Tag: USA

Fear of a Black Planet

  By

★★
“Not everything is black and white…”

It’s interesting to look at the film’s IMDb page, and contrast the reviews, where there’s nothing less than an 8/10, with the rating, where 73% of votes are a 1/10. One “review” was actually a rant about other reviews which appear to have been removed? Something odd there. There’s no doubt, the film is not so much tackling a contentious topic, as driving head-first into it at 80 mph. Even the title (obviously inspired by the Public Enemy LP of the same name) is an incendiary one, guaranteed to raise the hackles of many – and, to be honest, not without reason, because of the assumptions it makes. It’s a shame, since the film is at least slightly more nuanced than the title makes it seem.

We’re still deep in problematic territory, however. The topic of race relations in post-Trump America is not something a 70-minute film can address in any meaningful way. While I have to admire the intent, it feels like this was doomed to fail from the get-go, and delivers only the most ham-handed of commentary. Fay (White), a newly graduated black cop, is on the way to visit her father’s grave when full-on race war breaks out. She takes shelter in the warehouse belonging to artist Nova (Kott), only to find it’s not much of a safe haven. For Nova turns out to be part of a white militia group, run by Lestor (Benton). They’ve got a van and are plotting something not very nice with it.

The issue here is the script, which has so many flaws it’s hard to pick out the worst. It’s probably Fay’s repeated failure to nope the hell out of there, despite prolific opportunities. Though the competition in this category is tough. Why does Nova let a “monkey” in to their lair, on multiple occasions? Why do the militia not permanently dispose of Fay the first chance they get? Shouldn’t they – oh, I dunno – lock the door to prevent Fay’s white boyfriend, Ric (Price), from coming in? It’s not as if civilization outside has collapsed into anarchy and utter chaos. Oh, my mistake: it supposedly has. Or maybe not immediately recruit Ric onto their team? Guess you just can’t get the white supremacists these days…

None of these have anything to do with the film’s apparent message: it’s basic storytelling. The performances are fine, and the direction occasionally impressive; the ending works better than it should. However, these aspects deserve a much better plot, and aren’t enough to salvage the endeavour as a whole. With regard to the messaging, it’s not as painfully didactic as I expected from its title, tending to let its morality flow from the situations. Though any pretense at balance is limited to a two-minute appearance by a vigilante apparently affiliated to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, going by his multiple references to “white devils”. The reality, of course, is that 90% of people, black and white, don’t hold these kinds of extremist views. Here, 90% do, making it as much a dubious fantasy as Birth of a Nation.

Dir: Detdrich McClure
Star: Jay White, Amanda Kott, Joshua Benton, Keli Price

Infinite Storm

  By

★★
“An uphill slog.”

The “based on a true story” label covers a broad range of cinematic outcomes. However, a general rule of thumb is, the closer a movie stays to the facts, the less interesting the result will be. On that basis, I suspect this is a true and accurate deduction of the life of Pam Bales, and one particular incident therein. Because it’s largely lacking in excitement, and worse, seems to know it. Unless you have a fondness for watching someone trudge uphill for 30 minutes, then downhill for another sixty, I’d recommend giving this a pass. Despite some attractive scenery (Slovenia standing in for New Hampshire), there’s not enough to generate the necessary amount of drama or tension.

Pam (Watts) heads out on a solo hike of Mt. Washington. While she’s an experienced hiker, and a member of the local volunteer search and rescue team, she is still not prepared for the sudden change in weather conditions that descends, engulfing her in a blizzard. Managing to extricate herself from a crevasse into which she falls, she then stumbles across another hiker (Howle), ill-outfitted for the storm, just sitting in the middle of the trail. She has to try and negotiate a way down and off the mountain for both of them, a task made harder by her new charge’s odd aversion to being rescued. He won’t tell her his actual name, forcing her to call him John by default, and at one point deliberately plunges off a precipice.

There does turn out to be a reason for this suicidal behavior, which is fair enough. Less satisfactory, is the script’s decision to give us a back-story about Pam and her children. It feels as if they think simple heroism is not something a person – in particular a woman – can simply have; there has to be some more or less buried trauma in their past, to justify their bravery. I didn’t feel this added anything of real significance to her character – and worse, I didn’t care and, to be honest, found it kinda dull. It’s as if the makers didn’t have faith in the ability of their core story to hold the viewer’s attention. Sadly, I can’t argue with them on that point.

In particular, it doesn’t offer any particular progression. This is just Pam stumbling her way about, against the environment and the elements for an hour and a half. At the end, there’s a particularly “Eh?” moment, where a caption informs us that it only takes one person to change a life, not long after Pam has declared that the universe is an infinite storm of beauty. I’m not sure how the film got there from what it depicted over the previous ninety minutes. I always say that the vastly overrated 2001, is the only journey to the outer planets, which feels like it was filmed in real-time. Along the same lines, Infinite Storm is the only mountain climbing movie I’ve seem, which feels like it was filmed in real-time 

Dir: Malgorzata Szumowska
Star: Naomi Watts, Billy Howle, Denis O’Hare, Parker Sawyers

Hunting Ava Bravo

  By

★★★
“No business like snow business.”

I do admire a film which does not hang about, and this certainly qualifies. We begin with Ava Bravo (del Castillo) removing a hood to find herself in a very remote, snowbound mountain cabin. A cassette player nearby has a message. She has been abducted by Buddy King (Blucas), a millionaire with a fondness for kidnapping trauma survivors and hunting them through the wilderness. There’s a snowmobile parked five miles North, if she can make it across the winter terrain there. To make it fairer, Buddy has only three bullets for his gun. Oh, and he’s going to be coming up from the basement in ten seconds. Safe to say, this is the kind of start that grabbed my attention. 

It does have some trouble living up to it, with rather too much slack in what follows, even if the running time is under 80 minutes. Things do unfold largely as you’d expect, in what’s another variation on the ever popular Most Dangerous Game concept. Seriously, there have been so many now, I feel I should add a tag for that subgenre. So, we get Eva getting the drop on Buddy, only to find his cassette message was not entirely truthful, and she needs to keep him alive if she wants out. The rest of the film is a struggle between the two of them for dominance, and we learn a little of their histories and what makes them tick.

It probably needs some tighter plotting, e.g. a third party (Medina) turns up when needed by the plot. Though this does get explained, it wasn’t entirely convincing. I have… questions. Let’s leave it at that. This also applies to the ending, where Eva’s geographic knowledge suddenly seems considerably better than it was. However, this is made up for with a decent pair of lead performances, and some sequences which are effective and tense. Del Castillo should be known in these parts as the star of La Reina Del Sur and Ingobernable. This is a bilingual performance, with a chunk of unsubbed Spanish, though it’s mostly cursing.  [Sometimes having a wife of Cuban extraction has its benefits. I’m now fairly fluent in certain phrases you won’t learn on DuoLingo…]

This does come to play in what’s likely the tensest scene. Ava and Buddy stumble across two Hispanic hunters, leading to them both trying to convince the hunters that the other is the dangerous psycho. He has the bruises to support his case, and she is carrying the gun. However, she has the language advantage. It’s a well-written, performed and staged sequence, and shows where the film could perhaps have gone. Moments like this were enough to get me over the less interesting bits of chit-chat, though Ava’s matter-of-fact description of her previous abduction and escape is chilling in its understated nature. If it’s all too uneven to be wholeheartedly recommended, I felt there was enough here to justify its existence. 

Dir: Gary Auerbach
Star: Kate del Castillo, Marc Blucas, Halem Medina

Emily the Criminal

  By

★★★★
“Parks and Illegal Recreation.”

For six months or so, our morning routine involved the consumption of an episode of Parks and Recreation with breakfast. Our favourite character on the show was Ron Swanson, but not far behind was April Ludgate, played by Aubrey Plaza. She was the mistress of deadpan misanthropy, delivering lines like “I’m just gonna live under a bridge and ask people riddles before they cross.” We’ve not seen her in much since the show ended, but the concept of April Ludgate, career criminal, was too delicious to pass up. So here we are, yet I must admit, Plaza is almost good enough to make us forget April. Well, except for one roll of the eyes, which was vintage Ludgate.

She plays Emily, a young woman saddled with an inescapable pit of student loans, for a basically useless qualification, and an unfortunate felony relegating her to food delivery work. A chance encounter brings her into contact with Youcef (Rossi). She earns $200 for making a fraudulent credit-card transaction on his behalf, and is offered the chance to earn ten times that, for a larger, riskier purchase. With regular employment clearly not the solution, Emily embraces her new, illegal career, working with Youcef, much to the disdain of his Lebanese brothers. As their infighting escalates, Youcef decides to cut and run, only to be beaten to the punch. Emily won’t stand for that: “You’re a bad influence,” says Youcef, as he and Emily prepare to rob his brother. He’s not wrong. 

On one level, Emily’s situation is a result of her poor choices. Running up eighty grand in debt for an art degree and committing felonious assault are both decisions she made, of her own free will. These have consequences. Yet I increasingly found myself rooting for Emily, and her refusal to be ground down by the unfairness of life, or those seeking to exploit her – both in the legal and illegal employment sectors. She possesses undeniable smarts, and a righteous anger at the undeserved success of those she sees around her. Her wants are not excessive, and her crimes are… if hardly victimless, non-violent. At least, if you don’t count those who try to take advantage of her. For Emily wields a mean stun-gun.

If the world won’t give Emily a chance, playing by their rules, she’ll simply make up her own rules. She’s not willing to conform just to become society’s victim, and in this, weirdly, it has elements in common with urban flicks like The Bag Girls. There’s also no sense of honour among thieves, though the authorities and police in this movie are notable by their complete absence. Certainly, the threat of arrest is never a consideration for Emily, or at least, doesn’t alter her trajectory. The ending is ambivalent, to put it mildly: crime appears to pay, though it seems Emily may be addicted to the adrenaline high as much as the ill-gotten gains. While the morality here may be questionable, Plaza’s performance still makes it more than worthwhile. 

Dir: John Patton Ford
Star: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Gina Gershon

Useless

  By

★½
“[Obvious comment redacted]”

Giving your film a title like this is basically asking for trouble. It gives snarky critics an extremely easy weapon to wield against the movie. That’s especially so when it’s a low-budget effort, made with considerably more heart than skill. It’s not without merit, especially in the photography. It is crisp and does a good job of capturing some beautiful Montana scenery – there’s a reason the state is nicknamed Big Sky Country – and the rodeo action. The problems are in a script which never met a cliché it didn’t like, and performances that do little or nothing to elevate the material.

The very first scene has a mother professing her love to her daughter, Jessie (Wilson). Two minutes later, she dies in a car accident. That’s a good indicator of the level of plotting you can expect from this. Jessie goes to live with her uncle Mick (Bracich) and mopes around. A lot. She is eventually brought out of her shell after Mick buys her an equally broken equine called Lucky – I presume this is where the title comes from. Girl and horse bond, help each other to heal, and take part in the sport of barrel racing. This had apparently been her mother’s favourite pastime; not that we knew anything about this before she died, of course. I also hope you know all the intricacies of barrel racing, for the film assumes you do, rather than bothering to explain anything about it.

I get that Montana is a different world, with a slower pace of life. Yet the dramatic approach here is beyond low-key, to the point of soporific. Even when Mick has a stroke (damn, this family has some poor luck), Jessie’s reaction barely registers above the level of slight annoyance. It feels very much that Wilson was chosen, not for her dramatic abilities, rather her talent in the saddle.  To this non-horse person, she looked solid there: it turns out she was the 2017 Montana High School Rodeo Association Champion Barrel Racer, and has been in the sport since she was 4. So her action scenes are authentic and work. When she opens her mouth? Not so much. The subplot in which she has to chose between nice nerd Kyle (Christensen) and bad boy bull-rider Blaze (Olson), falls flatter than huckleberry pancakes as a result.

At the other end of the spectrum, is the musical score. This doesn’t so much enhance proceedings, as signal the intended emotions enthusiastically. It’s probably the first time a soundtrack could be accused of blatantly over-acting. Not that there is any particular sense of dramatic escalation. Instead of, say, building to a big barrel racing competition, things peak with an illicit party at which – gasp! ‐ alcohol is being drunk. While there is a contest at the end, with no build-up, it is also severely lacking in impact. It’s clear this was a project born out of and fuelled by passion. It’s also very apparent, that alone falls well short of being enough. 

Dir: Josiah Burdick
Star: Brooke Wilson, Mark Bracich, Michael Christensen, Brian Olson

Code Name Banshee

  By

★★½
“Daddy issues.”

This seemed considerably better in the trailer, which makes it look like quite an action-packed extravaganza. The reality is much less interesting, with a murky and confusing plot, and what action there is, is often filmed in a murky and confusing way. It begins with an agent, code name Banshee (King), quitting the government agency for which she works. The handoff of an asset went wrong: one of the colleagues involved was her father, who vanished entirely. The other was Caleb (Banderas), who went off the grid thereafter. Five years later, Banshee is a private assassin, but her latest job is interrupted by Greene (Flanagan), who wants her to give up Caleb’s location. 

Naturally, she won’t, and tracks down Caleb herself to warn him and his teenage daughter, Hailey (Davis) – as well as, hopefully, find the truth out about what happened to her father. Before she can do so, Greene shows up, with an apparently infinite supply of minions, who appear remarkably oblivious to concepts such as “taking cover”. To get to this point, you will have to endure a script that doesn’t bother explaining almost any significant point. I’m not sure why Greene is suddenly and energetically going after Caleb, half a decade later. Or why Banshee also waited so long to visit the only man who knows what happened to her father. Then there’s the facile ease with which she is able to track down Caleb, based entirely on a fragmentary conversation from a long time previously. Mind you, running a bar is not exactly what I would call “going off-grid”…

It is a bit of a pity, since I liked most of the characters, and the actors do a fairly good job of bringing them to life. King and Davis have good chemistry, and  Banderas brings an effective world weariness to his role, as a veteran who now just wants to be left alone. The highlight though, is likely Flanagan, who hits the right balance, creating a larger than life villain, without going too far into the chewing of scenery. The lack of apparent motivation – we never know who he’s working for, or why – does limit his effectiveness. 

The first bit of action may be the best elevator lobby fight since The Matrix, and does a good job of establishing Banshee’s credentials, even if there isn’t much else of a similar standard the rest of the way. Indeed, as far as Banshee goes, there’s not much at all, until Greene’s curiously incompetent henchmen start to show up at Caleb’s house, attacking in small, conveniently handleable groups. For… reasons, it’s largely down to Banshee and Hailey to hold them off, the latter proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So, two action heroines for the price of one. Yay. Just do not expect to learn the truth about what happened to dear old Dad, or you will be sadly disappointed. Actually, you may well be disappointed anyway…

Dir: Jon Keeyes
Star: Jaime King, Antonio Banderas, Tommy Flanagan, Catherine Davis

After the Pandemic

  By

★★½
“As generic as its title.”

A disease sweeps the planet, killing billions. The only ones with any hope of surviving in the outside world are the young, a small number of whom appear to have a natural immunity. Five years on, and Ellie is one of the few to have endured, scraping for a life among the leftovers of civilization. But she and the other survivors are the targets for the Stalkers: roaming groups of biohazard-suit clad hunters in white vans. They seek to capture the immune, for use in a project to develop a vaccine that can allow the elite to come out of their safe havens. While trying to avoid them, she encounters Quinn (Smith), another survivor with a wealth of knowledge, and a hard-edged approach to life. Initially, Quinn wants nothing to do with Ellie, though eventually realizes two heads can sometimes be better than one, in the never ending struggle to stay alive and free.

After the opening narrative, there’s a spell of over 20 minutes which are entirely dialogue free. It’s a brave choice, yet doesn’t hurt the movie, instead reinforcing the loneliness of the situation in which Ellie finds herself. I do have questions about so much time supposedly having passed. There are some suspiciously well-preserved corpses, and the world itself seems barely different from now, save for the shortage of people, without signs of decay. I was expecting more to be made of the youth element too, perhaps along the lines of Roger Corman’s cult flick, Gas-s-s-s, with a replacement culture having arisen to replace the geriatric one. Never happens: save for the age of the main characters, it’s irrelevant. 

The biggest issue, I felt, was there just was not enough going on here to justify the movie’s existence. After Ellie meets Quinn, the next hour largely appears to consist of them avoiding or running from the Stalkers. The pair of heroines are in severe need of some kind of goal, an end-game to which they are working, rather than, as it appears, merely basic survival on a day-to-day basis. The script seems to concentrate on the relationship between them, yet never puts in the necessary work beyond the superficial level. Why are the girls so different, given their similar experiences? 

While the performances are decent enough, the same goes for them: they get the job done, and no more. The occasional brief flashback proves almost aggravating rather than enlightening in this regard. Things do escalate down the stretch, with matters between Ellie, Quinn and the Stalkers coming to a head. Though if I was in charge of the last-named, I would have a quiet word about their collection protocols. Sloppy, and they pay the price. It is not quite enough to save the scenario. While you can’t point at much here that writer-director Lowry specifically does wrong, nor does he bring anything novel to the post-apocalyptic party, and neither is this done well enough to stand out from the crowd. Forgettably competent. 

Dir: Richard Lowry
Star: Eve James, Kannon Smith

The Woman King

  By

★★★
“Annalise Keating does not mess around.”

The above – though expressed rather more bluntly! – was Chris’s reaction to the opening scene, in which Nanisca (Davis) leads her female troops, the Agojie, in the ambush of slavers from the neighbouring Oyo tribe. The Oyo are rivals to the Kingdom of Dahomey, under King Ghezo (John Boyega), who relies on Nanisca and the Agojie to protect his territory, and it’s getting closer to all-out war. The Agojie get a new recruit, Nawi (Mbedu), whose father drops her off at the palace gate, because of her refusal to accept an arranged marriage. Nawi turns out to have a very close connection to Nanisca, but also ends up captured by the Oyo and needs to escape before being sold to Brazilian slavers.

I found myself disappointed by this split focus. Davis is great, commanding the screen in just about every scene, and looking every inch a credible army commander. Her physique is also impressive, considering she’s older than I am. The problem is, there isn’t enough of her, even in a 134-minute movie, and Nawi isn’t anywhere near as interesting. While Nanisca may be a fictional character (and I’ll circle back to this), she’s a unique creation. Nawi, on the other hand, feels like a lazy combination of tropes from other films. Never mind the training montage, I literally sighed when she goes back to help a struggling comrade in arms during her final test. The more I saw of her, the less interested I was.

The Agojie in general are an intriguing topic, and there has been some controversy over the film’s depiction of Dahomey. In reality, they were no less enthusiastic about slavery than their neighbours, and certainly didn’t limit themselves to captured enemy soldiers, as is kinda suggested here. However, I can’t say I was bothered. Heck, one of my all-time favourite films is Braveheart, which has only a tangential and tenuous link to historical fact. This deserves no less a pass. You have to accept that these days, you just couldn’t sell – to the audience or a studio – a film where slavers were the good guys. Or girls, in this case. Just do not attempt to pass this off as history.

While more accurate than Black Panther, which had its own female warriors, I’d say it is on a par with your typical Joan of Arc biopic, of which I have rather a lot of recent experience! Purely as entertainment though, it’s decent enough, with Prince-Bythewood possessing a good eye for spectacle. The various threads of Nanisca’s life are weaved together in a decent way, leading to a final confrontation that’s no less satisfying for being entirely expected [and reminiscent of another not-very-historical epic, Gladiator] However, at the macro level, it never quite meshed for me into more than a pleasant time-passer. Nanisca is a fascinating heroine, in need of a character arc. The problem is, Nawi is an interesting arc, in desperate need of a character. 

Dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Star: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim

Terror on the Prairie

  By

★★★
“Prairie dog pest control.”

I keep hoping Carano will deliver an action film reaching the quality of her debut, Haywire. Results since then have been… well, let’s be charitable and call them uneven. The reasons for her departure from “traditional” Hollywood aren’t something I want to get into: but this, produced by conservative outlet The Daily Wire, does show the book isn’t closed on her yet. The Wire have put out a few films we’ve covered here, though again, the quality has been mixed: the last, Shut In, was not good. This is a similarly simple story, yet does a bit more with it. The pacing is too languid for my tastes, yet there were sufficient quirks to keep me adequately interested.

It takes place on the Montana plains, some years after the end of the Civil War, where Hattie McAllister (Carano) and her husband, Jeb (Cerrone), are trying to make a life for themselves and their two kids. Hattie has just about had enough, and wants to head back to her home-town of St. Louis. Before any decision can be made, life is interrupted by the arrival of a former Confederate officer, the Captain (Searcy), and his band of men. While he initially seems charming, the scalps tied to his saddle tell another story, and it’s quickly clear he has a specific agenda, rather than randomly passing through. With Jeb away in town, it’s up to Hattie to fend off the ensuing siege until her husband can return. Considering she is depicted as unable to kill a rattlesnake that entered their cabin, she’s going to need new-found resilience.

It’s a straightforward tale, brought down by too many unnecessary pauses: we really do not care what Jen is getting up to, for example. These derail the film’s reasonable efforts to build tension, bolstered by some surprisingly graphic gore (one throat-slitting in particular), and Searcy’s good performance as a thoroughly villainous antagonist, whose word can’t be trusted, despite his quoting of scripture. It might have made more sense to have Hattie depicted as competent and brave from the get-go. Instead, it leaves the Captain and his men seeming incompetent, although some of this is their initial reluctance to take her seriously, e.g. he addresses her 9-year-old son as the “man of the house.” 

A novel wrinkle is the director’s decision not to accompany the action with a musical score of any kind. It certainly keeps you in the moment, yet there is also reason why Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack is so key to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns being undisputed classics. The action, if generally restrained, is competent, and it’s probably for the best the film did not try to turn Hattie into some kind of Western MMA goddess. I did worry the return of Jeb was going to push his spouse off to the sidelines in the final reel; while it teetered on the edge for a while, the film pulled back. If not breaking any boundaries, this is worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of the genre.

Dir: Michael Polish
Star: Gina Carano, Nick Searcy, Donald Cerrone. Tyler Fischer

Regarding the Case of Joan of Arc

  By

★★½
“Joan of Waco”

Joan is always a figure who has the potential to be co-opted into other times and locations. Recently, we reviewed Maid of Baikal, a novel which relocated her to the Russian Revolution. This takes a similar approach, moving her from the 15th century to a contemporary setting, and also relocating it to middle America. It begins with largely unseen forces orchestrating the bombing of a federal building, also only heard. We then leap forward to the military tribunal trial of “Joan (LaLiberte – such a conveniently appropriate name for the role, I have to wonder if it’s a pseudonym), who is convinced her actions were in accordance with God’s will. Not everyone is in agreement, shall we say.

The main plus here is the lead actress, who is instantly plausible in the role, It’s clear that Joan, as first encountered, is absolutely possessed with unshakeable faith. However, things like an encounter with a relative of one innocent victim, begin to suggest her belief is not on the utterly solid foundation it initially appears. On the other hand, the main problem is an obtuse and distanced approach, which makes it hard to be sure what approach the film-makers are taking. It’s brave to position an extremist as the heroine of your film. Yet, it feels like they chicken out, and are unwilling to take that ride to its natural conclusion, instead swathing almost every scene in a haze of moral ambiguity.

The modern setting does cement the moral that historical – or, indeed, current – narratives are almost always subjective. At the time of her death, Joan of Arc was a heretic to the Catholic Church; now, she’s a saint to the same body. A similar angle becomes very apparent here: the script has Joan visiting locations such as Waco, Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City, the stories of which depend largely on your own, pre-existing beliefs. Everyone surrounding the case seeks to manipulate it and Joan to their own ends, whether it’s chief interrogator Major Calhoun (Cook), or the Human Rights Watch advocate (Hunter), who wants Joan to use her rights, in order to help LGBT activists in Hungary. It’s agendas, all the way down. Hell, there’s even a character identified in the end credits as “The Deep State.”

I think I’d rather this had picked a lane and stuck to it. I don’t care particularly which lane: make Joan a terrorist who totally deserves to die for her crime of cold-blooded murder, if you want. Or a heroine, bravely fighting for what’s good in the country, a reminder of the awkward truth that the United States was formed by armed insurrection. This wants to be both, and neither, playing its cards too close for the audience to be willing to bet on it with any emotional investment. As a result, the ending doesn’t pack the wallop you feel its aiming for, though I certainly admire the attempt to spin the story in a new way.

Dir: Matthew Wilder
Star: Nicole LaLiberte, Christopher Matthew Cook, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Alice Hunter
a.k.a. American Martyr