Tag: USA

Fast Lane

  By

★★
“The Farce and the Furious.”

fastlaneAfter a freeway chase ends in a fatal crash, a policewoman (Lizette) goes undercover to infiltrate the warring gangs of car thieves responsible. As “Baby” Martinez, she helps Eve (Lethridge) evade capture by an irate car-owner and, as a result, is recruited to join  the all-female group of which Eve is a part, operating under the protection of Mama (Olivia Brown). However, Eve has a past to contend with, having defected from the gang led by Knight (Parker) – and worse still, taken his classic car with her. Unknown to her, the trunk holds a stash of drugs, whose loss leaves Knight feeling the heat from those in the criminal food chain above him. As a result, he’s prepared to go to any lengths to recover his property.

It’s not very exciting, in part because it’s painfully obvious that all the cars used here, clearly had to returned to their owners in the same condition in which they were received. Thus, this is a movie about stealing fast cars, in which no-one goes very fast, or even bumps into anything, which kinda dilutes the point of having them to begin with. The low budget is also apparent elsewhere, with a lot more dialogue than action, and people doing a lot more talking about stuff, than actual stuff. The performances are a bit variable. Lizette is okay as the lead, and I’d actually like to have seen more of Mama, whose potentially interesting back-story deserved further development. On the other hand, Parker [whom you may recognize as Dozer from The Matrix] appears to be trying way too hard to channel the late Michael Clarke Duncan, and across the board, we get a bit too much posing and not enough acting. Stephen Bauer plays the police detective supervising the operation, and literally phones in half of his lines, since he seems to spend most of his time on the police radio.

There’s some dubious logic here, with supposed boss Knight doing far too much of his own dirty work – that’s why you have minions – on the way to a finale where the guns finally come out, and the police conveniently show up at just the right moment. I went into this with minimal expectations, of little more than 75 minutes time passing without me sliding into unconsciousness. It just about managed to reach that low-hanging standard.

Dir: David Betances
Star: Melina Lizette, Anthony Ray Parker, Kenyetta Lethridge, Steven Bauer

Relic Hunter: season one

  By

★★★
“Sydney Fox and the Temple of Tomb.”

relichunterMore or less shamelessly ripping off Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider in equal measures, this Canadian TV series ran for three seasons and 66 episodes between 1999 and 2002. The heroine is Sydney Fox (Carrere), a Professor of history at “Trinity University,” who is renowned for her ability to track down historical artifacts lost for centuries – and, unlike some of her colleagues in the business, return them to their rightful owners. She is assisted on the road by Nigel (Anholt), her British assistant who is smart, but far happier in a library than taking part in the globe-trotting or fist-fighting, in which Sidney revels, and back at base by Claudia (Booth), her bubble-headed secretary who got the job largely because her father is a major donor to the college.

The episodes are almost completely standard, starting with a historical prologue, to show how the relic was lost. Someone goes to Trinity to ask for help finding it. Sydney and Nigel follow a series of clues bringing them closer to the relic. There’ll be another group hunting the same object, for mercenary or other reasons, often with an unexpected agent working for them. Expect secret passages and protective traps, some fisticuffs as Fox takes out the villain’s goons, light romantic tension, a mildly life-threatening situation and a happy ending as the treasure is found and something moral is done with it. The only things that change are the McGuffin and the country involved. The latter is generally as close as the Canadian shooting location can fake it, though the end of the season did appear to fund a trip for actual shooting: five of the last six episodes had a French setting.

It’s hardly challenging stuff, and the action is generally several level sub-Buffy, in part because Carrere lacks much physical presence. The history on view is particularly woeful too, with basic factual errors surrounding just about every “real” character. All told, after the first couple of episodes, which seemed particularly stilted, I contemplated quietly forgetting the entire idea. However, I persevered, and the series did slowly grow on me. Sydney and Nigel develop a nice chemistry, and there are occasional moments which suggest a more tongue-in-cheek approach than you might expect. For instance the line delivered on their entrance into an Amsterdam bar: “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m in a Kubrick film?”. Or, as shown below, there’s the muddy catfight between Sydney and a female adversary, which is almost as self-aware as the one between Denise Richards and Aunjanue Ellis in Undercover Brother.

Make no mistake: even by the low standards of network television, this is hardly great, being incredibly derivative, and unwilling to stray anywhere outside its comfort zone. And yet… Once I came to accept these limitations, I found myself increasingly entertained by the fluffy lack of envelope-pushing. This is the televisual equivalent of putting on a beloved bath-robe: well-worn, comfortable, and you know exactly what you’re going to get. If not something you probably want to wear all the time, there are occasions when it’s just what’s needed.

Star: Tia Carrere, Christian Anholt, Lindy Booth, Tony Rosato

The Devil’s Gravestone

  By

★★
“Blade-ette, but a good deal more chatty and cheaper.”

devilsgravestoneJaq (LaMont) has devoted her life to hunting and killing the vampires who stalk the night in the metropolis of ‘Roach City’. She became this way after her husband, Cale (Red Star), was turned by one of the most notorious of serial vampires, and the first victim of his blood-lust was their young son. He vanished, and Jaq has spent the years since trying to track him down, taking out any fangster who gets in the way. She is visited by a local detective, Dick (Nemmers), who gives her some surprising news: Cale stabbed himself to death in a local cemetery. However, the body vanishes from the morgue, and it soon becomes clear that that’s not the only strange thing going on, as a woman who was sexually assaulted nearby has gone from zero to heavily pregnant in a few days.

After a brisk and fairly promising start, this becomes increasingly bogged-down in exposition and talk, rather than action. It does have some interesting ideas, putting new twists on old ideas, such as the concept that vampires perpetually need blood, because they “burn” it off constantly, a result of their superhuman strength and speed consuming so much energy. However, there isn’t enough time to do much with these concepts, which are instead espoused – typically by a character I nicknamed Dr. Exposition (James) – then never mentioned or of significance again. If he had been laying the groundwork for a series, it might have made sense, but in a standalone movie like this, it bring things to a grinding halt. It’s the last thing the film needs, because the extremely-low budget approach across the board, from video definition through sound (a lot of the dialogue seems post-synched) to special effects, then becomes all the more obvious.

Once that happens, it becomes a chore to get through. I kept finding my attention drifting elsewhere – checking my email, picking my toenails, the sort of pastimes you do when you’re vaguely bored, yet not disinterested enough to seek out aggressively something more entertaining. More than once, I realized something semi-important had happened while I was distracted, and would have to rewind to the point where I’d lost interest. That’s never a good sign, and the final “apocalyptic” showdown left me thoroughly unimpressed, with all the initial potential having evaporated.

Dir: Jay Mackenzie Roach
Star: Elle LaMont, Joe Nemmers, Grant James, Niko Red Star

Killer Women

  By

★★
“Here lies Molly Parker, dead by a thousand clichés.”

And it didn’t take long for the fatal blow. The series was an American version of the popular Argentine crime drama Mujeres Asesinas, which had already been successfully transplanted to other Latin American countries. This edition was originally only given a trial run of sorts, with eight episodes bought, and scheduled after New Year as a mid-season replacement for another deceased ABC series. However, after miserable ratings for the first two episodes, the network cut the order to six shows, a mere ten days after the series premiere. Unaware of this, it caused us some confusion when we turned on #6, which was suddenly now #8, with the sixth and seventh having been reduced in their entirety, to “Previously, on Killer Women…”

The problem was clear: scripts unable to escape the tired and banal, going down well-worn paths over familiar from a thousand other shows, right from the opening shot of the Alamo, unimaginative director shorthand for “We’re in Texas.” As if the stetsons and cattle weren’t a giveaway there – WE’RE IN TEXAS. [The show doth protest too much: it was largely filmed one state over, in New Mexico] Another example: literally seconds into the establishing scene of one episode, Chris predicted the victim would be a star athlete, from the NFL, bludgeoned to death with one of his own trophies. Turned out he was from the NBA; otherwise, she was spot-on. This kind of painfully obvious was par for the course. Oh, look: the heroine is having a sexy relationship with hunky DEA agent Dan Winston (Blucas). Now she’s trying to get out of an abusive relationship with her politician ex-husband (Nordling). This apparently gives her an empathic relationship with other woman in similar situations. Kill me now.

It’s a shame, because the best thing about the show is Helfer, who plays lead Molly Parker with a winning charm that deserves much better material. There’s something of Geena Davis about her, both women being tall (Helfer is 5’11”, an inch less than Davis) and lanky, with smiles that can light up a room. Truth be told. the former model is probably a little too polished to be the Texas Ranger she plays here, but she does convey the multiple facets of her personality well, rather than being a one-dimensional crime-solving machine. Indeed, most of the performances are perfectly adequate. Blucas has previous experience playing the eye-candy boyfriend to an action-heroine, having been Riley Finn in season four of Buffy, and Nordling is suitably slimy as the husband who just won’t accept that it’s over.

No, it’s the storylines that aren’t up to scratch here, starting with the central conceit, which sees Parker every week confronted by a murderous woman or women. Given that FBI stats have male murderers outnumbering their female counterparts by better than nine to one, this was stretching credibility a bit, and is a limitation which further hampers writers who have already demonstrated a lack of ability. The debut episode starts off promisingly enough, with a woman in a blood-red dress stalking down the aisle of a church and gunning down the groom. But what first seems like a straightforward crime of passion, turns out to be the result of blackmail by a Mexican drug cartel, and somehow ends with Parker and Winston carrying out a solo raid across the border to rescue the victims. I think I heard a snort of derision from my wife as this all unfolded, and sadly, she was largely justified.

There were a couple of stories which were potentially interesting: I liked the second episode more, but even that spiralled its way down into eventual implausibility, with the killer deciding Molly’s unwanted ex-husband is a suitable target for her next victim. The back story was little better, with her brother (Trucco) apparently cheating on his wife, but actually taking on “extra work” to help out his ranch financially. It doesn’t take a weatherman to figure out that this will end up blowing him into conflict with Winston. It probably says something that skipping episodes as the network did, had little or no effect on coherence. All told, this was on thin ice from the get-go, and its termination came as no surprise, sad though we always are to see any action heroine show bite the dust. Helfer will hopefully recover, and go on to better things. This will otherwise be quietly forgotten by all involved.

Creator: Hannah Shakespeare
Star: Tricia Helfer, Marc Blucas, Michael Trucco, Jeffrey Nordling

"The best thing about the show is Helfer, who plays lead Molly Parker with a winning charm that deserves much better material."

Friday Foster

  By

★★
“Thank God It’s Not Friday…”

Friday_Foster_PosterI was quite surprised to realize this was actually adapted from a nationally-syndicated comic strip, the first to have a black woman – indeed, a black character of any kind – as its focus. However, by the time the film came out, in 1975, the strip had already come to an end, running from 1970-74; despite it’s groundbreaking heroine, it’s now largely forgotten. The film is too, with a title that is so bland, I nearly skipped over it entirely on Netflix. If it wasn’t for the completist in me, I’d probably have been better off doing so, for this is a very minor Grier entry, despite what is almost an all-star cast. Besides Grier and Kotto, as the poster mentions, there’s also Eartha Kitt, Carl Weathers, Jim Backus, Scatman Crothers and Rosalind Miles (the last who was in the surprisingly-decent Al Adamson flick, I Spit on your Corpse!).

Shame the storyline doesn’t really know what to do with them, meandering instead through a muddy plot that tries to make up, in whizzing from Los Angeles to Washington, what it makes up for in genuine coherence. Friday (Grier) is a photographer who is sent on New Year’s Eve to get the scoop on the unexpected return of Blake Tarr (Rasulala), the “black Howard Hughes,” she instead witnesses an assassination attempt. [I note, this is one of the few genre entries which depicts black citizens at all tiers of society, including the top of the power elite.] Shortly after, her best friend is stabbed to death at a fashion show, after intimating to Foster that something is up. You will not be surprised to hear that these things are connected, and finding the truth takes the help of a friendly private-eye (Kotto), and Friday crossing the country, before a massive shoot-out erupts on a preacher’s country estate.

However, Friday is not very much involved in this – indeed, despite the obvious flaunting of a gun in the poster, she’s disappointingly pacifist. I mean, when an assassin (Weathers) breaks into her apartment while she’s showering, she runs away. That is not the Pam Grier for which I signed up, I signed up for the one that would have kicked the assailant’s arse, strangled him with her towel, then calmly returned to her shower. I was kinda amused by the way she steals cars at will – first a hearse, then (of all things!) a milk-float. But as a plucky investigative heroine who steps aside and lets the men do just about all actual fighting necessary, she’s more like Brenda Starr than Foxy Brown. Aside from Grier’s shower and the occasional N-word, this romp could just about play on TV without anyone getting too upset. And that just ain’t right.

Dir: Arthur Marks
Star: Pam Grier, Yaphet Kotto, Godfrey Cambridge, Thalmus Rasulala

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

  By

★★★½
“Still not as good as the book.”

catchingfire2It took a little way into 2014 for it to get there, but Catching Fire overtook Iron Man 3 to become the biggest-grossing film in the US, released in 2013. What’s particularly stunning about that is, it’s the first #1 film for a year, with an woman as the unequivocal lead, in four decades. And depending on how you view Linda Blair in The Exorcist, you might have to go back even further, to Babs Streisand in 1968’s Funny Girl. It indicates just how far this series has redrawn the playing field: there can no longer be any credible claim, as heard after the failures of Catwoman, Aeon Flux, Cutthroat Island, etc. that action heroines are, per se, box-office poison.

I was really looking forward to this, too, having enjoyed the second book more than the first, and with the reviews for the cinematic part two also an uptick better. And… S’alright, I suppose. Though that’s a bit unfair: it’s mostly disappointing only in relation to my increased expectations. On any other level, this is very solid cinema, with Lawrence continuing to provide a steely, resourceful heroine who breaks the mould. But I’m still finding myself on the outside, looking in – observing Katniss, rather than feeling for her. If there’s an emotional heart here, it hasn’t been beating in synch with my own; when this ended, I turned it off, went to bed and forgot all about it.

There were a couple of ways in which it felt deficient to the book, even though it’s still an extremely faithful adaptation, with virtually every incident being reproduced, in a way not far off how my mind’s eye saw them. “Virtually” might be important there. Even at 146 minutes, I got the feeling some key elements were watered down. For instance, the film doesn’t do a good job of explaining why Katniss decides that Peeta must survive at all costs. In the book, it’s clear that it’s because she believes only he can lead a rebellion, with her role being to make sure he lives to do so. Of course, the Peeta in these films doesn’t exactly come over as a teenage Martin Luther King or Gandhi: he seems there more as a cuddle-buddy for Katniss, when Gale isn’t around [thankfully, that love triangle seems pushed further into the background this time around].

HGCF_KATNISS_75J_PLAK_D_CMYK_300_A4.inddThe same sense of dilution goes for both the attacks and their results in the film version, with neither packing much wallop. A number of Katniss’s friends and allies are killed in this one, but none have as much punch as their most obvious counterpart in the first part [name omitted, just in case anyone reading this hasn’t seen or read it!]. Finally, and to some extent contradicting what I said in the opening paragraph, our heroine isn’t less the focus here, as she was in the first film, where she all but flew solo in the Games. Again, it plays differently from the book, whose first-person narration ensures that Katniss is put squarely front and centre: this entry feels more like The Expendables, with a team-based approach to the process. To some extent, this does make sense, however: one of the themes here, is the ripple effect of Katniss’s victory and how things are not longer just about her survival. The gradual realization that this is now much larger, plays a major part in the lead-up to the Quarter Quell.

Which brings me to the things the film does well, because the set-up, as Katniss and Peeta go on their “victory tour” of all the districts, is quite exquisite. Right from the first stop, where a supposedly celebratory rally ends up diverting far from what the authorities want, after the couple abandon their bland, pre-prepared speeches, you get a real sense of rising revolt. What also comes across well, is the sense of large-scale discontent, even among the power elite in the capital: witness the reaction to Peeta’s (fake) announcement of Katniss’s pregnancy, or the costume designed for her, which contains a none too subtle reference to the rebellion (and for which its designer pays the price). As a work of political subversion, this is far superior to the likes of V for Vendetta, and the dystopia depicted, in all its brutal coercion, is undeniably chilling.

It does suffer somewhat from “second film syndrome,” though stands alone much better than, say, The Desolation of Smaug. Proceedings end on the same cliffhanger as the book: while Katniss was fighting for survival, the powers that be were taking care of business elsewhere. I haven’t read the third volume yet, and am torn between doing so before I see the next film or after it. Complicating matters, the last book, Mockingjay, will be pulling a Harry Potter or Twilight, and becoming two films, to be released in November 2014 and 2015. I’m a bit dubious: the book is barely half the length of either of those volumes, and we’ve seen with The Hobbit, what can happen when material is stretched too thinly. Against that, due to its first-person narrative, the book is likely much more limited in its ability to depict the obviously impending global revolution, and one imagines this will be expanded upon in the two parts of Mockingjay.

One thing seems little in doubt. By the time the series in finished, Lawrence will have the number one, two, three and four box-office hits in action heroine history, and may even have the first billion-dollar global entry. That can only be applauded.

Dir: Francis Lawrence
Star: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Sam Claflin, Woody Harrelson

"By the time the series in finished, Lawrence will have the number one, two, three and four box-office hits in action heroine history, and may even have the first billion-dollar global entry. That can only be applauded."

Ready to Fly

  By

★★★½
“Is it a bird? Is it a plane?”

readytoflyI took some skiing lessons back when I was at university, on the dry slope, but my sole experience of doing it on actual snow was a one-day trip: the real thing is considerably colder, faster and a great deal harder, let me assure you. So, the prospect of whizzing down a ramp, going off the end at 50-60 mph, and flying through the air for the length of a football field or thereabout… Well, anyone who does ski-jumping has my respect – and all the more so when, like the women in this documentary, as well as fighting gravity, they have to go up against the (literal) old boys’ network of the International Olympic Committee, who had succeeded in keeping women’s ski-jumping off the program, making it the sole “men only” sport in the winter games.

The documentary focuses, in particular, on Lindsey Van, who was the first ever women’s world champion, and was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the, IOC to force them to include ski-jumping in the 2010 Vancouver games. The judge agreed there was discrimination, but refused to make the IOC comply – ironic that, going into the Olympics, Van actually held the record for the longest jump on the hill where the games took place. Lindsey briefly quit the pastime to which she had dedicated her life, in disgust at that decision.

However, she couldn’t stay away for very long, and to date has gone through four knee surgeries and a ruptured spleen in pursuit of her sport, while also struggling to get sufficient funding, in part due to the lack of Olympic acceptance. But the IOC agreed to consider ski-jumping again for the 2014 games in Russia – providing the 2011 women’s world championships are deemed of acceptable standard. Will the fly-girls get their day? Or as one of their former vice-presidents hints, could the committee bear a grudge against the sport, for the embarrassment of the lawsuit with which they were targeted?

To be honest, there’s no particular drama here, since a quick Google will tell you that, yes, women’s ski-jumping is indeed in the 2014 edition, which start next week [making it particularly appropriate to write about this film now]. However, it’s still a solid and generally engrossing documentary, about a sport that certainly deserves more coverage than it has received, though this seems rather too reliant on over-dramatic music, and Nyad’s narration is unremarkable. It’s at its best when not actually on the slopes, presenting Van and her team-mates as people; never mind the jumping, perhaps the most heroic thing is her donation of bone marrow to save the life of someone whom she doesn’t even know. Her low-key approach to that can only be admired.

I’m not a great winter sports person, and my interest in the upcoming Olympics is generally likely to be light. But I think I might just tune in on February 11, and witness history in the making. I’d recommend checking this film out as well, because it’ll probably inspire you in a similar way – though you still won’t be seeing me on a chair-lift any time soon!

Dir: William A. Kerig
Star: Lindsey Van, Jessica Jerome, Alissa Johnson, Diana Nyad (narrator)

Deadly Innocents

  By

★★½
“Sisters are doing it for themselves.”

deadlyAfter shooting her husband, Beth (Crosby) is sent to the funny farm, due to her split personality, Cathy, who was responsible for the murder. Busting out of the funny farm after Cathy takes full control, she holes up in a gas station, run by Angela (Wyss), who is almost as loopy, albeit in a less murderous way, having been raised by her religious fruitcake father, who just passed away. Cathy/Beth’s resemblance to Angela’s late mother helps cement a relationship between the two women. Initially, it may all be frilly dresses, make-up and feminine bonding, as the newcomer brings the repressed young girl out of her shell. But how long will it be before Cathy is stabbing customers in the neck with syringes? [That’s almost guaranteed to get you a poor Yelp review: “while restrooms were clean, the murderous assault by a deranged member of staff was somewhat off-putting”]

Meanwhile, a local cop (Stevens) is courting Angela, and a local retard (Hellman) – hey, you watch the film and tell me that’s not the most accurate description – is exercising her investigative skills, which appear to be at least the equal of the local force. It’s the kind of the overblown Southern melodrama that’s basically begging for a drag queen singalong version; maybe a remake starring Gina Gershon as Cathy, or at least, Jennifer Tilly. Instead, however, we’ve got to make do with Bing Crosby’s daughter, who admittedly, probably knows a bit about controlling fathers. Here, the main takeaway is a new-found respect for Andy Serkis’s portrayal of Gollum, because watching Crosby switch between Beth and Cathy is cringeworthy. Fortunately, the makers appear to realize it, with this aspect all but abandoned once she escapes the mental hospital, and Crosby makes for an entertainingly loony tune.

However, there isn’t actually much, in content or execution, which will stick in your mind – between a couple of bits of gratuitous nudity, this feels for long periods more like a TV movie, or something you’d find on the Hallmark channel. I did quite like the ending, which I’ll confess didn’t see coming, and is darker than I expected. However, too much of this comes over as watered-down, without the courage of any convictions, and it needed to go a good deal further into the realms of madness, to possess any lasting value.

Dir: John D. Patterson.
Star: Mary Crosby, Amanda Wyss, Andrew Stevens, Bonnie Hellman

Gravity

  By

★★★★½
“Run Sandra Run”

GRAVITY2013 was perhaps a landmark for women in action films. with the top slot at the American box-office going to Jennifer Lawrence in Catching Fire. But also present in the top five was this, which kicked Katniss’s arse for critical acclaim, snaring 10 Oscar nominations to Fire’s… Well, none at all, actually. That’s probably a little starker contrast than is accurate – they are respectively 97% and 90% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes – but it is interesting to compare the two films and their approach. In Gravity, the sex of the lead character simply isn’t very relevant: you could switch it to being a man, and you wouldn’t need to change much, not even the name – Ryan Stone. I’d be unsurprised if told that, like Salt, this was originally written for a male lead. Indeed, it also fails the infamous Bechdel Test of feminism, passing none of its three criteria – though this says more about Bechdel’s uselessness than Gravity, I feel (Run Lola Run also goes 0-for-3, and it’s not the last thing it has in common, as we’ll see).

But Gravity certainly deserves coverage here, every bit as much as Alien – another film where the gender of the hero is largely irrelevant.  Admittedly, in some ways, it’s the very antithesis of what we now associate with “action film”, most obviously with an average shot length claimed in a number of places to be about 45 seconds. I’m not sure the math on that quite works out, and it’s certainly boosted by its amazing opening shot, which runs well over 10 minutes. But in an era where the dreaded “MTV-style” of editing has hampered many a genre entry e.g. a number in the Resident Evil franchise, this is truly a breath of fresh air, with Cuarón happy to let things unfold in front of us, rather than jazz things up with frenetic and pointless cutting, that doesn’t generate tension and excitement less than confusion. Of course, that’s Cuarón’s style: his previous (and excellent) Children of Men had a couple of similarly spectacular long shots.

Stone (Bullock) is a mission specialist, whose debut flight into space is to carry out maintenance on the Hubble. She’s on a spacewalk with shuttle commander, Matt Kowalski (Clooney), when a devastating storm of debris strafes them, knocking out their comms with Earth and leaving Stone tumbling through space. Though Kowalski, with the aid of his jet-pack, brings her back, the shuttle is toast, and there’s no option but to head for the International Space Station, hoping it will provide a safe haven and means of returning to Earth, before both Stone’s air hits empty, and the debris completes another orbit and blasts them once more. However, before getting inside [SPOILER], they get hung up on deployed parachute cords from a module attached to the ISS, and Kowalski cuts himself loose, drifting off in to space. This saves Stone from immediate threat, but she’s now utterly alone and [END SPOILER] facing an escalating series of predicaments, requiring her to dig deep into her inner resources, both mental and physical.

gravity2More than once, I found myself holding my breath, as the heroine fought against the implacable foe of a brutal, unforgiving environment. That’s the first element this has in parallel with Lola, which also had no human adversary. There, it was time which was the enemy, and that’s an aspect here too, with every 90 minutes bringing a new barrage of destruction. But the main thing this has in common is the heroine’s initial dependence on a paternal figure (her true father in Lola) for rescue from their difficult situation. It’s only when that support is removed, and she is thrown back to surviving entirely on her own merits, that the film blossoms fully. For the first 30 minutes, this is little more than space opera heroics, with Clooney being Clooney and some eye-rolling clichés: Kowalski is on his last mission, and another member of the crew has a picture of his family taped to his spacesuit. Yeah, that’ll end well. Still, extremely nice visuals – stunning, to the point this is one of those rare films I will buy on BluRay – are enough to get us through to the last hour, which is basically woman vs. space, and is absolutely compelling.

B-movie critic Joe-Bob Briggs once declared, “The first rule of great drive-in movie-making: Anyone can die at any moment.” By this metric, Gravity is a great drive-in movie, because Ryan’s survival is, often literally, dangling by a slim thread. Whether she’s bouncing around like an interstellar crash-test dummy, running out of oxygen, or bailing out of a space-station on fire, the peril is right there, and it’s Stone finding ways to deal with it that help make her one of the best heroines in mainstream cinema of the past few years. Cuarón, mercifully, doesn’t give her a romantic interested, no boyfriend or even a child back on Earth as motivation for survival: she explicitly says at one point, “No one will mourn for me. No one will pray for my soul.” And it doesn’t matter.  Indeed, that’s a big part of her transformative journey, going from someone who relies on others, uncertain of her own abilities, to being completely self-assured and single-minded. She wants nothing but to live – not for a man, or her offspring, just for herself.

Her final words are a simple, “Thank you”: it’s not clear to whom they’re addressed, since it has been made clear, Stone isn’t religious. Perhaps it’s gratitude for her rebirth: I suspect it’s no coincidence that there are scenes and shots here, which appear consciously to echo a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon, or a turtle struggling out of the egg. Bullock’s performance is beautifully understated, which is exactly as needed for the scenario – what’s the point in hysterics when there’s no-one around to see them? – and over the course of the film, she goes from a somewhat annoying, dependent second banana, to someone in whom you are fully invested. With her survival highly uncertain, right until the final frame (hey, cameo appearance by Arizona’s own Lake Powell!), I’m not certain how much repeat viewing this might have. It’s possible knowing the outcome may degrade the tension which is certainly one of the film’s strongest suits. However, even discounting that, there’s an awful lot here to like and appreciate, Cuarón has likely become one of those few directors whose name alone is enough to get me to watch, but everyone involved here deserves enormous praise for their work in crafting a memorable piece of cinema.

Dir: Alfonso Cuarón
Star: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

gravity3

T.N.T. Jackson

  By

★★½
“More of a damp squib than dynamite.”

tntjacksonDescribed in 1975 by no less than Roger Ebert as, “easily the worst movie I’ve seen this year,” Jackson concerns the investigation of the titular T.N.T. (Bell) into the disappearance of her brother in Hong Kong. It seems to have something to do with the drug-smuggling ring run by Sid (Metcalf), whose minions include Elaine (Anderson), who might not be quite what she seems, and Charlie (Shaw), the only person in Hong Kong whose Afro can rival TNT’s for size, firmness or general Afro-tastic quality.  Someone keeps hijacking Sid’s shipments, so Charlie puts together a team of the colony’s finest fighters to protect it: seeing her chance to get into the organization, T.N.T. auditions and gets a job. However, no everyone is as convinced of her innocence as Sid.

I wouldn’t go quite as far as the late Mr. Ebert (though the cover on the right likely ranks up there with the very worst visualizations of all time!), but this comes over as a lame imitation of Pam Grier’s genre entries, with a greater emphasis on martial-arts, rather than gunplay or other forms of violence. Which is kinda weird, considering that Bell was previously most famous for being the first African-American woman to be seen on the cover of Playboy. The other oddness here is that it was co-written by cult actor Dick Miller, who had a long career working for Roger Corman, in the likes of Bucket of Blood, and The Little Shop of Horrors. This was the last of his three writing credits; I guess, he figured that after this, things could only go downhill.

There are a couple of scenes of striking brutality – an early arm-breaking and the finale, where she punches her opponent’s heart out – and one, which I’m still trying to figure out if it’s empowering or racist, where T.N.T., keeps turning the lights out because she’s almost invisible in the dark. Well, as long as she doesn’t smile, I guess. The fights are pretty unimpressive, with some painfully obvious stunt doubling for Bell. Truth be told, Anderson probably fares better than the heroine in this category, and the best fight might be between the two of them in a graveyard. However, much of this has not stood the test of time well, and the film desperately needs someone like Grier, to elevate proceedings through sheer force of personality.

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Jeannie Bell, Stan Shaw, Pat Anderson, Ken Metcalf
Previously capsule reviewed in the Women Who Kick Butt box-set.