Tag: USA

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

Candy Land

  By

★★★★
“Remy is feeling a little cross…”

Sheesh, they’ll adapt anything into a movie these days. Hey, I guess if Clue, Battleship and Ouija can become films, why not Cand… Yeah, to be clear I am joking. Do not, for the love of God, mistake this as about the quest for King Kandy. Though I am amused the Wikipedia page for the game specifically says, not to be confused with this film. For it’s actually about truck-stop hookers being stalked by a murderous psychopath. Which could, I admit, probably be adapted into a pretty decent board-game. The central character is Remy (Luccardi), an escapee from a religious cult, who finds herself stranded at the truck-stop, and befriended by Sadie (Quartin) and the other “lot lizards” there.

Remy eventually becomes part of the “team,” also including gay-for-pay Levi (Campbell), who service the truckers who pass through the high-altitude location – as well as local sheriff Rex (Baldwin). It’s a tough life, with violence a risk they face on an everyday basis, such as when a trucker shows up in a toilet stall with his throat slit, or someone decides Levi is a bit of rough. However, things escalate considerably, because the problem is: you can take the girl out of the cult, but you can’t take the cult out of the girl. After getting a visit from another member, Remy decides, as she puts it, “We must cleanse the world before we can cleanse ourselves of it.”

No prizes for guessing what that means, as if the poster doesn’t make it abundantly clear. Swab manages to do a decent job of straddling the exploitational and the thoughtful. This certainly doesn’t stint on the nudity, from the first scene which sees Sadie riding her client like she was trying to start a fire, through one of the girls taunting the cult leader by opening her legs in front of him. It’s pretty damn gory as well. But it’s not just mindless sex and violence. For instance, it would be easy for Swab to paint the victims as… well, just victims, but they’re depicted as there, and doing this work, of their own choice and free will.

I did feel that the shift from religious advocate to prostitute to spree killer for Remy was a bit abrupt. A little more time for the transition might have helped, or perhaps making her more clearly dedicated to her lethal cause from the get-go. Yet the way things turn out, perhaps indicate that was the case all along. Credit to Swab for not pulling punches either, with things continuing to escalate and the body count continuing to mount until, literally, the final shot. Hardly anyone here gets out alive, and I was left wondering if the religious fundamentalists had won. There’s a lot of films while look to recreate the bygone grindhouse era. This seeks to look forward instead, and is likely all the better for it.

Dir: John Swab
Star: Olivia Luccardi, Sam Quartin, Owen Campbell, William Baldwin
[This review previously appeared on Film Blitz]

EFC

  By

★★½
“Ducks one set of cliches, walks right into another.”

I wanted to like this more than I did, because the makers are aware of the tropes of the mixed martial arts genre, and in the first half, make a concerted (and largely successful) effort to avoid them. However, the movie is much less successful in the second half, and ends up replacing those cliches with a different set. The result leaves the film just as formulaic – albeit not in the direction I expected. It begins in expected fashion, with a title bout in the EFC, between Alexa Star (Aboya) and Cassady Jones (Rose). The former prevails, but the champion is then attacked after the bell by her opponent.

For reasons never quite explained, Star is stripped of the title, and an eight-woman tournament set up to crown a new champion. This event is hotly anticipated, due to the previous events having gone viral. However, sleazy shareholder Frank Russo (Zeppieri) has other plans, to asset strip the federation, in contrast to EFC President Donna Carter (Jones), who wants to make women’s MMA the equal of the men’s version. I was expecting the tournament to progress to the expected Star-Jones rematch, saving the company in the process. Doesn’t happen. For Cassady loses her first round bout, but Carter throws her a lifeline, suggesting that with the business degree, she can be of more help to the federation as a manager, fighting in the boardroom rather than the ring.

This was definitely not what I was expecting, and credit to the script for going in this unexpected direction. However, it feels as if they are much less comfortable in the world of high-finance, television right and leveraged buyouts. These elements never ring true, and there’s a certain point where it becomes easy to predict where things will end up. If you guess this may be with Cassady making an impassioned plea to the shareholders, to elect her to the board and let her take the company to the next level… I can neither confirm nor deny. There’s also a subplot about fighters failing their drugs tests, which gets started, then dropped very quickly, only to resurface out of nowhere as a “gotcha” for Russo.

I think I might have preferred the results if the film had stuck to the beaten track, because the action sequences are well-staged enough, that they do not deserve to get sidelined in favour of unconvincing business negotiations. All the actresses involved manage to look the part, and at least give the impression of knowing their way around a punching-bag. Less successful is Rose’s transition from MMA to MBA, especially after you’ve heard her character unleash a torrent of F-bombs at Donna for daring to suggest Cassady use her college degree. Her academic credentials should have been established first, with an intellectual fighter in itself being a novel proposition. The overall result is something which I can’t call a success. Yet as failures go, it’s definitely one of the more interesting.

Dir: Jaze Bordeaux
Star: Karlee Rose, Richard Zeppieri, Kathryn Aboya, Stephanie Jones

The Casino Job

  By

★★★
“Stripper’s 11.”

Make no mistake, this is a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women, which may well leave you with a more cynical view of human nature. But if you’re going to watch a cheap and tawdry excuse to show nekkid women… You could probably do a lot worse. The main area in which this punches above its weight is in the script, which has had some thought put into it. The viewer may actually leave the film knowing more about Nevada gaming regulations than they did going in: nekkid women and genuinely informative. I did not see that coming. It also has a final twist which will make you rethink much of what has happened.

It takes place in Las Vegas (though the less glitzy resort of Laughlin stands in for Sin City at certain points). Sleazy strip-club and casino owner Barry (Mauro) needs four of his ladies to make a good impression on his business partners, but the evening ends with one woman, Jennifer (Joiner), alleging he raped her. Due to lack of physical evidence, the cops won’t take action, but Jennifer’s friends, led by Amber (Martinez), swear to take revenge, and cook up a scheme that will relieve Barry’s casino of a good chunk of cash. The aim is more than simple larceny, but also to drop him in hot water with the gaming authorities, who require casinos have enough on hand to cover winning payouts.

Doing so requires them to bring on board a friendly blackjack dealer, Scribe (Franke), and also use their womanly wiles to ensure everything goes to plan. That’s what I meant about human nature, because every man here can be easily manipulated to do anything, with the promise of a little action. This is absolutely required by the plot, in order for the heist to work. And every woman is perfectly willing to do the manipulating. By the end, you could argue the case that nobody here, even Jennifer, should be classified as a nice person. And I write as someone who, in my youth, was not unfamiliar with strip-clubs, and so is under no illusions about the illusion, if you see what I mean.

Still, if none of the characters were likeable, the mechanics of the heist managed to keep me interested, along with the way Barry is kept out of touch and unable to deliver the needed funds. He then ends up trying to take revenge on the girl-gang, and it’s that what proves his ultimate downfall. There’s a lovely montage at the end, showing everybody getting laid… ending with Barry in jail, also getting laid. I genuinely LOL’d at that. The women are undeniably easy on the eye, particularly Irina Voronina as the club’s top earner, Paradise. Really, its clear the makers have kept their ambitions here restrained and, I suspect, on those terms, it should be considered a success. Clearly nonsense, yet was I not entertained? Yes: yes, I was.

Dir: Christopher Robin Hood
Star: Amylia Joiner, Dean Mauro, Ilsa Martinez, Jay Anthony Franke

Huntress

  By

★½
“Ze German WW2 Chainsaw Massacre”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was fairly notorious in Britain in the eighties and nineties, being famously banned on video. Naturally, this meant I had to see it, and… I was initially underwhelmed. However, I’ve gradually come to appreciate its raw intensity over the years. If I ever doubted its merits, watching this largely shameless knockoff should act as a reminder. Because it shows how flat and uninteresting the premise can be, when executed poorly. This relocate things from seventies Texas to Germany in the last days of World War II. A medevac team is trying to get injured and grumpy officer, Colonel Franklin (Christian) to a hospital before his leg falls off from sepsis.

Along for the ride are nurses Ellie (McDowell) and Annie (Sarah Hawthorne), a pacifist medic, Will (Sohns), and a couple of GIs to provide protection. It’s not long before they run into trouble and out of fuel. Fortunately – or so it seems initially – they encounter friendly, and attractive local, Helga (Savage) who gives them her homemade sausages and says she has plenty of gasoline at her house, just over this way a bit. If you have read the opening paragraph, you’ll be able to work out where the rest of the film is going. Let’s just say, the moral of the story is: do not accept smoked meats of unknown provenance, from strange women in the middle of woods. Truly, words to live by.

Yeah, turns out she is the acceptable face of a family of psychos, along with sister Greta and mother Ursula. Or maybe it’s the other way round, I forget. Naturally, the convoy members enter the house in easily disposed of ones and twos, with an utter disregard for military protocol. For example, another moral might be, don’t drop your guard in order to slow-dance with mysterious veiled women, in the middle of large, spooky houses during wartime. Only bad things can come of it. The consequences are, a great deal of slowly creeping about corridors, which the makers mistakenly think generates tension. It actually generates tedium. I mean, Colonel Franklin has an excuse, having been shot in the leg. Everyone else? Not so much.

It’s not a terrible idea, and the performances are largely serviceable. However, the parallels to Texas become more blatantly apparent, the deeper we get, all the way until a final shot which is utterly a gender reversed clone of that in TCM. But rarely does this come anywhere close to capturing the same sense of unfettered insanity. If you’re going to try and ape a stone-cold horror classic, you have to bring your A-game, because otherwise, the comparisons will do you absolutely no favours. Instead, I was more left wondering how people go from running along a corridor in one shot, to being chased through the woods in the next. This one is a nightmare, alright. Just in all the wrong ways.

Dir: Matthew M. Howe, J. Christian Ingvordsen
Star: John Christian, Braxton Sohns, Maggie McDowell, Violet Savage

Barbie and the Three Musketeers

  By

★★★
“All for one, in a Barbie world.”

Yes, I went there again. After Barbie Spy Squad, I’ve gone back to the plastic fantastic, for another entry in the crossover action heroine animated industry. This isn’t the first review here to cover a female take on the classic novel. La Femme Musketeer had already gone there, but the major difference there was, as the title implies it only had one woman, who had to keep her sex under wraps. Here, while the setting remains pre-revolutionary France, the wannabe Musketeer is openly a lady. On the high level, it is a fairly loyal adaptation, with teenage heroine Barbie – here called Corinne (Sheridan) – heading to Paris to fulfill her long-held ambition of becoming a Musketeer.

There, she’s initially spurned – albeit more for her lack of relevant experience than her gender – and has to prove herself. Naturally, there are no women Musketeers with whom she can bond, but she literally bumps into other young women, such as Viveca (Tozer), Aramina (Johnson), and Renée (Bell), with whom she finds employment as a maid in the palace. Naturally, she encounters the similarly teenage Prince Louis, and discovers that the skills of her coworkers are not limited to light housework. Together, they have to protect Louis from various attempts on his life, such as a falling chandelier, carried out by those who have designs on the royal power, before Louis ascends to the throne on his imminent eighteenth birthday.

Y’know, I did not hate this nearly as much as I feared I might. Corinne is established early on as smart, athletic and competent, though I could probably have done without her talking animals. But in general, the voice acting is enthusiastic and effective, though the women do sound a bit as if they have interchangeable heads. Bonus points for the unmistakable tones of Tim Curry, playing malevolent regent Philippe, who is next in line after Louis. The animation is… okay, I guess, considering the era. Nobody is going to mistake this for Pixar, yet it does the trick, and on occasion is actually more detailed than I expected (just not on the character’s faces – though, again: plastic, duh).

Messaging is probably considerably lighter than in the live-action Barbie movie. There’s a few statements that “girls can’t be Musketeers” – I mean, this was 17th-century France, it’s not wrong – and the resulting need to prove them incorrect. That’s about it. Instead, there’s a training montage set to the riff from EMF’s Unbelievable, which I did not have on my Barbie Bingo Card. The action is better than I expected, too, though obviously no blood, despite all the pointy objects being energetically wielded, both by the heroines and their enemies. At the final ball, no weapons are allowed in, so they have to make do, with creative use of fans, ribbons, etc. [Weirdly I read one review which said they never get to use swords, which they clearly do.] There’s also refreshingly little romance here. All told, perfectly watchable, to my near-shock.

Dir: William Lau
Star (voice): Kelly Sheridan, Tim Curry, Kira Tozer, Willow Johnson, Dorla Bell

In the Lost Lands

  By

★★★
“Bit of a lost opportunity.”

Well, this crashed and burned at the box-office in no uncertain fashion, taking in less than ten percent of its $55 million budget. While not surprising – dark fantasy doesn’t exactly have a good track record of late – it is a bit of a shame. I loved the look of the film, which is often spectacular, reminding me of things like The Chronicles of Riddick in a willingness to step back and overwhelm the viewer with scale. I am, of course, contractually obliged to watch anything with Milla Jovovich in it, and she’s her usual good value here. Bautista had a solid track record too, and he’s certainly appropriate for the role. But then, there’s the plot…

This all takes place in a harsh post-apocalyptic world, ruled over by Overlord, with his rule maintained by the church and its inquisitors, who tolerate no heresy. That would be the witch Gray Alys (Jovovich), who can compel anyone meeting her gaze to do her bidding. She is tacitly contacted by Overlord’s wife (Okereke), who wants Alys to give her the power to change her form. Doing so means Alys must journey into the Lost Lands outside civilization to find such a shapeshifter, and she hires Boyce (Bautista) as a guide on that quest. However, they are also pursued by church enforcer Ash (Joven), who is keen to bring the blasphemous Alys to heel for her reluctance to toe the line.

The stuff in the Lost Lands is great, and is where the film genuinely lives up to the “epic fantasy” tag. Frankly, that budget seems quite cheap for what you get, with some stunning landscapes and great set-pieces, including one on a cable-car which is likely to be among the best action sequences I’ll cover on the site this year. The problems arise when the film drifts away from the most basic of plot: Alys and Boyce hunting a shapeshifter, while Ash hunts them. That would, of course, be far too simple for a film based on a story written by George R.R. Martin. As you’d expect, the creator of Game of Thrones has a lot of other palace-based shenanigans involving the Overlord and his queen.

These are muddled, confusing and, frankly, not very interesting. This kind of heavy plotting is certainly not in director Anderson’s wheel-house either. If you look at his filmography, his output tends to be at its best when its most streamlined. The same applies, in microcosm, to this film. Give us Milla and Dave slicin’ and dicin’ their way through Ash’s minions, and we will be happy. The further it drifts from this elegant simplicity, the less firm is the ground on which it operates. To the point that, too often, it ends up sinking under the weight of what the script thinks is gravitas, yet in reality is nothing more than stuff we have no reason to care about. 

Dir: Paul W. S. Anderson
Star: Milla Jovovich, Dave Bautista, Arly Jover, Amara Okereke

G20

  By

★★
“Making America Grate Again.”

Amazon Prime doesn’t have the best reputation for its original movies. Indeed, I’m hard pushed to think of one which I’d want to watch again. That record is unchanged after this, a fairly ludicrous Die Hard knock-off which even an Oscar winner like Viola Davis can’t do much to salvage. It’s another in the recent series of “president in peril” films. When your movie takes inspiration from the likes of Olympus Has Fallen, you’re setting the bar low from the get-go. Then cobble together a script involving the three boogeymen of current culture – AI, cryptocurrency and white men. Finally, pretend Kamala Harris won the election, and was a military-trained bad-ass. Given all this, two stars is probably an achievement. 

US President Danielle Sutton is in South Africa with her family to attend a conference and get agreement for her plan to… [checks notes] “empower struggling sub-Saharan farmers through access to digital currency.” Where’s DOGE when you need somebody to shut down this blatant waste of taxpayer money? The conference is taken over by Edward Rutledge (Starr), a formee Special Forces soldier whom I thought was South African, but turns out to Australian. I blame Starr’s ropey accent. He plans to use the gathered leaders to create deep fakes which will tank the economy and boost the value of his crypto holdings. Naturally, President Sutton is able to slide away with the help of Secret Service agent Manny Ruiz (Rodríguez), and… Oh, figure it out yourself. 

I’ll never be averse to a good Die Hard knockoff. Unfortunately, this isn’t much cop. While Davis does what she can, being decent dramatically, and just about credible on the action (if you squint hard enough), she can’t negate the stupidity and cliché-ridden nature of the script. For example, Sutton’s whiny and rebellious teenage daughter, who – what are the odds? – turns out to be a world-class hacker, so can counter Rutledge’s plans, when necessary to the plot. And even Davis looks unconvincing when going toe-to-toe with men significantly larger than her, then straight-up outmuscling them. There are ways to handle this kind of thing, e.g. Air Force One used stealth for its hero more than strength. Director Riggen doesn’t bother, damaging the movie’s credibility. 

It doesn’t help that it’s currently hard to make politicians of any colour seem sympathetic. I have a deep cynicism about them, and frankly, Rutledge makes some credible points in his inevitable anti-government rants. I also felt a rather unpleasant racist tone to the script, with enough of the fights being interracial to leave me going “Hmmm…” Go through this thinking “White people bad”, and you’ll probably be fairly accurate at predicting the script’s twists. If generally competent on a technical level, there are still mis-steps like some obvious CGI. All films in the Die Hard genre are wish fulfillment to a certain degree. This, however, takes it to a near-stupid degree, and doesn’t provide the escapism for which I was looking. 

Dir: Patricia Riggen
Star: Viola Davis, Antony Starr, Ramón Rodríguez, Anthony Anderson

Glow Street

  By

★★½
“Women of Glow, not Women of GLOW…”

This would be a creditable little film, if the makers could ever be bothered to finish it. Yeah, it ends in what is supposed, I presume, to be some kind of cliffhanger. But it botches the landing badly, first by leaping forward two weeks instead of showing us the climax to which things have been leading up. Then, it just… ends, without resolution in any of the major plot threads. It’s a shame, because to that point, if doing nothing particularly new, this is competent in its execution, and I’ve seen a lot worse. It gets the basics right, with a half-decent story and characters: in the urban genre, this is sadly less common than you would hope.

It takes place in Atlanta, where the fictional Glow Street is the centre of the drug trade, with various factions fighting for control, with their battles spilling over into the neighbourhood, where innocent bystanders sometimes bear the brunt. After a brief “Tsk-tsk” about this in a detective’s speech at the beginning, however, morality is hard to find here. Instead, we’re plunged into the activities of Jahdai (Lynn) and her colleagues, who initially act as enforcers for Troy. But after they disobey a direct order from him, in order to take care of some personal business, they are no longer employed. In need of cash to meet their own liabilities, they decide to rob a stash house. Naturally, this doesn’t go as planned.

The main thing this probably has going for it is Lynn. She has some spectacular skin art, so looks the part, and has the attitude to match. Jahdai is certainly not somebody I would want to cross, yet manages to become someone who is not one-dimensional (another common problem in this sub-genre). Indeed, there are a slew of subplots, including a mother with lung cancer, a father who just got out of jail, and so on. It probably takes about forty minutes for the main story – the stash-house robbery, and subsequent betrayal – to kick in. Then there’s Trav (Stagg), the brother of someone killed in an earlier incident, who is out for revenge on Jahdai, largely what leads to the non-ending discussed above.

Escobar does an acceptable job of keeping the various threads coherent, and there’s no shortage of enthusiastic carnage. On the downside, there’s far too much unconvincing CGI blood, while often leaves the film looking like a Grand Theft Auto side-mission. All told, however, I was kept reasonably entertained and engaged, and it definitely looks and sounds like a professional work, rather than shot on somebody’s phone. Until things fall apart at the end, I would have been interested in seeing subsequent tales from this hood. But the writers’ inability to finish the job, leave me wary that further entries might end up pulling a similar trick. Tell me a complete story, dammit – if it’s good enough, I don’t need tricks to drag me back for more. 

Dir: Vincent Escobar
Star: Destinee Lynn, Kierra Shiday, Caleb Stagg, Natasha Eli Pearson

Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story

  By

★★★½
“Intermittently awesome.”

Regular readers will already be aware of the long history of stuntwomen, going back a hundred years to the serial heroines of the silent era. But there’s still a lot to be learned from this documentary about these fearless, and largely unsung, daredevils. Narrated by Rodriguez, it’s mostly a series of discussions between OG stuntwomen, like Epper, who was Lynda Carter’s double in Wonder Woman (and who passed away earlier this year), and members of the current generation, such as Amy Johnston, of Lady Bloodfight fame. The anecdotes shared by the former are an often fascinating insight into the struggles to be taken seriously, in a time when many directors would rather slap a wig on a stuntman.

In comparison, the modern equivalents seem a little bland. It almost feels like the adversity through which Epper and her contemporaries went, reinforced their characters. I mean: doubling for Pam Grier, as David did, feels like it would be rather more of an influential experience than doubling for Scarlett Johansson. Not that this stops some of the modern stuntwomen from complaining about inequalities in the business. To be honest, this aspect does come off as a little whiny in nature. Rather more inspiring are statements like, “I didn’t want to be respected for a girl. I didn’t wanna be good for a girl. I just decided I was gonna be really good.” That’s the kind of attitude which I respect more than blaming sexism and racism. 

Another slight weakness is, it’s quite easy to lose track of who’s who, especially once you get past the main participants, and people you recognize. Not that there is much chance of failing to recognize Jessie Graff, of Ninja Warrior fame. Though it’s a little surprising Zoë Bell – arguably the best-known of modern stuntwomen, albeit a crown perhaps now passed to Graff – doesn’t merit more than a passing mention. It’s fun simply being a fly on the wall as Graff hangs out with her colleagues, bouncing on her trampoline, or watching renowned stunt driver Evans fake drag-racing with her son, and doing handbrake turns on the roads around their property. As Rodriguez enthuses, “I love that your neighbors are cool with all this.”

It is a little weird that the two male directors talked to are Paul Verhoeven and Paul Feig. Verhoeven is his usual entertaining self, but Feig comes over as almost smugly “right-on”. Mind you, if you’ve seen his painfully earnest Ghostbusters remake, you’ll understand his mindset. The documentary does take a rather chilling turn, though justifiably so, discussing the risks faced by all stunt performers, including fractures, concussions, paralysis and even death. It’s easy to overlook, especially now when we assume everything is green-screened or CGI. Some of the stories from the veterans, of the days when safety standards were… less stringent, shall we say, are staggering. You should certainly leave this with a deeper appreciation for those willing to risk their lives and limbs, purely for your entertainment.

Dir: April Wrig
Star: Jeannie Epper, Debbie Evans, Michelle Rodriguez, Jadie David