Tag: urban

Candy

  By

★★★
“Houston, we have a problem…”

You’ll probably understand why that cover picture got me to pause my casual scrolling through Amazon Prime. Well played, movie producers. Well played… Likely inevitably, the film didn’t quite live up to the advertising, mostly due to a significant lack of plot. The film barely runs 65 minutes, before we get to a sloth-like end-credit crawl, and there’s probably not enough story-line to fill a music video for one of the gangster rap songs which pepper the soundtrack. Yet, in terms of atmosphere and setting, it feels authentic. I can’t state with certainty it is, never having been a) to Houston, b) black, or c) involved in large-scale criminal enterprise. But in cinema, feeling authentic is a large part of what matters.

Candy (Adams) can check all three of those boxes, being in charge of an urban Texas group whose business is apparently equally involved in drugs, and robbing others in the same line of work. She’s rather hands-on: with three other women, including her cousin, Dody (Caliste), they go invading homes, and the residents usually come off very much the worse for it. Though sadly, those exploits aren’t the main focus of the film. Indeed, it’s kinda hard to say what is. Most of it seems occupied with a series of vignettes; narrative drive is very much secondary, though these episodes are good at portraying the two sides of a criminal life: both the glamour and the brutality.

For instance, there’s a scene where the women go into a convenience store and Candy shoots the breeze with the owner, an OG called Mr. Mack (played by rapper Bun B), who’s now retired from the game to become a shopkeeper. Though Cody does meet someone significant there, in terms of the film, it’s not very important. However, it’s just a nice exchange, and the film has a number of others. They’re rarely dull, and it generally avoids getting bogged down in cliche. Eventually, we do find out that corrupt cop Soso (Smith) is planning to take out Candy and her crew, as they prepare that mainstay of gang films: a big score. In this case, shipping tons of drugs to St. Louis.

It’s just a shame the plot hadn’t been there from the beginning. Perhaps I’m too used to my narconovelas, which go to the other extreme, arguably cramming in too much. But even the way in which the climax here is resolved, is rather unsatisfying, relying on what feels like a bit of a cheat, and being based on information withheld from the audience. It’s a shame, as the framework is in place for something better than most of these urban films I’ve seen, such as Jack Squad or the cinematic hell which was Hoodrats 2. On the basis of this, how Candy came to be where she was, for example, might have been a more interesting story than what she did once she got there.

Dir: Nahala Johnson
Star: Sheneka Adams, Gina Caliste, Kendrick Smith, Jessica Kylie

Sweet Justice (2009)

  By

★★
“In need of significant support.”

Four women run a charitable agency in Texas, helping single mothers track down and obtain child support payments from deadbeat dads. However, they don’t limit themselves to the simple serving of legal papers. The women adopt a more… hands-on approach, shall we say, first luring their targets in with the promise of sex, then threatening them at gunpoint, to make sure they pay up. For obvious reasons, the cops soon take interest in this string of unusual armed robberies. Meanwhile, the city’s white mayor, is dealing with a domestic crisis of her own, thanks to her daughter having had a child by (gasp!) a black man.

Y’know, woeful though this is in many ways, I actually somewhat respect the intent and the topic: at least its heart is in the right place. It seems like I have seen a lot of female vigilante films of late, and too many of them seem to descent into undiluted man-hating. This does a better job than most of avoiding that. There are times when the agency’s female clients are actually wrong, identifying the wrong man as their “baby daddy”, and some men are actually trying to do the right thing as well, such as the father of the mayor’s grandchild. It’s all considerably more even-handed than I expected, and does a decent job of highlighting just how screwed-up the current system is, failing almost everyone involved. However, social commentary, no matter how well-intentioned, is generally pretty low on the list of things I’m looking for on this site.

It doesn’t help that the execution is laughable in most regards, with few of those involved in front of the camera giving any indication of being genuine professionals. To be fair, the actresses generally come off slightly better than the “actors,” who appear to be a selection of wannabe rappers. But the story is ridiculously implausible as well, and morally dubious, too: is armed robbery really an appropriate and measured response to failure to pay child support? You’ll definitely have time to consider such things, during the many slacker-paced scenes. The cops are spectacularly incompetent too, though this is stupidity necessary to the plot, otherwise the vigilante squad would be locked up inside fifteen minutes. This perhaps therefore deserves slightly more slack.

There isn’t even any particular escalation or closure to be seen here. The sole thread which gets properly resolved involves the mayor, who eventually comes to terms with her grandchild’s parentage, and quits the re-election race in favour of her family. That’s nice. The vigilantes just continue on their serene way, as if this were some kind of pilot for a banal TV series. It all feels less like a coherent or interesting feature film, than an excuse for the director to hang out with a few of his pals and some local musicians. To anyone outside that clique, there’s little here of interest, and it’s certainly as forgettable as its remarkably generic title.

Dir: Arthur Muhammad
Star: Tammy Thomas, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Shannon Ashe, Z-RO
a.k.a. Black Angels

SheChotic

  By

★½
“You’ll need a break.”

Within about two minutes of starting this, I realized I had made a terrible mistake, and was watching something barely reaching the amateur level of film production. Still, I soldiered on – albeit for some loose definition of “soldiered” – until the bitter end, mostly so I could issue an informed warning about this to any prospective viewers. Maxine (Mitchell) is rather upset when she discovers her boyfriend, music video producer Lance (Watts) has been cheating on her with Lana (Bryant). Mind you, she’s clearly a bit unhinged already: for example, telling him she’s pregnant when she isn’t. So it’s not much of a surprise when her reaction to his two-timing is to kidnap Lance, tie him up in her basement and submit him to various indignities, along with seeking revenge on Lana. Which, apparently, includes sleeping with her father (Walker).

If this all sounds like completely ludicrous and implausible nonsense… I have done my job as a reviewer, because that’s exactly what it is, buttressed by poor audio quality, questionable directorial decisions (the conversation where the camera spins around the participants like a hyperactive house-fly was an especially dubious choice) and a final twist which managed to be both out of left field and entirely predictable at the same time. About the only thing which I did quite like, was the way Maxine’s personality splits into two distinct characters. One is urging her on to do ever more malicious deeds, while the other is trying to take a higher moral path. Surprisingly – considering the ineptness everywhere else – it’s decently handled on both sides of the camera. Even if I doubt anyone ever thought, “I want an erotic thriller which largely avoids actually nudity, with a black, female version of Gollum in it,” this aspect is likely responsible for this avoiding a dreaded and rarely awarded one-star rating.

I was amused by the po-faced disclaimer from the director which opens this: “Due to my strong convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses support of violence, abuse against women or other subject matter that may be considered offensive.” Several points come to mind. Firstly, if you have to add a disclaimer to your film like that, you’re doing it wrong. Secondly, it’s little more than empty virtue signaling anyway: It’d be far more notable if a director stated “I wholeheartedly endorse violence.” Thirdly, any abuse here is far more by women: what is Mr. Fiori’s stance on that? Sadly, it appears we will never know, save for the unlikely event of there being a SheChotic 2. Fourthly and finally, it’s never a good sign when the text which starts your movie is worthy of deeper analysis and commentary than 95% of what follows it. Though if it had instead simply read, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” it would certainly have been equally valid.

Dir: Leandre Fiori
Star: Erica Mitchell, Robert D Watts, Brittany Bryant, Jason Walker

Queen Pin

  By

★★½
“Thug life.”

Rhanni (Brown) falls for the notorious Florida drug-dealer Seven (Bird) hard – to the extent she’s prepared to overlook the fact he’s married. Instead, she becomes his best friend, and works alongside him in the pharmaceutical business. When he is gunned down by his rivals, Rhanni decides to take what she has learned and put it into practice. She assembles her team of loyal but brutal associates, and sets out to take over the town. This brings her unwanted attention from two groups. Firstly, the authorities, who are always seeking to snare one of her underlings, and get him to snitch on his boss. More lethally, there’s the mysterious “Genie”, the current top dog, whose face no-one has seen. Genie sends Lil’ Miller (Michele) to take out Rhanni, only for the hitwoman to throw her lot in with the intended target.

This is one of those where I am very clearly not the target audience, and I had to keep the closed captions on to figure out every second word – basically, the ones which weren’t “nigga”, sprinkled around here as frequently as a Valley Girl uses “like”. The only reason I mind, is because it gets pretty repetitive. Authentic? Possibly: I’m not exactly in a position to comment. The aim seems to be something like a distaff version of Scarface (or La Reina Del Sur, though this 2010 film pre-dates the TV series by a year), but the film just doesn’t have the budget to be able to deliver anything like its ambitions. As a result, those who are supposedly on the top of the heap, seems to spend a startling amount of time in cheap apartments and casual restaurants – the kind of place where, I kid you not, the shrimp alfredo arrives 30 seconds after the characters order it.

Credit this for being a little more thoughtful than I expected, with Rhanni eventually deciding to escape the thug life and start a record-label (no prizes for guessing how that goes), and a final moral that’s more effective than I expected. This might perhaps be because the director is a woman – something I wasn’t aware of, given a non-gender specific name, until the end credits where she is listed as playing a waitress. There’s definitely too much bad rap, playing almost permanently in the background, which does nothing to enhance the atmosphere, and at times the result feels more like a poverty-row music video than a genuine feature film. Despite this, I’m not averse to watching the sequel, which sees the return of Lil’ Miller – likely the most energetic and interesting character here.

But not Rhanni. For, in a creepy bit of art imitating life, Jokisha Brown was gunned down in an Atlanta parking lot in July 2016, a few months after her brother was shot dead at a Jacksonville strip-club. [Her ex-boyfriend was arrested the following April and is a “person of interest”, according to the most recent reports] That’s a level of method acting to which even Al Pacino wouldn’t go.

Dir: Gin X
Star: Jokisha “Dynasty” Brown, Krystal Michele, Jacoby “Beam” Freeman, Tearon “Nephew” Bird

Avenge the Crows: The Legend of Loca

  By

★★★½
“Though I’m still not sure what the title means…”

This feels like a low-budget project in many ways, but manages to punch above its weight, in part due to an impressive supporting cast. While Lou Diamond Phillips, Danny Trejo and Steven Bauer are nowhere near as important as their names on the cover might suggest, their presence provide a solid foundation on which the less well-known members of the cast can build. In particular, Danay García as Loca; having bailed on Fear the Walking Dead after about two episodes, I wasn’t aware of her, but on the basis of this, she’s a name on whom we’ll be keeping an eye.

Gabaeff, as well, has some interesting shots in his directorial locker. At times, this almost reminded me of Memento in the structure: it’s only at the end that you are given the necessary knowledge to  understand all that has happened. Even on a smaller scale, the layout is often fractured. More than once, a character gets a phone-call, and the film then jumps back in time, and over to the person on the other end of the line, to show what led up to them making that call. As such, it takes a bit of getting your brain around – yet the payoff, in the “Aha!” moment where you realize how it connects, is gratifying.

An interesting twist is that Loca is not the executor of the revenge, as is usually the case – she’s the target for it. Casper (Phillips) is in prison, but a henchman there, Joker (the genuinely scary-looking Flores), is about to be released. Joker is told to “send a message” to Loca, through her niece, Cammy (Rivera). But he goes further than Casper intended, and rapes Cammy. That starts Loca on a search for protection, but the gun-dealer she visits to acquire weapons turns out to be targeted for some retribution of his own, and Loca is dragged into that as well. Handling all this will require her to navigate dangerous waters, and bring together enemies to face a common foe.

There’s a strong scent of grim reality here: I don’t know if the tattoos everyone is sporting were “real” or not (likely a mix), but I don’t think I’ve seen a more inked-up feature. You get the feeling the people involved are largely familiar with the environment in question – not least, of course, Trejo, whose background as a felon-turned-star actor deserves to become a movie of its own. Here, he plays the owner of the bar where Loca hangs out, and is as gloriously gruff and down to earth as ever. The rest of the cast all fit their roles well. If the eventual resolution (where Bauer eventually turns up, after we had virtually abandoned hope!) feels a little unlikely and convenient, given the complexities of what had gone before, this doesn’t undo the generally solid work here. It’s better than I expected going in.

Dir: Nathan Gabaeff
Star: Danay García, Emilio Rivera, Michael Flores, Angelique Rivera

Diamond Dawgs

  By

★★
“Car trouble.”

It’s hard to believe a film rated two stars exceeded expectations, but when I saw this had scored just 1.7 out of ten on the IMDb, I was braced for something much worse. I mean, cross off the friends of the cast and crew who scored it a “10”, and 72% of voters have given it the lowest mark possible. Make no mistake, this isn’t great. It’s not even good. But this is not quite as irredeemably bad as that score would imply.

The story concerns the car thief gang of the title, including Ciara (Johnson) and Pretty (Manning), who work under the heavy thumb of South Central (Núñez). They target a party being held by rappers High Rollaz, not realizing the trunk of one car lifted contains the only copy of a master tape for the High Rollas latest album. The trio, led by Millions (Green), start to follow the Dawgs’s trail, only for things to get complicated when Ciara and one of the High Rollaz fall for each other.

Made in 2009, the production values here are shaky at best, with the video in particular not having aged well. You could likely record better quality footage on a medium-end phone these days, and the sound might well be improved, too. The story is woefully thin: there are scenes which either stay far beyond their purpose (unless that purpose was to showcase one of the rap songs on the soundtrack), or don’t appear to serve any purpose at all. The action, such as it is, is very poorly-executed: the Dawgs do very little actual crime after the opening sequence. Basically, rob the party and that’s it.

And, yet… On a couple of occasions, the film did surprise me. For instance, there’s one scene where South Central forces one of his minions to play Russian Roulette, and it’s genuinely disturbing. Núñez’s acting experience is apparent, and weirdly, his performance here reminded me of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s portrayal of Negan in The Walking Dead (which, obviously, it well pre-dates). There’s the same sense he’s entirely unhinged, and could go off into insane violence at any moment. We also get the Most Unexpected Star Trek Reference of All-Time, when a drug dealer says of his product that it will, “Get you high, like Captain Kirk… The young Kirk, the one getting all the alien pussy.” I laughed, anyway.

I’m certainly not the intended audience here, yet I can’t imagine even its target would be able to look past the shoddier aspects, despite what feels like a certain veneer of urban authenticity to the dialogue and characters. It plods on, entirely as you’d expect, to the final face-off, when the High Rollaz try to execute a deal with South Central and his crew, for the return of their tape. I sense the actresses here were chosen more for their visual appeal – it seems most of them were models – rather than their acting ability. Though since they get precious little to do here, it’s very difficult to tell whether or not they have any talent. They do nail the “looking pretty” thing, close to impeccably.

Dir: Chris Rogers
Star: Sherina Manning, Azur-De Johnson, Will Green, Miguel A. Núñez Jr.

Skirt Day

  By

★★★½
“Those kids became my enemies.”

skirrtdayGuaranteed to put anyone off education as a career, this stars Gallic sex-kitten from the 80’s, Isabelle Adjani, now all middle-aged and playing French literature teacher Sonia Bergerac. whose career has devolved into hell – hence the line atop this review. She’s teaching a teenage class who, virtually without exception, clearly don’t want to be there, when she finds a gun in one of their bags. A struggle erupts, and when the dust settles, Sonia has the gun, a student is lying on the floor with a bullet-wound, and a siege situation has begun. On the outside, police negotiator Labouret (Podalydès) is having a bad day himself, trying to avoid a blood-bath, while his political masters try to spin news of the unexpected hostage crisis. But inside the theater, Sonia finds that it’s not just political power that grows from the barrel of a gun: she hasn’t ever had pupils pay such impeccable attention to her lessons before…

Made in 2009, this has, if anything become even more topical in the light of the refugee crisis which has become a hot-button issue in Europe of late. For this pulls few punches in its criticism of those who adopt politically-correct policies, simply to avoid trouble with minorities. The title refers to one of Sonia’s unusual demands, a day that women can wear skirts without the risk of harassment by political or religious conservatives, and writer-director Lilienfeld is also scathing in his criticism of immigrants who don’t integrate into their new homeland (a later reveal indicates it’s the latter aspect which is most important), as well as, it appears, yelling at local kids to get off his damn lawn. It is almost certainly the case that aspects of this will make more sense to a local audience; viewers outside France have to work backwards from what’s presented, to read Lilienfeld’s view of French society, rather than the other way around. However, he is also careful not to paint the pupils with a single brush: some are every bit as aggrieved with the status quo of appeasement as Sonia – and, arguably, with greater justification.

It’s not a film without its problems. The exterior scenes don’t have anything like the same impact, and the end feels almost like the director ran out of things to say, and opted for the simplest way to tie up all the loose ends, regardless of how abrupt it might seem. But it’s still genuinely thought-provoking – not something we find often in our genre here – and even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything Lilienfeld has to say, he deserves respect for saying it in a reasonable way. Adjani, who largely came out of retirement to make this, does a great job: the scenario sounds kinda silly, yet largely through her portrayal of a woman at the absolute end of her rope, it becomes plausible enough to work. Hard to imagine anything like this coming out of Hollywood, that’s for sure.

Dir: Jean-Paul Lilienfeld
Star: Isabelle Adjani, Denis Podalydès, Yann Ebonge, Sonia Amori
a.k.a. La Journée de la jupe

Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warriors

  By

★½
“And no: neither of the actresses on the cover actually star in the film, as far as I can tell.”

When Chino (Rodil) beats up his woman, Lucia (Sparagna) decides it has happened for the last time, and accompanied by her two friends, Celia (Mortel) and Miriam (Cho), she gives him a dose of his own medicine, with a baseball bat. This turns out to be a clear case of thinking without acting, because it turns out he’s a big kahuna in one of the local gangs, and is now out for revenge on the trio. After a drive-by cripples their vehicle (a ghettomobile with the amusing personalized plate, ‘ICUHATN’), they are stuck deep in enemy territory, with a lot of unfriendly people looking for them. And even if they make it out alive, what then?

I like the idea a lot: it could have become a Latina take on The Warriors, an urban nightmare journey pitting the heroines against a range of city low-lives, as they battle their way back across Los Angeles. And, perhaps surprisingly, the acting is not terrible: I was expecting something sub-amateur, but the three ladies are competent, and Rodil is actually more than adequately unpleasant as the villain. Arellano knows where to point the camera too – and, as an aside, you do not appear to need any knowledge of his previous Hoodrats. Two things, however, undo all the positives, and send this heavily into the red.

Firstly, the script is really badly written, with any number of scenes that outstay their welcome or are simply unnecessary. I’ll describe a couple of the worst offenders. Late on, two of the women are captured; the third just wanders off, bumps into a complete stranger and has an irrelevant conversation, resulting in her grooving out to some tunes. What? That, however, is a masterpiece compared to the scene where they seek help from the local king pimp, the inexplicably-British Baron of New Orleans. He looks like Simon Pegg, sounds (dubbed?) like Russell Brand, and must have been an investor in the film, because there is absolutely no justification for the seemingly endless minutes of screen time allocated to his vapid burblings.

The other problem is the fights, which are largely predictable, uninteresting and completely fail to be hard-hitting. For instance, the enemies met by the three women as they head home, are inevitably…three women, and the sluggish cartwheel move Lucia uses, apparently inspired by capoeira, doesn’t improve with repetition. I’ve seen films where my attention drifts away, except during the action scenes: here, however, it drifted away more during the action. It builds to a finale in what could well be a school gym, that is ludicrous in its implausibility, though is a fitting end to an inept work.

Dir: Edgar Arellano
Star: June Marie Sparagna, Donnabella Mortel, Arden Cho, Neal ‘Xingu’ Rodil