Tag: USA

Get My Gun

  By

★★★½
“Inside out.”

You could accuse this film of pulling a bait-and-switch. The first thirty minutes are set up to point emphatically towards one scenario. It then goes off in a completely different direction for much of the final hour – one very clearly inspired by French New Wave of Horror masterpiece, À l’interieur (Inside). Then it circles back around to kinda-sorta tie up the loose ends. Fortunately, I came into this one with almost no preconceptions. A poster of a nun wielding a shotgun? That’s all it took to add this one to my watch-list, and whatever happened thereafter was alright with me. Providing it delivered on the promise of a heavily-armed Sister of No Mercy on the advertising, at least.

It does, somewhat – though I have reason to doubt her nun authenticity. It’s Amanda (Hoffman), whom we first see forcing a man into the trunk of her car at the point of her boomstick. We then flashback to her working as a hotel maid, alongside BFF Rebecca (Casey). One day, Amanda is raped by a hotel guest (Jousset), whom we recognize as the man getting trunked, and ends up getting pregnant. She decides to keep it – that’s a discussion in itself – but to offer the baby up for adoption, and the selected parent is Dr. Catherine Gilden (Rubino), who initially appears perfect. Key word there: initially. Because Catherine becomes too stalkery for Amanda’s tastes, so she breaks off the arrangement. Which is where the film makes a sharp right.

Admittedly, in the annals of poor decisions, Amanda escaping her stalker by going to a remote cabin owned by Rebecca’s dad, is probably not the best idea. Anyone who has ever seen a horror movie can predict how well this works, i.e. not at all. After a brief homage to The Shining, we’re off to the races, with Catherine and Amanda engaged in a no-holds barred battle over the unborn child. Well, some holds barred: Inside, now that was truly no-holds barred, most memorably when Beatrice Dalle tried to excavate the disputed foetus with scissors from its mother. Nothing so extreme here, although this does have its moments. For good reason does Amanda proclaim, “Why won’t you fucking die?”

I would probably have to admit, this is rather more fun than the early going, though the relationship between Amanda and Rebecca feels genuine. You will probably learn more about the process of cleaning hotel rooms than you wanted to know, and it feels as if the makers suddenly realized the movie they originally set out to make wasn’t very interesting. I feel the second half makes up for it, and it’s clear by the end, when we circle round to her assailant, that Amanda has been changed by her experience. I certainly have questions, not least about Rebecca’s fate, and its definitely not as grindhouse as it thinks it is. But as a nasty slice of female empowerment, I reckon this certainly has its moments.

Dir: Brian Darwas
Star: Kate Hoffman, Rosanne Rubino, Christy Casey, William Jousset

Agent Jayne: A Woman with a Mission

  By

★★
“Just say no to drugs.”

What’s unusual here is that, allow this is an American production, the cast and crew are almost entirely of South Asian origin. Which is fine, except that writer/director Gil has an imperfect grasp of English. Witness the opening voice-over, which I present verbatim: “There are three wants which can never be satisfied. That of the mastermind who want more, that of the peddler who pray for more, and that of the whistle stopper who don’t know when to say enough.” Um, yes? Fortunately, it’s not too dialogue-heavy, and the plot is mercifully basic, albeit needlessly cluttered up with jumps around in time of weeks, months or days, which a more skilled creator would have avoided.

The heroine is Jayne (Sood), an agent for some law-enforcement group, I guess – the film is vague on detail – under Chief Collins (John). Having successfully solved a five-year old murder case, her next mission is to take down drug lord Alberto Trapani (Massey), whose product is threatening the youth of the city. Her investigation basically consists of Jayne wandering round and catching his minions, who for some reason tend to carry out drug deals in woodland glades, counting their money while sitting at the base of a tree like cartel pixies. Interrogating them eventually gets her the location of Trapani’s lair, so an army battalion is mobilized to take down public enemy #1. Oh, my mistake: the authorities just send in Jayne with a handgun for a spot of extra-judicial murder.

The budget for this was reportedly fifty thousand dollars, and that seems about right. There was clearly little to spend on most aspects of the production, with hardly any action to speak of, and a script in undeniable need of revision. For instance, at one point, Jayne says, “With every step forward, I risked exposure.” Which might make sense, if not for a earlier TV news headline, which boldly trumpets, “Agent Jayne’s next target: Alberto Trapani.” Good thing drug lords don’t watch television, I guess. These kind of embarrassing gaffes leave the whole production feeling like the work of enthusiastic amateurs, rather than professionals.

However, I didn’t hate it. There are occasional moments which work, such as Trapani’s associate Arthur (Bajpay) losing his daughter to a drug overdose and switching sides as a result. His heartfelt speech is genuinely affecting, while the clear and strong anti-drug message is laudable. The acting is generally okay, with Sood able to do her best with lines that, as mentioned, could use considerable additional polish. I also liked the synthwave soundtrack, cobbled together from various public domain sources, but on some occasions providing a sorely needed energy for the scene on which it sits. The end promises Jayne will return in “Misssion 2” [sic], taking on a militia involved in human trafficking. With more action and a better script, I’m down for this – though I wouldn’t bet on either flaw being fixed to any significant degree.

Dir: Waqar Peter Gill
Star: Shalini Sood, Uriel Massey, Ashutosh Bajpay, Julius John

Queen of the Ring

  By

★★★
“Bit of a test of stamina.”

Coincidentally, I watched this the night after Sinners, another period piece which looks at the place of a specific culture in society. There, it was music in predominantly black society of the thirties; here, it’s professional wrestling in the overwhelmingly white society of the fifties [the presence of in this WWE champion Naomi as Ethel Johnson, feels very much a token gesture]. Definitely fewer vampires in this, however. It’s the story of Mildred Burke (Rickards), who went from working as a waitress in a diner, though wrestling at carnivals, to become one of the biggest draws in the ring of her time. The end of the film calls her the first woman to become a millionaire through sports. 

It’s not an easy journey, being both helped and hindered along the way by sometimes manager, sometimes promoter, sometimes husband, sometimes abusive bastard Billy Wolfe (Lucas). She also has to deal with scepticism regarding her talent, other wrestlers and promoters trying to muscle in, and even legal barriers, with many states forbidding women’s wrestling bouts outright [In the UK, the city of London banned such matches until as late as 1979]. All while also being a single mother, trying to bring up her son. This builds to a battle for the Women’s Wrestling World Championship in 1954, pitting long-running title holder Burke, against her now ex-husband’s wrestler, and Mildred’s long-time rival, June Byers, whose dislike of the champion goes back to the carnival shows. 

Definitely the best thing about this is Rickards, who very much looks the part of a wrestler: fit and well-toned, without ever seeming muscle-bound. Though it is odd how little she seems to age over the course of proceedings – likely close to twenty years all told, if the age of her son is any guide. Beyond the mere physicality, the Mildred we see here is also a warm and winning personality, and it’s very easy to root for her. As a fan of wrestling in general, I enjoyed the glimpse into the past of the pastime, and it treads a decent line between being accessible to non-fans, without dumbing everything down too much. Though there are some goofs, in terms of period wrestling: tapping out in submission only started in the nineties. 

The main problem, and it’s a significant one, is the film is far too long, at a hundred and forty minutes. It’s clear that writer-director Avildsen was in love with his own script, but there are long chunks – mostly in the second half – which feel closer to soap opera. The whole scene with Burke and Wolfe buying out a whole hotel, so their black wrestlers don’t have to go somewhere else, seemed like pure virtue signalling, and caused me literally to cringe. There simply isn’t enough going on here to justify the running-time, and while the good stuff here is often very good e..g the lesson on how to cut a good promo, it definitely feels like a case where less would have been more. 

Dir: Ash Avildsen
Star: Emily Bett Rickards, Josh Lucas, Tyler Posey, Francesca Eastwood

Imani

  By

★★½
“The Long Goodnight Kiss”

I’m not sure whether this is too long or too short for its own good. Could be a little bit of both. As the tag-line for this review suggests, it bears more than a superficial resemblance to a certain other action heroine film. Faith Newford (Hall) is your everyday, upper middle-class woman: married to a loving husband, physician Bryce (Shipp), with a young daughter, and running a shoe store on the side. Let’s not trouble ourselves about the mysterious amnesia, which leaves a large chunk of her past a blank slate. The problem is, Faith – or Imani, as she was previously known when she was a special ops soldier, is not supposed to be alive at all.

A blow to the head suffered during an abduction attempt triggers the return of her old skills, albeit at the cost of sending her on the run. Turns out she was in possession of information which could prove seriously detrimental to the political ambitions of General Michelle Dupree (Mirto). It’s why Imani and the rest of her squad were supposed to have been eliminated. If dodging Dupree’s goons wasn’t enough, there is another shadowy yet powerful group, who have an interest in Imani from the other direction, intending to use what she knows against Dupree. It’s all rather too over-complex, and I suspect they’d have been better off either simplifying the plot, or making it a mini-series. Hence my opening sentence.

The makers do get some things right, not least there has clearly been a decent amount of resources put into this. It doesn’t look cheap, and they also largely avoid most cliches of black action cinema. Though, inevitably, you still get drug dealers, rap music and The Man – or, in this case, The Woman – they are more incidental, and not the focus. Hall is okay as the heroine. If no Geena Davis, she generally acquits herself adequately in most of the action scenes, at least when she’s not trying to go toe-to-toe with obviously far larger and stronger opponents. For example, Raymond ‘Supreme’ Avant Jr (Lofton), who looks like he could eat Imani for breakfast, and pick his teeth clean with her spine. Yeah, their fight was a tad cringe.

At least the cinematic amnesia wasn’t too grating. For the movie simply has someone sit the heroine down and explain the past, rather than relying on the contrivance of her remembering it when convenient. Sometimes, simple is better. However, the film isn’t good at managing all the threads in the plot carpet, and it proved too much for my poor little mind to handle. I think my brain threw up a blue screen of death somewhere in the middle, during one of the more expository sections, about who was doing what to whom and why: my interest and attention never fully recovered thereafter. I did find the ending satisfyingly bleak – there’s always someone more shadowy and powerful than you – but I’d not call this more than adequate.

Dir: Mike Ho
Star: Brittany S. Hall, Demetrius Shipp Jr., Kris D. Lofton, Elyse Mirto

Road Wars: Max Fury

  By

★★
“Mock fury”

Just as Furiosa ended up being a sequel that nobody wanted, what we have here is a mockbuster sequel that, as far as I can tell, nobody was asking for. This is, at least loosely, set in the same post-apocalyptic universe as The Asylum’s earlier (unseen) knock-off, Road Wars, which sought to ride on the coat tails of Fury Road. The sequel begins with Shane (Wells, who actually appeared in the old-school Mad Max 2) being cast out of his very small tribe in the desert. It’s not long before they regret their decision not to impose the death penalty, as he turns around and shoots James dead, before heading off to join his new tribe. Five years later, James’s daughters Naomi (Shah) and Greta (Kaur) are living with their mother Sarah (Wilson) and step-father, in their secluded compound. An attack leaves the parents in need of antibiotics, so the daughters head off to pick them up. Doing so, however, puts them back on Scott’s radar, and he intends to take the chance for some long-delayed revenge.

Obviously, anyone watching this and expecting something on the scale of George Miller’s episode is going to be extremely disappointed. Me? Not so much. I’m familiar with The Asylum, and knew what I was letting myself in for. But even by their standards, this is cheap. The apocalypse happens entirely off-screen, and what you get instead is a bit of running and driving around the desert landscape. The latter is distinctly low-key, with barely half a dozen vehicles and no destructive mayhem to speak of. The two that do get blown up, the explosions are obviously digital – the studio clearly wanted to get their security deposit back from the car-hire company at the end of the day. For the classic Thunderbird, I understand that choice. However, the other is a beat-up junker of a pick-up truck, and it says a lot they weren’t willing to write off the five hundred bucks.

They weren’t willing to write much elsewhere either. After the prologue, things get kinda confusing for a spell, with it largely unclear who is attacking the family, and why. Things do eventually settle down, and we get the required bickering between the younger, headstrong Naomi and her older, more cautious sibling over what to do, who should do it, and how. I was expecting the trip to get the antibiotics to be more fraught with peril than it is i.e. not at all, with a combination lock the only difficulty faced. Mind you, the final confrontation with Shane is just as underwhelming. Despite occasionally decent cinematography, there was a specific point at which I realized my moderate and restrained hopes were unlikely to be met. This occurred when Naomi randomly smears mascara – or engine grease, it’s hard to tell – across her eyes, for absolutely no apparent reason beyond imitating Furiosa. Being a mockbuster isn’t easy, I get it. That doesn’t excuse the lack of effort here.

Dir: Mark Atkins
Star: Preet Kaur, Chandni Shah, Vernon Wells, Lindsey Marie Wilson

The Old Guard 2

  By

★★
“Old and tired.”

I was considerably less impressed with The Old Guard than some folk. I suspect it benefited from coming out during the COVID lockdown, when people were desperate for entertainment, and would obsess over any crap (see: Tiger King). Truth be told, it was really rather mid. Hard to believe it has been five years since then. With hindsight, we should probably have rewatched the original. Might have saved us having to look up the plot on Wikipedia, because the sequel assumes we remember everything about the first film, as if it were yesterday. We do not. It’s still basically about these immortals (or thereabout), who have been helping humanity through the ages. This seems initially to mean working with the CIA, which is certainly a choice.

As well as Andy (Theron), who has lost her immortality because reasons, there’s Nile (Layne). On the other side, we have Quỳnh (Ngô), who spent centuries at the bottom of the ocean, perpetually drowning, and is consequently slightly peeved. No, really: you’d expect full on psychosis, but she’s not much more than somewhat annoyed, and gets over it impressively quickly. There’s also Discord (Thurman), the first immortal, who has a scheme of her own to… Well, it’s complex, but it turns out that not only can immortality be lost, it can also be transferred between people. Death, where is thy sting? It all smacks of lazy, even desperate writing, inevitably leading to a scene borrowed from Star Trek II.

The film feels full of these missteps, lumbering clumsily from one chunk of exposition to the next. This builds to an assault on a Chinese nuclear facility, but there’s no sense of resolution. Because the film is more interested in acting as a bridge to The Old Guard 3, consequently ending in an ending which isn’t an ending. A third part is not something in which I have interest: any review of it here is likely to be out of genre obligation, rather than genuine interest. The only potential plus is that perhaps we might see more of Discord there, because in this installment, Thurman’s presence is wasted to a degree that is almost impressive. Though if it’s another five years before part 3, she’ll then be aged more or less sixty. 

On the other hand, Theron looks eerily like she did in Aeon Flux, almost twenty years ago. And the action in general isn’t bad in quality, with both her and Ngô having their moments. It is technically sound, occasionally slick, and there are some cool car moments at the beginning. But if you compare it to something like Ballerina, both the quantity and impact of the fight sequences are clearly short of the mark. If that hadn’t been the case, I’d have been willing to forgive the clunky exposition and generally uninteresting nature of the plot. But I wouldn’t say “somewhat alright” fights come close to justifying anyone’s monthly Netflix subscription.

Dir: Victoria Mahoney
Star: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Veronica Ngô, Uma Thurman

The Ballerina

  By

★★
“Not particularly on point.”

Here’s a real obscurity. 18 years old, and yet still with a mere seven votes on the IMDb. There, I had to find it by going through the director’s name, as the title brought up nothing. To be fair, it’s not even the best-known film of the year, because some guy called David Lynch made a short called Ballerina in 2007. But it turns out to be an early work from Mauser, whose Lady Outlaw we covered earlier in January. That was certainly better – as it should be, coming almost two decades later, the director having made a good forty (!) features since. It doesn’t look like his budgets have increased much, but Outlaw does a better job of working within it.

Here, the ballerina is Tara, a ten-year-old girl who sees her parents ruthlessly gunned down because of their connection to the Capello crime family. She vows to find and kill whoever was responsible, and is brought up by her big brother Angelo (Jasso). He trains her in the ways of his own profession, as a hitman for the Capellos. Eight years later, Tara (Nutting) still has not been able to take her revenge, and is studying dance at college, while working alongside Angelo. She gets a visit from the mysterious Ruby (Young), a near-legendary figure in the underworld, who offers to tell Tara who killed her parents, if she helps fix things to his advantage. But she may not like what she is told. 

Mauser clearly subscribes to the notion that talk is cheap, for it is very chatty. Sometimes, this is ok: Young has a presence which commands the listener’s attention. But too often it comes off as a bad Tarantino wannabe – and even a good Tarantino wannabe would be on thin ice. Witness the lengthy early discussion about smoking, which had me wishing I had a knitting needle to jab into my ears. Fortunately, nothing thereafter is quite as terrible. However, it’s a film more interested in telling, rather than showing. There’s a corrupt female cop (Posas) in the mix, and I liked the way all the police station scenes were shot in shadow. Clearly to hide that they couldn’t afford a set, yet it works well enough. 

The action is no great shakes, with Nutting being slow and having a limited set of moves. Certainly, there’s little or no indication of the expected balletic grace. She seems about as much a dancer as I am: I won’t see fifty again, and my knees aren’t what they used to be. Jasso comes off like you ordered Joe Mantegna on Temu, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, It all builds to an ending which strongly suggests Mauser is a big fan of The Usual Suspects in addition to Tarantino. As a pastiche of better film-makers, it’s just about okay, though the ten-year-old version of the heroine may be the most disturbingly intense thing this has to offer. 

Dir: Brett William Mauser
Star: :Amanda Nutting, Matthew Jasso, DeMarcus Young, Valerie Posas

Ballerina Assassin

  By

★★
“Let the buyer beware.”

Right in the middle of us watching this, Chris got a text from our daughter: “I think we rented the wrong version of Ballerina…” Yes, independently, she was watching the same film. The difference is, we understood what we were getting into. We knew this was a mockbuster from infamous purveyor of such things, The Asylum. I thought the concept of people mistaking Asylum movies for the real thing was an urban legend. Courtesy of our daughter, we now know better. Or worse. For this is, of course, not fit to lace up Ballerina‘s shoes, and anyone expecting it will be sorely disappointed. Yet it’s not irredeemable. I’ve seen considerably worse. From The Asylum,  in particular. 

Though I will question the title. Heroine Maria Herrera (Kaur) is not particularly an assassin. She’s really an agent, working for a shadowy government agency run by Bixby (Keating). She is, however, a former ballerina. This comes in handy for her new mission, in which the agency seeks to trap cartel head and aspiring politician Javier Aguilar (Sellar) on his trip to the United States. Maria is tasked with getting close to his wife, Carmen (Scotto), who is going to an audition for a spot in a ballet troupe. Naturally, it’s not that simple. Maria soon discovers there is someone in the agency who is actually collaborating with Javier, and has a strong desire to see her taken out of the picture. Permanently. 

As stories go, it’s fairly workmanlike. You won’t find it hard to work out who’s the mole. To be fair, the film doesn’t stretch this element out too long, which would have been irritating. It then becomes a battle for possession of a hard-drive containing incriminating evidence. Loyalties shift – Javier in particular is surprisingly sympathetic for a cartel boss – all the way till the final scene. Kaur, who also starred in The Asylum’s Furiosa mockbuster, Road Wars: Max Fury (review of that coming next week) is okay. She’s not particularly pretty, but that kinda works for the character. I was amused by her using her ballet skills to get through a laser corridor, like the kind first seen in Resident Evil.

There’s also a combat drone brought up early on, and you just know it’s going to end up chasing down the heroine. However, when it eventually does, the results are underwhelming, and this goes for the majority of the action. It’s basic stuff, with very little imagination or flair, and nobody here is able to carry it off at any level above the barest minimum. As cheap entertainment – we literally got it through our local library for free – it just about passes muster, if you’re in an undemanding mood. But it’d be much better off not inviting comparisons to what’s likely to be the best action heroine film of the year. Our daughter was highly unhappy about the deceptive marketing, and I cannot blame her in the slightest.

Dir: Michael Su
Star: Preet Kaur, Dominic Keating, Nicolas Sellar, Rocio Scotto

Lady Lawman

  By

★★½
“Badge of honour.”

After the pleasant surprise which was Lady Outlaw, I went back to the well of Mauser movies, for this one, which seemed similarly themed, but made three years earlier. It’s definitely a bit less successful. More talk, and that is almost impressive considering how chatty Outlaw was. The central performances are okay, but some of those around the edges… Hoo-boy. However, this did actually introduce me to a historical action heroine I hadn’t heard of. So let’s discuss the real F.M. Miller, though it’s clear the film is filling in a lot of blanks – not the least of which is giving her a first name, Francis. In reality, nobody seems to know what her initials stood for.

However, she certainly seems deserving of respect. She was made a deputy Marshal in 1891, and consequently worked mostly transporting and guarding prisoners. But a contemporary report said, “Miss Miller is a young woman of prepossessing appearance, wears a cowboy hat and is always adorned with a pistol belt full of cartridges and a dangerous looking Colt pistol which she knows how to use.” Here, she’s a rancher, who is brought on board by Buck Johnson (Jecmenek), to help hunt down notorious outlaw Richard Andrews (Leos). He’s an interesting character, being a Black slave-owner. Or former slave-owner, the film taking place after the end of the Civil War. He turned to outlawing, and became quite a leader, to the point his men are willing to die for him.

Which is where Buck comes in, because he lost two deputies in a suicide attack by Andrews’s men. As a replacement, he brings Francis (Jasso) on board – initially for her tracking abilities, learned before her husband was gunned down by highwaymen. However, after bringing in Andrews’ sidekick by herself, she earns her marshal’s badge, and the search is on for Andrews. This involves rather more riding and talking than anything, up until a grubby brawl in the mud during a rainstorm, which is actually well-handled. However, given the blank slate that Miller presents, I would prefer them to have given her more to do. There’s no surprises here, in particular the personal connection between her and Andrews, which is not the revelation the film seems to think.

Jasso is fine as the heroine. There’s a down to earth quality about her which is winning, and she knows it’s her gun which levels the playing field against men larger and stronger than her. Jecmenek is decent too – Buck is absolutely ruthless, which makes sense by the end of the film. “Violence solves everything,” he says. Elsewhere, as mentioned, more of a mixed bag, and that’s being charitable. Some scenes are more wooden than a fence-post, and given how dialogue heavy this is, we have a real problem. Still, based on it and Outlaw, it seems Mauser’s talents are trending in the right direction. If we get the cross-over hinted at by the end of Outlaw, I would certainly not mind.

Dir: Brett William Mauser
Star: Ryan Lakey Jasso, Jake Jecmenek, Carlos Leos, Ernest Martinez

Agent of Death

  By

★★½
“Multiple personality new world order”

I quite liked the idea here, but the execution just wasn’t quite good enough to do justice to the concept. It feels like a matter of resources to some degree. But I also feel that a few tweaks to things would have paid significant dividends. The heroine is Tara Croydon (Fox), a CIA agent who experiences a crisis after an operation means she’s not around when her father passes away. In her depression, she signs up for a cutting-edge but rather dubious experimental project under the oversight of Hype (Medina). This involves her being given the ability to transform, physically, into one of fifteen different personas which have been implanted into her.

Once she has come to terms with this, it obviously offers a wealth of possibilities for use on missions. However, this is not entirely without a downside, not least the instability of one of the personas, Maeve (Miller). As a result, Tara is cautioned against using Maeve. She also discovers eventually that the whole operation is not as officially sanctioned as she  believed, and there’s an unexpected connection to her father. The ending doesn’t exactly tie everything up, leaving the film too open-ended for my tastes. Clearly, Marder was angling for this to spawn a franchise, but since work on this apparently started in 2018 (it seems to have begun as a series called Shifter, which premiered in November 2019), I suspect everyone involved has more probably moved on to other things by now.

With regard to the resources, it tries to be considerably more global than it can manage. Tara’s first mission post-implants is to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and this is followed up by one to central Africa. Except, in both cases, it’s painfully clear that the production likely never got outside the TMZ of Hollywood or wherever. There’s no reason things had to take place overseas: I could easily come up with domestic operations that could have used her talent just as well. The other problem is the 15 personas are only somewhat different versions of Tara. It would have been much more fun to see her occupying a broad range of shapes, skills and personalities.

It doesn’t help that the thunder has been stolen by Netflix series, In From the Cold, also about a spy with the ability to shapeshift. That came out in January 2022, while this was presumably sitting on a shelf somewhere. It leaves Agent of Death looking like a knock-off, even though that isn’t the case. Something of a pity, since this contains a decent amount of hand-to-hand action (and surprisingly little gun-play for an American show involving the CIA!), with Fox and the various actresses representing her personas, doing reasonable work. On the other hand, Fox’s acting tends to come over as wooden: for example, she’s never able to sell the death of her father adequately. While the time passed here, it’s telling that the cliffhanger ending neither excited nor annoyed me very much.

Dir: Matthew Marder
Star: Alanna Fox, Hugo Medina, Samantha Grace Miller, Richard Rivera