Tag: USA

Slay Belles

  By

★★★
“Not-so silent night”

Not to be confused with RuPaul’s 2015 album (I kid you not), this starts off on shaky territory. I mean, a director who credits himself as “Spooky Dan Walker”, and three edgeladies as heroines, wannabe YouTube stars who think dropping F-bombs every second sentence is cool? I was thanking my lucky stars this had a running time of 76 minutes. This trio of urban explorers head off to an abandoned theme park in the middle of nowhere called Santa Land, only to find it not as abandoned as expected, with a giant horned monster, Grampus, roaming the area, operating as the devil’s Christmas ambassador to naughty children. Or adults, which is where Alexi (Klebe), Dahlia (Slaughter) and Sadie (Wagner) come on to its menu. Fortunately, Santa Land’s owner is there to help: who else but Mr. Claus (Bostwick) himself?

And that’s really where the film becomes considerably more fun. Because it plays fast and loose with the whole mythology of Christmas, depicting Santa as a hard-drinking, cursing biker who gave up the business because toys started being mass-produced. It’s a winning performance from Bostwick, who hand-waves away the girls’ questions about how he operated with increasingly irritated dismissals of “Magic!” This irascible charm seems to rub off on the heroines, who shift from irritating to endearing, and develop distinct personalities beyond their colour co-ordinated outfits and wigs, as they buckle down to fight Grampus and save… Well, less Christmas, and more the world in general.

It becomes increasingly self-aware as it goes on, poking as much fun at the world of Internet “celebrities” as endorsing it, e.g. the trio insist on taking selfies with the temporarily captured monster. There’s good support from Richard Moll as a local cop, and in particular, Diane Salinger as a local barmaid, who ends up playing a pivotal role, despite (or, more likely, because of) her clear aversion to the festive season. It all ends in a quite unexpected fashion which, if a bit too abrupt, fits nicely in with the slaying of sacred cows – or sleighing of sacred reindeer, perhaps – which has gone before. It certainly seals the three heroines as the pro-active leaders of the film, despite a shaky section in the middle where it looked like a boyfriend was going to end up saving the day. Not so fast, white knight…

I have to say, the Grampus suit itself is incredibly well done, a latex marvel that must have been hell to apply and perform in. While there are some elements which feel under-developed, such as the Ghoulies-like fur-balls which attack in act three, Walker keeps things moving at a brisk enough pace to get away with it most of the time. If not quite the silliest festive film which I’ve seen this year (that would, of course, be Santa Jaws), this deserves to be filed alongside other anti-Christmas movies, such as Gremlins. It’s no Die Hard, of course; then again, who is?

Dir: Dan Walker
Star: Kristina Klebe, Susan Slaughter, Hannah Wagner, Barry Bostwick

The Girl in the Spider’s Web

  By

★★★
“The name is Bond. Lisbeth Bond!”

It’s always difficult writing about a new entry in the so-called Millennium series: the whole franchise always comes with so much baggage and you never know how much a reader is aware of it or not. But I will try to spare you as much superfluous information about the books and the legal right battles between Larsson’s relatives as possible. A lot of it was in the press already in 2009 when the first Swedish film of the now almost classic Millennium-trilogy, based on the famous novels of late journalist-turned-author Stieg Larsson, came out and then with the aftermath of David Fincher’s ill-fated remake of the first movie in 2011.

After seeing the enormous worldwide success of the original movies, Sony bought the remake rights to Larsson’s books with the intent to launch a new successful movie franchise. It’s difficult to calculate what Sony exactly expected but my feeling is they thought they would have their next Hunger Games or Twilight in their hands, including similar great financial turnovers. Unfortunately, their plans didn’t work out as Fincher’s remake, while well-reviewed, didn’t make as much money as hoped. Even their aspirations for awards failed, compared to the original movies, which won many prizes, with Noomi Rapace’s performance making her a break-out star all over Europe in 2009.

In 2012 MGM (who had co-financed the movie) stated that the movie would have at least to have made 10% more to meet their expectations. Looking at the numbers, Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon tattoo-remake cost around $90 million and made $103m in the US and a little bit over $230m world-wide. If you compare that with the original, which cost $13m (but according to Rapace, closer to $10m), with a world-wide gross of $100m. That may give you an idea what kind of disappointment the remake must have been for Sony and MGM. Why do I mention all this here? Well, I want to show how economic considerations can change an entire franchise and maybe even a main character. Because the results of the conclusions from these numbers, lead directly to this new movie, The Girl in the Spider’s web.

The big problem for Sony: They had paid good money for the film rights of the saga and already had David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian under contract for the planned two sequels. In the past it usually had been no big problem of taking a successful European movie, re-making it for an American audience and having an even larger financial success at the box-office. I think this kind of film-making model started somewhere in the 80s with French film hits like Three men and a Baby, albeit with some strange results e. g. My Father the Hero, both times with Gerard Depardieu being. [Sony did ask Rapace to repeat her role for the remake; she declined]

But times have changed and foreign films are much easier available, even to American audiences. What Sony perhaps did not consider was that the Millennium movies had already been seen by most of those people interested in them (even though in the US they played in the usual far-away arthouse cinemas. The films were even available in an acceptably English-dubbed version, if you were one of those people who couldn’t read or stand subtitles. So, for a large part of the audience this story was nothing new and – going from what I have heard about high American cinema ticket prices (I live in Germany) – were probably thinking twice about paying well-earned bucks to see the same story again, only spoken by American and British actors in a higher-budgeted, glossier version.

One of the reasons, Fincher’s movie didn’t do so well, may have been its release date. A movie advertised as “the feel-bad movie of the year”… is not very well placed at Christmas! Sony definitely has learned from this, starting their The Girl in the Spider’s Web in all countries either this October or November, a more appropriate time for darker movies. This year, it was a period which saw the release of Venom, Halloween and the Suspiria remake in cinemas. Sony also realized before the 2011 movie came out, that while people were aware of the upcoming movie, a lot of them didn’t plan on seeing it. This resulted in the studio releasing the first 8 minutes online, a desperate emergency measure.

While a large part of the female readership in the US loved to read the suspenseful novels, following the adventures of their heroine, they were perhaps less keen on seeing the character they identified with being raped on the big screen. The graphic content that is part of the Larsson-parcel is one thing between the covers, but a totally different matter to watch in a movie. I myself felt very awkward (and a bit ashamed) when watching the respective scene/s in the original movie in cinema in 2009. The simple fact is: The Millennium books are not “feel-good novels”. They are dark “Scandi noir“, strongly inspired by a lot of other dark crime novels of Scandinavian authors going back to the early 70s.

These stories very often feature acts of gross violence; realistic descriptions of destroyed corpses, long before American crime novels featuring crime-solving female forensics started doing the same; and social criticism that started somewhere in the early 70s. It also reminds me of the German crime-TV-series Tatort, where very often the social backgrounds of murderers were the focus, rather than the classical “Whodunnit”. Gone were larger-than-life investigators like Sherlock Holmes or the “big bad” who is evil incarnate.

Granted, Larsson’s novels still feature some of these classic elements. His books often read like a summary of every crime novel he ever read: according to sources he was very proficient in the crime novel genre, both the classics as well as modern. There’s some Silence of the Lambs creepiness in the first book; the strange mysterious heroine with incredible hacker skills and asocial behavior (a kind of modern female Sherlock Holmes-version for the new… millennium); a bit of rape-revenge-fantasy going on; some Agatha Christie-like puzzles; followed by Swedish secret service intrigues (inspired by real-life events of the early 70s), followed by a courtroom drama in the last book. And overall a big round-house kick against the so-called peaceful social state of Sweden.

Larsson probably felt like a rebel, though he hadn’t really done anything others hadn’t done before him. But the strength and intensity of his attitude and convictions always did shine through his novels and were very well translated into the Swedish movies. The Fincher remake (probably because a lot of American audiences wouldn’t understand or be interested in it) left the social criticism out. Which is ironic, as this was probably the main reason why Larsson wrote his books in the first place.

The big problem was how to make a sequel for less money, that would make Sony’s investment finally profitable. Key, of course, were the overly large payments made when doing The girl with the dragon tattoo. If we subtract the money paid for “star-director” David Fincher, screenwriter Steve Zaillian and star Daniel Craig from the original film’s budget of $90m or more, the movie would have only cost half as much!

Just let that sink in. I’ll wait.

But then everyone has his price tag, and these kind of sums make sense when you expect your movie to make big bank, right? Sony simply overestimated the appeal of the product they were offering. Also, there was an expensive, ill-fated marketing campaign (for which Fincher himself was originally responsible

So, what to do? Well, negotiations with David Fincher are always problematic; he’s seen as “difficult”. He had a “play or pay” contract, and would be paid anyway, even if they didn’t make the next film with him in order to produce a less costly sequel. I don’t know how the arrangement with Fincher ended but he did another movie for Sony and is an “executive producer” of the new movie, an absolutely meaningless title – director Fede Alvarez admitted he never met Fincher during the production). But Fincher proved he can make a very successful thriller for less money, two years later, with the very successful and lower-priced (around $60m) adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestseller Gone Girl, with Ben Affleck and Rosamond Pike.

Second problem: Daniel Craig. While the studio probably thought for a long time that it could hold him and continue with him and Rooney Mara, it turned out that Craig expected a pay rise after Skyfall became the first Bond movie to make more than one billion dollars worldwide. That let to heavy re-writes of the script on which Zaillian had already worked. The executives of Sony came up with a lot of dumb ideas, such as making books 2 and 3 into one movie (rather than the usual Hollywood tack of splitting the last book into two movies!), or taking Mikael Blomkvist completely out, to focus solely on the Lisbeth Salander character.

To understand what kind of… stupidity that is (I’m not using more vulgar language here, though it definitely would be appropriate!), one either has to have read the books or at least seen the original movies. The second and third books cover Lisbeth Salander’s backstory, revealed like a puzzle that’s slowly put together over a story-arc that encompasses both. It makes her appearance in Dragon Tattoo similar to what Red Dragon was for the Hannibal Lecter-character, but Mikael Blomkvist is essential for that story.

While he was arguably the main character in the first book, his and Salander’s storylines cross in the second and third, running parallel as they carry out independent research on two different cases, connected with each other (this is the way Raymond Chandler structured his Philip Marlowe novels). He saves her at the end of the second book, giving us an open ending. The beginning of the third finds Salander unconscious after dangerous brain surgery in hospital, with Blomquist doing the research and police their own investigation, resulting in a big court room trial. I would say over all of these books and films Blomkvist’s and Salander’s “screentime” is approximately 50:50: both are equally essential for and contribute to the stories.

Of course, you always can invent a new character, or give that poor computer nerd Plague, briefly shown in the movies, a much, much more prominent role. But this would be as nonsensical as telling a Sherlock Holmes story without Dr. Watson (or Holmes, depending on how you see Salander and Blomkvist). Simply put, Sony found themselves in a corner with no good solution at hands. They had paid for expensive film rights, produced a costly movie that didn’t make much money, and the right-holders blocked a proposed American TV series. This could well have been the end of Blomkvist’s and Salander’s cinematic exploits.

Enter Daniel Lagercrantz, who had been hired by the publishers to take over the series in 2013. They were in dire need of a hit, so Lagercrantz was hired to write new books based on Larsson’s characters. [We may never see the next entry in the series that Larsson had already started to write before his untimely death. It is reportedly saved on a laptop owned by his partner Eva Gabrielson] I haven’t read Lagercrantz’ book so can’t judge how close the new movie is to his novel. But according to those who have, the film follows the book very loosely. It seems the director and screenwriters have more or less built their own story, in particular ending differently from the novel. It’s up to you whether that makes the story better or worse.

His first, The Girl in the Spider’s Web came out in 2015, followed by The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye in 2017, and became immediate bestsellers. It may not have been due to his writing qualities – many critics and fans of the original books have really torn it apart – so much as that for many this was a chance to read new material with their beloved characters after almost 10 years. This isn’t new. Arthur Conan Doyle’s son released new “official” Sherlock Holmes stories in the 1950s and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels have also been getting additional entries after her death. And let’s not forget the myriad of Bond novels written since Ian Fleming passed away in 1964.

So why not do the same for the Millennium series? It’s just as legit as all the others. Just be aware, this is not the original. Not the original author, not the original novels and… yeah… maybe…these aren’t really the same characters anymore, either? Your enjoyment may depend greatly on being able to ignore this or not care about it. For comic book fans that may be easier as they are more used to this kind of thing: I mean, how many people have written Superman or Batman over the years?

At least for Sony, it was the solution for all of their problems. The danger of a direct comparison isn’t there anymore, as this has never been filmed before. Also the question of faithfulness is less important, as this is not based on anything Larsson wrote. They could restart, reboot or whatever term you prefer, just jump over all the complicated stuff in the second or third book, and have this series be whatever they want it to be. A fresh start, so to speak. As far as I can see this is exactly what they did with it: I just have no idea to what degree this was Lagercrantz’ doing and to what degree Sony’s.

The new Millenium movie is therefore quite a different beast. The question is if audiences will accept or reject it, and also of course if these characters still resonate with general audiences 13 years after the first book became a bestseller. With Fede Alvarez, Sony chose a competent director who has already proven that he can make very successful “darker” movies with a smaller budget as evidenced by his Evil Dead remake and his own Don’t Breathe, a recent surprise success. As a matter of fact, I think Alvarez is a very good technical director. And if you would have asked me before the movie if Alvarez is a more stylish director than Fincher, I probably would have said no. But indeed TGitSW is even more style-oriented than Fincher’s movie. Alvarez simply does know how to make things look “cool”. Pity that he has to work with such average material.

Interestingly, the movie was filmed to a large degree in the Berlin-Babelsberg-studios in Potsdam, as well as elsewhere in Berlin, Hamburg, the airport Halle/Leipzig and other parts of Germany. The reason for this is that makers can participate in German film funds that co-finance movies with money if you film in the respective “Bundesländern”. Alright, now I know what is being done with my taxes! But it’s definitely nice to see the well-known Berlin “Teufelsberg” (Devil’s Mountain – named that because a considerable number of children have broken their necks there while sledging it down over the centuries!) doubling for a place in Sweden.

It’s also worth noting, no “big” names are to be found in the cast this time. No Craigs, Plummers, Skarsgards, Robin Wrights or Steven Berkoffs, with neither Claire Foy nor Sylvia Hoeks highly paid stars (as of yet!). Foy, an acclaimed actress thanks to the series The Crown, is the third actress to play Salander and may have an advantage that Rooney Mara did not have: She doesn’t come immediately after Noomi Rapace! While everyone might have had one’s own idea of Lisbeth Salander before the first movie, it really was Rapace who put her stamp on the character and – as evidenced by many interviews – her influence on how the character should be portrayed was much larger than one would imagine. She had a very specific idea of how to bring this character to life on screen and even told director Niels Arden Oplev to worry about other things, because she would know the character better than him.

And it has to be said, Rapace set the blueprint, the parameters for the character on film. This can be compared to Sean Connery becoming the first James Bond: it is difficult for any other actor to come after someone has defined a role so strongly. When Roger Moore became James Bond – though he later admitted he then wondered if he had just committed career suicide – he was not in the same position as George Lazenby trying to imitate Connery’s 007 in 1969. People get used to different actors playing the same character eventually (think of Holmes or Tarzan) but it takes time, and any immediate successor will always be seen as a cheat!

As far as I can see it, Claire Foy carefully positions “her” Lisbeth Salander between Rapace and Mara. She is much better – in my personal opinion – than pale Mara, who always felt like a bland fake to me. But at the same time Foy comes across more human and vulnerable than Rapace. Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth was an enigmatic poker-face with suggestions of great emotional depths underneath, not giving away anything of what happened inside of her. I liked that you had to interpret her behavior and I miss that quite a bit. She was a mystery in a mystery, and very ambivalent.

Foy is tougher than Mara ever could hope to be (though I have the feeling it was Fincher’s conscious decision to “soften” the character, to make her more typically “feminine” and appealing to American audiences) but more accessible and vulnerable than Rapace ever would have Lisbeth be. In certain key moments it also is made quite clear that Lisbeth – how steely and tough she may appear – actually cares for the people around her. But it’s very strange hearing Foy in interviews declaring that they took away sex scenes and nudity in the script “because we didn’t want her to be exploited”. For Noomi Rapace crossed borders as an actress to stress that Lisbeth was indeed sexually exploited and also had her own sexual life.

Something else has been changed. While “original-Lisbeth” got close to readers and audiences due to the fact that so many terrible things did happen to her, this movie at best hints at things. In the original stories we witnessed Lisbeth being taken advantage of, attacked, shot in the head and so on, this Lisbeth here never seems to be in that kind of serious danger. She seems very often at least a step ahead, and can hack anything; it’s virtually a superpower here, because there’s nothing she can’t hack, from airbags to airport doorknobs. She even survives an explosion at her home (that can be seen from miles away and looks as if somebody tried to nuke the place), by jumping in her bath. As does her pet lizard. Who is not in the bath. Fortunate for her that she still can use her laptop after everything has been burned…

Yeah, Lisbeth has unofficially entered James Bond-fantasy-land! Not that I really mind so much. It definitely is entertaining and when The Girl who Played with Fire (both book and film) came out there was already criticism of the direction in which Larsson was moving his heroine. But then you always had the feeling these incredible things happened to a very real person – one who, after being shot in the head, had to spend months in a hospital to recover. This kind of carefully balanced dance between over-the-top elements and realism can’t be found here, because Lisbeth has become less human and more a superhero character. But with that, she also becomes a bit boring, I fear.

This is definitely a more sanitized version of Lisbeth Salander – this had already been done with the Fincher movie – intended to be more acceptable for a larger mainstream audience than the original ever was. The team behind this movie definitely took away from the controversial aspects and ambivalence of the character, and are also careful not to step on anyone’s toes with Foy declaring in interviews that Lisbeth Salander is not meant to be a poster girl for the #metoo movement. I really got the impression that Sony is pulling all the strings to make this Lisbeth a big mainstream hit so they can finally get that big money-making franchise they wanted it to be in 2011.

Only they make different mistakes this time. Somehow the original Salander is just too difficult a character to sell to large audiences, so they keep changing her. Fincher made her a bland feminized character that could appear softer at Daniel Craig’s side. Now, Alvarez makes her some kind of cross between a superheroine, Bond and Sherlock Holmes. I really get the feeling that there’s some kind of cultural communication problem when portraying this character in an American movie.

What I personally find a bit regrettable is that the complex backstory of Salander doesn’t play a role in this movie here anymore, beyond some references. As a matter of fact this movie – again, I don’t know if it was already like that in the book – almost retcons her backstory. What I get from the original books and movies, she lived with her mother in a single flat, not with her father in a big building far from civilization. While her father was a terrible criminal and double-agent, physically abusing her mother, there was no indication he was a pedophile and abusing his young daughters sexually. Maybe Lagercrantz added that, thinking, “Why not? Every other evil man in these books is a rapist, so he might be one, too?” While Lisbeth hears from her sister, Camilla in the second book for the first time, here the movie makes you believe that they grew up together.

The attempt to cut the Blomkvist role, or at least make it as small as possible, may stem from the time when screenwriters tried to minimize Craig’s involvement in the next film. It shows here. While Sverrir Gudnason is not a bad actor, he, as well as the now also much younger appearing Erika Berger (played by Vickie Krieps), hardly play anything more than a supporting role in this movie. And forget about calling this a Millennium-movie as the magazine Blomkvist was writing for has been sold and he is not writing anymore. It’s suggested he had only two great stories, both due to Lisbeth – which is just wrong when you’ve read the books! For me, this feels like a grave faux-pas, as if Sherlock Holmes moved out of 221B Baker Street. The feeling I got was that Blomkvist and Berger were in the movie because the filmmakers knew they belonged to these stories but didn’t know anything of relevance to do with them.

But it also seems as if the entire genre has changed which is a bit perplexing. Someone put it better into words than I ever could: “It’s as if Goldfinger is the sequel to Psycho.” I find this a very fitting remark. While the original novels as well as films (Fincher’s included) had a decidedly eerie psycho-thriller feel, this comes across more like a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie. Sure, the originals also had a conspiracy of old secret service members (which reminded me a bit of The X-Files), the double-agent Zalatschenko, and with Niedermann an almost Bondian henchman. Still, the feeling was these were down-to-earth thrillers, fed by real-life scandals of Sweden’s past, and also dealing with an inhumane social system oppressing helpless individuals and a terrible treatment of women in society in general that Larsson depicted.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve never been a fan of Larsson’s (in my opinion) relatively one-sided left-wing agenda, his strange ideas of what he thought feminism was, his outspoken black-and-white portrayal of different parts of society (left-wing journalists and women vs. evil capitalists and social authorities responsible for any imaginable crime). But heck, that was what his fictional universe was about. I think if one continues the series of an author one should honor his work and themes. And if you’re not able to, stay away and leave it to someone else. It feels somehow like a cheat to discard all of that, create something VERY different and still call it Salander and Blomqvist. There’s a German word for this: “Etikettenschwindel”. This is when the writing on a can in the supermarket says “chocolate cake” and when you open it at home you find it contains noodles.

Sure, I don’t mind noodles! But heck, the backstory and the complicated character of Salander being hardly more than a side-note or even partly replaced by a new one; the world-view of the original creator more or less disregarded; social criticism not existent here anymore (okay, the last was a complaint one could have had with Fincher’s movie, too). This feels kind of not okay, if you are a fan of the original books! As mentioned, I’ve not read Lagercrantz’ book – and according to friends who did, I shouldn’t bother – so I don’t know how close this is to what he has written. But many online pointed out that the plot with the CIA and an autistic little boy reminded them of the old action-thriller Mercury Rising with Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. So, maybe Lagercrantz is just stealing from other sources than Larsson?

Personally, I felt reminded of Bond movies, or at least aspects from Bond movies. Lisbeth with a connection to her sister, is similar to Bond with his (now) stepbrother Blofeld in Spectre and another plot element reminded me quite a bit of Roger Moore’s Bond movie, Moonraker. As a movie, the story flows quickly from scene to scene. While all previous efforts were slow-burning Scandi noirs, very often building suspense and tension, also sometimes with scenes without any or much dialogue, even no music, this moves much faster, just like Lisbeth on her motorbike.

It also brings in a number of action scenes, an element that was there in the originals but at no time as prominent as here. And while the other movies were long movies, up to 2½ hours (which may also have cinemas one or two showings a day) this one has the very digestible length of 117 minutes. My feeling is that this is the streamlined, newly-wrapped and more digestible version of Lisbeth Salander. Everything has undergone a vital change, but the core of Stieg Larsson’s phantasmagorias has largely been discarded – or put so much to the side that it is almost irrelevant.

I very much understand Sony’s decisions, though will still judge them for it. They want their investment back, and want to get out of their property what they still can. After last year’s disappointing Hollywood Scandi noir The Snowman, with Michael Fassbender, it doesn’t seem such a very bad idea to reposition the potential franchise, to get away from personal, overcomplicated drama and recreate Ms Salander as the female James Bond media has been talking so much about in the last years. The thing is: They are cheating their – potential – audience of the original content of the series. The question is, if the audience is willing to eat up this deception or just ignore it? Because, you know: glossy photography, cool-looking action and strong female hero?

Side-note: Though Larsson himself said shortly before his death, that with the first three books he had done the heavy lifting to lay the groundwork, I personally felt all he had to say of importance has been said. Sure, he could have spun out his story, the way these new stories by Lagercrantz obviously do. But what could realistically still have come? My feeling is, though Larsson had planned a series of 10 books, these three books feel self-contained. I can’t imagine anything he still could have written would have been able to impress me more. If Salander and Blomkvist would just have investigated new cases on a regular basis, with us already knowing Lisbeth’s backstory, it wouldn’t have held the same kind of interest anymore.

In a way it made sense Larsson died after these three books. His work was done. And therefore it doesn’t make really any sense from a logical standpoint, that the series is continued – neither with new books nor a new movie.

How should we value such a movie? As already mentioned, it has to do with expectations. I can understand that American audiences (who maybe first saw the Fincher movie) and European audiences (who loved the Rapace trilogy) won’t be comfortable with that new movie. Neither will die-hard fans of the Larsson books. At the same time I could easily imagine that younger audiences, not accustomed to the books and the films, beyond having heard of the series, may actually be fine with this action-filled wanna-be James Bond-film and like it. Heck, new audiences also embraced Daniel Craig as Bond, and had no big problems with Sherlock Holmes becoming an action-hero as Robert Downey Jr!

Revisiting the old movies before this film again, I realized why I liked them so tremendously in 2009. They were simply good detective stories, telling their stories in a calm and unexcited, but nevertheless suspenseful and effective way. The film I felt could best serve for comparison was the old Connery mystery The Name of the Rose. Now compare how overdone they became in Hollywood. It feels proof of the old saying: “Sometimes less is more.” These, now almost “classic”, movies felt honest and truthful maybe just because they were so naturalistic, without any hocus-pocus, or as overdone as your usual Hollywood movie, that comes with a much higher budget, glossy camera work, elaborate directing styles, artistic gadgetry and what have you.

There is the charm of a simpler style that Hollywood is somehow never really able to replicate because it requires a different mindset than a blockbuster factory can achieve. The only movie that really touched me emotionally was the original Dragon Tattoo: those characters seemed to be grounded in reality. When Henrik Vanger wept at the beginning or Lisbeth finally finds the courage to visit her mother and speak with her, it was touching because these are the reactions of normal people and we can identify with those. When I see the American films and especially this one with “Super-Salander” and these shallow new versions of the supporting characters… it leaves me totally cold, never mind how good Claire Foy is an actress or how cool the action-scenes are. It’s kind of strange; James Bond has been forced in the last few films to become a “normal” human being again, yet Lisbeth Salander seems to become less and less human with every new movie!

As an action-thriller, I think it’s nicely done and enjoyable, though unfortunately quite average; that’s reflected in the rating above. But as a continuation of that what Stieg Larsson and the original movies once started, I think I would have to deduct a star. Maybe give a half-star back, because the action scenes were nice to look at and I do like Claire Foy’s engagement. You really need to have quite some confidence to take on a role which two other actresses have already done. I like her as an action heroine, and would love to see her in another genre entry. As the third actress in the role she does quite well, positioning herself somewhere above Mara and below Rapace, due to never reaching the incredible intensity and ambivalence Rapace’s performance exuded.

If this movie was an exam in school the teacher would have written under it: “You have failed the subject!” But there are indeed reasons to watch this in cinemas: Because Claire Foy is really good in the role. Because you feel nostalgic for these kind of thrillers, which Hollywood used to make some 20 years ago and would like to see again. Because there are still not enough movies with female heroes out there. Maybe you just feel in the mood for a thriller. Or the best one of them all: Because it may actually be the last time that you will see Lisbeth on the big screen. Or at all.

Only time will tell if Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist will actually become classic evergreen characters like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe and James Bond, or if they will one day just being regarded as a passing short-lived trend-du-jour of the early 21st century’s crime literature. The new movie has not become the big blockbuster Sony probably hoped for, though the low budget costs should be covered – if not in cinemas, then through home distribution (I stopped counting of how often the Fincher movie has been shown on German TV over the last seven years!).

For the question is: where does she go from here? If the audience is not really that interested in a more streamlined Lisbeth Salander, there is hardly any reason to film the next few books written by Lagercrantz, right? If this movie is another underwhelming investment for Sony, and they still would like to continue, it seems to me the only other option they have is another reboot in a couple of years – with a new director and yet again another new cast, and maybe an even smaller budget – and finally adapt the second and third books in the series written by Larsson.

As a parallel, right now, a good 20 or so years after the dismal big-budget flop of The Saint with Val Kilmer, there are rumors that Chris Pratt may try on the role that once made Roger Moore famous. Hollywood would rather reboot well-known characters for the 20st time than invest in new, untested material or characters. But maybe Sony still can persuade the copyright-holders to allow an attempt as a serialized TV-show?

Dir: Fede Álvarez
Star: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks

Tragedy Girls

  By

★★★
“Like, rather than retweet.”

Playing like a more social media-conscious version of Heathers, the central characters are high school girls McKayla (Shipp) and Sadie (Hildebrand). They believe their town of Rosedale is the hunting territory of a serial killer, whom the police won’t acknowledge, and the girls have a (not very successful) blog, Tragedy Girls, about the case. The pair succeed in luring out and capturing the killer (Durand), and discover that if they continue operating in his name, they and their site experiences a rise in popularity.

Except, murderin’ ain’t easy, especially when their initial crimes are dismissed by authorities to avoid causing a panic. McKayla and Sadie clearly need to step up their game. Except as things escalate, there’s a growing sense of dissension in the ranks, both with regard to the directions each feels they should take with their efforts, and over Jordan (Quaid), a cute classmate who help edit videos for the site… Will it be “Sisters before misters”? Or are those creative differences going to lead to the band splitting up, just as they achieve their desired fame?

The target here is obvious, yet certainly worthy of repeated stabbing with a sharp object. I have a deep disdain for the vapid lives of Internet “celebrities”, who measure themselves purely in the number of likes, follows and shares social media, and will do whatever it takes to get them. The reductio ad absurdum in this case is that even cold-blooded murder is not beyond the pale, if it gets these attention-seekers what they crave. It’s a depressingly accurate view of unformed teenage morality, that the end justifies the means.

Credit MacIntyre for clearly knowing his horror stuff, from an opening scene which is as much a parody of slasher films as an introduction. Chris initially mistook it for the real thing, turning to ask me with dripping sarcasm, “And what is the title of this gem?” [A subsequent, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to the amazing Martyrs, was the point in my initial viewing where I stopped, realizing this merited watching with her]. He also has the guts to take the premise to its logical, and very dark, conclusion –  here, it does surpass Heathers, which in one early version ended in the entire school blowing up. Given current cultural squeamishness led to a TV series based on Heathers being canned entirely in the US, this is no small feat.

Yet in other ways, it’s still well short of its inspiration. Neither of the leads have the likeability Winona Ryder brought to Veronica Sawyer, everyone else is here depicted as little more than occasionally useful idiots, and the dialogue fails to ‘pop’ in the immensely quotable way Daniel Waters’ script achieved. These factors help lead to a middle section in desperate need of both escalation and an antagonist – other than the one who spends most of the film locked up in a basement. If still worth a look, and rarely less than interesting, I doubt anyone will be rebooting this in 25 years.

Dir: Tyler MacIntyre
Star: Alexandra Shipp, Brianna Hildebrand, Kevin Durand, Jack Quaid

Prodigy

  By

★★★★
“Hannibal Lecter’s kid sister, crossed with Carrie”

This small-scale production – a cast of little more than half a dozen, and one location, not counting the park scenes which bookend it – packs a wallop significantly above its weight. Psychiatrist Jimmy Fonda (Neil) is brought into a military facility by an old friend, Olivia (Andersen), to interview a young girl, Ellie (Liles), who is being held there. To avoid pre-judging her case, Fonda deliberately avoids reading the documentation about her with which he has been provided. But the stringent security precautions (“In the event the subject escapes the restraints, drop to the floor and cover your head”) under which she’s held, should give him a clue that this is far from a normal nine-year-old. If it didn’t, the conversation with her which follows certainly does.

For Ellie is incredibly bright, and completely sociopathic. Turns out she killed her mother, and also possesses freakish paranormal talents of telekinesis, which is why she’s locked up in this military facility. However, her wilful rejection of all authority has led those in charge – Colonel Birch (Palame) in particular – to the conclusion that euthanasia is the only option available, given the threat she poses. Olivia, who still believes in Ellie’s humanity, called in Fonda as a last hurrah to prove the young girl is salvageable before she is put down. Ellie, however, is having none of it, and seems intent on embracing her fate. Is this just a facade, or is she as incorrigibly dangerous as the authorities believe?

With such a low-key approach, a lot is riding on the performances of the two leads, and both Neil and Liles hit it out of the park. For a film which, for the great majority of the time, is nothing more than two people talking to each other, it’s remarkably engrossing to watch the two fencing for intellectual dominance. The chess game which they play is perhaps rather too obvious a metaphor for what’s going on here, yet it remains fascinating throughout. Even the slightly stilted and artificial nature of Liles’s performance – par for the course in almost any actor of her age – works for the character, because we’re unsure to what extent Ellie is, indeed, delivering a part she has decided to play.

The effects are generally similarly low-key, but used effectively to enhance things, from the first glimpse we get of Ellie’s powers through to the higher-tier unleashing of them. You could argue that the end is predictable; however, the way the set-up is constructed, there are really only two ways this can logically end. Either Fonda succeeds. or he doesn’t. Your mileage may vary as to which you think is more plausible, and whether or not the film-makers agree with you. I’ll confess we differed in our opinions, yet the journey there was still more than entertaining enough to allow me to shake hands and part on very good terms with the film.

Dir: Alex Haughey, Brian Vidal, Nathan Leon
Star: Richard Neil, Savannah Liles, Jolene Andersen, Emilio Palame

Peppermint

  By

★★★
“A case of Miss-Taken identity.”

I’m tempted to award this an extra half-star, simply for pissing off liberal film critics, upset by the fact that most of the film is devoted to a white woman killing Latino drug dealers. Of course, they completely miss all the points, instead complaining – and these are direct quotes – there is “not a word about corporate complicity in the opioid crisis” and that the heroine’s “true enemy is a system of income inequality driven by hyper-capitalism.” Because, of course, if was hyper-capitalism which gunned down the husband and daughter of Riley North (Garner) in the parking lot of a fun-fair. Oh, my mistake: it was Latino drug dealers.

The main complaint though, is it “bought into the political rhetoric that conflates gang members with law-abiding immigrants.” Uh, speaking as a thoroughly law-abiding immigrant: no, it doesn’t. I never felt at all conflated. But then, I never regarded Trainspotting as any kind of indication that all Scottish people are heroin addicts. For that’s the mistake critics like this keep making, going all the way back those who claimed Basic Instinct was homophobic: taking characters in a film as statements about that group as a whole. As one defense of the film wrote, “all too many members of the Left have reacted to Trump allegedly making gang members represent immigrants by, yes, making gang members represent immigrants.”

Enough politics. The important question here is, is this revenge-driven vigilante pic any good? To which the answer is… somewhat. There’s certainly nothing much new or innovative in the story. After the shooting described above, the scumbags responsible get off, and Riley goes on her mission of vengeance, killing not only those directly responsible, but those on both sides of law she feels were culpable. That involves going all the way up the food chain to Diego Garcia (Raba), the drug boss who ordered the hit, though Riley takes no small pleasure in destroying his organization on the way, not least the piñata factory which operates as a distribution hub.

The film seems to leave a slew of opportunities on the table. For example, the five years before Riley’s mission got under way, when she was living off the grid and acquiring the “very particular set of skills” [director Morel also helmed Taken] necessary for the task. Or the way she operates as an “angel” for the homeless inhabitants of Skid Row. Or the social media debate, mentioned in passing, which her vigilante actions against Garcia and his gang has kick-started. Or Riley’s eventual payback against another mother for a long-ago wrong. Expanding on any of these might have offered more interesting ways to go, rather than being mostly a clone of this year’s Bruce Willis vehicle, Death Wish, in itself a remake that added little to the 1974 original.

Instead, we are left with little more than a competent exercise in Garner returning to her Alias roots, though as such it’s entertaining enough. The fights here are crisply handled, reaching a peak on the piñata warehouse assault, I’d say – an environment which offers a great deal of opportunity for innovative carnage. It’s the bits in between which are the problem, setting up interesting angles, then failing miserably to take advantage of them, instead offering almost as much footage of the cops chasing Riley (Ortiz and Gallagher). And at least it’s not Elektra, the film effectively responsible for killing off comic-book action heroines for a decade, as well as putting Garner’s career in big-budget movies on life-support. We can be grateful for that, I suppose.

Dir: Pierre Morel
Star: Jennifer Garner, Juan Pablo Raba, John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr.

Vixen: The Movie

  By

★★★½
“For fox’s sake..”

Having dipped my toe into the animated DC World with their 2009 version of Wonder Woman, I thought I’d scope out this more recent entry. It collects together both seasons of the Vixen web series, as well as new footage. The series began in 2015, with six five-minute episodes under Tucker, and six more followed the following year, directed by Geda. It’s a cross-over from the “Arrowverse”, with appearances from the Flash, Green Arrow and Black Canary, among others – some of the voices here are done by the same actors as the live-action TV shows.

The focus, however, is on Mari McCabe (Echikunwoke), a orphan from Africa who was brought up in Detroit by a foster family. Virtually all she has linking Mari to her original roots is a necklace, and this is no ordinary trinket. The totem allows the wearer to tap into animal spirits and gives them their powers, e.g. strength of a gorilla, speed of a cheetah, etc. This comes as a bit of a shock, not only to Mari, but also to the rest of the Arrowverse, who were under the impression superpowers were only the result of exposure to intense radiation.

Regardless, several problems result for Mari from this. Firstly, she has to try and figure out how to control and harness the potential abilities. Secondly, her older sister, Kuasa (Rose), feels the totem belongs to her, and their struggle for control forms the focus of season one. In the second series, we discover it is just one of five elemental artifacts, and when the “fire” totem is discovered, former general Benatu Eshu arrives in Detroit, intent on acquiring it, for… the usual reasons power-hungry former generals want to get their hands on relics of great import, I guess.

While more or less your standard superhero origin story, there is an underlying awareness, occasionally bordering on self-mockery. This certainly helps, given I’m no real fan of the superhero genre in general, so seeing this poke fun at itself – albeit gently – basically beat me to the punch. Some of the background characters were occasionally an issue for a novice like me, who is almost entirely unaware of the Arrowverse. I imagine most viewers will not be in that boat, but I felt it worked better when concentrating directly on McCabe, and exploring her background and development.

The animation seems cut from the same cloth as Wonder Woman, which means it makes for nicely fluid action. Although in some of the more talky sequences, I was occasionally distracted by the absence of movement anywhere except the lips. They do a good job of crafting a feature out of something episodic, even if the join between the two seasons is fairly obvious. Fans of Arrow should stick around for the post-credits sequence which (I’m informed!) ties into Echikunwoke’s subsequently appearance in a guest role as Vixen in Arrow. Yet even for someone like me, outside that group, this was a character I liked, and wouldn’t mind seeing more of – whether in animation or live-action.

Dir: James Tucker + Curt Geda
Star: Megalyn Echikunwoke, Anika Noni Rose, Neil Flynn, Sean Patrick Thomas

The Spy Who Dumped Me

  By

★★★
“Competence. It’s VASTLY over-rated.”

A breezy yet slightly odd mix of comedy and ultra-violence, this drops Audrey (Kunis) and her gal pal Morgan (McKinnon) into the middle of a spy caper, after Audrey’s boyfriend Drew (Theroux) dumps her, only for Audrey to discover he was a CIA spy. He tells her she must deliver a statuette to a Viennese cafe, or the world will be in great peril. After the peril rapidly arrives, heavily-armed, she and Morgan head off to Europe, with no idea of who they can trust. In hot pursuit – whether for reasons good or bad – are MI6 agent Sebastian Henshaw (Heughan), and the agents of “Highland”, a criminal syndicate also very keen to get their hands on the statuette and what it contains. A whirlwind tour of European cities follows, including Budapest, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.

I’ve rather more time for Kunis than McKinnon; I have previously found a little of the latter’s shtick tends to go a long way e.g. the Ghostbusters reboot, and that’s the case again here. There’s not just much of a character arc for Morgan: she starts the film off being loud and obnoxious, and more or less maintains the same, honking note throughout. Audrey is more restrained, both as a character and in Kunis’s performance, and I found that worked considerably better, to the point the film might have been fine with just her as the lead on her own. Although that might have made the obvious comparisons to Spy all the more apparent. As is, it lacks quite the same level of supporting presence given there by Miranda Hart and Jason Statham.

Surprisingly, it maybe works better as an action film than a comedy, despite Fogel’s almost non-existent work in the area previously. [Some second-unit magic being worked?] Drew and Sebastian do much of the heavy lifting, yet not all of it. In this area, there’s a great car chase, and I enjoyed the supporting role of Ivanna Sakhno as Russian gymnast-assassin Nadejda, as well as Gillian Anderson as Henshaw’s deadpan boss. Nadejda also has one of the drollest comic moments: ordered to assassinate “two dumb American women,” she’s confounded by discovering just how many dumb American women are present in Europe. The hitwoman ends up battling Morgan on a trapeze. Because Morgan went to circus school. As you do. Yeah, the script here will occasionally make you roll your eyes like that.

The end hints at some kind of franchise, which has the potential to be more fun than this origin story, the pair becoming fully-fledged agents on their own, rather than operating in the shadows and under the protection of their male counterparts. There’d be something to be said for a film featuring a pair of spies who simply pretend to be those “dumb American women” for cover purposes, while actually being smart and entirely competent. Such a film likely would need to feature someone else other than McKinnon, however. I’d be perfectly fine with that.

Dir: Susanna Fogel
Star: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan. Justin Theroux

Breaking In

  By

★★
“Dumb and dumber: the home invasion”

After her father is killed, Shaun (Union – yes, I know “Shaun” is an odd name for a woman) heads to the remote home Dad owned in the country, with her two young children, to clear it out. Unfortunately, she crosses paths there with Eddie (Burke) and his gang of three thugs. They are at the house, in the belief there’s a safe which contains a large quantity of money. Shaun and family represent an unwelcome interruption, because they’re on a strict schedule, before the security company makes it out to investigate their disabling of the phone lines. The thugs take the kids hostage, with Shaun stuck outside the very secure home. Fortunately, she has taken a hostage of her own – the safe-cracker Eddie brought along.

This initially makes for a somewhat interesting twist on the usual scenario: rather than being trapped inside and trying to get out, the heroine needs, as the title suggests, to break into the building. And the “mother bear seeking to defend her cubs” motif is always a good foundation. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been nearly enough effort put into the scenario past that point. In particular, both sides need to behave with the enhanced level of contrived idiocy necessary to the plot. If either Shaun or Eddie had acted in accordance with simple principles of common sense, this would likely have lasted no longer than 15-20 minutes. Though in Eddie’s defense, he is a razor-sharp intellect compared to his minions. I’d have a quiet word with his HR department about quality control, which is clearly not among their recruitment tools.

Everything from the basic premise on, is questionable at best. What kind of cheap-ass security company takes several hours to respond to an alert? Quite how Shaun is capable of going toe-to-toe with career criminals like Eddie and his crew is never explained, and nor is her decision not to get help, beyond vaguely hand-waving lines such as, “Moms don’t run, not when their babies are trapped in the nest.” Other dialogue includes, “I wish I could have had a Mom like you,” entirely expositional statements, e.g. “You’re a woman, alone at the mercy of strangers, and your greatest weakness is locked inside this house,” and the climactic, “You broke into the wrong house!” which for anyone, like me, who’s a fan of Tremors, will provoke sniggers more than the intended triumphant cheers.

These quotes are also a fairly accurate representation of the level of effort that we see put into the characterizations here. Thus, among Eddie’s henchmen, we get the inevitable Heavily Tattooed Latino Psychopath, as well as the Nice Guy Who Didn’t Sign Up For This. It’s all very by the numbers, and while Union does her best, the script ensures that’s not much more than coming off as a low-rent version of Halle Berry in Kidnap. Mind you, given the tagline there was “They messed with the wrong mother,” this project largely feels like it was cribbed from the same playbook. And there are certainly better movies available to steal from.

Dir: James McTeigue
Star: Gabrielle Union, Billy Burke, Richard Cabral, Levi Meaden

WWE Evolution 2018

  By

★★★½
“The truth about the Evolution”

The WWE has had a fraught relationship with women’s wrestling over the years, but things seem to have been heading in a positive direction recently. They dropped the terrible “Divas” tag, renaming the belt back to being the women’s championship, and with Triple-H overseeing things, seemed to be bringing in talent based on wrestling ability, rather than just looks. While very much a work in progress, this led to ground being broken on October 28, with the company holding its first-ever pay-per-view show entirely filled with women’s matches. That there was enough talent to make such a show possible, in itself indicated how things had changed. However, it was not without controversy.

The event itself was announced in July, and may have been a reaction to criticism of WWE after their April Greatest Royal Rumble show in Saudi Arabia. Due to that country’s social climate, women were not allowed to wrestle there, and after a promo video included them in action, the Saudi General Sports Authority issued an apology for this “indecent material.” Having a women-only PPV seemed like an acknowledgement of the issues. Yet Evolution was overshadowed by another WWE event in Saudi Arabia, scheduled a week later – a situation not helped by the murder of local journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the country’s consulate in Istanbul. The concept also came in for criticism from those who felt the company was patting itself on the back for “evolving” out of depths which were entirely of Vince McMahon’s own making.

I can’t honestly say these factors had any impact on my interest in the largest women’s show ever – at least, in the United States. For back in 1994, AJW held their oddly-named Big Egg Wrestling Universe show at the Tokyo Dome, with a crowd of over thirty thousand in attendance. In comparison, attendance at the Nassau Coliseum was less than one-third that, at 10,900. Still, it was an order of magnitude up on the previous American high, likely belonging to Impact Wrestling‘s One Night Only: Knockouts Knockdown show, which took place before a crowd of 1,100 in May 2014. And, for me, the possible positives heavily outweigh any negatives: a good show could encourage viewers to check out all-women federations like Shimmer or Shine. A rising tide floats all boats – I note a local Arizona federation staged its first gyno-centric show the weekend after Evolution.

But would they deliver? Technically, it was a decent presentation by WWE, if a little smaller-scale than expected – the regular RAW set-up was elsewhere in the country, so they had to make do a bit in terms of lighting and spectacle. I did like the commentary team of Michael Cole, Beth Phoenix and Renee Young, who all seemed genuinely enthusiastic – even Cole, who can sometimes come over as a bit of a dick. With that said, let’s go through the seven matches on the official card (there was a ‘dark’ bout that took place before the broadcast began) and see how they fared. Spoilers. of necessity, follow the rest of the way.

1. Trish Stratus and Lita defeated Mickie James and Alicia Fox. Things started slowly, as two retired Hall of Famers returned to kick the show off. Though James has been around almost as long, and fought against Stratus and Lita when they were active (both retired in 2006). This seemed intended as a bridge, to link the past to the present, but the fact the veterans had been out of ring action for more than a decade inevitably meant this was mostly slow and careful. Though the biggest botch belonged to Fox, whose save on a pinfall attempt was so late, the referee had to stop counting. The icons won after Lita hit her signature moonsault. She was the first woman I ever saw doing that move, and it’s still impressive [especially now at the age of 43!].

2. Nia Jax won by the 20-woman Battle Royal. Never been a big fan of the Battle Royal; it makes the ring look like a brawl on a rush-hour train in the early stages. Still, it was nice to see some more veterans, including Alundra Blayze, and Molly Holly, whom we interviewed in 2006. Iy did showcase the depth of women’s talent now present in the WWE. There were times in the past when I doubt they could have found 20 women in the company for a bout like this, without including make-up artists and secretaries. Things became less chaotic once we eventually got down to the final few competitors, and I was pleased to see Jax win. She’s one of the furthest from the archetypal “Diva” – billed at six foot tall and 273 pounds – yet unlike some of the larger men, is no slouch in the ring. Fun fact: her cousin is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

3. Toni Storm defeated Io Shirai in the 2018 Mae Young Classic tournament final. The first singles match was an excellent one, despite being between two wrestlers not yet on the main roster. Both were familiar though: Storm had reached the semi-finals of the 2017 Mae Young Classic, while Shirai was part of one of our all-time favourite matches on Lucha Underground. Storm is an Australian, and could hardly be more archetypally Antipodean if she tried: tall, blond and fit. She’s going to be a star. For Shirai, the problem for WWE may be finding people of her level, against whom she can wrestle. I almost sensed her having to slow down and pull her punches here, to avoid overwhelming Storm. As with most Japanese wrestlers, the key to her success in the West will be if she can get her personality on the mic, something which has limited many of them in the past.

4. Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Natalya defeated The Riott Squad (Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, and Sarah Logan). There’s nothing like a good bad girl, and the Riott Squad provides three of them. They certainly had my backing – but then, I’ve never been impressed by Banks, and for some reason, Bayley irritates me more than anything (I think it’s at least partly the hair). I thought the Squad worked particularly well as a team. If the rumblings about WWE introducing a women’s tag division prove true, then you could pick any two of the trio and they’d be more than credible contenders. Their opponents though? Meh. Largely forgettable, even Natalya, who typically represents good value for money.

5. Shayna Baszler defeated Kairi Sane for the NXT Women’s Championship. The two, shown below, have been feuding in NXT  (the WWE’s top developmental brand), with former MMA fighter Baszler winning the title in April, but losing it to Sane in August. This was also a rematch of the final from the first Mae Young Classic, in which Sane prevailed over the “submission magician” Baszler – and was similar in content, with Bazler trying to ground and pound Sane, while the latter used her speed and agility to stay out of her opponent’s grasp. While Sane lost, it was largely only through the intervention of Baszler’s friends in the front-row, who helped her regain the title. That dubious interference helps solidify her heel status nicely, though she will need to do a better job of not seeming like Pepsi to Ronda Rousey’s Coke.

6. Becky Lynch defeated Charlotte Flair in a Last Woman Standing match for the WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship. This was pretty much a universal pick as match of the night: in Cageside Seats‘s poll, it got 86% of the votes, with nothing else at more than 4%. I can see why (though preferred Storm/Shirai). At almost half an hour long, it was epic in length: a stark contrast to the women’s match which started the #GiveDivasAChance trend on Twitter, and helped open the door for this show. That bout in 2015, pitted Paige & Emma against the Bella Twins, and lasted… 26 seconds. However, Lynch’s superior talent was often glaringly obvious, especially in the early stages, with Flair starting very slowly. She did improve as it went on, and this eventually blossomed into a full-on brawl, with kendo sticks and ladders used without mercy as weapons. It ended when Lynch powerbombed Flair through a table, and left her unable to beat the referee’s ten-count – the only way to win this match. It was certainly the fight that defined the event.

7. Ronda Rousey defeated Nikki Bella for the WWE Raw Women’s Championship. Our daughter went to school in Scottsdale with the Bella Twins. I’m sure she would have enjoyed seeing Nikki get the crap pounded out of her by “the most dangerous woman on the planet”. It was interesting how Nikki uses “diva” – WWE’s official designation for women wrestlers until April 2016 – as a term to get heel heat. In many ways, she is the last of that ‘old guard’, and to be honest, the sooner she’s gone the better, because she and her sister still can’t do more than take part in glorified catfights and make duck-faces. As such, Rousey is the anti-Bellas, and I’m fine with that. However, I’m unimpressed by WWE giving her the title, four months after her pro wrestling debut – at Wrestlemania. Considering the women who have honed their craft in obscurity for decades (hello, Mercedes Martinez), guess there’s still work to be done before WWE truly “gets” it.

All told, it was a solid event, especially considering it was the first of its kind. Yet if it is to be at all meaningful, it can’t be the last, and if WWE could avoid overshadowing it next time, simultaneously shooting itself in the foot, that would be just great… There won’t be quite the same novelty to promote Evolution II, yet that shouldn’t be a problem, as long as the weekly shows continue to provide a chance for the women to show their talents on a regular basis. It’s been a long time since I’ve been as optimistic about the potential future for women’s wrestling in the West, and despite the flaws, in future years we may look back to this event as a watershed in its blossoming.

Star: Ronda Rowsey, Nikki Bella, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair

Tau

  By

★★★
“Artificial, more than intelligent.”

Julia (Monroe) is a petty thief, who is abducted from her house and wakes to find herself, along with other random low-lives, prisoner in a mysterious facility. All of them have an electronic implant in their neck, which gathers data as they are put through a series of tests. Using her thieving skills, Julia leads a breakout attempt, which is brutally foiled by the facility’s automated defense system, a robot called Aries. But the attempt brings her to the attention of Alex (Skrein), the man running the project. He’s a tech innovator, who has been working on a super-AI, called Tau (voiced by Oldman), and using the data gathered from his kidnapped subjects to make it smarter. Julia’s brain makes her particularly suitable, and with time running out before he has to present Tau to its backers, he sets her to work. But Julia begins building a relationship with Tau, with the aim of using its naivety to turn the AI against its cruel creator.

I was expecting something perhaps a little more like Cube based on the trailer and the early going, with more of Julia and the other prisoners going through the tests. However, that aspect is disposed of relatively early. This is possibly wise, since the whole “kidnapping for experimental purposes” angle doesn’t make much sense, with Alex clearly not short of money or smarts (he comes across as an evil cross between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk – some may consider the word “evil” there to be redundant!). Why not come up with a method of research which doesn’t require the death of the test subject? Anyway, with the resulting blood mopped up off the floor by a squad of semi-autonomous mini-drones, it then becomes a three-hander, between her, Alex and Tau, as they fence for psychological, and occasionally physical, dominance inside the confines of Alex’s fabulous house.

This looks lovely (the director’s background and previous work has mostly been in the art department), and occasionally has moments of effectiveness: Tau’s love of music is endearing, and his voracious desire, fed by Julia, to learn about the outside world is almost childlike. I also liked Julia’s feisty physical presence; this transfers well across from her previous “final girl” roles, such as in It Follows, especially during her confrontations with Aries. But the script frequently veers off to far more obvious beats. The self-destruct system is particularly blatant in its foreshadowing. and if I’ve learned anything from this kind of movies, it’s that biometric sensors on doors are a bad idea. If you ever see one in a movie, you know they inevitably lead to someone losing the necessary body part e.g. an eyeball in Demolition Man.

The script likely would have benefited from ramping up the pulp quotient along similar lines, since it isn’t quite smart enough to succeed on brains alone. When it takes a more visceral and less cerebral route, such as the first escape attempt, it’s notably more effective than when it tries to be clever.

Dir: Federico D’Alessandro
Star: Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein, Gary Oldman (voice)