Tag: 2024

Extraction, USA

  By

★★
“Wears its bleeding-heart on its sleeve.”

Marni (Johnson) is stuck in the titular town, where oil fracking is causing problems from earthquakes to poisoning the local water supply. She’s barely scraping by as a single mom to teenage son Jason (Strange), working as a bartender for sleazy owner Daryl (McMahan), who has a bad case of wandering hands, and hustling customers at pool. Her life is upended when Steph (Carpenter) comes into the bar, kicks Marni’s ass on the pool table, and the two end up making out in the back alley. When Steph becomes aware of Darryl’s safe full of cash, she suggests they liberate it, to finance a new life for them and Jason, far away from Extraction.

Naturally, things do not go quite as planned. The first attempt ends in failure, though  do discover the source of Darryl’s unreported income. [There’s a huge plot-hole here, in that they’re seen in Darryl’s office, and end up having to knock the witness out. They would surely have been identified, yet the matter is never mentioned] Realizing her actions could put Jason at risk, Marni regrets her decision and breaks up temporarily with Steph. They reconnect and decide to make a second attempt, this one a higher-risk plan involving kidnapping Darryl and forcing him to open the safe at gunpoint. [Though weirdly, they buy Airsoft guns mail-order for this. Was Walmart closed?] However, getting the cash might not be the end of the matter.

The main issue is, it feels like the makers are more interested in checking off boxes as a good diversity and liberal ally. Fossil fuels, male chauvinism and big business are bad. LGBTQ, people of colour and feminist activism are good. The plot? Secondary, with the robbery not even being suggested until virtually the half-way point in the film. The problem is, it doesn’t quite have the impact intended on me. For example, Marni complaining about her student loans, resulting from her taking a useless degree, is not the sympathetic flex Yonts believes. Choices have consequences, sweetheart. Did she take on this voluntary debt before or after having Jason? Neither inspire pity here.

I found all these elements and questions a distraction from what should be the meat and potatoes of the plot – or given the film’s sensibilities, the tofu and garden salad of the plot. There’s a whole thread where the drugs are being sold to the oil company to make their employees work harder and… I can’t even. Crop the whole thing down to a tightly-focused heist, and we’d all be much better off. The performances are fine, certainly good enough for that,  though I’m trying to work out the ages here too, since Marni seems way too young to have a son of that age. I initially thought she and Jason were brother and sister.  The problems here are very much on the scripting side, with an ending which is as unsatisfying as the rest of it.

Dir: Mike Yonts
Star: Leanne Johnson, Marlee Carpenter, Chase Strange, Derek McMahan

Robbin

  By

★½
“Robbed of two hours of my life.”

I’ve seen worse films, to be quite clear. Technically, this is perfectly acceptable, with an apparently reasonable budget, put to decent use. But I don’t think I’ve seen one which has been more annoying. It manages to hit that sweep spot of being both incredibly stupid, while also congratulating itself for being very smart in its attempts at social commentary. But the annoyance extends beyond that, to purely instinctive reactions like really bad hairstyles sported by some players. I can’t explain these responses, and am not interested in analyzing or defending them. But they certainly played their part in my steadily increasing irritation at the plot, characters and execution, over an excessively long running-time of one hundred and sixteen minutes.

The heroine is Robbin (Serayah) – and, yes, there are two b’s there. She is a former bank employee, who was falsely accused of stealing two million dollars. With the evidence stacked against her, she took a plea agreement rather than risk a long jail sentence. When she gets out, she decides the best way to respond is… by actually stealing from the bank. Yeah. Let that morality and wisdom sink in. She assembles her old crew from the South Central ‘hood where she grew up, and they begin planning their heist. But one theft is deemed insufficient payback, and another, even bigger robbery is planned. This is despite the increasing attentions of the police, including a detective (Lee), who has known Robbin and her friends since they were kids.

Far and away the worst thing here is the script, also by Stokes. It demonstrates a repeated, startling level of ignorance about how banks work, how computers work [authority check: I spent over a decade in IT with HSBC], and how the police work. For example, in the world of this movie, a detective under announced and active investigation by Internal Affairs for corruption, is not only allowed to keep working on the case concerned, she then gets to lead a raid on the suspects’ base of operations. #NotHowCopsOperate Hell, you could possibly also throw how criminals work onto this heaping pile of no-knowledge, since at one point a robber clearly asks a bank cashier for “No unmarked bills.” Um… shouldn’t that be “No marked bills”? 

Then there’s the whole clunky parallels to Robin Hood, beginning with the heroine’s first name. All her team – fresh off robbing a convenience store, I note – suddenly acquire altruistic reasons for their move into big-ticket crime. Add on a nasty racial strand, where just about everyone black is good, and everyone white is malicious and evil, to an almost tiresome degree, and you will perhaps begin to see from where my irritation stems. “Tubi Originals” are well-known for setting a low bar, to put it kindly. This falls short of reaching that bar.  If it weren’t for the fact that Tubi is a free service, I would seriously be contemplating cancelling my subscription.

Dir: Chris Stokes
Star: Serayah, Erica Pinkett, Jadah Blue, Robinne Lee

Fight to Live

  By

★★★½
“One tough mother.”

Bec ‘Rowdy’ Rawlings is an Australian mixed martial-artist, who fought in the UFC for a bit, and then became the first woman to win a bare-knuckle boxing world title. This documentary covers her life, from growing up as a teenage tearaway, through motherhood transforming her character, her discovery of mixed martial-arts, a disastrous and highly toxic first marriage, and escaping that to become eventually the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship federation’s Women’s Featherweight World Champion. Phew. That’s quite a lot to get through in less than eighty minutes. The film does a decent job of covering its bases, through interviews with Bec, and her family and friends, plus no shortage of archive footage of Rawlings, both in and out of the ring.

Everyone in it, but Bec in particular, comes over as down-to-earth: it might be an Aussie thing. Certainly, she makes for an interesting contrast to the more… outspoken American and male MMA fighters, like Conor McGregor. Rawlings seems almost humble, speaking of the respect she has for anyone tough enough to get in the ring. Admittedly, this is likely in contrast to her early years when she was very much on the path to delinquency. Particularly awkward, since her sister was a police officer, who remembers getting a radio call describing a suspect, and knowing immediately that it was her sibling. But parenthood flicked a switch, and Bec realized after having her first son Zake, she needed to take responsibility for her actions.

However, life took a darker turn in her relationship with fellow MMA fighter, Dan Hyatt. For three years, he abused her, both physically and mentally. At one point in the documentary, the interviewer asks for specifics of what he did, and… Well, to be honest, it feels unnecessarily invasive, and almost exploitative: I didn’t feel like the details added anything. Eventually, she was able to escape the situation, and it certainly appears to be a case of “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” While the recovery process took a number of years, she can now look back on the horrors of that period in her life, and as Rawlings says, it happened to her, but does not define who she is, an awesome attitude.

To be honest though, I was more interested in the sporting side of the documentary, which follows Bec as she prepares to defend her title belt in Cancun, Mexico, against Cecilia Flores. She won – hey, it’s on her Wikipedia page – although it’s a little odd that this fight took place back in February 2019, but the film basically ends there, with only a couple of captions covering the five years between then and its release. I had, again, to check Wikipedia for more up-to-date information. After spending time fighting for Bellator, she’s now back fighting for the BKFC, winning her last (at time of writing) bout in January 2025. More power to her, both in the ring and as a mother.

Dir: Tom Haramis
Star: Bec Rawlings, Adrian Rodriguez, Mal Van, Jacqui Rawlings

Agent Jayne: A Woman with a Mission

  By

★★
“Just say no to drugs.”

What’s unusual here is that, allow this is an American production, the cast and crew are almost entirely of South Asian origin. Which is fine, except that writer/director Gil has an imperfect grasp of English. Witness the opening voice-over, which I present verbatim: “There are three wants which can never be satisfied. That of the mastermind who want more, that of the peddler who pray for more, and that of the whistle stopper who don’t know when to say enough.” Um, yes? Fortunately, it’s not too dialogue-heavy, and the plot is mercifully basic, albeit needlessly cluttered up with jumps around in time of weeks, months or days, which a more skilled creator would have avoided.

The heroine is Jayne (Sood), an agent for some law-enforcement group, I guess – the film is vague on detail – under Chief Collins (John). Having successfully solved a five-year old murder case, her next mission is to take down drug lord Alberto Trapani (Massey), whose product is threatening the youth of the city. Her investigation basically consists of Jayne wandering round and catching his minions, who for some reason tend to carry out drug deals in woodland glades, counting their money while sitting at the base of a tree like cartel pixies. Interrogating them eventually gets her the location of Trapani’s lair, so an army battalion is mobilized to take down public enemy #1. Oh, my mistake: the authorities just send in Jayne with a handgun for a spot of extra-judicial murder.

The budget for this was reportedly fifty thousand dollars, and that seems about right. There was clearly little to spend on most aspects of the production, with hardly any action to speak of, and a script in undeniable need of revision. For instance, at one point, Jayne says, “With every step forward, I risked exposure.” Which might make sense, if not for a earlier TV news headline, which boldly trumpets, “Agent Jayne’s next target: Alberto Trapani.” Good thing drug lords don’t watch television, I guess. These kind of embarrassing gaffes leave the whole production feeling like the work of enthusiastic amateurs, rather than professionals.

However, I didn’t hate it. There are occasional moments which work, such as Trapani’s associate Arthur (Bajpay) losing his daughter to a drug overdose and switching sides as a result. His heartfelt speech is genuinely affecting, while the clear and strong anti-drug message is laudable. The acting is generally okay, with Sood able to do her best with lines that, as mentioned, could use considerable additional polish. I also liked the synthwave soundtrack, cobbled together from various public domain sources, but on some occasions providing a sorely needed energy for the scene on which it sits. The end promises Jayne will return in “Misssion 2” [sic], taking on a militia involved in human trafficking. With more action and a better script, I’m down for this – though I wouldn’t bet on either flaw being fixed to any significant degree.

Dir: Waqar Peter Gill
Star: Shalini Sood, Uriel Massey, Ashutosh Bajpay, Julius John

Queen of the Ring

  By

★★★
“Bit of a test of stamina.”

Coincidentally, I watched this the night after Sinners, another period piece which looks at the place of a specific culture in society. There, it was music in predominantly black society of the thirties; here, it’s professional wrestling in the overwhelmingly white society of the fifties [the presence of in this WWE champion Naomi as Ethel Johnson, feels very much a token gesture]. Definitely fewer vampires in this, however. It’s the story of Mildred Burke (Rickards), who went from working as a waitress in a diner, though wrestling at carnivals, to become one of the biggest draws in the ring of her time. The end of the film calls her the first woman to become a millionaire through sports. 

It’s not an easy journey, being both helped and hindered along the way by sometimes manager, sometimes promoter, sometimes husband, sometimes abusive bastard Billy Wolfe (Lucas). She also has to deal with scepticism regarding her talent, other wrestlers and promoters trying to muscle in, and even legal barriers, with many states forbidding women’s wrestling bouts outright [In the UK, the city of London banned such matches until as late as 1979]. All while also being a single mother, trying to bring up her son. This builds to a battle for the Women’s Wrestling World Championship in 1954, pitting long-running title holder Burke, against her now ex-husband’s wrestler, and Mildred’s long-time rival, June Byers, whose dislike of the champion goes back to the carnival shows. 

Definitely the best thing about this is Rickards, who very much looks the part of a wrestler: fit and well-toned, without ever seeming muscle-bound. Though it is odd how little she seems to age over the course of proceedings – likely close to twenty years all told, if the age of her son is any guide. Beyond the mere physicality, the Mildred we see here is also a warm and winning personality, and it’s very easy to root for her. As a fan of wrestling in general, I enjoyed the glimpse into the past of the pastime, and it treads a decent line between being accessible to non-fans, without dumbing everything down too much. Though there are some goofs, in terms of period wrestling: tapping out in submission only started in the nineties. 

The main problem, and it’s a significant one, is the film is far too long, at a hundred and forty minutes. It’s clear that writer-director Avildsen was in love with his own script, but there are long chunks – mostly in the second half – which feel closer to soap opera. The whole scene with Burke and Wolfe buying out a whole hotel, so their black wrestlers don’t have to go somewhere else, seemed like pure virtue signalling, and caused me literally to cringe. There simply isn’t enough going on here to justify the running-time, and while the good stuff here is often very good e..g the lesson on how to cut a good promo, it definitely feels like a case where less would have been more. 

Dir: Ash Avildsen
Star: Emily Bett Rickards, Josh Lucas, Tyler Posey, Francesca Eastwood

Outlaw

  By

★★★
“A Rocinha Tale”

Interestingly, this is based on a somewhat true story, written by Raquel Santos de Oliveira. She comes from Rocinha, one of the most notorious slums in Rio, where she grew up on the streets. “By 11, I was already carrying a .38 revolver,” she says. In the mid-eighties, she was the girlfriend of Ednaldo de Souza, the man in charge of crime in Rocinha, and took over after he was killed in a gun-battle with police. She exited the gang a few years later, and was able to straighten our her life, quit using cocaine, and wrote a book, Number One, at the suggestion of her therapist. While fictional, it’s clear it draws a great deal from Rsquel’s own experiences.

It begins with the childhood of Rebeca (Bomani), which includes being sold off into prostitution at an early age. She’s able to dodge that, by instead working for local boss Amoroso (Cortaz), until the boss gets assassinated on the order of rival Del Rey (Otto), who thene takes over. Rebeca is able to switch sides, and falls in love for another member of the gang, Pará (Amorim). Naturally, any happiness they find together is short-lived and when she loses him as well, Rebecia decides to take revenge, even though her target is operating in cahoots with corrupt members of the police force. The story unfolds in flashback, Rebeca making a tape as her building is under attack, believing her story is all that will be left of her.

This makes an interesting contrast to non-GWG film, Elite Squad, which takes place in a similar setting, only told from the point of view of an honest police officer. [It’s highly recommended, by the way] Outlaw doesn’t run more more then eighty minutes, and so there’s isn’t a lot of slack. Indeed, I suspect it might have been better told over a longer period, since there are points where it feels like it is galloping through its story, mixing historical footage with modern content, aged to look like it’s the eighties. It is quite effective on a high level, but in the second half especially, I didn’t feel as if my attention was being solidly held, due to a narrative which seemed to lack flow.

It does seem like Wainer was heavily inspired by the gangster works of Martin Scorsese, such as A Bronx Tale. Okay, that one was directed by Robert De Niro, but he was clearly Scorsese influenced as well. It’s very down-to-earth, rather than glamourous, and doesn’t stint on the violence which goes along with the criminal territory. The strong sense of place you get might be the best element of the film, since Bomani only occasionally succeeds in inhabiting the skin of her character. If this had been the pilot for a TV series, such as one of my telenovelas like Dueños del paraíso, I would likely be interested in watching it. As a complete story, it’s fine but leaves little impact.

Dir: João Wainer
Star: Maria Bomani, Jean Amorim, Milhem Cortaz, Otto
a.k.a. Bandida

Road Wars: Max Fury

  By

★★
“Mock fury”

Just as Furiosa ended up being a sequel that nobody wanted, what we have here is a mockbuster sequel that, as far as I can tell, nobody was asking for. This is, at least loosely, set in the same post-apocalyptic universe as The Asylum’s earlier (unseen) knock-off, Road Wars, which sought to ride on the coat tails of Fury Road. The sequel begins with Shane (Wells, who actually appeared in the old-school Mad Max 2) being cast out of his very small tribe in the desert. It’s not long before they regret their decision not to impose the death penalty, as he turns around and shoots James dead, before heading off to join his new tribe. Five years later, James’s daughters Naomi (Shah) and Greta (Kaur) are living with their mother Sarah (Wilson) and step-father, in their secluded compound. An attack leaves the parents in need of antibiotics, so the daughters head off to pick them up. Doing so, however, puts them back on Scott’s radar, and he intends to take the chance for some long-delayed revenge.

Obviously, anyone watching this and expecting something on the scale of George Miller’s episode is going to be extremely disappointed. Me? Not so much. I’m familiar with The Asylum, and knew what I was letting myself in for. But even by their standards, this is cheap. The apocalypse happens entirely off-screen, and what you get instead is a bit of running and driving around the desert landscape. The latter is distinctly low-key, with barely half a dozen vehicles and no destructive mayhem to speak of. The two that do get blown up, the explosions are obviously digital – the studio clearly wanted to get their security deposit back from the car-hire company at the end of the day. For the classic Thunderbird, I understand that choice. However, the other is a beat-up junker of a pick-up truck, and it says a lot they weren’t willing to write off the five hundred bucks.

They weren’t willing to write much elsewhere either. After the prologue, things get kinda confusing for a spell, with it largely unclear who is attacking the family, and why. Things do eventually settle down, and we get the required bickering between the younger, headstrong Naomi and her older, more cautious sibling over what to do, who should do it, and how. I was expecting the trip to get the antibiotics to be more fraught with peril than it is i.e. not at all, with a combination lock the only difficulty faced. Mind you, the final confrontation with Shane is just as underwhelming. Despite occasionally decent cinematography, there was a specific point at which I realized my moderate and restrained hopes were unlikely to be met. This occurred when Naomi randomly smears mascara – or engine grease, it’s hard to tell – across her eyes, for absolutely no apparent reason beyond imitating Furiosa. Being a mockbuster isn’t easy, I get it. That doesn’t excuse the lack of effort here.

Dir: Mark Atkins
Star: Preet Kaur, Chandni Shah, Vernon Wells, Lindsey Marie Wilson

Inspector Sabiha

  By

★★★
“In-flight entertainment.”

Under other circumstances, this six-episode TV series, would potentially be a marginal entry. But, just as I try to take the historical era into account, I think the location from which a film comes should also be a consideration. Some countries and cultures are simply more action heroine friendly than others. What would be groundbreaking in one region, might not even qualify from elsewhere. This is from Pakistan, and is almost the first such entry in our site’s history. [There’s just Hunterwali which… yeah!] I originally saw this in a condensed movie version, at an altitude of forty thousand feet and a ground speed of 555 mph. For I stumbled across it on the in-flight entertainment system while flying back from the UK to Arizona.

It adequately occupied a bit of time on what ended up being a fourteen-hour flight, thanks to an engine issue delaying the take-off. My grumpiness at this was, however, somewhat alleviated by unexpected GWG on the seat-back TV. By Western standards, it would definitely be considered mild, almost to the Lifetime TVM level (which makes sense, basically being a TV movie). But Pakistan isn’t exactly a beacon of empowerment. This female cop was “a giant step for womankind in the Pakistani drama arena”, according to local writers, so we need to cut it some slack. The heroine, Sabiha (the unfortunately named Butt), is the daughter of Inspector Saeed Shah, who was murdered in the line of duty while undercover. She wants to follow in his footsteps – her uncle Akbar (Ehteshamuddin) is also on the force.

He has a nasty revelation: her father, who was also his brother, had gone over to the side of the criminals. This was something covered up to avoid embarrassing the force to outsiders, though it’s an open secret within the police. Sabiha is devastated by this, adding on to problems with her self-confidence as she goes through the training, to the point she is unable to fire her gun, despite the encouragement of a friendly trainer. She eventually is able to cowboy up and persist. Passing the police exam gives her the access necessary to investigate her father’s case, find out the truth about his death, and dispense justice to those who were responsible.

To be honest, Butt doesn’t really look the part – too much make-up for a cop, by Western standards. Nor is she especially convincing in action, though it is cool when she whips off her burqa to reveal her police uniform underneath, and storms the villain’s headquarters. There are some decent emotional moments too. In this area, the heroine is outdone by her mother (Iffat Omar), who is impressively intense, such as when begging her husband not to go undercover. Writer-director Sarwar cuts up the time-line, so we bounce back and forth from Sabiha’s training to her childhood, but it always remains comprehensible. Despite not having seen Gunah, the series to which this is a prequel, it proved good enough to hold my attention. Though considering my location, guess I couldn’t exactly walk out…

I subsequently found all six TV episodes with English subs, and a playlist is embedded below. 

Dir: Adnan Sarwar
Star: Raba Butt, Enteshamuddin, Yasir Hussain, Yasir Nawaz

EFC

  By

★★½
“Ducks one set of cliches, walks right into another.”

I wanted to like this more than I did, because the makers are aware of the tropes of the mixed martial arts genre, and in the first half, make a concerted (and largely successful) effort to avoid them. However, the movie is much less successful in the second half, and ends up replacing those cliches with a different set. The result leaves the film just as formulaic – albeit not in the direction I expected. It begins in expected fashion, with a title bout in the EFC, between Alexa Star (Aboya) and Cassady Jones (Rose). The former prevails, but the champion is then attacked after the bell by her opponent.

For reasons never quite explained, Star is stripped of the title, and an eight-woman tournament set up to crown a new champion. This event is hotly anticipated, due to the previous events having gone viral. However, sleazy shareholder Frank Russo (Zeppieri) has other plans, to asset strip the federation, in contrast to EFC President Donna Carter (Jones), who wants to make women’s MMA the equal of the men’s version. I was expecting the tournament to progress to the expected Star-Jones rematch, saving the company in the process. Doesn’t happen. For Cassady loses her first round bout, but Carter throws her a lifeline, suggesting that with the business degree, she can be of more help to the federation as a manager, fighting in the boardroom rather than the ring.

This was definitely not what I was expecting, and credit to the script for going in this unexpected direction. However, it feels as if they are much less comfortable in the world of high-finance, television right and leveraged buyouts. These elements never ring true, and there’s a certain point where it becomes easy to predict where things will end up. If you guess this may be with Cassady making an impassioned plea to the shareholders, to elect her to the board and let her take the company to the next level… I can neither confirm nor deny. There’s also a subplot about fighters failing their drugs tests, which gets started, then dropped very quickly, only to resurface out of nowhere as a “gotcha” for Russo.

I think I might have preferred the results if the film had stuck to the beaten track, because the action sequences are well-staged enough, that they do not deserve to get sidelined in favour of unconvincing business negotiations. All the actresses involved manage to look the part, and at least give the impression of knowing their way around a punching-bag. Less successful is Rose’s transition from MMA to MBA, especially after you’ve heard her character unleash a torrent of F-bombs at Donna for daring to suggest Cassady use her college degree. Her academic credentials should have been established first, with an intellectual fighter in itself being a novel proposition. The overall result is something which I can’t call a success. Yet as failures go, it’s definitely one of the more interesting.

Dir: Jaze Bordeaux
Star: Karlee Rose, Richard Zeppieri, Kathryn Aboya, Stephanie Jones

Huntress

  By

★½
“Ze German WW2 Chainsaw Massacre”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was fairly notorious in Britain in the eighties and nineties, being famously banned on video. Naturally, this meant I had to see it, and… I was initially underwhelmed. However, I’ve gradually come to appreciate its raw intensity over the years. If I ever doubted its merits, watching this largely shameless knockoff should act as a reminder. Because it shows how flat and uninteresting the premise can be, when executed poorly. This relocate things from seventies Texas to Germany in the last days of World War II. A medevac team is trying to get injured and grumpy officer, Colonel Franklin (Christian) to a hospital before his leg falls off from sepsis.

Along for the ride are nurses Ellie (McDowell) and Annie (Sarah Hawthorne), a pacifist medic, Will (Sohns), and a couple of GIs to provide protection. It’s not long before they run into trouble and out of fuel. Fortunately – or so it seems initially – they encounter friendly, and attractive local, Helga (Savage) who gives them her homemade sausages and says she has plenty of gasoline at her house, just over this way a bit. If you have read the opening paragraph, you’ll be able to work out where the rest of the film is going. Let’s just say, the moral of the story is: do not accept smoked meats of unknown provenance, from strange women in the middle of woods. Truly, words to live by.

Yeah, turns out she is the acceptable face of a family of psychos, along with sister Greta and mother Ursula. Or maybe it’s the other way round, I forget. Naturally, the convoy members enter the house in easily disposed of ones and twos, with an utter disregard for military protocol. For example, another moral might be, don’t drop your guard in order to slow-dance with mysterious veiled women, in the middle of large, spooky houses during wartime. Only bad things can come of it. The consequences are, a great deal of slowly creeping about corridors, which the makers mistakenly think generates tension. It actually generates tedium. I mean, Colonel Franklin has an excuse, having been shot in the leg. Everyone else? Not so much.

It’s not a terrible idea, and the performances are largely serviceable. However, the parallels to Texas become more blatantly apparent, the deeper we get, all the way until a final shot which is utterly a gender reversed clone of that in TCM. But rarely does this come anywhere close to capturing the same sense of unfettered insanity. If you’re going to try and ape a stone-cold horror classic, you have to bring your A-game, because otherwise, the comparisons will do you absolutely no favours. Instead, I was more left wondering how people go from running along a corridor in one shot, to being chased through the woods in the next. This one is a nightmare, alright. Just in all the wrong ways.

Dir: Matthew M. Howe, J. Christian Ingvordsen
Star: John Christian, Braxton Sohns, Maggie McDowell, Violet Savage