Tag: c

Country House

  By

★★½
“Well, that’s different.”

The title above is the one by which it appeared on Tubi, though everywhere else calls it Aggression. I guess both are appropriate, in different ways. Neither shed a great deal of light on proceedings here. Then again, you could argue, the film itself is largely deficient in the area of enlightenment too. It takes place in rural France, where Sarah (Nicklin) has been reunited with her sister Marie (Duchez), after twelve years living in England. The circumstances are not happy, the visit being the result of their father’s death. However, there appears to be a dark past surrounding the circumstances of Sarah’s departure. Meanwhile, Marie is mute, although this does not play into the scenario which unfolds. 

After a chunk of small-scale family drama, things kick off with a home invasion staged by Chris (Torriani) and his colleague (Jacquet), who doesn’t seem to have a name. As is common in these cases, one of the criminals is “nice”, while the other is a psycho. And similarly, Marie is timid, and inclined to run, while Sarah is… not. I probably don’t want to say much more, even if simply by not saying more, I am in fact… saying more. Let’s just add, the original title becomes considerably more relevant. That, alone, would be something we’ve seen before in the home invasion genre. However, it’s just the start, because things go entirely off the deep end, in terms of motivation especially.

Just do not expect anything orbiting in the same solar system of a coherent explanation. The only other review of this I could find (in French) called this a giallo. After a first half where I was very hard-pushed to spot the similarity, I can see where that’s coming from. It has the same air of unfiltered madness, as well as suddenly switching to a lurid colour scheme, which makes as much sense as the plot i.e. none at all. One second, a scene will be lit in neon blue; the next shot, taking place in the same location, will be mint green. You could say this is a striking and brave choice of artistic palette. Or you could say it’s pretentious bollocks. I’d not argue either way. 

It is, I suspect, the first Lovecraftian home-invasion movie. Admittedly, after watching it, you may well understand why this is the case. I did like Nicklin, who has been seen here previously in Sister Wrath, and does the best she can in terms of selling the insanity inherent in the script. I could potentially have enjoyed the madness, had it bothered at least to attempt an explanation. Instead, the lack of anything close comes over as lazy film-making. I do appreciate a good swerve, and this undeniably ends up somewhere very different from what I was expecting. However, when you unexpectedly pull the rug out from under your audience, you need also to provide somewhere for them to land.

Dir: Rick Jacquet
Star: Sarah Nicklin, Marie Duchez, Cédric Torriani, Rick Jacquet
a.k.a. Aggression

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

Chicks with Sticks

  By

★★
“Two minute penalty, unnecessary cliches.”

Printed directly from the finest template of sports movie tropes, this is less a script than a bullet list of plot points you’ve seen a thousand times before. Struggling single mom (check) Paula Taymore (Gilsig) had to give up a promising ice hockey career to take care of her son (check). A bar argument leads to a challenge match against a local men’s team (check). Paula has to assemble a women’s side (check), from a ragtag group (check), including an ex-convict (check), sassy Black girl (check) and a witch (check). Can she overcome adversity and local prejudice (check), find love with hunky single dad Steve Cooper (Priestley, and check) and triumph in the big game? (BIG BOLD CHECK, LARGE FONT).

It’s not just the storyline that comes out like a prepackaged frozen dinner, the style and approach to the content is equally safe, competent and, ultimately, bland. That means training montages, a soundtrack of bland country and pseudo-inspirational pop/rock, and attempts to yank on audience’s emotional heartstrings which could not be more blatantly obvious. Yet there are reasons these things have become overused stereotypes: it’s because they are effective. You may know, with absolute certainty, the women’s team are going to fight back after falling 4-1 down. This doesn’t make it any less heartwarming when it happens, and this is effective enough as undemanding cinematic comfort food. It’s the kind of movie you curl up on the couch with, clutching a cup of hot chocolate, some Sunday afternoon.

What’s odd is that there are moments where it does have the opportunity to break away from the obvious. For example, there’s a plot thread where one of the women absconds with the hard-raised team funds. However, this is discarded almost as soon as it has begun, with no actual resolution. In its place suddenly appears, out of nowhere, the fact that the goalkeeper is throwing the game for gambling purposes. Still, nothing a few stern words from Paula can’t sort out, amIrite? There’s no effort at all put in on the side of their opponents, who might as well be a pack of skating Neanderthals. Their idea of wit is putting a camera in the women’s locker-room, an element that has not aged well, to put it mildly.

The performances are likely better than the material deserves. Kidder, as Paula’s mom, manages to be heartfelt without coming over as insincere or sacchariney, and Gilsig has her moments, mostly when struggling to balance her family responsibilities with her own hopes and goals. Of the supporting cast, Marquis comes off best, making a strong impression as acidic goth Felicity Carelli, though singer Michie Mee seems thoroughly out of place. Whoever thought it made sense to have her rap the Canadian national anthem, probably has found themselves on an RCMP watch-list. You may not need to know anything about hockey to watch this. However, you won’t learn anything about it either.

Dir: Kari Skogland
Star: Jessalyn Gilsig, Margot Kidder, Jason Priestley, Juliette Marquis
a.k.a. Hockey Mom or Anyone’s Game

Closure

  By

★★½
“The truth is out there. Somewhere.”

Surprising to see a rough, occasionally nasty slice of rape-revenge was funded by the British government, through the National Lottery scheme. Not that I’m complaining: it’s preferable to period nonsense or kitchen-sink dramsa depicting inner-city life. But I would not typically have expected something as unrepentantly exploitative to get money from such a source. The film kicks off when Alice (Anderson) and her boy toy, Adam (Dyer) are on the way home from a party. A road rage incident leads to him being savagely assaulted, and her being gang-raped, leaving both of them severely traumatized by their experience. Interestingly, it’s Alice who is the one most intent on finding the perpetrators and taking revenge.

Turns out her recently deceased father was a soldier, who taught her not to turn the other cheek, and left her a weapon with which she can carry out her vengeance. This makes her considerably more interesting a character than Adam, who now mopes around smoking weed and suffering from erectile dysfunction. Alice locates one of the attackers, Heffer (Calf), and sets her plan in motion. However, things become increasingly complicated, first with the presence of his daughter, and the discovery that his participation in Alice’s sexual assault was not as purely predatory as it seemed at the time. She begins to understand that retribution can be messy; on the other hand, Adam is becoming more gung-ho about the process, and refuses to back down from his revenge.

I guess these two sides of the coin, and their contrast, are key to the film’s message, though the sudden way in which it ends might leave you wondering if there’s any genuine message intended at all. Maybe it was all the fulfillment of some weird, albeit understandable, Gillian Anderson fetish for writer-director Reed (there are a couple of scenes which lean towards that interpretation). She is certainly the best thing about this, and her journey from predatory cougar through to literally predatory cougar would have been worth following. Dyer continuing to get roles remains a mystery, not least because he was at least five years older than his supposed 23-year-old character here, and can’t exactly make up the deficit in acting ability.

“Do you know what they did after they finished with me? They laughed.” That’s Alice’s chilling explanation of why she’s so hell-bent on making Heffer and his colleagues pay. While I did appreciate the way the rapists were neither your stereotypical yokels nor yoofs, being middle-class and middle-aged, it’s really only when Anderson is on screen that this movie shows credible signs of life, Anderson again proving that she is considerably more than Dana Scully. Even here though, the film manages to fumble things in a final act which feels a severe cop-out, albeit after we are treated to the site of Alice sticking a gun where a gun is not normally expected to go. Take that mental image with you, the next time you buy a lottery ticket.

Dir: Dan Reed
Star: Gillian Anderson, Danny Dyer, Anthony Calf, Adam Rayner 
a.k.a. Straightheads

Candy Land

  By

★★★★
“Remy is feeling a little cross…”

Sheesh, they’ll adapt anything into a movie these days. Hey, I guess if Clue, Battleship and Ouija can become films, why not Cand… Yeah, to be clear I am joking. Do not, for the love of God, mistake this as about the quest for King Kandy. Though I am amused the Wikipedia page for the game specifically says, not to be confused with this film. For it’s actually about truck-stop hookers being stalked by a murderous psychopath. Which could, I admit, probably be adapted into a pretty decent board-game. The central character is Remy (Luccardi), an escapee from a religious cult, who finds herself stranded at the truck-stop, and befriended by Sadie (Quartin) and the other “lot lizards” there.

Remy eventually becomes part of the “team,” also including gay-for-pay Levi (Campbell), who service the truckers who pass through the high-altitude location – as well as local sheriff Rex (Baldwin). It’s a tough life, with violence a risk they face on an everyday basis, such as when a trucker shows up in a toilet stall with his throat slit, or someone decides Levi is a bit of rough. However, things escalate considerably, because the problem is: you can take the girl out of the cult, but you can’t take the cult out of the girl. After getting a visit from another member, Remy decides, as she puts it, “We must cleanse the world before we can cleanse ourselves of it.”

No prizes for guessing what that means, as if the poster doesn’t make it abundantly clear. Swab manages to do a decent job of straddling the exploitational and the thoughtful. This certainly doesn’t stint on the nudity, from the first scene which sees Sadie riding her client like she was trying to start a fire, through one of the girls taunting the cult leader by opening her legs in front of him. It’s pretty damn gory as well. But it’s not just mindless sex and violence. For instance, it would be easy for Swab to paint the victims as… well, just victims, but they’re depicted as there, and doing this work, of their own choice and free will.

I did feel that the shift from religious advocate to prostitute to spree killer for Remy was a bit abrupt. A little more time for the transition might have helped, or perhaps making her more clearly dedicated to her lethal cause from the get-go. Yet the way things turn out, perhaps indicate that was the case all along. Credit to Swab for not pulling punches either, with things continuing to escalate and the body count continuing to mount until, literally, the final shot. Hardly anyone here gets out alive, and I was left wondering if the religious fundamentalists had won. There’s a lot of films while look to recreate the bygone grindhouse era. This seeks to look forward instead, and is likely all the better for it.

Dir: John Swab
Star: Olivia Luccardi, Sam Quartin, Owen Campbell, William Baldwin
[This review previously appeared on Film Blitz]

The Casino Job

  By

★★★
“Stripper’s 11.”

Make no mistake, this is a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women, which may well leave you with a more cynical view of human nature. But if you’re going to watch a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women… You could probably do a lot worse. The main area in which this punches above its weight is in the script, which has had some thought put into it. The viewer may actually leave the film knowing more about Nevada gaming regulations than they did going in: nekkid women and genuinely informative. I did not see that coming. It also has a final twist which will make you rethink much of what has happened.

It takes place in Las Vegas (though the less glitzy resort of Laughlin stands in for Sin City at certain points). Sleazy strip-club and casino owner Barry (Mauro) needs four of his ladies to make a good impression on his business partners, but the evening ends with one woman, Jennifer (Joiner), alleging he raped her. Due to lack of physical evidence, the cops won’t take action, but Jennifer’s friends, led by Amber (Martinez), swear to take revenge, and cook up a scheme that will relieve Barry’s casino of a good chunk of cash. The aim is more than simple larceny, but also to drop him in hot water with the gaming authorities, who require casinos have enough on hand to cover winning payouts.

Doing so requires them to bring on board a friendly blackjack dealer, Scribe (Franke), and also use their womanly wiles to ensure everything goes to plan. That’s what I meant about human nature, because every man here can be easily manipulated to do anything, with the promise of a little action. This is absolutely required by the plot, in order for the heist to work. And every woman is perfectly willing to do the manipulating. By the end, you could argue the case that nobody here, even Jennifer, should be classified as a nice person. And I write as someone who, in my youth, was not unfamiliar with strip-clubs, and so is under no illusions about the illusion, if you see what I mean.

Still, if none of the characters were likeable, the mechanics of the heist managed to keep me interested, along with the way Barry is kept out of touch and unable to deliver the needed funds. He then ends up trying to take revenge on the girl-gang, and it’s that what proves his ultimate downfall. There’s a lovely montage at the end, showing everybody getting laid… ending with Barry in jail, also getting laid. I genuinely LOL’d at that. The women are undeniably easy on the eye, particularly Irina Voronina as the club’s top earner, Paradise. Really, its clear the makers have kept their ambitions here restrained and, I suspect, on those terms, it should be considered a success. Clearly nonsense, yet was I not entertained? Yes: yes, I was.

Dir: Christopher Robin Hood
Star: Amylia Joiner, Dean Mauro, Ilsa Martinez, Jay Anthony Franke

Cadejo Blanco

  By

★★★½
“…the size of the fight in the dog.”

Cross another country off the map: Guatemala, in this case. I should probably start by explaining the title. The “cadejo” is a dog-like spirit from local folklore, which comes in two varieties. The black (negro) one is malicious, appearing to and trying to kill travellers, while the white (blanco) is benevolent. According to Wikipedia, it “protects people, including drunks, vagabonds, and people with grudges from all evil. Emphasis added, because now and again in this, there appears to be one watching over the grudgeful heroine here, Sarita (K. Martínez). She is on the hunt for her sister, Bea (P. Martínez – maybe they’re real sisters?), who vanishes one night, after the siblings have an argument at a local nightclub.

Sarita had just discovered Bea had been seeing a gang-banger, Andrés (Rodriguez), who worked on the weekend there as a barman. She goes to his home town where he operates, and infiltrates the gang, seeking to find out what happened to Bea. Gaining their trust is not easy: she has to act as bait, luring a rival of the group’s boss into a hotel for an assassination attempt. She then discovers Bea may have been abducted by another gang operating in the area, and volunteers for a more active role in the next murder. What price is she willing to pay, in order to discover the truth about Bea’s fate, and make those responsible pay for their involvement?

The common theme here is everyone underestimating Sarita, and how far she will go to achieve her aims. The most obvious culprit is the first target, who sees in her only a fresh whore to bed. It’s a superbly tense sequence, beginning with an extended single shot of her arriving at and exploring the club where the target is located. It then becomes increasingly fraught as he first wants to take her home rather than the designated hotel – and it turns out he has a room there already. You’ll find yourself holding your breath as Sarita has to improvise: what she may lack in experience, she makes up for in quick thinking. And, by the end, in her utter ruthlessness, again underestimated by her victim.

At 126 minutes, it could perhaps use some tightening. However, it’s rarely boring, simply as a depiction of existence at the bottom of society, where life is disposable. As Andrés’s friend Damian (López) says to Sarita, if any of them die, “Nobody will care. We don’t matter to anyone. They’ll all be very happy we’re dead.” Lerner used a lot of non-professional actors, some of whom had first-hand experience of gang life, and the resulting authenticity powers the film through the choppier waters it sometimes encounters. I would recommend not investing too much in Bea’s fate, since the specifics are never detailed. Yet it isn’t the point. This is Sarita’s story, and by the end, she’s far from the brave innocent we met at the beginning.

Dir: Justin Lerner
Star: Karen Martínez, Rudy Rodriguez, Pamela Martínez, Brandon López

Control

  By

★★★½
“So how do they go to the bathroom?”

This is is a very small-scale bit of science fiction, with barely a handful of speaking parts, and mostly taking part in a single room. Despite this, and some qualms about the use of cinematically convenient amnesia, it works rather well. Eileen (Mitich) wakes to find herself in a room without windows or doors. A disembodied voice (LeBlanc) tells her to move a pencil on the table. She does and is knocked out. Regaining consciousness, the voice repeats the instruction. Except, Eileen is now chained to her chair. And if she doesn’t complete the test quickly enough, Eileen is informed her daugher, Eve (Loiselle) will be killed. OK, the movie has my attention. 

Turns out, Eileen has psychokinetic skills, the ability to move things with her mind. The tests are an escalating series of experiments, designed to force this talent up from her subconscious, to the point where she can control it. Part of the process involves adding her husband, Roger (Tchortov) into the room. Though they’re clearly in there for a lengthy period, leading Chris to pose the question at the top of this review. No answer is ever obtained, and that’s probably the film’s biggest weakness. Not specifically the toilet question, just a tendency to handwave its way past issues. The way Eileen’s lost memories return at the pace needed by the script is also a bit weak, though the validity of these is questionable. 

Despite these weaknesses, there’s a lot here that is done right. The positives begin with Mitich, who hits all the points in a fine performance. She shifts from sympathetic through to scary, as the strength of her abilities becomes apparent, then back to poignant when we discover – albeit through that cinematic amnesia – the truth about her situation. Inevitably (and this is kinda obvious, so barely counts as any kind of a spoiler), the decision to torment someone with paranormal talents ends up with Eileen using them against her captors. This is done mostly in an extended sequence where she walks through the complex at a sedate pace, absolutely unstoppable. The effects are more restrained than, say, Marvel or DC, yet are certainly up to the task. 

Despite the cover, I don’t remember Eileen actually holding a gun at any point. Not with her hands: one of the trials does involve her assembling a pistol from its component parts, purely with her mind (below). Admittedly, she doesn’t need a physical weapon: the telekinetic abilities she has pose more than enough threat. In hindsight, she does go for more spectacular methods of dispatch than necessary: a simple squeeze of the heart would suffice. However, I’m happy to err on the side of style over substance, and by this point, I was sufficiently invested in Eileen’s past, present and future to buy into whatever might happen. If there’s similarity to another slice of Canadian SF, Cube, the better-defined plot here means it’s something I’m prepared to tolerate. 

Dir: James Mark
Star: Sara Mitich, George Tchortov, Evie Loiselle, Karen LeBlanc

Cleaner

  By

★★
“DEI Hard.”

Director Campbell recently appeared here with the entertaining Dirty Angels, and I was hoping for more of the same here. Sadly, I came away disappointed. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, Daisy Ridley is not Eva Green. That’s OK. After all, only Eva Green is Eva Green. But it’s still an issue. A bigger problem though, is likely the unashamed way thus is a knockoff of a certain Bruce Willis movie, and Daisy Ridley is not Bruce Willis either. Here, she plays Joey Locke, a former soldier now working as a window-cleaner in a skyscraper owned by Evil Corporation Inc. They’re actually called something else, but I’ve already forgotten what, in the two hours since. 

She also has to care for an autistic brother, Michael (Tuck), who is alternately utterly useless and a wiz with computers, depending on what the script needs at that moment. She ends up having to take him to work, and – what are the odds? – it’s the very same evening a group of eco-terrorists under Marcus Blake (Owen) and his lunatic sidekick, Noah (Skylar). will storm the building. Their intention is to blow the lid off Evil, Inc’s dirty little secrets. In the nasty little corners of the Internet where Luigi Mangione is a hero, they’re probably the good guys. It’s all fashionably murky, but another demerit: Skylar isn’t anywhere close to Alan Rickman. Owen might have worked, but for reasons, he’s not the main bad guy.

The film is, at least, considerably shorter than its inspiration. Although it feels this was obtained by removing most of the stuff which made Die Hard such fun. Instead, Joey is left dangling outside the building for too long, exchanging vaguely sisterly dialogue with the police inspector on the ground. It’s painfully notable that the competent people in this film are, almost without exception, wonen. In the middle act especially, it feels very much like the script was not so much written (by three human beings, apparently), as constructed by a Democratic focus group, circa September 2024. Occupy Wall Street! Climate change! Disability representation! Vote Kamala! Sorry, dunno how that slipped in. By the time we get to Joey actually kicking terrorist butt, I was largely checked out. 

There are some positives. The relationship between Joey and Michael is sweet, and kudos to the film for casting a genuinely autistic actor. Campbell also has enough of a track record in action, he could do this sort of thing in his sleep. Though, except for the opening scene, a flashback to twenty years earlier, there is rarely a sense Joey is genuinely dangling hundreds of feet off the ground [contrast Fall]. Ridley does enough with her part to suggest she may have a decent future in the action genre. She’ll need to pick better scripts, however, and the same goes for Campbell. Dirty Angels had its flaws, to be sure. It was still several notches more entertaining than this. 

Dir: Martin Campbell
Star: Daisy Ridley, Taz Skylar, Matthew Tuck, Clive Owen

Catwoman: Hunted

  By

★★
“A cat-aclysmic cat-astrophe!”

Catwoman: Hunted is a 2022 DC animated movie. Here is a little confession: Catwoman alone never worked for me. In combination with Batman, there is that special chemistry, a feeling that makes the character work but alone? Nope! Neither in the comics with her solo title, nor in a movie solely focused on her (Catwoman with Halle Berry still makes me tremble… but not in a good way!) does this character function for me. A burglar dressed in a cat-suit? No, actually that comes across for me as old-fashioned (do thieves that climb up houses still exist, today?). Strangely, whenever the character appears on the screen contrasted with Batman, it works.

Anyway, it doesn’t stop people from trying to give the most famous Cat-orientated character of the DC universe further solo adventures. In this movie, Selina Kyle appears in classical dress at some kind of cosplay event. Everyone is dressed either as a DC hero or villain: she is next to Batman villain Black Mask in her classic 1940s costume, only to later switch into her modern sexy suit and steal a diamond. Unfortunately, she is discovered and hunted by the Leviathan crime syndicate that set up the party. The diamond was Black Mask’s entry fee to the society. Catwoman is saved by Batwoman who kind of forces her to do… well, what? Kind of spying on Leviathan. Once again being discovered – for a thief she is really not that successful – she and Batwoman must face several opponents…

What sounds as if it could be an interesting story, turned out to be a very disappointing movie. I had to watch it twice because even though the film is a short 78 minutes, I almost fell asleep. The introduction to the story feels clumsily handled, scenes are overlong, and after we know where the story wants to go, the movie basically is a constant follow-up of fight scenes of Catwoman and Batwoman against a range of well-known and lesser known DC villains. These include Cheshire, Nosferata (one I had never heard of before, and I used to read DC comics quite regularly in my youth), Solomon Grundy and the Cheetah herself, Barbara Minerva who is Leviathan’s chairwoman, though Talia al Gul is managing everything from the shadows.

It feels as if someone threw as many characters, mainly female ones, into the script as possible, perhaps to hide the fact that Batman isn’t in the picture. But they don’t necessarily have the knowledge how these characters usually act. That may be partly the fault of director Shinsuke Terasawa (Wikipedia lists the movie as a Japanese-American production; maybe Warner’s wanted to save money?) but the script also has structure problems. What I’d call act one wasn’t finished until half the film’s running time was over. And the script doesn’t develop any further from this point on. You’re left to wonder what the big plan was, or what Catwoman was supposed to do, but this question is never answered. The remainder is a bunch of fight scenes, heaped on each other until this is finally over.

The script is by Greg Wiseman, whom I personally admire for his wonderful, unfortunately underrated, Disney animated classic series Gargoyles from the late 90s. He also was involved in animated series such as The Spectacular Spider-Man and Young Justice, a series that also has its fans, despite flying under the radar. But here he seems missing the right feel for the established DC heroes and villains.

Take the Catwoman of this film for example. We all know how this character should be played, though there are different interpretations of the character on the big screen over the years. This Catwoman comes across as downright awkward and arrogant to the hilt. We know of Catwoman’s erotic flirtations with Batman, but here she is “in heat” the whole time which just feels wrong. I know how it sounds but this Catwoman feels… well… oversexualized. And just because she has a thing for Batman doesn’t mean you just can switch this behaviour to Batwoman. Yes, we know Batwoman is nowadays a lesbian, since this side-character from the Batman comics of the 50s was resurrected in modern times. But that doesn’t mean that she must almost be seduced by Catwoman. Then Catwoman drops the ball again, as if the whole point of the scene was just about showing us how incredibly irresistible she is to everyone. Thank you very much, female self-esteem!

More than this – and difficult even for me, who usually accepts some very unbelievable things in story-telling – this Catwoman seems almost to have superpowers. I have no problem having her, teamed with Batwoman, fighting the assassin Cheshire, against whose poison she had earlier taken an antidote, or Nosferata, who reminded me of a female version of classic character Man-Bat. But the two fighting and beating 50+ assassins of the League of Shadows? No. Just no. Sometimes it borders on the ridiculous. When Catwoman shoves a bundle of explosives in Solomon Grundy’s mouth and tells us: “That’s all folks!”, I wondered who had the marvellously stupid and tonally deaf idea of referencing Porky Pig in a DC movie! It just feels tonally wrong.

Another ill-fitting decision is the score by Yutaka Yamada. Don’t get me wrong. His music will probably please you if you like jazz, but for a DC action movie it’s just the wrong choice. What almost – but only almost – saves the movie is the final chase when Barbara Minerva turns into an oversized version of her Cheetah personality and goes after Catwoman. For the first time in this movie you have the feeling Catwoman is in real danger. But this is too little too late. It can’t compensate for all the mistakes that had been made in the movie before.

Don’t take the above too hard; someone unaccustomed to DC or Batman comics might actually enjoy this. For me, someone who knows and loves the characters, it felt like a gigantic misstep by the creative team who made this film. And I still can’t help the feeling that it would have been a much better movie if Batman had been the main character, having to deal with an opposing Catwoman. The best thing here was a 40-minute extra on my Blu-Ray, about the history of Catwoman in comics, TV and movies. That was really interesting. The main feature… not so much!

Dir: Shinsuke Terasawa
Star (voice): Elizabeth Gillies, Stephanie Beatriz, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Zehra Fazal