Tag: USA

Wilderness Survival for Girls

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★★★
“Just because we’re girls, why do we have to be afraid all the time?”

Three teenage girls, Ruth (Brox), Deborah (Henning) and Kate (Humiston) head off to the remote mountain cabin owned by Kate’s parents for a weekend away. Initially, it’s an overdose of teenage drama bullshit in various flavours, as they drink, smoke weed, talk about sex and so on. But their soap-opera idyll is interrupted by the unexpected return of Ed (Morrison), who has been squatting in the cabin. The girls capture him, using the gun he left behind, with the intent of taking him down the mountain to the police the next day. But as the night goes on, the tensions between the three young women begin to fracture their friendship. There’s also the question of Ed: is he the innocent drifter he claims to be, or is there a connection to a long-buried trauma in Kate’s history?

If you’re hoping for definitive answers to at least some of the questions asked by the film, you’re going to come away disappointed. Ed is almost a MacGuffin in human form. He exists largely to propel the rest of the film forward, and act as a force which will cause the girls to reveal their true nature over the course of events. They are three very distinct personalities, to the point that I wondered if (and not for the first time) they were intended to represent the three aspects of the psyche: id, ego and super-ego. While my recent knowledge of teenage girls is strictly limited to parental experience – and thus not that recent – if there’s one thing I know, it’s that they tend to congregate with those like them. The disparate trio we get here wouldn’t last 10 minutes in high school before tearing themselves apart. Though I guess that is what happens for a good chunk of proceedings here.

You should probably be forgiven for having strong reactions to them: my instant dislike of Kate, turns out to be not unjustified, considering the ease with which she embraces her inner psychopath. Deborah, meanwhile, is a little too one-dimensional and obvious for my tastes, so it’s left to Ruth to do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting. Brox does well enough in that task to keep the movie interesting; at least, once it gets past a rocky opening 20 minutes, and the thriller aspects come into play, more than the “teen angst” ones. I will confess to being somewhat disappointed by the ending, which seems contrived in such a way as to achieve closure, without any of the participants having to take personal responsibility for their actions. There are also any number of poor choices made by the trio, in order to reach that point. Though, against speaking from my parental experience, that’s probably about par for the teenage girl course. There was just about enough here to sustain its brisk 78 minute running-time, and going much longer would likely have been a mistake.

Dir: Eli B. Despres, Kim Roberts
Star: Jeanette Brox, Megan Henning, Ali Humiston, James Morrison

The Super Femmes

  By

★★
“Hardly super, thanks for asking…”

Running a crisp 58 minutes in its omnibus edition, this is a bit like Kung Fu Femmes. Both were originally web series, but have now made their way on to Amazon Prime, which is where I stumbled across them. This is rather less grounded, taking place in a world where superheroes and supervillains exist, doing battle in the usual manner. While not technically based on a comic-book, it might as well be – the poster makes that abundantly clear. The IMDb description calls it “filled with satire.” I’m not so sure, and think we probably need to have a talk about what “satire” actually is. Creator Garris seems largely to believe that simply repeating the cliches of the genre passes the bar. He’s wrong. There needs to be exaggeration of these tropes, and that’s largely missing here. Its absence leaves this mostly a bad comic-book, rather than being a parody of one. For example, adding visual effects like “POW!” to punches is hardly inventive, and certainly not satire.

The heroine is Cat Nips (Vanelle), who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of another superheroine, Smash Mistress (Caruana). She has been kidnapped by malevolent genius Mad Mort (Gordon), who has a machine which can absorb her powers, and inject them into his short-lived clones of Smash Mistress, which do his evil bidding. Not helping matters, the local superheroes group, led by The Smoking Cape (Paris), have gone on strike, to protest budget cuts proposed by the city’s mayor – who is actually their leader, in his daytime identity. What’s up with that? There’s also a guild of supervillains, though not everyone in it is happy at Mad Mort’s plans to take things over.

Occasionally, it does work, mostly when Garris pushes the boat out beyond the cliches into more imaginative territory. There’s the Golden Goddess, a retired superheroine now reduced to selling “magical” headbands on line. And some of the villains are entertainingly crap, such as Pasta Fingers and White Rapper Kid – not exactly useful powers. Things get thrown for a loop at the end with the unexpected arrival of a superheroine from the future, who states, “I’ve come from season three.” That’s the kind of self-referential nonsense which the series needs more of. It’s on considerably less solid ground when trying to take right-on jabs at, for example, the portrayal of women. Considering the costumes of the ones here, this comes off as empty cant.

The production here is low-end, but solid enough in most regards. That also applies to the performances, few of which are memorable in either direction. And that might be part of the problem: it’s all rather too low-key. If you think of comic-book movies, the characters which stand out e.g. the Joker (whether played by Jack Nicholson or Joaquin Phoenix, tend to be those that are over-the-top. But the delivery here skews more toward the prosaic, and character names like – and I wrote this down – “Sharon MaBooty” don’t go far enough towards making up the difference.

Dir: Dean Garris
Star: Vanelle, Leah Caruana, Roger Paris, Robert Gordon

Alone

  By

★★
“Getting away from it all.”

Jessica (Willcox) is making a break from her new life, packing up her possessions and driving away from her home and family in the big city. However, it’s not long before her journey through the countryside begins to hit bumps in the road. Specifically, in the shape of another driver (Menchaca), whose actions against Jessica veer between the aggressively hostile and the creepily over-friendly. The two encounter each other on a number of occasions, the incidents escalating until he finally drugs and kidnaps her. She wakes to find herself locked in the basement of a remote cabin, and needs to find a way to avoid a fate which, it appears, others before her have suffered.

A remake of Swedish film Gone, the major failing here is not enough happening to sustain the running time. The story needs to spend significantly less time on the build-up; for example, by cutting out the background stuff about exactly what it is, that Jessica is escaping from. We are given no reason to care, and it has little or no relevance to the movie’s central conflict. Similarly, there are likely too many encounters between her and him, before he finally abducts her. We get the picture after virtually the first one – and I have to say, the sensible thing for anyone to do thereafter, would have been to reject any further attempts, rather than engage in additional contact.

Of course, logic and common sense tend to be anathema to this genre, though there are times here where Jessica does behave credibly. For instance, her method of getting out of the basement is genuinely smart. I also liked the scene where, after her escape, she finds a hunter in the woods – only for the man to show up, and claim she’s his mentally-ill sister (an idea made plausible by her understandably hysterical reaction). But for every one of these positives, there are two negatives, such as her getting hold of his phone and calling… his wife, to let her know she’s married to a predator. While I admire the spirit of sisterhood there, I’d have suggested self-preservation might have been a better use of those cellphone minutes.

Eventually, we get to a finale, which has some more credibility speed-humps. Firstly, the coincidence that, in this gigantic forest, he buries a body right next to where she is hiding. And secondly, that when someone attacks you from the back seat of your car, you will immediately accelerate away which simultaneously fighting them, driving at top speed down a narrow forest track until the inevitable accident. Okay… This does lead to a half-decent brawl between them, on the scorched earth of a patch of cleared forest, with the crash having acted as a nice equalizer (despite the apparent lack of seat-belts!). It is, however, very much the definition of “too little, too late”, and can’t rescue this from the multiple missteps which have preceded it.

Dir: John Hyams
Star: Jules Willcox, Marc Menchaca, Anthony Heald

Till Death

  By

★★½
“Women don’t sweat, they glisten.”

I kinda agonized, for far longer than I should have, over whether this was a 3-star or 2½-star film. It’s probably 2¾. Or perhaps 2 5/8. No, 2 11/16. In the end though, it doesn’t matter. It’s just another in Megan Fox’s attempts to become the next Angelina Jolie, following in the footsteps of the similarly okay but not exactly memorable Rogue. Indeed, I initially thought this was by the same director, but turns out it’s a different director who uses initials in lieu of a first name. Anyway, with this one now available on Netflix, it will likely raise Fox’s action-actress profile. In terms of current rankings, she probably moves ahead of Ruby Rose in the rankings. Though that’s not exactly difficult.

The problems here are mostly pacing, with the movie being too slow to get to the main course. Emma (Fox) is unhappily married to Mark (Macken), an over-controlling lawyer, and is having an affair with one of Mark’s colleagues. After an excess of scenes belabouring these points, e.g. Mark orders her dessert after she has declined it (what a bastard!), on their 10th anniversary, Mark takes her out to a remote lakehouse. She wakes the next morning to find herself handcuffed to him, and Mark then blows his brains out. Turns out, his life was about to fall apart, but he has a plan to wreck Emma’s life from beyond the grave. This involves sending two thugs (Mulvey and Roth) to the house, one of whom has a beef with her, due to Emma having cost him his eye.

Our heroine, therefore, has to elude the home invaders while chained to a 180-lb (literal) dead weight, in a house from which all sharp objects have been carefully removed. This is kinda distracting, as I found myself figuring out alternative methods of separation, such as slamming the corpse’s wrist repeatedly in a car-door. But that’s perhaps for the best, as a distraction from too many shots of Emma dragging Mark’s body around the house, using her wedding-dress as a tarp (I’ll take “Over-obvious symbolism” for $400, please, Alex). Naturally, this unwanted connection lasts only until the plot decides it needs to be discarded, when it becomes a more standard home-invasion thriller.

It does perk up on the arrival of the villains, and there are some reasonably clever twists thereafter. To be honest, Mark’s warped imagination was almost impressive. Though if I was going to such lengths to extract revenge, I’d probably want to be there to see it. Where’s the fun otherwise? Fox does put in the effort, even if as Chris noted, Emma remains remarkably shevelled (as opposed to dishevelled) over the course of proceedings. Her hair and lipstick remain almost pristine despite crawling across grubby floors and snowy landscapes. I’m reminded of the old line quoted at the top; if you can still look hawt when drenched in blood and brains, your make-up artist deserves some kind of award.

Dir: S.K. Dale
Star: Megan Fox, Callan Mulvey, Jack Roth, Eoin Macken

Kate

  By

★★★
“Dying to kill you.”

The action heroine plotline of a woman defending a child – sometimes her own, but more often an acquired kid – is a common one. The “Mama Bear”, as TV Tropes called it, was most famously used in Aliens, but shows up with some regularity in our genre. See also Ultraviolet, Furie and The Long Kiss Goodnight (have I really never reviewed that?), while Gunpowder Milkshake was the most recent example. Of course, it’s not just heroines to whom it can apply; indeed there’s another page on TV Tropes called “Badass and Child“, covering the likes of Leon: The Professional. But the pairing of an action heroine with a (usually female) child has particular resonances, that perhaps merit general discussion, before we get into the specifics of Kate.

Firstly, it offers an easy justification for any and all subsequent violence. In Western society, women are not supposed to be aggressive. They are seen as the caring, nurturing gender, but protecting their offspring is one of the few times when they are “allowed” to engage their inner monsters. Again, it’s not limited to the female sex (think Taken), but male characters tend to have a wider range of potential motivations e.g. patriotism, personal power, so you don’t see paternal protection as often. [And that’s quite enough P’s.] In most cases – Ripley being an exception – the mother figure is already something of a bad-ass, so has that “very particular set of skills” necessary. It’s just the specific direction of her targets which is a result of the threat to her offspring. 

There is also, quite often, some kind of emotional resonance, in the cases where the child is not biologically related [when that is the case, you don’t typically need or get any more explanation, blood being thicker than water]. Maybe the kid acts as a surrogate, a replacement for one previously lost (Alien), or the heroine could never have. Or if a girl, the protagonist can perhaps see a younger version of herself. The other common theme is the use of the child as a key, to unlock the adult. Often, the latter has lost her humanity, typically through harsh circumstances, becoming largely a lone figure, with her emotions suppressed. The “childlike innocence” of the young person, to use a cliché, can be used as a psychological crowbar, pricing open the hard shell of the grown-up, allowing them to reconnect with their humanity. The more emotionally-driven immaturity also stands in contrast to the adult’s stoicism, often to an extreme degree. 

Which brings us to Kate, since the film demonstrates most of the above, to a certain degree. It is, to some extent, an unfortunate victim of its own timing. Probably safe to say, I would have enjoyed this more, had it not come out almost immediately on the heels of both Gunpowder Milkshake and The Protégé – films with which it has rather too much in common. All three movies are about female assassins, who find themselves at a crossroads in their professional and personal lives. In Kate and Milkshake, the protagonists find themselves, more or less unwillingly, in charge of a young girl. In Kate and The Protégé, they operate under the guidance of an older, male veteran killer, who trained them since childhood, but may or may not have their best interests at heart. Throw in to this, the “investigating your own murder” plot-line from classic film noir D.O.A., and you’ll understand why this seemed over familiar. 

It begins in Osaka, where Kate (Winstead) takes out a yakuza boss, despite qualms over the presence of his daughter. She tells her mentor, Varrick (Harrelson), she will do one last mission before she retires – yeah, that cliché. But before it happens, she’s poisoned with radioactive polonium, which will kill her in a few hours. Intent on extracting vengeance, she finds it was apparently ordered by Kijima, brother of her previous victim. To try and lure him out, Kate abduct his niece, Ani (Martineau), the girl who was there when Kate killed her father. But Ani becomes a target as well, due to a power struggle within the criminal syndicate, and Kate her unwilling protector. This makes the whole “I killed your father, actually” thing more than a bit awkward, especially as Kate needs Anu’s help if she’s to discover the truth about her own assassination. For that is even more disturbing than she expects.

As you can probably tell, there’s nothing new in the story. This doesn’t mean it’s devoid of merit, for the execution is solid.  Nicolas-Troyan, previously here for The Huntsman: Winter’s War, brings a perpetual neon sheen to Japanese urban life, leaving half the film feeling like cut scenes from Blade Runner. While lovely to look at, this is very much a foreigner’s view of Japan, which makes Kate’s familiarity with the culture a bit jarring; she speaks Japanese, and is obsessed with ‘Boom Boom Lemon’, a (fictional) local soft-drink. The heroine could have done with more of this kind of humanizing quirk; for much of the movie, she seems more like a machine for revenge, rather than a woman clinging to her last hours of life, as the perfectly-machined tool of her body increasingly betrays its owner.

The other positive is the action, which is well-handled, and occasionally savage to an almost extreme degree. The peak is likely an early battle between Kate and a large number of gang members, culminating in Kate stabbing an opponent up under the chin, the blade coming out through his nose. I have not seen that before. However, the keyword there is “early”. The film probably needs a better sense of escalation, and the lack here stands in contrast to the likes of the John Wick franchise. I can’t say I was ever bored here. However, I didn’t feel there was enough to make it stand out from the (recently very sizable) crowd. I suspect this will likely vanish into the crowd of Netflix originals, and quickly be forgotten.

Dir: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Star: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson, Tadanobu Asano

Cowgirls vs. Pterodactyls

  By

★★½
“Where the deer and the pterodactyls play.”

A title like this is inevitably going to come with all manner of expectations, and these will largely be things that any film is ill-equipped to fulfill. That’s all the more the case, when your movie is clearly a super low-budget endeavour. By most objective standards, this could be seen as terrible, and I wouldn’t argue with you. But for all the flaws, and enthusiasm that exceeds technical ability, this is made with clear affection for its elements. That goes quite some way in mind to excusing the problems. In particular, there’s a love for the world of stop-motion dinosaurs, which I share. For example, the narrator is Martine Beswick, who co-starred in the classic stop-motion dino epic, One Million Years B.C. I presume Raquel Welch was unavailable…

Truth be told though, there’s only one “actual” cowgirl here. That’s Bunny Parker (Vienhage), who is hired by schoolmistress Rebecca Crawford (Wiley), after her husband is snatched and taken away by a pterodactyl. No-one believes her, flying reptiles not exactly being native to to the wild West, which is why she turns to Parker for a search and rescue mission. Also along for the ride is saloon madam Debbie Dukes Riley Masterson III (Vega), who has come into possession of a satchel of pterodactyl eggs, which may help explain the creature’s aggressiveness. After a long trek through the wilderness, they reach the cave complex where the beasts make their home. Let battle – involving guns and a convenient, large box of dynamite – commence!

I did enjoy the stop-motion work by Ryan Lengyel. Even if it’s not up to the standards of Ray Harryhausen, to put it mildly, the work involved is still apparent, and his models’ interactions with the human cast were particularly well done. Kennedy matches this footage with larger models and puppets, and the results were worthy of praise, given the clearly limited resources. That said, other aspects are embarrassingly sloppy. Would it have killed one actress to have removed her glaringly anachronistic nose-ring? Some of the guns, too, look like they came out of a Christmas cracker. Period pieces like this are particularly unsuited to low-budget work, and it seems fair to suggest that Kennedy bit off more than he could chew.

However, he wisely keeps things moving, and at 71 minutes, this isn’t likely to outstay its welcome. Well, providing you do have the necessary tolerance for movies where imagination greatly outstrips the budget. The three leads all go at their roles similarly i.e. perhaps with more enthusiasm than talent, though it’s an approach appropriate to the overall attitude. Less successful is import scream queen Thompson, whose character Doris Yates seems to serve little real purpose. She may well have emailed her scenes in. I went into this thinking, “It’s probably going to suck, but I hope it does so in a reasonably entertaining way.” Overall, I’d say that nailed it, with just about enough moments where we were laughing with the film, rather than mocking it.

Dir: Joshua Kennedy
Star: Madelyn Wiley, Haley Zega, Carmen Vienhage, Dani Thompson

The Retreat

  By

★½
“Striking a blow for equality. With an ax.”

After the unexpected pleasures of What Keeps You Alive, I guess what this proves, is that film-makers are able to make shitty lesbian horror movies every bit as badly as straight ones. Truly, a lack of talent is blind with regard to sexual orientation. This begins in a way not dissimilar to Alive, with a lesbian couple whose relationship is on shaky ground, heading out into the wilderness.  Sadly, things then diverge in just about every metric of quality. In this case, it’s Renee (Pirie) and Valerie (Allen), who are heading off to a country B&B to meet up with two gay friends.  Except, when they get there, the friends are nowhere to be seen. The new arrivals then proceed to ignore more red flags than would be found on May Day 1980 in Moscow, until they get kidnapped by the local homophobic psychos. They have a thriving business in live-streaming snuff films, and welcome the arrival of some fresh meat.

Well, until Renee and Valerie escape, and rather than hightailing it out of there – you know, like any normal, sensible person would do – opt to take on their attackers, because Rural Homophobes Must Die. Oddly, those subsequent deaths are shown in a degree of detail that borders on the gloating, while the murders of their victims take place out of frame. Hmm. Well, when I say “shown”, I’m talking loosely, because this has to be close to the most atrociously-lit film I have ever seen. At one point, our heroines are enjoying a nice picnic in broad daylight. Just a few minutes in story time later, it’s either the middle of the night, or an unexpected total solar eclipse popped up. Because the audience are left peering into darkness, trying to figure out which vague, blobby shadow is doing what, and to which other vague, blobby shadow. I don’t know whether it’s bad film-making, or a really bad transfer, but it’s borderline unwatchable.

From what I could determine, peering into the gloom, it doesn’t have anything much new to offer either. But then, the specific sexual orientation of horror movie characters is rarely relevant: I just don’t care. The film, meanwhile, seems to think that putting lesbians in, is enough to allow them to trot out any number of overused elements everywhere else. They’re wrong. A poorly filmed, cliched horror movie does not become any better because its two heroines are sleeping with each other. Dangling ends abound, such as Renee’s easy familiarity with firearms, which serves no notable point, and there is precisely one (1) decent kill. It even fails as a commentary on society, being far too obvious and simplistic to work on that level. To succeed, a film like this typically needs to have at least one of the following body-parts: a brain, a heart, or guts. Trying to replace all three with a vagina isn’t a recipe for success.

Dir: Pat Mills
Star: Sarah Allen, Tommie-Amber Pirie, Aaron Ashmore, Munro Chambers,

Lady Mobster

  By

★★★
“Because ‘Lady Accountant’ wouldn’t have sold as well…”

The salacious sleeve promises considerably more than this can deliver. For we are actually talking a TV movie from the eighties here, with all the limitations that imposes on content and execution. Yet, if sold a lot more on sizzle than steak, and it did come very close to not qualifying here – likely the last scene being when it finally reached the finish line – I can say I was never bored.

Long-time soap opera queen Lucci plays Laurel, the young daughter of a mob family, who witnesses her parents being killed as part of a war between Mafia groups, over whether or not to go legitimate. She’s then taken in by one of her father’s allies, Victor Castle (Wiseman), and grows up as part of his family, becoming a lawyer and eventually marrying his son, Robert (Born). Castle has never given up the dream of getting out of the mob world, and with Laurel’s help is working towards that goal. However, the more traditional families are no less reluctant than they were decades previously, and the resulting feud comes once again to Laurel’s house and loved ones. She ends up taking over as the head of the family, and is now determined to find both those who killed her parents, and those intent on perpetuating the beef now.

It does play like a low-rent version of The Godfather, with Lucci playing the Michael Corleone role of someone who doesn’t really want to get involved in the criminal enterprise, yet finds herself increasingly drawn into it. As such, she’s good in the role, exuding the necessary confidence to make her facing down a room of Mafia dons at least plausible, if still somewhat unlikely. There’s an effective scene early on, when she has a meeting with a prospective partner of the Castles, and rips him a new one for false accounting and fraud. This establishes her character as at least a financial bad-ass, even if there’s precious little gun-play for her to do over the first 85 or so minutes.

Still, director Moxey has been doing this kind of thing for what seems like forever – he directed the original Charlie’s Angels pilot – and keeps the story-line progressing consistently. Certainly, Lauren’s resulting character arc is the best thing the film has going for it, as we see her develop over the course of the film. If this does resemble a pilot episode for a series that never happened, the way it finishes makes it one I would be more than slightly interested in watching. It feels a bit like an eighties version of La Reina Del Sur, with its story of a woman whose family ties to organized crime prove eventually to be a critical formative influence in her life. At the time, that was positively radical, and even if the treatment here is undeniably milder than I’d have preferred, I wasn’t left feeling like I’d been too badly deceived by the cover.

Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey
Star: Susan Lucci, Michael Nader, Roscoe Born, Joseph Wiseman

Streets of Vengeance

  By

★½
“Porn stars vs. Incels”

This poorly-conceived and even less effectively executed cheapo, starts off looking like a home-video recording of a movie, taken off late night TV. There’s a bikini-clad hostess, who introduces the film, and it might not have been a bad idea, had they actually run with it. Cut into the movie for spoof adverts, bad infomercials, further host segments, etc. Yeah, could have been fun. Instead, it’s completely forgotten until almost the end, when she pops back up… purely to showcase a trailer for the directors’ next film, Slash-lorette Party. Verily, the level of cringe is strong in this one. If it had even embraced the eighties aesthetic for which it is clearly aiming, that would have been a credible substitute. But outside of the synthwave score by the very wonderfully named “Vestron Vulture,” there’s hardly any effort put in there either.

Instead, what you get is porn star Mila Lynn  (McKinney), who is about to quit the profession. Her boss, disgruntled by the news, delivers her up to a member of The Sword, a “men’s rights” group who have been abducting and torturing other adult entertainment stars, blaming them for causing addiction to porn. Mila manages to escape, beating her captor to death with a baseball bat, and sets up a vigilante squad, who will take the fight to the members of The Sword, and show them the error of their ways.

The above sounds considerably more interesting than the reality. I will say, that most of the actresses make thoroughly convincing porn stars – unfortunately, this is mostly in the way they can’t act their way out of a paper-bag. The pacing is also terrible. At 101 minutes, it’s at least twenty too long, and takes far too long to get to the meat of the matter. As a result, it commits the cardinal sin of grindhouse cinema: being boring. This is in part because it insists on being didactic, pushing its moral viewpoint to an obvious and rather painful degree. That’s another sin in which you never see good grindhouse flix indulge. I Spit on Your Grave didn’t need to spell out any obvious messages.

There’s a certain hypocrisy here, given the female nudity on view, frequently combined with things like the owners having their throat slit, New York Ripper style. None of the main actresses indulge, implying they are in some way “better” than that. It also fails to make a coherent argument against The Sword’s proposition – basically that, without porn, there’d be no porn addiction, and those who profit are no better than pushers. It’s just taken as “bad,” m’kay? Of course, the brutality with which Mila and her pals react, is morally little if any different from The Sword: an uncomfortable truth the film never dares address. All of which I could probably tolerate, if this was anything like fun to watch. It isn’t, and I couldn’t.

Dir: Paul Ragsdale, Angelica De Alba
Star: Delawna McKinney, Anthony Iava To’omata, Paige Le Ney, Daniel James Moody

Golden Arm

  By

★★★½
“Arms and the (wo)man.”

The sport of arm-wrestling has been featured in the movies before, most notably the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Over the Top. But that wasn’t a comedy – at least, not intentionally. This entry, as well as switching to the distaff side, also has its tongue in cheek, while still sporting a strong message about female empowerment, that never becomes a lecture. If you’re looking for an inspiration I’d saw the first season of TV series GLOW is very much a touchstone. As there, we have a woman who becomes involved in a sport at a difficult time in her life, only to find herself… well, finding herself as a result of her new endeavour.

The heroine is Melanie (Holland), a mild-mannered cafe-owner whose enterprise is almost out of business. Her pal, truck driver Danny (Sodaro, sporting one of the worst haircuts in cinema history), takes part in women’s arm-wrestling, but just had her wrist broken by the infamous Brenda the Bone Crusher (Stambouliah).  Seeking revenge, she eventually convinces Melanie, who has a natural talent – the “golden arm” – to enter the national championships in Oklahoma City. The goal is to win the crown, and fifteen thousand dollars that go with it, to save Melanie’s business and take down Danny’s nemesis. But the path towards that title will go through not only Brenda, but over a number of other hurdles for the rookie athlete, both physical and mental.

There’s very little new here in terms of plotting. Everything unfolds exactly as you’d expect, right down to the final which pits – surprise, surprise! – Melanie against Brenda in a best-of-three battle. Still, the joy here is in the characters and performances. There appears to be, if this film is to be believed, a significant overlap between arm-wrestling and pro wrestling, with the participants here adopting personas and cutting promos to intimidate their opponent. Melanie, for example, begins as a masked wrestler called “Freaked Out”, after the ring announcer mistakes a comment as her name. But she eventually becomes The Breadwinner, complete with a dusting of flour on her cheek.

However, the greatest pleasure is the Melanie-Danny relationship, which builds over the course of the film. They’re total opposites – “Please don’t say ‘twat'”, begs Melanie repeatedly – but there’s still such chemistry, you can see how they’d be fast friends. It’s so good, in fact, that the romantic angle between Melanie and referee Greg (Cordero) seems entirely superfluous. It actually drags down the rest of the movie, and provides nothing of substance except for an explicit reference to The Natural. That’s another apparent inspiration, in its story of a sports star rising above injury at the moment they need to most.

This is thoroughly foul-mouthed, albeit for comic purposes, and I will say, it doesn’t all quite work. For example, there’s an extended discussion over the female equivalent of “going balls out,” that’s frankly a bit cringe. However, the sheer heart on view throughout is undeniable: that powers this through the flaws, and will likely leave you with a big, goofy grin on your face.

Dir: Maureen Bharooch
Star: Mary Holland, Betsy Sodaro, Olivia Stambouliah, Eugene Cordero