Tag: USA

Breath

  By

★★
“The hole story”

Lara Winslet (Daigh) is a vulcanologist, who is on the side of a mountain in Italy, taking samples, when the ground gives way beneath her, and she falls into an underground pit, damaging her leg in the process. Help isn’t going to come, so with limited resources (not to mention a count of functioning limbs that stops at three), she is going to need to cope with the situation on its own, and figure a way out of what could easily become a fatal scenario. Meanwhile, on the outside, her father (Cosmo) is becoming increasingly frantic. This is erhaps because if Lara doesn’t come back, he’s going to be stuck permanently with her kid (Di Mauro). That would be my reaction, anyway…

There may be ways to make this kind of thing exciting. I imagine 127 Hours must have been able to manage it, though not having seen it, I can’t be specific on the techniques it used. Breath could have used some help, as there isn’t a great deal of adrenaline pumping through the veins of this situation. To try and generate some, it keeps flashing back to sequences set earlier and off the mountain, covering things like Lara’s affair with fellow scientist Adam (Chupin), or her more or less abandoning her daughter for the sake of career advancement in the name of scientific discovery. While this does provide some fill-in colour for her character, we eventually go back to her sobbing in a literal pit of despair.

I can’t really complain about the performances, and the photography does generate a decent sense of claustrophobia. I get the message that there are times when you can’t rely on anybody else, and have (again, more or less literally) to pull yourself up. Though I tend to feel that most life-threatening situations like this require more than a stern self-talking to, in order to get out of them: that is, however, what we get here. Lara’s leg seems injured only when necessary to the plot, and while being buried underground does bypass the usual cellphone issue, I can’t help wondering why she didn’t lob it (and its GPS) out of the pit – the hole wasn’t that deep. Or eat the nutritious, if not delicious, snake sharing it with her.

In the end, it’s just too simplistic a story: it’s almost binary, with the heroine either being in the pit or out of it. A more stepped approach, e.g. overcome the issue of her leg; figure out the water situation; try and attract attention, etc. would perhaps have done a better job of sustaining interest. Hell, even her background as a geologist never comes in useful, and it could have been anyone ambling around that mountainside. There’s a near-complete lack of ingenuity needed. In the end, it purely comes down to brute strength, as to whether or not Lara can make it out. Dare I say it, this was hole-y unremarkable.

Dir: John Real
Star: Rachel Daigh, James Cosmo, Neb Chupin, Alba Di Mauro

Once Upon a River

  By

★★½
“Initially hits the bull, ends up firing blanks.”

Margo Crane (DelaCerna) has been brought up by her native American father, since her mother walked out on them several years ago. Under his guidance, they have become self-sufficient, and Margo has become a crack shot. However, her creepy uncle ends up having sex with the teenager, an incident for which she gets blamed, ruining her life. She resolves to apply her shooting skills on him, only for the resulting incident to become a tragedy. Margo strikes out on her own up the Stark river, in search of her absent mother. Doing so, she meets a variety of people, then has to try and reconnect with a woman who now has her own life, one not necessarily helped by the unexpected arrival of a teenager.

The set-up here is remarkably engrossing, creating an interesting selection of characters that achieve depth in only a few minutes. Well, except for Creepy Uncle, who is almost entirely obvious, from the moment he invites Margo on a “hunting trip”, and certainly well before he offers to teach her how to “skin deer”. The period up to the unfortunate turn of events could well have been expanded to an entire movie, rather than compacted into a terse 25 minutes. That’s all the more so, because once Margo hits the river, the film loses much in the way of narrative thrust. Certainly, her talents with a firearm become all but irrelevant, and the film instead gets bogged down in its own drama.

It instead goes further down the character-driven path, such as the old geezer whom Margo helps, or the young man she encounters who is rather more in touch with (read: gives a damn about) his Native American heritage. Though it’s hard to tell with Margo, due to her subdued nature: it’s not often that she says more than a sentence, and seems particularly adept (out of necessity?) at keeping her emotions in check. Which makes for an increasingly frustrating viewing experience, the equivalent of deciding whether to buy a house, without being allowed to enter it. Then there’s an abortion subplot, awkwardly shoehorned in, without any particular effect on Margo’s character arc.

It’s all especially annoying, since Margo is initially set up as being a decisive character. The encounter with her uncle could have been depicted in a way that turned her into a victim. Instead, it’s more the repercussions thereafter which are the problem, and cause her to resort to violent action. After finding her mother (Pulsipher), in particular, she never seems to find a purpose to replace her maternal quest. She’s like a dog that has finally caught the car it was chasing. “Now what?” is the resulting question, and the movie doesn’t provide enough of an answer. It ends up falling awkwardly between a number of stools, being not-quite a coming of age film, nor a social drama, and there’s no sense of resolution. If your reaction when the end credits roll is greater than “Huh”, you were more affected than I was.

Dir: Haroula Rose
Star: Kenadi DelaCerna, John Ashton, Tatanka Means, Lindsay Pulsipher

Silent Dove

  By

★★★
“Flips the bird at the bad guys”

While obviously cheap, and occasionally laughable, the straightforward nature of this helped it remain generally entertaining. It’s not over-burdened with unnecessary plot complexities and this gives it a clarity of focus that works to its advantage. Dove (Atkins) is an assassin for the mob, but her boss, Teddy (Mensoza) wants her and her handler father (Sanford) out of the picture. So he begins setting Dove up to fail, giving her bad intel on a job, hoping that will lead to her death. She survives the unexpected scenario, so on her next hit, Teddy “forgets” to mention the presence of a young child, whom Dove ends up shooting as well as her target. That gives Teddy the excuse he needs to unleash his dogs on her and her father. But Dove is not going to be easy to eliminate, especially after Teddy makes it considerably more personal than business.

It’s the kind of film which would be quite easy to pick apart. The relationship between Dove and her father, for example, is so scantily drawn, you wonder why they bother at all, and there is also an odd flashback sequence to Dove being tortured. Was this some kind of origin story? It’s purpose is never made clear. There are gaffes and mistakes to be found, if you try. After killing the child, Dove’s gun suddenly vanishes between shots, and later there’s a bizarre moment where she sews up a wound in her arm through a bandage. As you do…? Most of the mobsters are hardly convincing in their roles, lacking the necessary sense of threat you’d expect from them, and quite why Teddy feels so compelled to get rid of Dove, since she’s clearly more competent than any of his operatives, is not explained to any satisfactory level.

And, yet…. Probably the biggest compliment I can give this is, if I made a girls-with-guns flick, it would probably look not too dissimilar to Silent Dove. For example, the script is not lumbered with any unnecessary romantic angles. Atkins’s performance, while so low-key as arguably capable of being called flat and disinterested, somehow seems perfectly fitting for her role, capturing someone who appears to be emotionally dead inside (which may be part justification for the flashback sequence?). Though relatively long, at 105 minutes, there didn’t feel as if there was any real amount of slack, in the way of unnecessary scenes, and it has at least one memorably imaginative kill, involving a significant quantity of sulphuric acid.

The bottom line is, I was always kept watching, and was never bored, even if it was generally fairly obvious where things would end up. It more or less does, though there’s a pleasant final twist that I did appreciate. Filmed in ten days on a budget of $15,000, the makers have put the whole thing up on YouTube, and I’ve certainly seen far worse movies given away for free there.

Dir: Paul Dupree
Star: Chelsee Atkins, Johny Mendoza, Gary Brumett, Malcolm T. Sanford

V for Vengeance

  By

★★★
“The Vampire Slayers.”

This is briskly entertaining, and feels like a female version of Blade, with an extra good-girl vampire as a bonus. Yet it’s definitely best not to pause and think about some aspects, because the story will likely fall apart under close scrutiny. Matters are complicated by a flashback-heavy structure, on occasion multiple levels deep, and an apparent desire to overstuff proceedings, at the expense of some elements. That said, it hangs together and is entertaining, mostly thanks to a likeable pair of lead performances. There is a decent quantity of hand-to-hand action, even if some of it does leave a little bit to be desired on the quality front.

Our heroines are Emma (Hudon) and Scarlett (Van Dien), sisters who were abducted from their adoptive parents, and turned into vampires by the evil Thorn. They eventually broke away from his control, and have just learned their third sibling, Kate (Dyer), is not as dead as they had long presumed her. Indeed, she has just succeeded in inventing a vaccine that can “undo” vampirism; it’s based on their mother’s research, a rare blood-type being the reason the trio were adopted. With the help of a bounty hunter called Marcus (Russell), they set out to re-unite with Kate, unaware that Thorn has similar designs on her, albeit for entirely different reasons. There’s also the Federal Vampire Control agency, who’d be more than delighted to see Thorn and/or Emma and Scarlett taken out of action.

Quite a lot of this which will be familiar if you’ve seen a reasonable number of vampire films, such as the tech’d up accessories, as well as the enhanced speed/power of the vampires. However, none of this is used to particular effect: the good old stake through the heart seems to be the most effective weapon. Similarly, the FVC seems little more than an afterthought, which plays almost no meaningful part in proceedings. Instead, this is at its best when going its own way. Emma tries only to feed on bad people, e.g. rapists, and there’s an amusing scene near the start with her increasingly less subtle efforts at entrapment falling on entirely stony ground. I’d like to have seen more of this tongue-in-cheek approach.

I did enjoy Hudon and Van Dien’s performances, which do manage to capture a real sense of sisterly love/hate. However, Marcus’s role is utterly obvious, and a later flashback shows he should definitely have been recognized by one of the siblings. Very convenient and selective amnesia is a wonderful cinematic thing, isn’t it? It’s this kind of sloppy scripting which stops this from potentially reaching the level of cult classic. The movie is nicely shot, and doesn’t look cheap, though the doubling for some of the stunts is occasionally a little too obvious. It feels as if it could have been a pilot for a series, although it’d need to find another Big Bad. A role-reversed version of Buffy, with the vampires doing the slaying, might have been fun.

Dir: Kelly Halihan
Star: Jocelyn Hudon, Grace Van Dien, Christopher Russell, Pauline Dyer

Fly Like a Girl

  By

★★★
“American girls only need apply…”

This documentary is about the field of women in aviation, combining archive footage with interviews, covering the range from those who aspire to fly (giving their Lego aircraft lady pilots!) to those who have been into space, fought combat missions in the Middle East or dodged death in aerobatic displays. There’s not any particular structure to proceedings, choosing instead to bounce around between its topics and subjects. This helps keep things fresh, yet at the cost of any narrative beyond, I guess, “Women can do anything men can”? Which, to be fair, deserves saying in the aviation field particularly: how much strength is needed to handle a joystick?

As you’d expect, the interviewees are a bit of a mixed bag. Historically, perhaps the most interesting is Bernice ‘Bee’ Haydu, who was a WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) in World War II, and aged almost a hundred at the time she was interviewed; sadly, she died not long after. I think what made her and the others interesting, were being the ones who had actually done something. While wanting to be an astronaut, say, is fine, it can’t compete with Nicole Stott giving an eye-witness account of what it’s actually like to be on the Space Shuttle as it takes off. Or Vernice Armor, the first African American female combat pilot and her tale of flying an attack helicopter, running down to its final missile and being the last hope for a pinned-down squad of troops. That kind of thing could easily become a Major Hollywood Movie.

I think my favourite of all the people interviewed was Patty Wagstaff, a three-time winner of the US National Aerobatic Championships, who seemed remarkably down to earth (pun intended) about her exploits. Seeing her fly upside down, to cut a ribbon with her propeller just a few feet off the ground, was genuinely impressive. On the other hand, Sen. Tammy Duckworth came over as a career politician, with career politician speak that was easy to tune out. Maybe she has stories of her time in the military that are the equal of Armor’s. You wouldn’t really know it from the bland content she contributes to this.

My main complaint, however, was the absolutely American focus. It felt as if no-one outside the United States had ever left the ground. No mention of Sophie Blanchard, the first aeronautess. No mention of British pilot Amy Johnson. No mention even of the Soviet Union’s Night Witches. They’re only the most successful group of female combat fliers in aviation history. But they’re not American, so for the purposes of this film, they don’t exist. The only meaningful reference to anywhere else, is when there’s a passing mention of Bessie Coleman having to go to France to get her pilot’s license. On that basis, it feels like a missed opportunity, only scratching the surface of its topic and wearing a large, nationalistic set of blinkers.

Dir: Katie McEntire Wiatt
Star: Nicole Stott, Tammy Duckworth, Patty Wagstaff, Vernice Armor

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