Tag: USA

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

Take Back the Night

  By

★★★
“A girl walks home at night…”

This is not exactly subtle in terms of its messaging, or the underling metaphor. But to be honest, I kinda respect that. I’d probably rather know what I’m in for, from the get-go, rather than experiencing a film which thinks it’s going to be “clever”, and pull a bait and switch. Here, even the title makes it obvious enough. The ‘monster’ here is sexual violence, and should you somehow make it through the film oblivious to that, you’ll get a set of crisis helplines before the end-credits role. However, it manages to do its job without becoming misanthropic, largely by having very few male speaking characters, and is adequately entertaining on its own merits, not letting the movie drown in the message.

Up-and-coming artist Jane Doe (Fitzpatrick) is savagely attacked one night outside the warehouse where she’s having her show. Though she reports it to the police, the investigating detective (Lafleur) comes increasingly to the conclusion that Jane is making up the story. This is partly because of her history of petty crime, substance abuse and hereditary mental illness; partly because what Jane describes, rather than a conventional attacker, is a monstrous, smoky and fly-blown apparition. Nor is Jane’s sister (Gulner) exactly supportive, even after the creature returns, looking to finish what it started. Jane discovers an underground network of survivors, and lore stating that only a bronze dagger, forged by a hunter, can hurt it. Fortunately, as an artist, she has a very particular set of skills…

The makers have made some interesting, and rather brave choices. Jane is the only character with a name, and she’s not exactly relatable in a conventional sense. I found it easy to dislike her influencer ways – she seems happiest when telling her sister of an upcoming TV interview about her ordeal – or the random sex she has minutes before the attack. One element of the message is very much that none of this makes Jane ‘deserve’ what happens to her, though the film ignores the counter-argument that when our actions have negative consequences, we can’t deny entirely our own responsibility. You go swimming with sharks, you might end up losing a limb.

There are points which do require the audience to stretch their disbelief more than the grounded tone of this should need. I’d also have liked to hear more about the network. Indeed, the film feels like it finishes just when it should be starting. An entity more interested in entertainment might have compressed what we get here into the front thirty minutes, and developed the notion of a crypto-cult of female vigilante warriors battling these creatures, with their bronze daggers from the shadows. That would, however, likely have diluted the message here and, make no mistake, that is what matters most to the film-makers. Regular readers will be well aware of my problems with cinematic soapboxes. While this does not avoid the resulting pitfalls entirely, nor is it a complete failure like some I’ve endured, and is certainly watchable. 

Dir: Gia Elliot
Star: Emma Fitzpatrick, Angela Gulner, Jennifer Lafleur, Sibongile Mlambo

The Novice

  By

★★★
“Rock out, with your cox out.”

Rowing is not a pastime to which I’ve ever given much thought. It’s the backdrop for this, and is based (to some extent) on writer-director Hadaway’s experiences of the sport at college. Her cinematic background is in sound editing, where she worked on films such as The Hateful Eight and – probably of most relevance here – Whiplash. The latter was a study of obsession in the pursuit of talent, and is echoed in the story here.

Alex Dall (Fuhrman) is the archetypal Type A personality, driven to push herself beyond what normal people would consider necessary. For example, she chooses her weakest subject of physics to be her college major, largely for the challenge. Similarly, she decides to take up rowing, and approaches this with the same, relentless single-minded determination and will to succeed. It’s not enough for her simply to make the freshman team. She wants to be part of the top-ranked varsity crew. And Alex doesn’t care about making friends in the process.

As such, she is a contrast to Jamie (Forsyth), another rookie, who joins the team at the same point. Her motivation is very different. She needs the scholarship that making varsity will bring, otherwise (in a rather snobbish plot-point) she will have to go to a less prestigious educational establishment. Inevitably, despite Alex and Jamie being initially friends, through the shared traumas of the hellacious training regime, their competition eventually puts them at odds with each other.

In another film, Jamie would be the protagonist, with Alex the nemesis who has to be battled. Here, though, the focus is on Alex, and the almost self-destructive way in which her obsession with being the best, wrecks every relationship she has, including that with teaching assistant Dani (Dilone). While her coaches certainly admire Alex’s unbeatable work ethic, the film also makes the point, quite forcibly, that in a team sport like rowing eights, other factors matter as much as, if not more so, than just talent. People skills are important too: for you do not necessarily have to like your team-mates, in order to become a cohesive unit. But you do have to respect them.

Hadaway’s experience is particularly apparent in the audio design, which definitely enhances the action oriented sequences, and the sardonic use of music such as Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry”. However, it does also appear she never met an opportunity for a montage she could turn down, and if you’ve seen any sports movies, you’ll know these are beyond cliche, even with all the director’s talents in the sound department. Alex is also not a very likable character: while that is clearly the point, it still has a distancing effect on the viewer. Part of me was subconsciously hoping for Alex to fail or even get struck by lightning (an apparently significant threat to rowers). The end does imply at least the potential for change in Alex is still there. Whether it will ever stick, I’m less convinced.

Dir: Lauren Hadaway
Star: Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Jonathan Cherry

9 Bullets

  By

★½
“Copy of a copy of a copy.”

While this is not an “official” remake of Gloria, it’s so damn close that I have no problem considering it as one. Writer/director Gaston seems to have… um, a bit of a track record in this area, shall we say. She previously appeared here by directing Beyond the City Limits, a film with such a strong resemblance to Set It Off, that it was released on DVD as Rip It Off. Some might call that a particularly appropriate title, and here, she once again seems to be sailing quite close to a lawsuit. It was purely by coincidence we watched this, the weekend after seeing the two versions of Gloria, and Chris took only a few minutes to call it out.

It’s definitely the worst of the three, and I write that as a fan of Lena Headey. She has done sterling work in things such as Game of Thrones and Gunpowder Milkshake, among others, so to see her in this mess is almost tragic. I almost can’t be bothered to provide a recap – a link to my Gloria review would suffice – yet here we go. A man is caught stealing money from organized crime, so he and his whole family are liquidated, except for young son, Sam (Vazquez). He escapes with an iPad that’s crucial to the mob’s operation, and is rescued by neighbour Gypsy (Headey). They go on the run from the henchmen seeking to recover the iPad, and Sam gradually breaks down Gypsy’s chilly facade, despite her ties to the criminals, being an old flame of its boss, Jack (Worthington).

Ouch. But… but… Sam has a dog! And Gypsy is a retiring burlesque dancer, now writing an autobiography! It’s totes different! No. No, it isn’t. Especially since neither of these are significant. The only relevance of the latter seems to be to allow Headey to show that she still looks pretty good in her late forties (pasties, please: this isn’t some cheap exploitation vehicle). Meanwhile, Sam manages the genuinely impressive feat of managing, somehow, to be more annoying than the kid in the original, burbling on in a child genius way about his booming cryptocurrency portfolio. Yeah, that aged like milk.

Despite Headey’s best efforts, there’s no aspect here which wasn’t done better in both the original, and the remake starring Sharon Stone. Even the new stuff falls flat, such as a weird and almost irrelevant subplot where they steal an already stolen car with a hooker (Anthony) in the back seat. None of the relationships are convincing, and the only moment that has any intensity does not involve any of the main characters. It occurs after Gypsy drops off the dog at the cabin belong to friend Lacy, played by veteran actress Barbara Hershey, who demonstrates an admirably no-nonsense approach to their pursuers. Please, do not even get me started on the finale, where Gypsy literally turns out to be bulletproof. When a film leaves you thinking, “Who came up with this shit?”, it’s never a good sign.

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Lena Headey, Dean Scott Vazquez, Sam Worthington, La La Anthony

Gloria (1980)

  By

★★★½
“Gloria, you’re always on the run now…”

Yeah, I’ll confess to having Laura Branigan’s eighties hit running through my head on repeat almost the entire movie, even if its lyrics can only be tangentially tied to it. What also struck me is how strong of an influence this was on Luc Besson’s Leon, especially at the beginning. I mean: a criminal gang takes out an entire family in a New York tenement, except for one child, as punishment for the father having tried to steal from them. That survivor takes refuge with a very reluctant neighbour with mob ties, who then has to protect the child as they move about the city. There’s even a scene where one of the gang fires his gun at a nosy resident.

In this case, the protective neighbour is Gloria Swenson (Rowlands), and the child is Phil Dawn (Adames), son of a mob accountant, who is also in possession of a highly incriminating notebook given to him by his father. Gloria makes no bones about her opinion, telling the parents, “I hate kids, especially yours.” However, necessity is the mother of motherhood, as it were, and her maternal instincts end up being awakened by six-year-old Phil, who swings wildly between acting three times his age and one-third of it. Gloria has no issue with using lethal force against those she perceives as a threat, as she seeks to broker a deal that will trade the book in exchange for her and Phil being allowed to walk away. This brings her into contact with mob boss Tarzini (Franchina) – not for the first time.

Rowlands is great in this, and you can see why she’s one of the few actresses to have been nominated for an Oscar in a girls with guns role. Director Cassavetes was her husband – he was originally just going to sell the script, but took on the director’s role after his wife was cast – and their long history of working together likely helped provide her nuanced performance. The problems are elsewhere. Phil is certainly no Matilda, and I was largely with the opinion Gloria expressed above. There’s also no-one like Stansfield, to act as an antagonist. Tarzini isn’t seen until the end, and up to that point, Gloria is opposed largely by a series of faceless goons.

Even given her background, it does seem remarkably convenient how she and they seem to stumble into each other in every other scene. It’s as if the film took place in a small farming town, rather than a city of over seven million inhabitants at the time. However, the film is never less than engaging due to Rowlands, who was fifty when the film came out, so is definitely older than your typical action heroine. Though your biggest takeaway may be how early eighties it all feels. Chris, who lived in New York at the time, loved that even seeing a car identical to her first one parked in a scene. Personally, I just had to marvel at how an unaccompanied six-year-old could buy a train ticket from New York to Pittsburgh without anyone batting an eyelid. Truly, a very different world… But what I really want to know is this: what happened to Gloria’s cat?

Dir: John Cassavetes
Star: Gena Rowlands, John Adames, Basilio Franchina, Buck Henry

Gloria (1999)

  By

★★½
“Gloria, non in excelsis“

Nineteen years after the original, four-time Oscar nominated director Lumet opted to remake Cassavetes’s movie. Though by some accounts, it was more a case of him wanting to work, rather than being particularly attracted to the project. If the results are anything to go by, he should have stayed at home. For the film was a bomb, and leading lady Stone received a Razzie nomination for her efforts. I wouldn’t have said she was that bad, though she’s clearly not at the same level as Gina Rowlands in the original. It does also address some of what I felt were its’ predecessor’s weaknesses. However, it tones down the central character, and this helps lead to what you’d be hard-pressed to argue is other than an inferior product overall.

It keeps the basic premise. Gloria (Stone) becomes the unwilling custodian of a young boy (Figueroa), whose family was wiped out by the mob. However, the kid is in possession of incriminating data, which could either be his salvation or his death knell, so Gloria has to protect him as the Mafiosi try to hunt him down. The big change is, rather than being a neighbour with some mob ties, Gloria here has just got out of jail, having served a three-year sentence after refusing to squeal on her boyfriend, mob lieutenant Kevin (Brit actor Northam, sporting a very credible New York accent, i.e. Chris didn’t complain about it!). When he brushes her off, she absconds with both the boy and the floppy disk which holds the data here. All 1.44 MB of it, I guess. For comparison, the original image of the poster (right) is larger than that. Gotta love tech in the nineties.

This does give the film a clear antagonist in Kevin, something lacking in the previous version, and the child here is less irritating, with a character that seems more consistent. The problem is Stone’s take on the character, which feels like the “Is Diet Pepsi alright?” flavour of the character. This one is considerably less ruthless: while she is happy to wave a gun around, I don’t recall her ever shooting anyone, which Gloria v1.0 did with an almost reckless abandon. Her motivation is also considerably more selfish, spawned (at least initially) by a desire to hit back at Kevin for dumping her.

You can perhaps tell the difference simply by comparing the posters for the two movies. The one here appears more interested in putting Stone’s cleavage front and centre: I note the kid did not stay in this picture. Indeed, on its own merits, this would have been a fairly marginal entry for the site, since it’s closer to a thriller-drama than an action movie. It does possess some effective enough moments, though some of these are cribbed wholesale from the original. This is not as terrible a remake as its reputation indicates: the core concept is too strong for that. Yet any purpose to it remains obscure at best, and entirely missing at worst.

Dir: Sidney Lumet
Star: Sharon Stone, Jean-Luke Figueroa, Jeremy Northam, George C. Scott

Borrego

  By

★½
“Borrego? BORE-rego, more like…”

Sorry, couldn’t resist it. For the recent string of suboptimal Netflix movies continues with this tedious bit of work, which feels like the first journey across the South Californian desert filmed in real time. It begins with Ellie (Hale), a botanist carrying out a survey near the Mexican border. She meets a teenage girl, Alex (Trujillo), who is skipping school and the two have an awkward conversation. I initially thought its stilted nature was intended to tell us something about the two characters, but nope. All the conversations here are awkward. Writer-director Harris just has no ear for dialogue, which may explain why so much of this is people wandering about instead.

Anyway, the plot proper kicks off when Ellie witnesses a plane crash nearby. Rushing to the scene, without any attempt to call for help, she finds the pilot, Tomas (Gomez) crawling from the wreckage with his cargo of drugs. At gunpoint, she is coerced into helping him carry what remains of the merchandise to its delivery point, where the intended recipient is growing increasingly antsy. Meanwhile, the only local cop (Gonzalez) is on the hunt, both for the missing botanist, and Alex, who is his daughter. All these plot threads lead to the copious trudging across the terrain mentioned above. Though people also bump into each other with the frequency required by the plot, so that the desert appears to be the size of your local convenience store.

Things unfold with the predictability of the sun in this arid corner of the country. Tomas and Ellie bond over their campfire, Tomas’s grasp of English waxing and waning as necessary. Turns out he was only involved in this sordid business to help his family, a casual excuse used by criminals since time immemorial, which cuts no ice with me. Hell, even antsy intended recipient says the same thing. We can clearly end the War On Drugs, by killing every drug dealer’s family, to remove their motivation! The movie opens and closes with po-faced captions about the societal problem of drug abuse, both prescribed and otherwise. I think if you need a Netflix original movie to tell you, “Drugs are bad, m’kay?”, there are bigger problems.

You will get an hour and a half of the various parties, showcasing some rather pretty locations, in lieu of anything approaching genuine tension or action: a car hitting a cactus is as close as we get. The photography is easily the best thing about this, with some excellent aerial footage that brings home the scope of where the participants roam. However, I did not sign up to watch “Drones Above the South-West”, and any goodwill generated falls into a canyon, as a result of the poor excuse for a climax. I’d not blame you for tuning out well before that point, however. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s all almost enough to make me wish for the ludicrous stupidity of Interceptor. 

Almost…

Dir: Jesse Harris
Star: Lucy Hale, Nicholas Gonzalez, Leynar Gomez, Olivia Trujillo

Lou

  By

★★½
“The family that slays together, stays together.”

A Netflix original movie, the first thing to say is: thankfully, this is not as bad as Interceptor. Mind you, few films with budgets measured in the millions are as bad as Interceptor. It did more damage to my perception of the Netflix brand than any other, to the point I was genuinely concerned about having to watch this, fearing it would be down at the same level. Certain elements are, most likely the script. But the presence of Alison Janney, single-handedly prevents the film from sinking, effectively acting as a life-belt for the less successful elements. It’s a shame the makers apparently didn’t realize what they had, and used the strength of its star better.

She plays Lou, a near-retiree who lives quietly on an island near Seattle. She has a tenant, Hannah Dawson (Smollett), a single mother of Vee (Bateman). But Lou is ready to check out of life entirely. She has a gun pointed at her own head, when Hannah rushes in, begging for help, because her husband Philip (Marshall-Green) – supposedly dead – has shown up and kidnapped Vee, in the middle of a ferocious storm. Fortunately, Lou has a history, which has given her the ideal set of special skills for the circumstances. She and Hannah set out through the rain in pursuit of Philip. Yet there’s more going on, with Lou’s history catching up with her, as well as the truth about her relationship to Hannah and Philip. 

The idea of Lou is a strong one, playing roughly along the lines of Liam Neeson in the Taken franchise, with a hint of John Wick. A grizzled veteran, who just wants to be left alone, who is dragged back into a life of violence: only, this time, it’s a woman, Lou being a CIA field agent, with 26 years experience, before leaving under murky circumstances. The rest of the story though? Oh, dear. The film staggers from ineptly-staged scenes of family bonding, to revelations that are more likely to provoke a snort of derision than a gasp of surprise. Lou vanishes entirely for much of the second half, and Hannah is simply not interesting enough to hold the movie together.

The action is fairly well-staged, though they don’t put enough effort into equalizing the fights. Lou’s opponents are all bigger and stronger than her, and there are times where the movie forgets this. However, Janney sells her persona so well, I was inclined to cut this the necessary slack. Director Foerster’s previous feature was Underworld: Blood Wars, and there’s a definite sense at the ending they want to turn this into a similar franchise. Despite the mediocre overall rating, there is plenty of potential in the lead character, and I would not be averse to more of her story. Let’s just hope they keep writers Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley in a remote cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest, and well away from any sequel’s script. 

Dir: Anna Foerster
Star: Allison Janney, Jurnee Smollett, Logan Marshall-Green, Ridley Asha Bateman

The Female Hustler

  By

★★½
“The long climb up.”

This is another one in the apparently endless series of low-budget urban movies, which focus on crime in the black community. Though this does actually have a couple of wrinkles which make it stand out, if not quite enough to make it a success for a wider audience outside its community. Columbus, Ohio is the setting, where Princess (Godsey) is struggling to make ends meet. She’s relying on handouts from her dodgy brother, Dae Dae, to make rent, and also wants to get her best friend away from her pimp. Opportunity comes knocking, in the shape of an Uber driver, Omar (Campbell), who brings her on board in his business, which he tells her has almost unlimited upside and growth potential.

to the movie’s credit, this isn’t the usual drug-dealing we’ve seen so many times before. While the specifics were a bit vague, it seems Omar is working on white-collar crime, syphoning off company payroll. His associate on the West coast, the appropriately named Cali (Bosley), is planning a hostile takeover, and brings Princess on board. Omar gets wind of this, only for Princess to turn the tables, leaving her boss for dead. That brings us to phase two of the movie, where Princess is now in charge of a nationwide enterprise. However, to no great surprise, it is not as easy as that, not least because Omar is still alive, and unhappy about the situation, to put it mildly.

To start with the positives, Godsey is a good actress, and indeed, most of the cast are solid enough, when their performances are given room to breathe. The first half of this, depicting Princess’s rise to the top, may be small scale, but is effective. I do have some questions though: for example, the reason why multi-millionaire entrepreneur Omar is working as an Uber driver, is never convincingly explained. However, the budget here is entirely incapable of depicting the lifestyle of Princess once she has reached at the top. It needs yachts, big cars, lavish apartments, etc. and the film never delivers. It feels like she’s probably still living in the same crappy apartment she inhabited at the beginning of the movie.

That’s far from uncommon: I’ve seen many similar films whose ambitions did not live up to their resources. A bigger problem, however, is the soundtrack. It feels simply like the director left his Spotify account on random, with one of an endless selection of songs written and performed by his mates, blasting every three minutes. There seems to have been little or no attempt to choose the songs to fit the needs of the scene, and they are far more often a jarring distraction. Occasionally, we get some sequences where Campbell does exercise restraint, opting for stock music instead, and these are inevitably better. But I’m not averse to Campbell overall, who shows enough talent, along with his lead actress, that they will be worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Dir: Dom Campbell
Star: Courtney Godsey, Dom Campbell, Kenneth Bse Count Bosley, Vivica Cartier