Tag: USA

Queen Pin

  By

★★½
“Thug life.”

Rhanni (Brown) falls for the notorious Florida drug-dealer Seven (Bird) hard – to the extent she’s prepared to overlook the fact he’s married. Instead, she becomes his best friend, and works alongside him in the pharmaceutical business. When he is gunned down by his rivals, Rhanni decides to take what she has learned and put it into practice. She assembles her team of loyal but brutal associates, and sets out to take over the town. This brings her unwanted attention from two groups. Firstly, the authorities, who are always seeking to snare one of her underlings, and get him to snitch on his boss. More lethally, there’s the mysterious “Genie”, the current top dog, whose face no-one has seen. Genie sends Lil’ Miller (Michele) to take out Rhanni, only for the hitwoman to throw her lot in with the intended target.

This is one of those where I am very clearly not the target audience, and I had to keep the closed captions on to figure out every second word – basically, the ones which weren’t “nigga”, sprinkled around here as frequently as a Valley Girl uses “like”. The only reason I mind, is because it gets pretty repetitive. Authentic? Possibly: I’m not exactly in a position to comment. The aim seems to be something like a distaff version of Scarface (or La Reina Del Sur, though this 2010 film pre-dates the TV series by a year), but the film just doesn’t have the budget to be able to deliver anything like its ambitions. As a result, those who are supposedly on the top of the heap, seems to spend a startling amount of time in cheap apartments and casual restaurants – the kind of place where, I kid you not, the shrimp alfredo arrives 30 seconds after the characters order it.

Credit this for being a little more thoughtful than I expected, with Rhanni eventually deciding to escape the thug life and start a record-label (no prizes for guessing how that goes), and a final moral that’s more effective than I expected. This might perhaps be because the director is a woman – something I wasn’t aware of, given a non-gender specific name, until the end credits where she is listed as playing a waitress. There’s definitely too much bad rap, playing almost permanently in the background, which does nothing to enhance the atmosphere, and at times the result feels more like a poverty-row music video than a genuine feature film. Despite this, I’m not averse to watching the sequel, which sees the return of Lil’ Miller – likely the most energetic and interesting character here.

But not Rhanni. For, in a creepy bit of art imitating life, Jokisha Brown was gunned down in an Atlanta parking lot in July 2016, a few months after her brother was shot dead at a Jacksonville strip-club. [Her ex-boyfriend was arrested the following April and is a “person of interest”, according to the most recent reports] That’s a level of method acting to which even Al Pacino wouldn’t go.

Dir: Gin X
Star: Jokisha “Dynasty” Brown, Krystal Michele, Jacoby “Beam” Freeman, Tearon “Nephew” Bird

Ocean’s 8

  By

★★★
“Diamonds are eight girls’ best friend.”

I have not seen any of the entries on the male side of the Ocean’s franchise, so can’t say how this compares. Maybe it would have helped – I sense there were efforts to tie them together, with a pic of George Clooney (whom I assume played the late brother of Bullock’s character). Maybe it would have hindered – even with my ignorance of the series, the heist movie we get here seems more than slightly familiar. The obvious touchstone here is the gender reversal of Ghostbusters, though while that was a reboot of the franchise, this is just another entry. Female-led, to be sure, but part of the universe, rather than writing over it. Perhaps that explains why this didn’t receive a fraction of the backlash; the lack of any significant, pre-existing rabid Ocean’s fanbase is perhaps also a factor.

And, having watched this, I’m not exactly inspired to fill in the blanks in my prior knowledge. This is unquestionably competent, even reaching the level of well-made on occasion – yet is entirely bland and completely forgettable. Maybe that explains the lack of backlash; no-one could be bothered. After all, there has never been a revolt triggered by vanilla pudding. Debbie Ocean (Bullock) gets out of jail, and along with former criminal associate Lou (Blanchett), puts together a team to steal the legendary Toussaint necklace. Since this is locked in the impenetrable Cartier vaults, the plan involves first getting it brought out for a gala at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, using a bankrupt fashion designer (Bonham-Carter) and a patsy to wear it (Hathaway). Then, it’s “just” a case of replacing it with a fake and getting away with the real thing.

I guess this is a “crime procedural,” with the focus on the procedures used by the criminals to commit their misdeeds. As such, you kinda wonder why they bother throwing  so many participants into the plot, since there’s not enough time, or apparently, interest, in making them three-dimensional characters. [One is played by “Awkwafina”: I’m not sure which is more cringey, taking inspiration for your name from a crappy brand of bottled water, or spelling it that way] These are more like well-dressed chess pieces – there are points where the heavy branding echoed Sex and the City – being moved around New York to achieve the end-game for Debbie and, to some extent, Lou.

However, it’s during the actual robbery when the film is at its most entertaining, as we get to watch the scheme unfold, reminding me of the old military adage, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Fortunately, it’s an extended sequence, which helps repay the viewer for sitting through the far less interesting stuff both before and after. Again, I don’t know how closely that aspect apes the structure of its predecessors; whether or not it does, what seems a fairly lazy approach to its script is a bit disappointing. I was adequately amused. Definitely no less, but no more either.

Dir: Gary Ross
Star: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter

Cattle Annie and Little Britches

  By

★★★
“All legends end in bullshit.”

One of the subjects here almost lived long enough to see her story on the big screen: the woman who was Cattle Annie passed away only three years before the movie version was released in April 1981. Playing her was the daughter of Christopher Plummer, Amanda, in her screen debut (she already had stage experience off-Broadway), while the role of Little Britches went to another near-newcomer who would also go on to fame in her own right, Diane Lane. It was based on Robert Ward’s book – he co-wrote the screen-play – and seems to take a fairly fast and loose approach to the facts of the pair’s lives. Though given the huge uncertainty involved in those, it’s hard to complain too much.

For example, rather than being born and brought up in Oklahoma, the duo are portrayed as making their way out to California to seek their fortune, when they’re forcibly detoured to Guthrie, OK, There, they encounter Bill Doolin (Lancaster) when he and his gang visit the town. Annie falls for gang member Bittercreek Newcomb (John Savage) and they end up being taken by him to the gang’s hideout. Their knowledge of the Doolin Gang is entirely based on the embellished stories they’ve heard about them, and they’re disappointing to find reality comes up short.

The man they encounter, and whose gang they join, is considerably older than the real person. Lancaster was 67 at the time, while Doolin was in his late thirties. The girls are also played significantly older: 23 during filming, Plummer was a full decade older than the real Cattle Annie. The cinematic Doolin seems increasingly weary of the whole outlaw thing, of being pursued by the relentless Bill Tilghman (Steiger), and has little or no interest in living up to his own mythology when he meets the pair. But Cattle Annie’s belief in the legend, at least somewhat reignites the fire. Though after his capture, Doolin returns to fatalism, and it’s up to the girls to stage a rescue mission, when the rest of the gang would just let their leader hang.

You get something of the hardscrabble life about the pair, and how the outlaw life is one of the few routes by which they could escape their grinding poverty. As Annie says after their failed initial attempt to follow Doolin, “I’ll not be a white nigger slave woman! I’d rather burn like a fire!” But there isn’t an enormous amount going on, and the film seems to contain a fair bit of filler, such as an impromptu game of baseball, using equipment looted during a train robbery [As a baseball fan, seems doubtful the entire group of adult men would be so oblivious of the sport as they appear. This was the mid 1890’s: the National League had been running for close to 20 years, with a team in St. Louis, one state over] Though as a meditation on the dying embers of the “Wild West,” and the gap between heroic fiction and slogging through endless rain and mud, it’s effective enough, and you can see why both young leads would go on to greater fame.

Dir: Lamont Johnson
Star: Amanda Plummer, Diane Lane, Burt Lancaster, Rod Steiger

The Heat

  By

★★★
“Warm, rather than hot.”

McCarthy appears to be Feig’s muse, having starred in his last four movies, from Bridesmaids through this, and then on to Spy and the Ghostbusters reboot. The results here, also fall somewhere in the middle: while decently amusing, this mis-matched cop comedy falls short of the unexpected glory which was Spy. Straight-laced FBI agent Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) is great at her job, but disliked by her peers for her officious attitude. In order to try and win a promotion, she accepts a case in Boston to locate an elusive and unknown drug lord, Simon Larkin. There, she immediately encounters and antagonizes a local cop, Shannon Mullins (McCarthy); Mullins is also a good law-enforcement agent, but the polar opposite of Ashburn, being loud- and foul-mouthed, and no respecter of authority. Inevitably, the two have to work together, and eventually develop respect and affection for each other, etc. as they solve the case. You know the drill.

The story here is incredibly hackneyed, and making the protagonists a pair of women is about the laziest twist imaginable by writer Katie Dippold. Mind you, she co-wrote the Ghostbusters reboot as well, so part of me wonders if her elevator pitches all consist of “(insert film name), but with women!” [Though for the record, she was not involved with the upcoming Ocean’s Eight] What salvages the film are the lead actresses, with both Bullock and McCarthy in equally fine form. The latter has that hyper-acidic persona down to a T, from the moment we first see Mullins, and she tells her boss, “I’ll be there sharply at go-fuck-yourself o’clock, if there’s no traffic.” Ashburn is at the other extreme, prissily tightly-wound, yet so inept personally, she has to kidnap a neighbour’s cat for affection since hers ran off. They’re a perfect match: Mullins doesn’t give a damn, because Ashburn gives them all.

It is at these two extremes when the movie is at its most entertaining, and that’s in the early going. As the film progresses, both of the characters drift towards the middle from the edges. They generally become less interesting as a result, though there’s still amusement to be had from Ashburn’s spectacularly incompetent attempts to be a bit sweary. There’s also a gloriously gory sequence, as she attempts to carry out a tracheotomy, having seen one on television. However, not all of the comedy works, and there’s absolutely no reason why this needs a running time of more than two hours. For example, the scene where they fight each other to go through a door first, goes on about three times as long as is either necessary or funny, and the scenes involving Mullins’s dysfunctional family left me entirely cold. They’d have been better off abandoning all efforts at the drug lord plot, and just given us 90 minutes of the central pair, at the Odd Couple counterpoints of their characters, and the resulting, delightful bickering.

Dir: Paul Feig
Star: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans

Megan Leavey

  By

★★★
“A tale of dogged determination.”

The crossing of war and animal genres of film isn’t one with much precedent, and you can see why: it would be difficult to balance those disparate elements. While this does a laudable effort, and manages to avoid sliding too far into the slippery road of sentimentality, it offers few surprises, even if you don’t know the true story on which it’s based.

Megan Leavey (Mara) opts to join the Marines after the death of her best friend leaves her feeling rudderless. While she gets through boot-camp successfully, she’s teetering on the edge of a discharge when a punishment detail introduces her to the canine corps. There, she meets Rex (Varco), a bomb-sniffing dog with whom she makes a connection – despite the mutt having issues of his own. Eventually, Megan gets assigned to the corps. She and Rex are sent to Iraq, where they have the hazardous task of finding the roadside IEDs, (Improvised Explosive Devices), an ever-present threat to American forces.

It’s there that the film is probably at its best, capturing the real sense of danger, lurking around every corner and in every encounter. It’s the little things which are most chilling: she’s scolded for telling an Iraqi kid Rex’s name, because it could be used against them. Turns out, the insurgents offer a bounty on dog handlers – particularly female ones. You’ll spend a good chunk of this time on the edge of your seat, knowing that “something” is going to happen, in a way I’ve don’t think I’ve experienced since The Hurt Locker.

Eventually, something does, and the film enters the second stage. Megan leaves the armed forces, suffering from injuries both physical and mental, and wants to take Rex with her. The military, however, have other plans, and he is sent back for another tour of duty. Megan becomes a relentless pest on his behalf, and when Rex is eventually set for retirement, ramps up the campaign to be allowed to adopt her partner. Except, he has been officially tagged as “unadoptable”, and incapable of being re-introduced to civilian life – effectively, a death sentence.

It’s interesting that this was re-titled for the dog in the British market, perhaps reflecting a different audience. And to be honest, I’m a cat person, which perhaps limits the impact this tale (tail?) of canine-human devotion will have. It all seems a bit one-sided: what exactly did Rex do to justify all Megan’s efforts? I’ll happily accept our cat sitting on my head and purring loudly at 6am, even if I suspect it’s less an expression of affection, than closer to “Get up and feed me, you lazy bastard.”

But regardless of species, any pet owner knows what it’s like to care, and by the end, you will be rooting for Megan to triumph. Mara’s performance is a winning one, and director Cowperthwaite is no stranger to emotionally-driven animal stories, though the work for which she’s best-known is the killer whale documentary, Blackfish. Despite some pacing problems, especially after the heroine returns home, the heart present here is undeniable, and makes for a decent movie to curl up with, alongside your animal companion of choice.

Dir: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Star: Kate Mara, Varco, Ramon Rodriguez, Common
a.k.a Rex

Lizzie Borden’s Revenge

  By

★★★
“It’s just a bunch of hot chicks in their nighties, playing Truth or Dare.”

It would, certainly, be easy to look at the poverty-row production values here, and dismiss this contemptuously as a bad film. I mean, the very first shot supposedly sets the scene at the infamous New England house in 1892, where Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. But take a look. I’m fairly sure the trash cans to the right of the house are not of 19th-century vintage. And I am almost certain the palm trees on the left are not native to Massachusetts either. Given this, the awful use of CGI blood, etc. if you were to dismiss the film as the kind of sloppy work that gives B-movies a bad name, I wouldn’t argue.

And, yet… The line of dialogue which is the review tagline above, shows impressive self-awareness, while  the storyline seems deliberately cheesy: A bunch of sorority sisters on campus lockdown stage a seance. As one of them says, “With a blood relative of Lizzie Borden sitting right in the centre of our circle, something is going to happen, I just know it!” No prizes for guessing what. To quote the film once more, “We conjured up the ghost of Lizzie Borden and now her lesbian ass is haunting our sorority house?” [This isn’t for titillation: okay, not just for titillation: one theory about Borden involves her relationship with actress Nance O’Neil]

It is at its most amusing when pushing this knowledge of horror tropes, such as when the dwindling band of sorority sisters refuse to split up, leading to a conga line through the house. The characters in question may be stereotypes – the bimbo, the nerd who spouts bizarrely incoherent lines such as “A statistically higher chance of probability”, the troubled one, etc. – but most of the performances are decent enough, and it’s all impressively gynocentric. [This movie would pass the Bechdel Test, though perhaps indicates once more the uselessness of that ludicrous metric.] The men are relegated to minor roles of no real importance, and are, if anything, even more two-dimensional than the women. They also don’t shed their clothes as much: at the risk of stating the obvious, I am fine with this.

Ricci, who plays Lizzie’s descendant Leslie, is an adult star of some renown, yet is perfectly adequate here. Overall, I’ll confess this kept me considerably more amused than I expected from the early going, when the performance of the actor playing Mr. Borden almost had me reaching for the off button (it may have been saved by the always welcome presence of cult icon and scream queen Brinke Stevens, playing his wife). Certainly, you have to get past the shoddier, cringe-inducing aspects; having a taste for the trashy end of cinema is also necessary. However, director Devine is a veteran of horror as well as exploitation genres, and inserts enough sly nods to its conventions and cliches, that I was entertained. 

Dir: Dennis Devine
Star: Veronica Ricci, Shanalynne Wesner, Jenny Allford, Mindy Robinson

Avenge the Crows: The Legend of Loca

  By

★★★½
“Though I’m still not sure what the title means…”

This feels like a low-budget project in many ways, but manages to punch above its weight, in part due to an impressive supporting cast. While Lou Diamond Phillips, Danny Trejo and Steven Bauer are nowhere near as important as their names on the cover might suggest, their presence provide a solid foundation on which the less well-known members of the cast can build. In particular, Danay García as Loca; having bailed on Fear the Walking Dead after about two episodes, I wasn’t aware of her, but on the basis of this, she’s a name on whom we’ll be keeping an eye.

Gabaeff, as well, has some interesting shots in his directorial locker. At times, this almost reminded me of Memento in the structure: it’s only at the end that you are given the necessary knowledge to  understand all that has happened. Even on a smaller scale, the layout is often fractured. More than once, a character gets a phone-call, and the film then jumps back in time, and over to the person on the other end of the line, to show what led up to them making that call. As such, it takes a bit of getting your brain around – yet the payoff, in the “Aha!” moment where you realize how it connects, is gratifying.

An interesting twist is that Loca is not the executor of the revenge, as is usually the case – she’s the target for it. Casper (Phillips) is in prison, but a henchman there, Joker (the genuinely scary-looking Flores), is about to be released. Joker is told to “send a message” to Loca, through her niece, Cammy (Rivera). But he goes further than Casper intended, and rapes Cammy. That starts Loca on a search for protection, but the gun-dealer she visits to acquire weapons turns out to be targeted for some retribution of his own, and Loca is dragged into that as well. Handling all this will require her to navigate dangerous waters, and bring together enemies to face a common foe.

There’s a strong scent of grim reality here: I don’t know if the tattoos everyone is sporting were “real” or not (likely a mix), but I don’t think I’ve seen a more inked-up feature. You get the feeling the people involved are largely familiar with the environment in question – not least, of course, Trejo, whose background as a felon-turned-star actor deserves to become a movie of its own. Here, he plays the owner of the bar where Loca hangs out, and is as gloriously gruff and down to earth as ever. The rest of the cast all fit their roles well. If the eventual resolution (where Bauer eventually turns up, after we had virtually abandoned hope!) feels a little unlikely and convenient, given the complexities of what had gone before, this doesn’t undo the generally solid work here. It’s better than I expected going in.

Dir: Nathan Gabaeff
Star: Danay García, Emilio Rivera, Michael Flores, Angelique Rivera

Breakdown Lane

  By

★★
“In need of some roadside assistance.”

An initial twist on the zombie apocalypse and an appealing heroine aren’t enough to save this. By the end, while said heroine has transformed into a mayhem-dealing machine, any fresh elements have been discarded, for a low-budget rehash of ones which we’ve seen far too often already. It starts intriguingly, with Kirby Lane (Moore) “ambushed” by a woman in a camper with a sick man at a gas station, while on the way to meet her boyfriend (Cushing). When her car breaks down in the middle of absolutely nowhere, the only connection to the outside world is Max (Howell), the agent for her on-board emergency help provider. But things in the outside world are deteriorating rapidly, and the tow-truck Max dispatches… well, let’s just say, it might be a while. Meanwhile, Kirby has to handle the perils which threaten her, including humans both infected and cannibalistic, as she tries to fulfill her promise to link up with Max.

The combination of zombies and deserts reminded me of It Stains the Sands Red, which I’d recently seen. And, like there, the makers apparently realized half-way through that the remote setting they’d chosen couldn’t actually sustain a feature, and opted to revert back to over-familiar tropes. While ending with the same overall grade as Stains, it gets there in a rather different way. This clearly has a far smaller budget, and is significantly less technically-accomplished [if the faux comic-book interludes don’t annoy the hell out of you after ten minutes… Wait longer…] But unlike Stains, it has a heroine who comes over as genuine and likable. Courtesy of Moore’s performance, you want to see Kirby survive, and that goes some distance to help paper over the obvious cracks.

Some distance, however, remains short of enough. The contrivance of having Kirby push her car across the terrain, as shelter and so she can keep hanging out with Max, is flat-out ridiculous. And once she gets back to civilization, the film can do nothing except bang out the low-budget zombie notes with which any genre fan is already familiar. Kirby’s transition into a tooled-up bad-ass momentarily piqued interest here, except it comes out of nowhere – and serves no particular purpose either, since there isn’t enough time left for it to become a significant factor. By the end, it has largely dissolved into another cheap horror film, indistinguishable from the rest, and neither particularly good nor bad as such things are concerned.

Although, here’s something odd. The film makes much of its Canadian-ness in the end credits, but unless they’ve started growing saguaros up North, looks to me like it was largely filmed in an utterly uncredited Arizona. That applies both to the desert scenes and the later urban ones. In particular, there’s a garage which is located about three miles from GWG Towers here, and one of the post-apocalypse vehicles seems to belong to a cosplay group we’re familiar with, the Department of Zombie Defense. Sheesh, how’s a state supposed to grow its film industry?

Dir: Robert Conway, Bob Schultz
Star: Whitney Moore, Stephen Tyler Howell, Aric Cushing

She’s Crushed

  By

★★½
“An object lesson about not sticking your dick in crazy.”

Playing somewhat like a more brutal version of Fatal Attraction, this sees Ray (Norlén) help out the girl next door, Tara (Dickinson) with some heavy suitcases she’s trying to move into her car. From this eventually stems a one-night stand between the pair, made all the more unfortunate by Ray’s girlfriend, Maddy (Wehrle) being stranded by the side of the road with a flat, while the pair do the dirty deed. Ray then discovers Tara’s darker side: and when I say “darker side”, I mean she makes Alex Forrest of Fatal Attraction look like a bunny-boiling beginner. With the aid of a condom from their dangerous liaison, she frames him for the rape/murder of his boss, forcing him to help her get rid of the body. And Tara is only getting warmed up. Wait until she gets her hands on Maddy…

Unlike Attraction, there is never any sense of doubt as to the woman’s sanity. Right from the get-go, it’s perfectly clear that Tara is barking mad, and likely already a killer; those suitcases mentioned above seem to contain the body of a previous victim. There’s some backstory about a severely-abusive father – one whose abuse of Tara continues right to the present day – and a mother in an asylum. It’s not really necessary, especially following the scene where we see her shaving her armpits with a carving knife. After that, very little more has to be said. Of course, she’s a relatively high-functioning psycho, in that Tara can come over as perfectly normal in everyday conversation. This, and her physical attractiveness, do make Ray’s interest seem somewhat plausible, along with the shrewish nature of his current girlfriend, although there’s so little build-up to Tara’s night with Ray, it’s a bit eyebrow-raising.

Indeed, events unfold in a way that’s rather too obvious for the first hour, with Tara alternating wildly between over the top Generic Loony (TM) and eye-blinkingly adorable, without any particular impact or development. Only after she kidnaps both the target of her affection and his girlfriend, does this achieve a degree of disturbing brutality, far beyond what Attraction depicted. And that’s exactly the territory which low-budget films need to inhabit, in order to succeed (or, at least, be memorable): where Hollywood fears to tread. If you’re not crinkling your toes up by the end of that sequence, you’re not paying attention. Does that 10 minutes justify the existence of the entire film? I’d likely need some convincing of that, and for a supposed military veteran, Ray finds it remarkably difficult to escape from the clutches of not exactly powerful Tara. At least, until the plot requires it, anyway.

Bonus points to the makers, for their use of videos on a Youtube channel, “taraiscrushed”, as a viral promo for the film telling Tara’s backstory, beginning more than three years before it was released. That’s planning ahead…

Dir: Patrick Johnson
Star: Natalie Dickinson, Henrik Norlén, Caitlin Wehrle, Keith Malley
a.k.a. Crushed

Mommy’s Secret

  By

★★½
“Mother by day. Bank-robber… also by day.”

This low-key Lifetime movie stars Carpenter as a literal soccer mom, Anne Harding, right down to the minivan she drives, taking daughter Denise (Grey) to her practice. Denise is a hot prospect, with college scholarships beckoning. However, life for the rest of the family is not so smooth. Anne lost her husband and is in financial difficulties, mostly because of the never-ending gambling debts run up by her other child, Kyle (DiMarco) to local thug Quinlan (Mitchell). Anne has tried to help, only to find herself robbing banks on behalf of the boss. It helps that she wears a fake beard and mustache, so the police are looking for completely the wrong gender. But it takes its toll on an increasingly-twitchy Anne, with Denise eventually putting together the pieces to realize her mother is responsible for the recent crime spree.

It is all, of course, moderately ludicrous, although the movie seems to be aware of this and plays it slightly tongue-in-cheek, e.g. focusing on the PTA sticker on Anne’s getaway minivan. I also have to say, for a family supposedly in dire financial straits, they have a lovely and extremely large house. Downsize, pay off Kyle’s debts and there’s no need for any of this felonious larceny. Even the robberies are… well, polite to the point of being positively Canadian, with everyone just believing Anne when she hands over the note saying she has a gun. And do not even get me started on Denise’s football games, which are the least convincing bits of sport I’ve seen committed to film in quite a while. No wonder Team USA didn’t qualify for the World Cup [that joke will firmly date this review!]

However… it’s all still just about adequately entertaining, helped by Carpenter’s winning performance. She’ll always have a bit of a spot in our heart, thanks to her work on Buffy, and here she gets to play the most screwed up soccer mom since Orphan Black. There’s a good twist to turn things around as we head into the third act, which I did not see coming. And Anne has to demonstrate an admirable degree of bravery after Quinlan decides to “encourage” her ongoing participation by snatching Denise. This helps it skate just this side of entirely laughable, even if Charisma pretending to be a man will always be no more credible than those martial arts films where Michelle Yeoh does the same.

In the film’s defense, there do appear to have been a number of not entirely dissimilar cases in real life,  where women at the end of their financial tether turned to robbery. Though I strongly suspect the final outcomes of those cases, were nowhere near as heart-warming as what is portrayed here [and this being Lifetime, saying so doesn’t exactly count as a spoiler]. The moral here is less don’t rob banks, and more, don’t play so much poker in shady local bars to the extent that you need to take a loan out from the owner. Truly a lesson we can all take to heart.

Dir: Terry Miles
Star: Charisma Carpenter, Sarah Grey, Amos Mitchell, Adam DiMarco