Tag: UK

Enola Holmes 3

  By

★★
“The death of Holmes?”

To recap. I was unimpressed with the first Enola Holmes movie, but pleasantly surprised by the sequel. Unfortunately, the third time here is very much not the charm. It’s a regression to the irritating approach of the original, which seems more interested in virtue signalling – and of a highly questionable authenticity at that. I sincerely doubt any of the ruling classes in Victorian England genuinely gave a damn, in the slightest, about any exploitation of the British Empire colonies. It was what they were there for. We did not take over half the world, out of a desire to introduce countries to the delights of cricket. Mention “reparations” in the 19th century, and you’d have been locked up in the loony bin.

That’s where this ends up, though it takes a while to get there. We begin with Enola Holmes (Brown) in Malta, where she is about to get married to Lord Tewkesbury (Partridge). But second thoughts, and the discovery that her brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill) has been kidnapped, cause her to leave her fiancé standing at the altar. When his mother also disappears shortly thereafter, the game is truly afoot. Turns out that this is all part of a scheme by Professor Moriarty (Duncan-Brewster), who has broken out of jail. She aims to get her hands on gold stolen by the British Army – including Tewkesbury’s father – from Afghanistan, which is now hidden in a Maltese cave. But she needs Enola to find the loot.

Yes, she. Because Moriarty here is a woman. And black. I know the character was in #2, but it was a minor sidelight and could safely be ignored. Here, she’s front and centre, begging the question. If you want a black, female villainess, why not invent one, rather than forcing an existing, well-known character to undergo a sex-change? And, worse, a race-change? This is just one of a number of missteps here, in a film whose Victorian atmosphere is repeatedly undermined by poor choices of costume, make-up and dialogue. Basically, it feels like the makers couldn’t decide if they wanted a modern heroine or a period setting, tried to do both, and ended up breaking each equally badly.

The Maltese locations are attractive and well-used, while the cast are… okay. Not the film’s biggest problems, shall we say. Brown is now in awkward stage where she’s trying to move on from child stardom, and is currently transitioning. No, not that way. To adulthood. While it’s all a bit awkward, the supporting players are able to… Well, support her. But it would take Meryl Streep to be able to work with this script. The resulting downturn in viewership was notable, and you have to wonder if Netflix might decide to pull the plug on what is obviously not a cheap franchise. Despite the pleasures to be found in the second installment, I don’t think I would shed any tears should this be the end. 

Dir: Philip Barantini
Star: Millie Bobby Brown, Louis Partridge, Himesh Patel, Sharon Duncan-Brewster

The Runner

  By

★★½
“Run Gal Run”

Poor Gal Gadot. Her career since Wonder Woman has basically been one downhill slalom after another. From the disaster which was Wonder Woman 1984, through Heart of Stone, and now this. It feels like everything has been a critical and/or commercial disaster. Even when not the star, she has been catching strays, such as Red Notice and the misconceived (to put it mildly) live-action Snow White remake. It’s at the point where her presence in a project is almost more a warning. The reviews for this could be a new low. Worse than Heart of Stone? Surely not. I was braced though. And while I found this less actively annoying, it still certainly isn’t good.

It’s a script which would barely trouble the back of a beer-mat. On the day prosecutor Maia Marten (Gadot) is scheduled to appear in court for the trial of a crime boss, her son Noah (Wilmot) is kidnapped. Unless she does exactly what she’s told by a voice on the phone (Lewis), Noah will die. The end game is Maia shooting the key witness in the hotel where he is sequestered. But to get there, she must run across London, this being contrived required so that the kidnapper can monitor her. He has also hacked her phone, so she is unable to call for help. There’s also some stuff about Maia’s mother having murdered her father. It doesn’t serve much purpose, and can safely be ignored.

This is the perfect movie, if you’re interested in spending eighty minutes, watching Gadot in motion, slowly getting sweatier and more dishevelled. To be honest… There are probably worse things to look at. Heart of Stone and Wonder Woman 1984, to name but two. As someone who lived in London for more than a decade, I also enjoyed trying to work out exactly where they were. This was challenging, given I left twenty-five years ago, and quite a lot has changed since. Still, I got the lie of the land, and unlike some films (Sherlock Holmes having its hero run from Tower Bridge to the Houses of Parliament in two minutes, requiring a sprint speed of 60+ mph), the geography here seems generally to make sense. 

But the fact that I was more interested in tourist landmarks, than the plot or the characters, is significant. You may even spend more of the film thinking of easier, less complex ways, for the voice on the phone to achieve the same end goal. For this is very much an example of an Amazon Prime streaming movie. You don’t need to think about the plot, or even pay attention to it. Everything is clear inside ten minutes, and the last five tidies everything up nicely, with a twist you will likely see coming – at least, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. In the middle? Running, taunting of Maia by the voice on the phone, and problem-solution on repeat. As Saturday night entertainment, it was… okay, I guess? Never going to watch it again though. 

Dir: Kevin Macdonald
Star: Gal Gadot, Damian Lewis, Alfred Enoch, Rory Wilmot

A Woman Scorned

  By

★★★
“Hell hath no fury?”

This had a fair number of decent and well-done elements. However, it very much feels like these are balanced by the aspects which fall short of adequate. How you react to this will likely be determined by your ability to overlook the latter, and appreciate the former. The basic idea is lean and mean. Sisters Jas (Purvis) and Laura (Pauley) are on a country weekend, when they encounter a car-load of men led by the particularly sleazy Randy (North). This leads to a home-invasion, a dead Laura, and Jas going on a rampage of revenge through everyone Randy can throw at her. Fair enough there, with enough brutal violence to leave the most blood-thirsty satisfied.

But I have questions. So many questions. Why does one sister have an American accent? Why are the villains so utterly incompetent? I mean, they can’t even tie Jas up for ten seconds – never mind taking advantage of the many, many opportunities to dispose of her entirely. Don’t even get me started on the gas canister scene: hello, throw it through the window? How does Jas, who has never been in the area, magically know the location of their headquarters, and so can head straight for it? Where did she acquire that very particular set of skills? All we get is a passing reference to her having taken a self-defense class – all I can say is, these lessons must have been given by John Wick. 

Because Jas goes from zero to stabbing someone in the neck, in about thirty seconds after finding the body of her sister, and takes more damage than a crash-test dummy, without flinching. As for calling the authorities? It’s vastly over-rated. This really leaves her character with nowhere to go for the rest of the film: a slower escalation would probably have been more satisfying. None of the above flaws are necessarily show-stoppers by themselves. The damage criticism, for example, could equally be levelled at the heroine in Revenge. However, they all combine to chip away at this film’s overall entertainment value, in effect leaving it doing the Hokey-Pokey: one step forward, one step back. 

This is before we get to specific elements, like the performances. These are similarly over the place, particularly among the villains. Fortunately, North – who likely has most acting to do, since Purvis’s performance mostly requires screaming – makes for a pleasantly hateable bad guy. There’s some spectacularly bad CGI fire; the practical stuff is fine, with energetic blood spatter, and everyone selling each bit of damage with the enthusiasm of someone auditioning for the WWE. This momentum is sufficient to paper over some of the flaws, though it would be optimistic to say it covers them all, or anywhere close to that. But I am a simple man, with simple needs. Consequently, I’ll always look somewhat kindly on a movie which possesses zero pretensions and a large bucket of red-coloured corn syrup.

Dir: Rebecca J Matthews and Michael Hoad
Star: Megan Purvis, Aaron-Jon North, Hannah Pauley

Gone to Ground

  By

★★½
“Start your engines…”

This one is fairly fringey, in terms of qualifications for the site. But I do feel, any film where a woman picks up and wields a chainsaw with bad intentions… Yeah, that’s pretty much a golden ticket to inclusion. You will have to be quite patient though. Very patient. It begins with a car crash which leaves Magda (De Mol), very much the worse for wear and badly concussed, in a gully off the road. She is rescued by Guy (Breck), an elderly gentleman who lives nearby, and who insists on nursing Magda back to health. However, matters are complicated by some rather dubious people, including Justin (Mills), who are after Magda and/or something in her possession. 

For a large part, this is really more of a relationship drama between Magda and Guy, with the only tension coming from cut-aways to Justin’s attempts at locating her. There’s a gulf in age, life experiences and attitudes between Magda, a Polish immigrant with a bleak past, as well as a murky present, and Guy, a former soldier who now has Alzheimer’s and is struggling against his son’s attempts to put him in a care home. But, probably inevitably, the two begin to discover a mutual understanding and respect. Hands up, anyone who did not see that coming, and pay more attention next time. Though matters there aren’t helped by her being economical with the truth, in part due to convenient cinematic amnesia, until Justin arrives with a truth delivery. 

De Mol does not appear to be Polish, and to be honest, this is often rather too apparent. Her line readings are stilted – admittedly, probably deliberately so – but if there’s any point to Magda’s ethnic origins, it’s outweighed by the clunkiness of the resulting performance. I was also significantly distracted by the logistics of a man with Alzheimer’s, who must be in his nineties (given his stories of flying a Lancaster bomber in World War 2), pulling a full-grown, unconscious woman from her car, out of a gorge, and back to his house – all by himself. My father is in his nineties, and I guarantee you, that ain’t happening. Later, Guy falls over, and can’t even get up by himself, so…

Things definitely kick up a gear when Justin arrives, and we find out a great deal more about the realities of events. We’re over eighty minutes in before that happens, and I do reckon it should have taken place considerably sooner, as there’s only so much passive-aggressive chit-chat I can stand between Ray and Magda. There is one strangely affecting scene right before the end where Magda finally opens up completely and, while it certainly leaves me looking more kindly on the film, I wish this had also happened much quicker. [Its poignancy is enhanced by knowing that Breck passed away in 2022; this was shot back in 2020] While the journey is clearly intended as the thing here, I’d have welcomed a straighter line to the eventual, chainsaw-ish destination. 

Dir: Phil Peel
Star: Melissa De Mol, Alan Breck, Alastair Thomson Mills

The Partisan

  By

★★★
“Part-ially effective.”

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

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

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

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

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

The Seasoning House

  By

★★★
“Sour and bitter in flavour.”

This is a nasty and grim piece of work, after which you will probably feel like taking a shower. However, I actually mean this in a (grudgingly) complimentary fashion, because it’s clear that director and co-writer Hyett was aiming for exactly that. Well done, I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though, and this is not a film I have any interest in revisiting. It takes place in an unnamed part of the Balkans (though my money is on somewhere in Serbia), during the ethno-religious wars which tore apart the region in the late nineties. All manner of highly unpleasant things went on: here, it’s a brothel in which kidnapped women are forced to service militiamen.

Working for the man who runs it, Viktor (Howarth), is a deaf-mute girl, whom he has named Angel (Day). She was also abducted, and could only watch as Goran (Pertwee) and his men killed the rest of her family. In some small amount of good fortune, Viktor has taken a shine to Angel, and so her duties are of the housekeeping kind, rather than being raped on a daily basis. But the things she sees, as she scurries around the air-ducts of the decrepit building, are the stuff of nightmares. Things come to a head after a platoon show up, assaulting the closest thing to a friend she has, Violeta (Walton), who already had her pelvis broken during a previous session. For the soldiers’ commanding officer is Goran…

This is where, mercifully, the worm turns, with Angel using her secret passages to avoid capture, as she takes out Goran’s men. The first, in particular, is a spectacularly brutal death by pointy object, which feels extremely cathartic. Thereafter, it does a decent job of not having her go toe-to-toe with larger and stronger opponents. The cramped spaces of the air ducts act as a great leveller in this regard, right up until the end. Well, almost the end. Because the final act has her trying to get help from the locals, and is a fraught endeavour in itself. I was reminded in this aspect of a certain other horror movie, though I don’t want to be any more specific there. 

The first hour in particular is a little too close to torture porn for my taste. It’s not necessarily especially graphic, though not pulling its punches. However, it still makes for uncomfortable viewing, and the abuse seemed, to me, to go on beyond what was necessary to make its point. A lot of credit to the production designer, who created sets which feel like you can taste the dirt and the sweat. Effective stuff, without question. Again: not to my particular taste, and I would have preferred it if more time had been spent on Angel making Viktor, Goran and the other bastards get their extremely well-deserved just deserts. Instead, I’ll be over in the corner, turning on this fire-hose.

Dir: Paul Hyett
Star: Rosie Day, Sean Pertwee, Kevin Howarth, Anna Walton

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

  By

★★★★
“Lethally blonde.”

This is Broomfield’s second documentary around the topic of Aileen Wuornos, having previously made Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. It’s a glorious doc – one of my all-time favorites – but is more tangential, being about those around Wuornos, seeking to exploit her situation for their own personal gain. He thought he was done with the topic, but he was called as a defense witness during Aileen’s final appeal against the multiple death sentences, largely because among those exploiters was her lawyer at the time, Steve Glazer. But around appearing in the witness box, Broomfield decided to make a second documentary, this time focusing on the woman at the centre of proceedings, all the way up to her execution by lethal injection in October 2002.

What I love about Broomfield’s work is, he goes where the story leads him. Some documentarians – and I’m looking at you, Michael Moore – go into production with An Agenda (caps used advisedly). They then craft the end product towards that agenda. To me, that’s less a documentary than propaganda. Broomfield seems to have a much more open mind, and the results sometimes end up going in unexpected directions. Here, it’s clear that he has sympathy for Wuornos, but doesn’t pull any punches about her personality and mental state. He presents footage both of her claiming self-defense and absolutely confessing to having committed cold-blooded murder. The scary thing is, Wuornos appeared to me to be highly credible in each, contradictory situation. Maybe I’m just easily fooled. Sobering.

Certainly, there is evidence of Aileen’s anger issues. During his final interview, we see how she can go from calm discussion to volcanic ferocity in short order, for little or no reason, and storming out while flipping Broomfield the bird. If there had been a firearm to hand during this outburst… Yeah, watching this, the idea of her killing seven in less than a year definitely seemed possible. Rage and easy access to guns is a dangerous combination. But as the film proceeds, it appears Wuornos’s mental situation deteriorates into frequent surges of paranoia, claiming mind-control weapons are being used on her, and that the cops knew who she was after the first murder, and let her continue killing so they could exploit things in the media. 

Should someone so clearly ill in the head be executed? Political considerations – it being an election year, with the governor wanting to appear strong on crime – appear to have overridden any judicial concerns. A cursory mental exam pronounced her fit to die, and the sentence was duly carried out. On that day, Broomfield was interviewed by the media (a classic case of the snake eating its own tail). He said, “Here was somebody who is has obviously lost her mind, has totally lost touch with reality. We’re executing a person who’s mad, and I don’t really know what kind of message that gives.” As someone not averse to the death penalty, this documentary certainly made me pause for thought, and that alone proves its quality. 

Dir: Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill

Burial

  By

★★★
“Werwolfs, not werewolves…”

There’s an interesting idea here, which somewhat works. But it’s perhaps a little too grounded for its own good.  It starts in a London flat, where senior citizen Anna Marshall (Walter) ambushes an intruder, handcuffing him to a radiator. Turns out he’s not just a burglar. He knows about her past, and wants the truth. So she tells him a story… At the very end of World War II, her identity was Brana Brodskaya (Vega). She was one member in a small group of Russian soldiers, who have been given a very important task: transport a box back from Berlin to Moscow. Oh, and bury it every night. Inevitably, their curiosity overcomes them, and the box is opened, to reveal Hitler’s corpse inside. 

Naturally, the remaining German forces are very keen to re-capture the Fuhrer’s body, to preserve the myth of his escape and survival. The group become bogged down in a Polish village, under attack from Nazi Werwolfs. Not, please note, actual werewolves. Though I have to say, that would have been pretty damn cool [I’m a big fan of Dog Soldiers, which does pit British soldiers against actual werewolves] The Werwolfs were resistance forces, left behind by the Nazis behind Allied enemy lines, as they advanced towards Germany. This is fact. As depicted here, they wear animals pelts when they attack, while burning mushrooms and lichen which cause their target to hallucinate. This is… rather less certain, albeit also kinda cool. 

Brodskaya is, clearly, the moral compass of the group, who tries to keep her comrades on task too – neither of which prove easy. When half of them split off seeking the “spoils of war”, she goes after them to stop them from committing war crimes on the civilian population. The locals are just tired of the conflict, and have little patience for either occupiers or liberators, not trusting either side. Parker does a good job of depicting the murkiness of a situation like this, where the lines of morality aren’t as clear-cut as you would initially expect. But the heroine is mission-oriented as well, and when control of the cargo is lost, she leads the charge to recover it, knowing the threat its loss would pose. 

Unfortunately, I found there to be significant issues with pacing, especially in the middle third which seems to contain several too many underlit action scenes in the woods. I’ve read multiple complaints about it being marketed as a horror movie, and certainly, if that’s what you are expecting, you will be severely disappointed. I had no such prejudices and so didn’t mind too much. Though I would have extended the flashback further, since there seems to be a lot of interesting material covered at the end, in a bit of an info-dump by Marshall. Between that and the non-lycanthropic werewolves, this is why I reckon there’s a lot of potential left unexplored here. An excellent concept, let down by only average execution.

Dir: Ben Parker
Star: Charlotte Vega, Tom Felton, Barry Ward, Harriet Walter

 

Wildcat

  By

★★★½
“She’s got claws.”

I was quite startled to read some of the scathing reviews this received. For I genuinely enjoyed it, to the point it likely came one element (which I’ll get to) from a seal of approval. Sure, it’s nothing particularly new overall. However, I found it consistently enjoyable, to the level I felt no desire to look at my phone at any point. These days, that’s high praise indeed. It takes place in a slightly alternate London, where gang bosses Frasier Mahoney (Charles Dance) and Mrs. Christina Vine (Krige) are on the edge of a war for control of the city. There’s also a rogue element, in the Mushka Gang, who have turned an East End estate into a no-go area.

Ada (Beckinsale) doesn’t have much to do with this, until her brother Edward (Hardiker) gets deep in debt to Mahoney. He kidnaps her daughter to ensure the money gets paid back. This forces Ada to carry out a heist on a jewellery store run by Vine, which is only the start in a series of problems. She does have assistance, in the shape of former lover Roman (Tan), who can help fence the product. Meanwhile, Ada is trying to get Mahoney blamed for the robbery, to start an inter-factional war that can cover their escape. Meanwhile meanwhile, we discover Ada and Edward’s past, and encounter a number of colourful characters, such as the foul-mouthed Galloway (Tom Bennett, channeling Budget Nick Frost).

There are a lot of moving parts, but Nunn keeps things clear. He has plenty of action experience, including the wonderful Scott Adkins vehicle One Shot, which was my favourite movie of 2021. This isn’t quite as relentlessly kinetic, yet keeps a good pace throughout. Tan actually gets as many action scenes as Beckinsale, and this brings me to the issue mentioned above. While she still looks the part – and very good for 52 – there’s an awful lot of shots from behind, strongly suggesting heavy stunt doubling. And it’s not subtly done. They might as well just have hired Laura Vörtler, Beckinsale’s stunt double, to play the part and been done with it. Still, despite clearly more limited resources, I preferred this to her last couple of actioners, Canary Black and Jolt.

It helps to have the likes of Krige and Dance in the supporting cast. The latter is barely seen until the end, though makes up for lost time with a blistering anecdote about his late wife. I really enjoyed Krige, whose character can go from comforting a grandchild troubled by bad dreams, to torturing an employee for information, without more than a blink. There are some elements which feel underdeveloped, such as a weird club which seems little more than a flimsy excuse to tie Beckinsale up. But overall, I enjoyed this, and particularly appreciated the bone-dry British humour peppered throughout. Although the lead may not have many more action films in her, Nunn continues to prove his credentials. 

Dir: James Nunn
Star: Kate Beckinsale, Lewis Tan, Rasmus Hardiker, Alice Krige

Compulsion

  By

★★★
“Rated R, for raunchy and rough.”

The “erotic thriller” now seems almost as quaint a part of cinema history as beach party films. It feels partly as if the Harvey Weinstein scandal made nudity and sexuality taboo in Hollywood. The rise of the Internet also provides easy access to all the naked flesh anyone could possibly want. Regardless of the cause, there are no longer big budget films like Basic Instinct or Wild Things being made, let alone being #6 at the North American box-office for the year, as Instinct managed [that said, United Artists paid $2 million for the reboot rights earlier this year. We’ll see; I’m not optimistic]. So in some ways, this feels like a throwback, drawing influence from Brian de Palma and Paul Verhoeven.

It’s the fourth, and supposedly final, collaboration between director Marshall and his wife/star Kirk. Two of the previous ones have been covered here, in The Lair and Duchess; I haven’t yet seen the other, witchcraft film The Reckoning. But there can’t be many directors who have worked so often with their spouses. Maybe Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich? The results for this couple have certainly fallen short of peak Marshall, such as The Descent, or even Doomsday, both commercially and critically. While this likely won’t change the narrative, I’m not averse to a nostalgic combo of gratuitous nudity and graphic violence. I’ll leave Mr. and Mrs. Marshall to figure out what it means for the relationship, in their couples’ therapy sessions. 

It takes place in Malta where a shapely cat-suit clad serial killer is committing some particularly brutal murders. Investigating the case is local detective Claudia Cavara (Gorietti), with the two main suspects Diana (Kirk), a bisexual thief with a hot boyfriend (McGowan), and her lesbian neighbour, Evie (Sieklucka). Will there be steamy trysts, voyeurism, and a Euro-pudding of accents, from Poland to Yorkshire? Yes, of course! Sieklucka was in those 365 Days films on Netflix, after all. You will also experience what may well be the stabbiest scene in film history, making Psycho look like a Sunday School play. While I felt the victim was certainly deserving (I hated his hair), it showed Marshall has clearly taken influence from Italian giallo films, with their masked killers and hyperviolence. 

It is, however, nowhere near as good as Basic Instinct. Kirk isn’t fit to hold Sharon Stone’s ice-pick, and the whole police side of things is embarrassingly half-baked. It also feels as if Marshall was more into the violence than the sex, and there was a point, probably about two-thirds in, where I realized I didn’t particularly care about anyone. The decision to make it a whodunnit backfires too, because there are an extremely limited number of possible suspects. The end result is therefore quite a mess, and I can understand the critical disdain. However, it’s a mess which had its moments, and was definitely among the most R-rated of movies I saw this year. More of those will always be welcome. 

Dir: Neil Marshall
Star: Charlotte Kirk, Anna-Maria Sieklucka, Zach McGowan, Giulia Gorietti