.”

Well, “delight” might not quite be the right word. But who am I to let facts get in the way of a good review tagline? It’s more of a Turkish nightmare, probably the most brutal rape-revenge movie I’ve seen since… Well, probably Revenge. The director is best-known for Baskin, generally considered the best horror movie from Turkey. Though, full disclosure, I wasn’t that impressed by it: strong on atmosphere, but short on a coherent storyline. That’s not an accusation which can be levelled at this. However, the level of savagery and bloodshed arguably puts this into the horror genre as well. It’s the story of two Turkmenistan sisters, Sayara (Kocabiyik) and Yonca (Kosar), both of whom are involved, in different ways, with gym owner Bariş Ataberk (Kizilirmak).

Yonca is having an affair with the married man. But she has been able to leverage this into getting a job at the facility, as a cleaner, for the much quieter Sayara. Bariş offers Sayara a job as a trainer, teaching female clients self-defense, knowing of her skills in this area, but she declines. Worse follows, when Yonca catches Bariş cheating, and threatens to reveal all to his wife. This does not go down well, and ends in Yonca’s death, which is called a suicide officially. It helps that Bariş’s father, Halil Ataberk (Inal), is a senator with a lot of political pull, and can ensure no action is taken against his son.

No official action, anyway. While Sayara may have seemed the quiet and meek sister, we see in flashbacks the relationship she had with her soldier father – now, notably absent. One senses a lot of darkness there. Indeed, he tells his daughter. “I committed many great sins. It doesn’t matter. The darkness in me, is in you too, Sayara. But if someone crosses that line – to you, or your mother, or to your sister – you will go all the way, without blinking. You will go to the bottom of that darkness.” And Sayara does. Boy, does she. Not just against Bariş, but all those involved, even tangentially, and using every weapon at her disposal, from fire to her teeth. The latter provides the film’s most horrific scene.

This establishes its direction early. The first spoken line is “Son of a whore!” and it’s something of a mix of social complaints thereafter. Class, nationality and gender all come into play here in the power dynamics. Though it’s not as one-side as it might seem: Yonca is hardly blameless, and seems to have a fondness for S&M games, as well as no respect for the sanctity of marriage. However, “blurred lines” hardly excuse what happens to her subsequently, and you’ll be firmly behind Sayara on her relentless quest for the bottom of that darkness. You may not find the ending fully satisfying, in the traditional sense. But I’m hard-pushed to deny it’s appropriate, and you will certainly remember it. 

Dir: Can Evrenol
Star: Duygu Kocabiyik, Emre Kizilirmak, Özgül Kosar, Levent Inal

SWAT Angels in Mission

  By

★★
“Mission: Fairly possible.”

Despite an impressive poster, this is a fairly humdrum action film. If it had been a Western production in the nineties, I would have described it as “straight to video.” I imagine the appropriate comparison here would be “straight to iQIYI”, the streaming service through which I saw this. It’s technically competent, make no mistake. However, there’s not very much to stick in the mind, and it feels like both the script and performances have been carried out with the bare minimum of effort. It’s the kind of thing you could have on in the background, while carrying out light household chores, and it would not impact the level of entertainment value obtained very much.

Mei Jing (Wei) is a cop, who is part of the Thunderbolt Strike Team in Donghai, under Wang Jianing (He). Her all-woman group are often passed over for the most exciting jobs, but they are key in foiling an attempt to free a captive, San Lin Jie, during a prison transfer. The attempt was made by his brother, who goes by the name of Hummingbird (Zhou). However, this helps puts Mei and her father, who was instrumental in the capture of San, on the radar for revenge by Hummingbird and his female sidekick, Nightingale. However, Hummingbird’s dedication to his cause does not sit too well with the other members of his own gang, who would rather just get on with their nefarious activities. 

The first effort he makes is to interrupt a stakeout Mei and her colleagues are carrying out downtown. This involves a sniper and some thugs at street level, though quite how this is going to force the authorities to release San is a bit unclear. I also wondered how he know the team were going to be there: I kept expecting there to be a mole in the department or something. Never did turn up. This fails, mostly because the women do fight back, in what’s probably the best bit of action heroine stuff the film has to offer. The opening attack on the transfer convoy isn’t too bad, generating a fair bit of tension while moving the story on. It’s not particularly GWG-ish though. 

He then ups the ante, by storming a nursing home and taking the residents hostage. Which at least seems like a semblance of a plan, and might also let him take his vengeance against Mei and her father. However, instead of building to a climax, it feels like the film kinda peters out in a generally disappointing way. While I could see the male lead going up against Hummingbird, surely we would get a nice, long fight between Mei and Nightingale? Sadly, no – this film, thy name is disappointment. Although to be disappointed, I would first need to have had some level of emotional involvement, and I can’t honestly say I did. On the other hand, I did get the washing-up done, so there’s that. 

Dir: Xue Wenhua
Star: Wei Xiaoxuan, He Meixuan, Zhou Zhiwen, Shen Tai

They Call Her Death

  By

★★½
“At no point, does anyone call her death…”

It’s clear what Snell is going for here. This is a throwback to the spaghetti Westerns of the seventies, along with Italian exploitation films from around the same time. I certainly admire the effort which went into this: for example, rather than shooting digitally and applying effects to imitate film, Snell actually shot on Kodak 16mm stock. I did not know that was still a thing, to be honest. Some of the other elements, like the music, also do a good job of reproducing the era – the movie poster is another one. I’ve seen enough of this kind of movie (mostly through Project Kinski), to appreciate what he’s doing.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen enough of this kind of thing, to be able to differentiate the good from the bad, and a fair bit of this skews towards the latter. Molly Pray (Rippel) can only watch as her husband is gunned down in front of her by a bounty-hunter, having been framed for the murder of a lawyer, But she will not accept this, and begins to unravel the threads of the conspiracy, which made Mr. Pray an unwitting victim. And when I say, “unravel”, I mean with extreme, bloody prejudice. She guts some, blows the faces off others, on her way up to the chain to the person pulling the strings at the top. She’s holding a stick of dynamite. We’ll leave it at that. 

If you are looking for a comparison, it would be something along the lines of Hobo With a Shotgun. That’s a film I love dearly, and that might be partly why I’m a little sniffy about this. Because if you compare Hobo to Death, the results do not favour this, almost across the board. Most obviously, while Rippel is decent, she’s barely in the same solar system as Rutger Hauer. The lack of a strong antagonist here is a problem too. Instead, Molly largely chews up one person after another. But because we don’t know much about them – beyond their connection, sometimes tangential, to the death of her husband – there’s a severe lack of emotional impact, even as she’s dismembering them for her pigs to eat. 

Finally, the pacing leaves something to be desired, especially the sections where the focus drifts off Molly, such as to the friendly new deputy, who is generally on her side. Almost any time he was on the screen, I found myself quickly losing interest, and keen for it to go back to the directly focused line of Mully’s vengeance. The reliance on mostly practical effects is laudable, and there are certainly some impressively gory moments of which Lucio Fulci and his ilk would be proud. But too many of the supporting performances feel like they come from people who were available. Given the shoot took several years from start to finish, that may not be much of a stretch. 

Dir: Austin Snell
Star: Sheri Rippel, Jeff Boyer, Devan R. Garcia, Shawn Nyberg

Unit 234

  By

★★
“Lock out while you rock out.”

File this synopsis under technically true: “After the shocking discovery of an unconscious man in a locked unit, the lone employee of a remote storage facility must fight to survive the night against a ruthless gang, dead set on retrieving their precious cargo – at any cost.” I guess the word with which I have the most reason to quibble is probably “fight”. For heroine Laurie Saltair (Fugrman) is more from the Brave Sir Robin school of fighting, if you’ve ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. She’s much more inclined to avoid confrontation than seek it out. Which perhaps making sense when facing a larger, better armed and more experienced enemy. But where’s the fun in that?

The man in question is Clayton (Huston), who is on a gurney having been kidnapped from hospital by Jules (Johnson), who is keen to finish the job. What job is that? Well, you find this out towards the end, when Laurie does, and it certainly upends much of what has gone before, to the point you’d be forgiven for annoyance at the film having perhaps wasted your time. What unfolds is, Laurie rescuing Clayton, and they then have to try and escape the storage facility and/or call for help, while Jules and his men hunt them both. Naturally, neither prove exactly successful, and that’s hos the plot unfolds. Mostly through the maze of passages in the facility, with a brief excursion outside for fresh air. 

There’s potential here: imagine a film where the heroine can crack open storage units and use the contents against the villains. This kinda happens here – only in about the dumbest and most implausible way you could imagine. Seriously: of all the things potentially to utilize, this was the way Laurie went? I think it was probably the moment at which the film jumped the shark for me, and it was never able to… I guess, un-jump itself thereafter. I feel a vague sense of loss at this, since the central performance are fine. Fuhrman is an engaging heroine, and Johnson is effective in his role. Weirdly, after non-GWG film Day of Reckoning, it’s the second this week where an ambivalent character coughs up blood. Go figure. 

It also felt like Laurie only became pro-active at the end of the movie, when it was necessary for the plot. When it happened, part of me was relieved it had finally happened – it probably just pushed the film over the line for inclusion on this site. However, there was another part of me that wondered where the hell this had come from, because it simply didn’t fit in with Laurie’s passive approach to that point. I may have been somewhat prejudiced by Fuhrman’s track record in Orphan: First Kill, where she’s more aggressive. This definitely needed a heroine along similar lines, although it’s the script, and its inability to unlock the potential, which feels the biggest weakness. 

Dir: Andy Tennant
Star: Isabelle Fuhrman, Don Johnson, Jack Huston, James DuMont

Hot-Blooded Angel

  By

★★
“Luke-warm vigilantes.”

Watching this one, I had a very strong sense of deja-vu, to the point I started looking for a previous review. Turns out, none such existed, because I think my previous encounter with it was on one of those dodgy, “pirate” YouTube channels, under the different name of Scarlet Strike. I skipped writing about it, since I wasn’t able to determine any information off that, such as cast and crew. Because, it turns out, that wasn’t its real title. A month later, I watched this official copy one morning, while Chris was taking our new cat to the vet to be neutered. There were points where I suspect the cat had the better day. 

Ok, it was not quite that bad, but coming the morning after Lamb Game, the gap in quality was palpable. It takes place in Chinatown, so I guess… not in China? A dubious businessman, Mr. Ba is seeking to knock down all the small businesses and family homes for the usual property development reasons. Standing against him are a pair of orphan sisters (Feng and Sun), who run a sweet shop, as well as the “Guardian Angel” (Xu), a masked vigilante who keeps the area safe from predators of all kinds. Basically, it ends as a team-up, especially after Ba decides to kidnap one of the sisters for use as leverage. The other sister and Guardian Angel then have to go rescue her from his headquarters. 

From a technical point of view, it’s competent enough. However, the characters all seem the epitome of blandness. There is what appears to be an effort to inject some kind of romantic interest in the shape of honest cop, Officer Wu (Huang). However, there’s absolutely no chemistry between him and any of the three female leads, so I’m not sure why they bothered. There are also a series of confusing flashbacks to childhood, though I’m uncertain to which character they refer. I’m still trying to work out whether the Guardian Angel is intended to be a long-lost sibling. Between her and Ba’s pair of minions, it appears Chinese orphanages may be a hot-bed of martial arts training. 

Looking at the poster, it’s either generated by AI or bad PhotoShop. The former would make sense, if only because the script could be from the same source. The action is rarely better than mid-tier, and there’s a lengthy section in the middle where it vanishes entirely. Instead, we get some genuinely bad attempts at comic relief, and it’s at that point I would have happily swapped places with the house feline. A brief spurt of fighting towards the end briefly reawakened interest. However, we suffer through a poorly-conceived finale involving a device, not previously mentioned, that can decrypt Mr. Ba’s hard-drive, and a coda which feels longer than the one at the end of Return of the King. This one certainly coughs up a hair-ball. 

Dir: Jin Xin
Star: Xu Dong Dong, Feng Yan Yan, Huang Tao, Sun Wen Xue