Tag: USA

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

The Lark

  By

★★
“The play’s the thing…”

This was originally a French play, L’Alouette, written by Jean Anouilh in 1952. Three years later, a translated version was brought to Broadway, where it ran for 226 performances from November 1955 until June 1956. Julie Harris played Joan, and there was quite a star-studded cast behind her, including Boris Karloff as Bishop Cauchon, Christopher Plummer and Theodore Bikel. It was critically acclaimed, Harris winning that year’s Tony Award as Best Leading Actress, and Karloff being nominated as Best Leading Actor. The following February, a TV adaptation was screened in the United, though wasn’t the first or the last such. In November 1956, the BBC screened their version, with Hazel Penwarden as Joan, and a supporting cast including Michael Caine. Additionally, 1958 saw an Australian version, though it seems notable only for having Olivia Newton-John’s father in the cast.

Neither of those versions appear to have survived, while a low-resolution version of the US one has, probably a Kinescope recording. It was part of the long-running “Hallmark Hall of Fame” series, and was broadcast on January 10, 1957. This explains the adverts before, after and during the intermission, for Hallmark products, in particular related to Valentine’s Day! Harris and Karloff reprised their roles from Broadway, with Plummer being replaced in the role of Warwick by Elliott, and Wallach as the Dauphin. It begins with Joan’s trial, the events leading up to that point being told in flashback, including the usual things such as her visions, encounter with the Dauphin, etc.

Although not a “live” transmission, this is very much a recording of a stage play, and that’s likely the biggest problem here. Treading the boards requires a different style of acting, with emotions needing to be projected to reach the back of audience. There are no close-ups on stage. Harris had film experience (being Oscar nominated in 1952 for The Member of the Wedding), and would go on to win 11 Emmys, as well as being one of the Hallmark Hall of Fame’s most frequent leading ladies, Here, however, it feels as if she didn’t adapt her performance here for the small screen, and as a result it comes over as rather shrill and almost hysterical. I wonder if Milla Jovovich used this portrayal as a template in The Messenger? It didn’t work there either.

The supporting cast fair better. Elliott in particular comes over as a genuinely nasty piece of work – there’s no question about where the play’s sympathies lie. But there’s no getting away from this version’s origins as a play, with basically nothing in the way of action worth mentioning. To use a good old British turn of phrase, “it’s all mouth and no trousers,” and the chat doesn’t add anything of significant to our knowledge about the character of Joan. To some extent, it’s less the fault of the program makers than the nature of TV at the time. It was still struggling to establish its own identity, in ways that would take advantage of the format. Underwhelming reproductions of other media were clearly not the answer.

Dir: George Schaefer
Star: Julie Harris, Boris Karloff, Denholm Elliott, Eli Wallach

Bad Girls

  By

★½
“Faster, Pussycat! Dull! Dull!”

I didn’t realize until this started, it was by the director of the (non-GWG) The Theta Girl, which was a self-indulgent and flawed, yet ultimately not worthless, drug-trip revenge flick, made for no budget and with obvious passion. This is more of the same, yet wears out its welcome considerably quicker. It doesn’t feel as if Bickel has learned anything of relevance from making his previous effort. It may be more technically flash (not quite the same thing as “proficient”, you should note), yet he seems to have learned nothing about narrative. The film here unfolds at two speeds: dead slow and utterly manic. If this was a person at a party, you’d quietly sidle away from them.

It begins in the latter mode, with three strippers led by Val (Renew) robbing their club, and going on a crime spree, leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. Their goals are vague, partly heading to Mexico (the part of Mexico is played by South Carolina roadside attraction, South of the Border), and partly kidnapping each lady’s favourite rock stars, who conveniently mostly happen to be playing shows that night in the same area. Throw in a random hotel clerk, and you have a six-pack of characters, sitting around in motel rooms and cars, revealing their innermost secrets and taking quite a few illicit pharmaceutical, as the largely unlikable authorities close the net on them.

I think I greatly preferred it when Val and her gal pals were killing people. The first 5-10 minutes of this are insane, a genuine assault on the low-fi senses that positively burns the retinas. You have to wonder how Bickel could possibly keep up the level of manic energy, and to some extent, it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t, or your television would probably melt from the raw heat. However, there’s almost nothing offered in its place, in terms of plot or character development, until the final few minutes, where the police finally track the trio down and launch an assault, which is resisted with all the fire-power available. It’ll certainly wake you up if you dozed off: something which I will neither confirm nor deny happened to me.

At points, it feels as if this is intent mostly on checking off a list of film influences, most obviously Russ Meyer and Jack Hill. Though it’s largely superficial i.e. for a supposed trio of strippers, they really don’t show a lot of skin, and might as well have been secretaries. Or nuns. [Hmm. I have an idea for a movie] As with Theta, Bickel deserves credit for simply making his own damn movie. I just hope the next one actually is his own. For rather than a homage to classic exploitation movies of the sixties and seventies, this plays as a third-generation VHS copy of them, and you will be considerably better off sticking to the original inspirations.

Dir: Christopher Bickel
Star: Morgan Shaley Renew, Senethia Dresch, Shelby Lois Guinn, Cleveland Langdale

In the Forest

  By

★★
“Once more: why we don’t camp.”

Three generations of a family take a trip into the woods in their mobile home. There’s grandfather Stan (Ward), his somewhat neurotic daughter Helen (Ayer), whose life has been falling apart around her, and Helen’s teenage daughter, Emily (Spruell), for whom a weekend in a forest with old people is just how she wants to spend her time. After finding a spot, they’re ordered off by a surly local with a shotgun. Except, mechanical and medical misadventures get them stuck. Helen heads off to find help, only to stumble across the home of the surly local, who is apparently involved in keeping teenage boy Andrew (Odette) locked up in a room. Andrew begs Helen for help, saying his sister is in the basement. Then his Mom shows up.

It’s not a terrible idea, pitting an urban family against a rural one, with the former being forced out of their comfort zone for the sake of raw survival. The problems here are all in the execution. Part of it is the split focus, with the film’s attention divided between the various plights of Helen and Emily. The former, in particular, seems to spend half the film chained to a crate, and the other half running frantically around the forest. The latter, meanwhile, is mostly in and around the motor-home, where she is paid visits by more or less threatening members of the local clan, and has to fend them off.

This could also have been fun had there been a little more ambivalence over who, exactly, are the psychos. That’s especially the case since Andrew definitely seems to have fallen not far from his tree, yet both mother and daughter seem remarkably willing to take everything he says at face value. Instead, there’s precious little subtlety here: for just about everyone, what you see in the first couple of moments defines their character the rest of the way. Some of the plotting could definitely have been improved, such as when the captive Helen breaks a pole out of closet and starts attacking the wall to the next room. While this does eventually lead to her escape, it seems more by chance than a plan.

Matters do improve somewhat when the family (or the surviving members, anyway) are re-united, and have to take on the matriarch, who is none too pleased at the chaos and dysfunction they have brought to her home. Things get distinctly down and dirty, the three women going at each other with weapons both conventional (gun), improvised (shovel) and downright unconventional (the stake from a garden fence). Yet, if this is when the movie is at its most fun and is also the level of no-holds barred insanity I was hoping it would deliver, it’s a climax which feels wildly out of character compared to what had gone before. This film spent time with the family as they baited hooks and went fishing. The jump to them shanking people, prison-style, is too far a gap to bridge.

Dir: Hector Barron
Star: Debbon Ayer, Cristina Spruell, Lyman Ward, Matthew Thomas Odette

See For Me

  By

★★★
“Wait Until After Dark”

Yeah, as the above might suggest, this owes a rather large debt to Wait Until Dark, with its central theme of an attractive, blind protagonist threatened by home invaders. It is not the first to have gone down that road (see also In Darkness), and I must say, the concepts here are considerably more contrived. However, the film does just about enough to sell them, to make for an entertaining end product. The heroine Sophie (Davenport) was a promising skier until a degenerative eye condition ended her career, leaving her almost totally blind. Now, she’s rather grumpy, frequently berating her mother (Brown), and picking up occasional house-sitting gigs, engaging in small-scale larceny against her employers to fatten the paycheck. 

Her latest such position turns unpleasant when a trio of thugs, under the direction of Rico (Coates), enter the house, seeking a large stash of cash hidden behind a panel. They are as surprised by Sophie’s presence, as she is by theirs. You’d think this would be a quick, one-sided struggle. But Sophie has an ally, in the form of the titular app. It connects her with a seeing helper, typically for assistance with humdrum daily tasks, and the helper in this case is former army member Kelly (Kennedy). Between her military training and fondness for first-person shooters, she knows a thing or two about creeping stealthily around a house, and taking out enemy targets – skills she’s happy to use to assist Sophie. 

What’s at least somewhat interesting, is that Davenport is legally blind. This seems an ongoing trend. While it makes sense, considering Hollywood’s recent obsession with “authenticity” in things like gender identity, I’m always reminded of the famous story about Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Olivier from Marathon Man – “Why don’t you just try acting?” It’s also notable that she’s not your typical heroine. Indeed, she arguably borders on the unlikable, between her abrasive attitude and petty thievery. Though some other reviews I’ve read suggest that severely weakens the film, I can’t say I minded too much. My bigger concern was a plot that teetered almost forever on the edge of implausibility, e.g. the way Sophie’s phone battery went from 20% to zero in a couple of minutes. While there was nothing utterly outrageous, all these micro-implausibilities added up over the course of proceedings. 

Within those constraints the film still had some successes. The best sequence probably had a police officer show up, with Sophie trying desperately to get the cop to go away. This screwed the tension level up considerably, with the officer insisting there was more going on than Sophie would admit. Thereafter, it does degenerate somewhat into lots of creeping around dark corridors. Or, at least, the level of dark corridors movies tend to have, which are just enough well-lit for a camera, and thus the audience. If the ending abandons the film’s titular concept, and probably provides the cherry of implausibility, the cake as a whole remains adequately edible. 

Dir: Randall Okita
Star: Skyler Davenport, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Kim Coates, Natalie Brown