Tag: sport

The Novice

  By

★★★
“Rock out, with your cox out.”

Rowing is not a pastime to which I’ve ever given much thought. It’s the backdrop for this, and is based (to some extent) on writer-director Hadaway’s experiences of the sport at college. Her cinematic background is in sound editing, where she worked on films such as The Hateful Eight and – probably of most relevance here – Whiplash. The latter was a study of obsession in the pursuit of talent, and is echoed in the story here.

Alex Dall (Fuhrman) is the archetypal Type A personality, driven to push herself beyond what normal people would consider necessary. For example, she chooses her weakest subject of physics to be her college major, largely for the challenge. Similarly, she decides to take up rowing, and approaches this with the same, relentless single-minded determination and will to succeed. It’s not enough for her simply to make the freshman team. She wants to be part of the top-ranked varsity crew. And Alex doesn’t care about making friends in the process.

As such, she is a contrast to Jamie (Forsyth), another rookie, who joins the team at the same point. Her motivation is very different. She needs the scholarship that making varsity will bring, otherwise (in a rather snobbish plot-point) she will have to go to a less prestigious educational establishment. Inevitably, despite Alex and Jamie being initially friends, through the shared traumas of the hellacious training regime, their competition eventually puts them at odds with each other.

In another film, Jamie would be the protagonist, with Alex the nemesis who has to be battled. Here, though, the focus is on Alex, and the almost self-destructive way in which her obsession with being the best, wrecks every relationship she has, including that with teaching assistant Dani (Dilone). While her coaches certainly admire Alex’s unbeatable work ethic, the film also makes the point, quite forcibly, that in a team sport like rowing eights, other factors matter as much as, if not more so, than just talent. People skills are important too: for you do not necessarily have to like your team-mates, in order to become a cohesive unit. But you do have to respect them.

Hadaway’s experience is particularly apparent in the audio design, which definitely enhances the action oriented sequences, and the sardonic use of music such as Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry”. However, it does also appear she never met an opportunity for a montage she could turn down, and if you’ve seen any sports movies, you’ll know these are beyond cliche, even with all the director’s talents in the sound department. Alex is also not a very likable character: while that is clearly the point, it still has a distancing effect on the viewer. Part of me was subconsciously hoping for Alex to fail or even get struck by lightning (an apparently significant threat to rowers). The end does imply at least the potential for change in Alex is still there. Whether it will ever stick, I’m less convinced.

Dir: Lauren Hadaway
Star: Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Jonathan Cherry

Perfect

  By

★★★½
“All in, all out!”

When I reviewed Russian fencing film On the Edge, I said, “I just need to find a synchronized swimming movie.” While this is a documentary, with all the positives and negatives of that genre, this fits the bill until Hollywood produces something more narrative. It follows the efforts of the Canadian team to get into the 2016 Rio Olympics. While normally, they’d be in as Pan-American champions, hosts Brazil got the spot reserved for the Americas. This forces Canada to go through the qualification tournament, battling their nemeses, Spain and Italy. The doc covers the arrival of new Chinese coach Meng Chen, efforts to get the most from her swimmers, and when this initially falls short, a radical re-invention of the team’s routine. 

You may be wondering what one of the most mocked Olympic sports is doing on the site. But beneath the fixed grins, penguin walks and stripper make-up, lies one of the most intense, demanding and gruelling sports, for men or women. To quote one team member, it’s like “running an Olympic-level 400-metre sprint while holding your breath”. She’s not wrong. The most memorable sequence here is when a series of team members list the injuries suffered for their sport. Broken bones. Torn muscles. And concussions. So many concussions, an inevitable result of rapidly-moving limbs in close proximity to skulls. I wrote elsewhere about the sport, now called “artistic swimming”; read that if you want the full case for why it belongs here.

Alternatively, just watch the film, because you’ll likely leave giving the athletes the respect they deserve. It’s the result of throwaway lines like one saying she spends 7-12 hours a day in the pool. Or the relentless pressure of Chen, pushing to unlock their potential. Or team captain Morin succumbing to an eating disorder, this sport being as much about how you look as how you perform. However, I’d have liked to have seen more technical background, rather than another scene of Chen yelling at the team. Even simple things, like explaining they aren’t allowed to touch the bottom of the pool, would have enhanced the footage of them throwing team-mates into the air. Though there are still some staggeringly beautiful shots, using reflections, tilted cameras, etc. it is a shame they couldn’t use the performance music – presumably for rights reasons. 

Interestingly, and perhaps pointedly, the team realizes its greatest results, after Chen adopts a more collaborative approach with them, and brings in external help. They even get an acting coach, to help improve their ability to convey emotions through movement. It’s nice too, to get a bit of insight into the aspiring Olympians, such as Holzner, for whom this has been an ambition since she was eight. We see the scrapbook she made when she was young (to help cope with a concussion!), and it helps foster an understanding of why people are willing to put themselves through this kind of ordeal. It all ends a bit messily: we don’t even see their final routine. But the journey is the thing here, not the destination, and you should be left with a new appreciation for the sport and its participants. 

Dir: Jérémie Battaglia
Star: Claudia Holzner, Marie-Lou Morin, Meng Chen, Karine Thomas

Fall

  By

★★★★
“Nope. NopeNopeNope. Nope.”

I never considered myself to be afraid of heights. I respect them, sure. But I am capable of going up the ladder to change that annoying smoke alarm battery without a safety net. This film though, literally gave me sweaty palms. It’s about climber Becky Connor (Currey) who lost her husband Dan (Gooding) in a rockface accident a year before, and has spiralled down into alcoholism and depression since. Her father (Morgan) gets her best friend Shiloh Hunter (Gardner) to intervene, and she convinces Becky the best thing is to get back on horse, with a climb of a two thousand feet tall, abandoned TV mast. 

The journey up is where the moist hands started. I don’t care how nice the views might be, I’m afraid it’s going to be a no from me, dawg. Adding to the fraught tension, is the focus by Mann on the decaying structure: rust, missing bolts and general creakiness. It’s like Final Destination: you know something is inevitably going to go terribly wrong, it’s just a question of when, and the specifics. It duly does, leaving the pair stranded near the top, on a platform about the size of our dining table, with no route down or way to call for help. The rest of the film is the struggle of Becky and Hunter (she uses her last name, or her social media identity of “Danger Deb”) to find a way to do one or the other. 

Most of it is well-written, with the two women using every bit of ingenuity, as well as both their physical and mental strength, in that struggle. While I was ahead of the plot a couple of times – some of the foreshadowing isn’t as subtle as it could be – there was one doozy of a twist near the end, that we definitely did not see coming. By the end, there’s no doubt Becky is an utterly badass, prepared to survive by any means necessary. My main complaint, storywise, was the clunky shoehorning in of a wedge issue to divide her and Hunter. This served no dramatic purpose, and had me rolling my eyes at the incongruity of it all. Hello: you are two thousand feet in the air!

Technically, however, it’s very well done, giving the viewer a real sense of what it must be like. If you are the slightest bit sensitive about heights, this film will find out, force its way into those cracks, and use them as leverage, to an almost queasy extent. I found it easy to believe they were genuinely up there, even if neither lead actress has quite the ripped physique of a real climber, someone like Slovenian Janja Gambret. I did wonder if it was potentially going to go full The Descent on us at the end, and embrace its inner bleakness. I won’t say whether or not it does. However, I suspect that the next time our smoke alarm starts to beep, its battery will have to change itself.

Dir: Scott Mann
Star: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding

The Ledge

  By

★★½
“Falls off sharply.”

Despite the above, there are some strong positives to be found here. First off, the Serbian mountain landscapes are beautiful, and the cinematography does them justice. Free climbing, the focus here, is an innately tense pastime, with the risk of serious injury or death present at any second. Again, the photography gets this over well, with some of the shots capturing the heights involved, to the point of almost inducing vertigo in the viewer. Finally, Ashworth is entirely convincing in her portrayal of free climber Kelly. She has the right, well-defined physique, muscled particularly around the shoulders, and exudes a quiet confidence in her own abilities, which is what you would expect. That’s the good news. 

Unfortunately, there’s the rest of the film, beginning with a plot that would be overachieving if it reached the level of dumb, and is little more than a series of eye-roll generating cliches strung together. Kelly and her gal pal are prepping for a weekend’s climbing on the anniversary of a tragic accident which claimed the life of Kelly’s fiancé, just as he was about to propose to her. Four jocks roll up at the next cabin, and before you can say “date rape”, the pal has fallen off a cliff, and is finished off by the group’s leader, Josh (Lamb). Becky happens to video that, and as they chase her, starts climbing the rock face to escape. The only way out is up, except Josh and crew take an alternate route up. It leaves Becky stuck on a narrow outcrop, with bad guys above, and a thousand-foot drop below.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention the snakes, which according to the movie, are a bigger threat to rock climbers, than plummeting to your doom. Or the conveniently abandoned tent on the ledge, just a few feet below a far better site. The whole thing is littered with this kind of contrivance. Worse still is Josh – by which I mean, both the character, and the ridiculously hammy performance by Lamb. It comes over as a douchebag version of Ryan Reynolds, and could not be more an Obvious Psycho, if he had been running a motel and talking about his mother a lot.

Some scenes are effective, mostly the simpler ones, pitting Becky against the implacable combination of the rock-face and gravity. If only the makers had realized what they have, does not need to be dressed up in painful and artificial ways to generate excitement. All you need is some initial device to get Becky onto the wall; everything thereafter is needless window-dressing. This includes the back-story of Becky’s boyfriend, and the convoluted saga of Josh’s love-life off the mountain, neither adding an iota to the entertainment value. Ford also directed Never Let Go, which used its exotic location and isolated heroine to slightly better effect. But if I never see Lamb’s irritating hamminess ever again, I will be entirely fine with that.

Dir: Howard J. Ford
Star: Brittany Ashworth, Ben Lamb, Nathan Welsh, Louis Boyer

On The Edge

  By

★★★½
“Makes a good point”

Whenever the Olympics are on, we love watching the weird sports that never get covered the rest of the time. That means things like handball, archery and fencing, so I was particularly interested by this Russian film, based around the quest for gold in the women’s sabre event. While it does struggle to move past the usual cliches of sports films, it’s done with enough energy to work. The two protagonists are Aleksandra Pokrovskaya (Khodchenkova), a veteran coming to the end of a long, successful career, and Kira Egorova (Miloslavskaya), a brash teenager who arrives on the scene with a blast, and whose unconventional style causes fits among other fencers. Aleksandra has one final crack at the prize which has eluded her – an Olympic gold – but Kira poses an unprecedented threat to that ambition. 

Yeah, like I said: it’s pretty much Sportsball Movie #4. You know from the start that Aleks and Kira are going to bash heads, but eventually come to a mutual respect for each other’s talents and abilities. Nor is it any surprise when Kira suffers a potentially career-ending injury, and Aleks overcomes her concerns to nurse her back to health [in fairness, she was partly responsible for the incident]. And could the two fencers possibly end up facing each other in the final match at the Olympics? Wild horses could not drag that answer to that question from my lips. 

Oh, who am I kidding. Of course they do. But it is to the film’s credit that I genuinely did not know how that was going to turn out. For the makers do a very good job of giving us two well-developed characters. Rather than protagonist/antagonist in the Rocky mould, we get two protagonists, each with their own set of motivations and ambitions. Initially, Kira seems the less likable of the pair, but the more we learn about her background, such as the fraught relationship with her father, the more I came to understand her abrasive personality and don’t give a damn attitude. [Khodchenkova may be familiar, as she has appeared in some Western movies, including The Wolverine and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy]

It is an issue that fencing at the top level is astonishingly fast. It’s not like cinematic sword fighting, where battles go on for minutes. Here, if your first attack doesn’t hit the mark, you’re likely to find yourself on the receiving, pointy end of your opponent’s weapon. But Bordukov does a good job of capturing the speed, and making it work for the film’s benefit, rather than its detriment. While there may be precious little about the storyline that’s original, it still makes for an engaging couple of hours. If you weren’t a fencing fan before, this might change your mind. So, that’s fencing out of the way, and we already had our Olympic archery movie. and handball film. I just need to find a synchronized swimming movie – and, don’t be fooled, they are hardcore – then I’ll be happy.

Dir: Eduard Bordukov
Star: Svetlana Khodchenkova, Stasya Miloslavskaya, Sergei Puskepalis, Alexey Barabash

9-Ball

  By

★½
“A load of balls.”

Oh, dear. There’s part of me which thinks this is what you get when you try and make actors out of pool players. For the star here, Barretta, is one of the top women cue artists in the world. She’s joined here by cameos from a couple of bigger pool stars i.e. people even I’ve heard of, in Jeanette ‘The Black Widow’ Lee and Allison Fisher, and you can’t really expect much out of any professional sportswomen, in terms of acting ability. However, she isn’t that bad, though this may just be relative to some of her fellow cast members. And, to be fair to the actors here, you could be an Oscar-winner, and still not be able to do anything with the wretched script, which is little more than a parade of cliches, when not being a shameless advert for the American Poolplayers Association and its leagues.

Gail (Barretta) is the daughter of a pool player, who saw Dad stabbed to death in the street in front of her house. Taken in by creepy Uncle Joey (Hanover), Gail has clearly inherited some of her father’s skills, and Joey makes her turn them to his benefit, hustling suckers for money in bars. But, of course, Gail has dreams of her own, meeting Nice Guy™ Mark (Kochanowicz), and wants to leave Joey to head out on her own as a professional player. Hence the largely pointless cameos by Lee and Fisher, advising Gail how to achieve her goal. Joey isn’t happy at the prospect of using his cash cow, and beats up Gail, who absconds with his “retirement fund”. Though initially sent to jail, he gets bailed out, and the time spent inside hasn’t exactly improved his temper.

I was really hoping for considerably more, and better filmed, pool. It’s  closer to being a Lifetime TVM with occasional interludes of the sport. And on the (sporadic) occasions we see Gail in action, we mostly see her striking the cue ball, or the target ball going into the pocket – hardly ever both in the same frame. What’s the point of having one of the world’s top players in your movie, if you rarely see them making their pro-quality shots?

It all builds towards an APA team tournament in Las Vegas, which at least. is a little better in this regard. Though that only shows up in the last ten minutes, leaving precious little room for any kind of tension to built. We gallop through it, to a final shot which don’t realize is the final shot, until after it has been pocketed. Even Joey’s subplot is hustled off-screen with an absolute minimum of excitement, despite him turning up at the event with a gun. There are possibilities in the idea, which I won’t deny: after all, pool is one of the few games where men and women can compete on equal terms. But they are painfully squandered by the wretched direction and script. As bar sports action heroine movies go, I guess we’ll have to wait for the Fallon Sherrock biopic.

Dir: Anthony Palma
Star: Jennifer Barretta, Kurt Hanover, Mark Kochanowicz, Jennifer Butler

Hockey Night

  By

★★★
“Cool as ice.”

At one point, the teenage heroine in this sports flick is asked, “What do you want to play hockey for?” In a modern film, I suspect you might get a long speech about female empowerment, proving that girls can do anything boys can, and so on. But here, her response is three words: “I like it.” It’s a plain and simple response which illustrates the approach taken by this plain and simple TV movie. That plain simplicity is both its biggest strength and its greatest weakness, for there are certainly no boundaries being broken or preconceptions challenged here. It’s exactly what you would expect from the genre and the story.

The Yarrow family have moved from the big city to the small, rural Canadian town of Parry Sound, described by local girl Evelyn as “the armpit of North America.” When daughter Cathy (Follows) asks Evelyn, “What do you do for fun?”, the reply is, “They haven’t invented it yet.” But they do have hockey…  And Cathy had been the goal-tender for the local girls’ team back in Toronto. Since there’s no equivalent in the small town, she tries out for, and wins, a spot on the local boys’ team, under coach Willy Leipert (Moranis). But this co-ed approach meets with opposition, in particular from the team’s sponsor, who threatens to pull his support if Cathy is allowed to play.

Yeah, from the above you can probably pencil out, with about 95 percent accuracy, how things will unfold, leading up to the finale of the big game between Parry Sound and local rivals, North Bay. Will Cathy fall for the team’s star player, Spear Kozak (Bisson)? Will there be moderate, but non-threatening. family strife as her mother fails to understand? Will curmudgeonly and chauvinist commentator, Bum Johnston (Chaykin) be won over to support her? Will there be montages along the way? I offer no prizes for anyone correctly guessing the answers to all of the above questions.

Yet there’s a simple and honest warmth here that works. Parry Sound is the birthplace of Bobby Orr, who is to hockey what Pele is to football, and the affection for the game is clear. There isn’t much conflict, to be sure – nobody ever tells Cathy directly that she poses a problem. Yet this feels in keeping with the polite and non-confrontational nature of the society depicted here (it would be a sweeping generalization to claim it of Canada as a whole. And yet, not necessarily inaccurate). Sure, her team-mates are sometimes jerks: they are, however, teenage boys, so it goes with the territory, especially with regard to teenage girls.

The two young leads are both very likeable, and it’s easy to see why they went on to greater things. Follows, in particular delivers a quiet, understated performance which is likely far more effective than a brazenly defiant one. Moranis and Chaykin provide good support, and deliver the kind of colourful  characters found in any small town. The plot may be hackneyed and obvious, yet as forty-year-old TV movies go, this is likely better than you would expect.

Dir: Paul Shapiro
Star: Megan Follows, Yannick Bisson, Rick Moranis, Maury Chaykin

Golden Arm

  By

★★★½
“Arms and the (wo)man.”

The sport of arm-wrestling has been featured in the movies before, most notably the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Over the Top. But that wasn’t a comedy – at least, not intentionally. This entry, as well as switching to the distaff side, also has its tongue in cheek, while still sporting a strong message about female empowerment, that never becomes a lecture. If you’re looking for an inspiration I’d saw the first season of TV series GLOW is very much a touchstone. As there, we have a woman who becomes involved in a sport at a difficult time in her life, only to find herself… well, finding herself as a result of her new endeavour.

The heroine is Melanie (Holland), a mild-mannered cafe-owner whose enterprise is almost out of business. Her pal, truck driver Danny (Sodaro, sporting one of the worst haircuts in cinema history), takes part in women’s arm-wrestling, but just had her wrist broken by the infamous Brenda the Bone Crusher (Stambouliah).  Seeking revenge, she eventually convinces Melanie, who has a natural talent – the “golden arm” – to enter the national championships in Oklahoma City. The goal is to win the crown, and fifteen thousand dollars that go with it, to save Melanie’s business and take down Danny’s nemesis. But the path towards that title will go through not only Brenda, but over a number of other hurdles for the rookie athlete, both physical and mental.

There’s very little new here in terms of plotting. Everything unfolds exactly as you’d expect, right down to the final which pits – surprise, surprise! – Melanie against Brenda in a best-of-three battle. Still, the joy here is in the characters and performances. There appears to be, if this film is to be believed, a significant overlap between arm-wrestling and pro wrestling, with the participants here adopting personas and cutting promos to intimidate their opponent. Melanie, for example, begins as a masked wrestler called “Freaked Out”, after the ring announcer mistakes a comment as her name. But she eventually becomes The Breadwinner, complete with a dusting of flour on her cheek.

However, the greatest pleasure is the Melanie-Danny relationship, which builds over the course of the film. They’re total opposites – “Please don’t say ‘twat'”, begs Melanie repeatedly – but there’s still such chemistry, you can see how they’d be fast friends. It’s so good, in fact, that the romantic angle between Melanie and referee Greg (Cordero) seems entirely superfluous. It actually drags down the rest of the movie, and provides nothing of substance except for an explicit reference to The Natural. That’s another apparent inspiration, in its story of a sports star rising above injury at the moment they need to most.

This is thoroughly foul-mouthed, albeit for comic purposes, and I will say, it doesn’t all quite work. For example, there’s an extended discussion over the female equivalent of “going balls out,” that’s frankly a bit cringe. However, the sheer heart on view throughout is undeniable: that powers this through the flaws, and will likely leave you with a big, goofy grin on your face.

Dir: Maureen Bharooch
Star: Mary Holland, Betsy Sodaro, Olivia Stambouliah, Eugene Cordero

3 Heroines

  By

★★½
“Largely misses the target”

As the Olympics get under way in Tokyo (COVID permitting – this is a pre-scheduled post!), it seems an appropriate point to review this, which tells the story of the 1988 Indonesian women’s archery team. They became the first ever from their country to win a non-exhibition medal at the Olympics. This was quite a big deal, considering at the time, the population of the country was 175 million, and they had been competing in the games for 36 years without any success. However, the resulting movie manages to be more like a soap-opera with arrows than the thrilling sports movie it should be, considering they clinched their medal with a sudden-death shoot-out against the might of Team USA.

They do get that aspect right, but I’m less certain about the veracity of some other elements. For example, much is made of coach Donald Pandiangan (Rahadian), “the Indonesian Robin Hood,” seeking redemption for having missed the 1980 Olympics due to a boycott. Omitted is the awkward fact he did get to take part in the 1984 Olympics… and came 43rd. Anyway, he has the task of licking into shape the trio of potential candidates: Lilies Handayani (Islan), Nurfitriyana Saiman (Lestari) and Kusuma Wardhani (Basro). The archers have their own range of issues to deal with as well, such as an unsupportive family, who just want them to settle down, marry (their choice, naturally), and get a good job. It’s basically a class in Sports Movie Cliches 1.0.1, with the stern, disciplinarian coach butting heads with his young charges, who just want to sneak out. [I was amused to see the local cinema playing Arnie classic, Commando!]

It does have a certain naive charm, and is so sincere about itself that you can’t complain too much. I think the pseudo-musical number into which the three heroines break, complete with singing at their hairbrushes, demonstrate the good natured and non-threatening approach here. But it’s more than two hours long, and the ratio of drama to sport is far too heavily tilted towards the former. Even when we get to Korea, it doesn’t help that in those days, Olympic archery wasn’t the dramatic, head-to-head knockout contest it later became. That would have been way more exciting to watch, than all teams shooting simultaneously, as depicted here.

The director does his best, and the shoot-off is likely the film’s most effective sequence. Though if I was American, I might be offended by its portrayal of one of their athletes shoving an Indonesian rival to the ground during the competition. I am fairly sure this did not happen, instead being fabricated for dramatic effect. But since I’m British, I don’t care. Our gals finished a plucky fifth. Mind you, I can imagine the South Korean women’s team who actually won the event – as they have every single Olympics where it has taken place – are probably wondering, “Where’s our movie?” I guess it goes to show, being a plucky underdog is just more cinematic. Sorry, Korea.

Dir: Iman Brotoseno
Star: Bunga Citra Lestari, Chelsea Islan, Tara Basro, Reza Rahadian
a.k.a. 3 Srikandi

Range Runners

  By

★★
“The loneliness of the long-distance runner”

Mel (Cooper) is engaged on a project of running the Appalachian Trail (or a convincing facsimile thereof), with some help from her sister, who meets her at various points to provide support and fresh supplies. Mel is currently on her own, starting an eight-day section of the hike where she’ll be out of contact. However, she bumps into a couple of suspicious characters, deep in the woods: Wayland (Leonard) and his partner, Jared (Woods). Initially, it seems like a creepy, but one-off random meeting. It turns out to be considerably more and subsequent encounters escalate, until Mel is sent plummeting over the edge of a drop-off, badly injuring her leg, but in possession of something very important to Wayland and Jared. Will she be able to escape her pursuers and make it to safety?

A good chunk of this effectively takes place inside the heroine’s head, as she pushes through the forest. There are flashbacks, in particular, to her youth when she was an athlete in training, being coached by her father. His approach was very much one of tough love, with the emphasis on “tough”, and a fondness for aphorisms, such as “[Your body] doesn’t tell you what to do, it’s the other way around.” It seems to have done the trick, giving Mel the mental toughness necessary to cope with the situation. However, it doesn’t exactly make for thrilling cinema, and considering the film runs 112 minutes, a little of this kind of thing goes a long way.

This is nicely photographed, it must be said, and the wooded location is used effectively, setting up a world in which a threat conceivably lurks behind every trunk and branch. The issues are much more with the plot, which fails on a number of levels. Not least, is the lack of motivation given to the villains, whose presence and actions are never well-defined, beyond being required in order for the plot to reach its (entirely predictable) conclusion. There are few if any surprises along the way. Even when the film tries to make you believe Mel has found sanctuary, anyone who has seen any wilderness survival films, will basically be waiting for that not to be the case.

By the time you filter out what’s unnecessary, and what doesn’t work, there’s probably not much more than 45 minutes of decent content to be found here. Rather than it being Mel vs. Wayland + Jared, it’s more a case of Mel vs. herself, or at least her own doubts and emotional baggage. The finale is decent, pitting our wounded athlete against the pair, and proves rather more satisfactory than most of what has been seen to this point. It’s an example of a film where the destination proves better than the journey to get there. Depending on your view, this may or may not be a suitable parallel to hiking the Appalachian Trail…

Dir: Philip S. Plowden
Star: Celeste M Cooper, Sean Patrick Leonard, Michael B. Woods, Sarah Charipar