Tag: wilderness

2320 Days in the Jungle

  By

★★★½
“[Crosses Colombia off holiday list]”

2320daysIn February 2002, Ingrid Betancourt was travelling through a rural area of Colombia, as part of her campaign in the presidential election for the Green Party. She was stopped at a road-block run by the Marxist rebel organization, FARC, and when they realized who they had, she and her assistant, Clara Rojas, were kidnapped. Betancourt would spent more than six years of jungle captivity with the guerillas, until she was rescued, in a startling piece of deception, by Colombian military forces. This documentary film tells her story, through archive footage and interviews with Betancourt, Rojas, other kidnappees and some of the FARC members.

The term “you couldn’t make this stuff up” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s probably apt here. The clearest example is the end, and the way Betancourt and her colleagues were freed. The authorities tapped into FARC’s communications channels and inserted an order that a humanitarian group would be transporting the hostages to meet the rebels’ leader. Except, the alleged group were actually soldiers pretending to be aid workers and journalists. They arrived, landing in a coca field with their helicopters, collected the prisoners and a couple of FARC officers, then took off, before taking the officers into custody and telling the kidnap victims, “We are the Colombian army. You are free.” [This deception was likely wise, since there had been a number of disastrous attempts to liberate other hostages by military means, ending in their death]

Many other facets also defy belief, from Betancourt’s multiple unsuccessful escape attempts through to Rojas getting pregnant by one of the guards, and being given a Caesarean section in the middle of the jungle.  It has to have been a hellish existence, the hostages being moved from place to place through the rain-forest to avoid being located by the authorities who were hunting for them – at one point, they were marched 40 days, for up to 12 hours a day. Her captors also deliberately attempted to spread dissension among their captives, in order to stop them from trusting each other and formulating escape plans. And it seems to have worked: even after his release, one of those held with Betancourt heavily criticized her, saying she was “the most disgusting human being I’ve ever encountered.” It’s always the way with documentaries; you’re never sure if you’re getting the whole story.

There’s certainly evidence of tension between Betancourt and Rojas. The former seems more actively inclined to try and escape, while the latter appears to be trying to avoid doing anything that could inflame their situation. During one of her breaks for freedom, Betancourt was spotted by a young female FARC fighter and tried to convince her they should leave together. The rebel said she understood, and that she also had a child in the outside world – but if she left, FARC would hunt them down and kill them both. I’d like to have heard more about these attempts, rather than hostage infighting, but this is still a chilling and effective story, which would make one hell of a movie.

Dir: Angus Macqueen
Star: Ingrid Betancourt, Clara Rojas, Luis Eladio Perez, Marc Gonsalves
a.k.a. Hostage in the Jungle

Heatstroke

  By

★★★
“Hyenas: yes. Laughing? Not so much.”

heatstrokeWildlife researcher Paul (Dorff) is looking forward to a trip to South Africa with his new girlfriend, Tally (Metkina), when he gets The Call from his ex-wife, informing them their daughter, Josie (Williams) has been arrested, and is generally hanging out with a bad crowd. Paul brings the highly-reluctant Josie on the trip, in the hopes the experience will enlighten her. Doesn’t work: she spends the time on her iPad, headphones on, sulking and being grumpy. Finally, they’ve all had enough, and Paul leaves, to take Josie back to civilization. When he doesn’t return, Tally goes to look for him, only to find the jeep crashed, Paul shot dead and Josie injured. Turns out they ran across a couple of minions belonging to Mallick (Stormare), a smuggler with a very strong interest in keeping his operation under wraps. Tally and Josie are now a pair of unacceptable loose ends that need to be tidied up – but Tally is not going to let that happen without a fight.

If some of the DVD sleeves promise rather more heroic, gun-wielding Dorff than the film delivers, I’m perfectly fine with that, as watching Tally take over things is likely more entertaining – there’s something a little Ripley-esque about the way she’s prepared to go to bat for a kid that isn’t her own. And go to bat fiercely: “Guess we’re not dealing with a f____ housewife,” says Mallick, after she has disposed of one particularly nasty henchman. The sequence leading up to that is likely the best in the film, Tally using guile to lure her target in before trying to strangle him; it’s credible in terms of strength and exudes a true sense of danger. Shame the rest doesn’t have such a well-considered approach; indeed, the ending relies on a change of heart by one character that’s a great deal more convenient than it’s convincing.

In between bursts of action, you can admire the South African scenery and some fairly impressive work with hyenas in apparent close proximity to the cast. Williams also does fairly well with a role that could have been utterly unsympathetic – we have had our share of bratty teenagers, and don’t exactly need to experience them dramatically – even if I had to keep suppressing a strange urge to yell “Stick ’em with the pointy end!” [I’d better explain: Williams has a major role in Game of Thrones, and that quote was tactical swordfighting advice given her at one point]. Stormare is his usual good value, and despite its flaws, there’s enough going on here to make for a passable slab of entertainment on a wet Saturday afternoon.

Dir: Evelyn Purcell
Star: Svetlana Metkina, Maisie Williams, Stephen Dorff, Peter Stormare

The Graves

  By

★★
“Home cooking isn’t necessarily more tasty.”

thegravesI must confess to being drawn in to this 2009 film partly by the “local interest” factor, it being an entirely Arizona-grown product. This is obvious – indeed, painfully so – in the early going, which includes a plug for a comic-store chain and a performance by a local band, as well as a particularly cringe-inducing cameo by some of the director’s own comics. Mercifully, the film rapidly moves on to the actual plot. This has sisters Megan and Abby Graves (Grant and Murray) head out for a spot of sibling bonding, before one moves from Phoenix to New York. Their road-trip takes them to a diner where they’re told about a nearby ghost town, Skull City, the site of a former gold-mine. Megan – the more outgoing and confident – is all for it; Abby is less sure, but is eventually convinced. What they don’t know, is that the mine is the home of a very nasty cult of religious psychos led by the Reverend Abraham Stockton (Todd), and even the friendliest of locals (Moseley) can turn out to be potentially lethal.

I appreciated the straightforward and unpretentious nature of this: it’s the two girls (really, it’s almost entirely Megan who’s the proactive one, with Abby only really good for running and screaming, with a side-order of quivering in terror) against the world. The story is thus largely to the point, though they might as well have disposed entirely with the unseen demonic entity subplot, since it doesn’t add anything, given the effects budget was apparently largely limited to hearing it consume souls… Unfortunately, that poverty extends to quite a few other aspects. For example, the mayhem has a tendency to happen just off-screen, which is never satisfactory at the best of times, and the use of obvious CGI blood only draws attention to this shortcoming.

The performances are a bit over the place too. I enjoyed Todd, who chews scenery to good effect, from the moment he stalks into the diner, a terrified young girl in tow. He seems to have a handle on the comic-book tone for which Pulido is going. The rest of the cast? Not so much, particularly Moseley, who seems to think that putting a fake pig’s nose on equates somehow to exuding menace. He’s wrong. The two leads fall somewhere in between: while they’re okay, the characters are never much more than generic cyphers. At least Pulido was wise enough to dump the hand-held video camera which infects some of the early going: a good rule for the use of such being, it’s never a good idea. I’ll admit half a star of my grade is likely the kick I got out of seeing places I know, such as scenes filmed at the late, lamented venue, The Sets in Tempe.  Take that away and sad to say, there isn’t enough meat on the bones of its potential. The moral here is, just because you can make a film, doesn’t mean you should….

Dir: Brian Pulido
Star: Clare Grant, Jillian Murray, Bill Moseley, Tony Todd

The Shallows

  By

★★★½
“Does for surfing what Open Water did for scuba-diving.”

the-shallowsThe older I get, the less any kind of extreme sports appeal. It’s likely an awareness that life is limited, and I’d rather hang on to it for as long as possible, rather than risk it in pursuit of a quick thrill. Parachuting? Skiing? Hell, even camping? No, thanks. I’ll be by the pool – not in it – with a cold drink and an exciting novel. This inevitably limits the attraction of this kind of “true life” adventures, because they rarely bother to demonstrate why the protagonist is doing what they are. Admittedly, that’s not the point: it’s all about the peril into which they get, and their struggles to extricate themselves. Everything else is somewhat superfluous, and that’s one of the issues here. Do we care about Nancy’s mid-twenties career choice crisis? Or that she’s on the beach because her late mother was there decades previously? Probably not. We’re here to see woman vs. shark.

Fortunately, the film largely delivers on this front, and it’s also nice to see a film where the heroine has absolutely no romantic interest at all. Once shark hits surfboard, and woman hits water, there are virtually no other speaking parts. It’s Nancy (Lively) in a stark battle for survival against the creature that’s circling her small, rock outcrop sanctuary. And with a large, dead whale nearby, the shark certainly isn’t going anywhere. That’s a problem for Nancy, because the initial attack has left her with a very badly-gashed thigh and potential gangrene. Fortunately, her medical training helps her patch up her own wounds, though the degree of damage she takes over the course of the film remains impressive. Enjoy the bikini-clad hottie, over whom the camera lingers in the early scenes – because by the end, Nancy looks more like she has gone five rounds with Gina Carano.

Inevitably, there are some concessions required. You’ve got a film that largely consists of a woman on a rock, so there’s more “thinking out loud” scenes than one normally sees. The shark, like most movie monsters, also demonstrates admirable dramatic timing, showing up when needed for the plot, and staying away during the moments necessary for the audience to get its breath back. Collet-Serra does an admirable job with the pacing, and the economical 87 minute running-time flies by. If the gilled antagonist here is a killing machine, streamlined by evolution over millions of years, with all extraneous irrelevancies removed, much the same can probably be said about this movie.

It has now been more than 40 years since Jaws made the entire world afraid to go into the water, but over the past few years, the shark movie has become more of a running-joke. Much as I must confess to having enjoyed Sharknado and its cronies, it’s nice to see something which redresses the balance somewhat. The Shallows certainly treats these lethal denizens of the deep with the respect and fear which they likely deserve, and endorses my ongoing decision to stick to dry land.

Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra
Star: Blake Lively

Into the Forest

  By

★★½
“After the apocalypse, life will be… kinda dull, actually.”

intotheforestNell (Page) and Eva (Wood) are sisters, living in a house deep in the woods with their father (Rennie). Nell is studying for her SATs, Evan is working towards a dance audition, until all plans are interrupted by a catastrophic power outage which leaves the entire country without electricity. Fortunately, they are almost self-sufficient, capable of living off the land as far as food and heat is concerned, even if the lack of power and very limited fuel forces some significant changes in lifestyle: Eva is reduced to practicing her dance routine to the relentless tick of a metronome, for instance. But when the women are thrown entirely onto their own resources, life becomes tougher, and various hard questions have to be answered, about whether to stay in their remote, apparently fairly safe location, or follow the reports suggesting that the Eastern seaboard may slowly be getting back to normal.

It’s nowhere as exciting as your typically post-apocalyptic scenario, though this perhaps has a greater ring of plausibility to it than the usual Mad Max-iness. When the world falls apart, it’s more likely to be with a whimper than a scream. That said: I don’t know who built their home, since it falls into complete dilapidation in less than a year, with a roof that starts leaking like a sieve in just a couple of months. What is it made of? Papier-mache? [I’m perhaps biased here, since the house I grew up in is over 200 years old, and somehow, still stands] This is likely a narrative conceit, necessary to force the heroines out of their survival-based inertia, which occupies the majority of the film. That angle is one of the disappointing areas: they’re reactive, rather than pro-active. If left entirely to their own devices, this might have ended up as little more than 100 minutes of the sisters gathering berries.

It does manage to go beyond that, mostly thanks to the performances of Page and Wood, who have a natural chemistry that feels authentic. They bicker like sisters, and fight like sisters, yet also show that when the chips are down, blood is thicker than water. This is demonstrated with the unexpected appearance of Nell’s boyfriend (Minghella), though he serves little other purpose before walking out of the film’s scope again. Page is also far too old these days to be a convincing high-school student: Juno was the best part of a decade ago now, and she wasn’t in her teens even when that came out. There is something to be said for a more character-driven apocalypse, one which consists of more than a steady stream of threats to be violently countered. However, this likely tilts the balance too far the other direction, and ends up with something too introverted and navel-gazing to be interesting.

Dir: Patricia Rozema
Star: Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Max Minghella, Callum Keith Rennie

Darkweb

  By

★½
“You smell the farmer!”

darkwebThe above is one of the lines of dialogue – rewound and checked on the closed-captions to confirm – which somehow got through the script, production and editing without correction, into the final film. This, folks, is cinema as a second language. The IMDB says “USA,” but that clearly isn’t the case. I’m going with Belgian, based on the names in the credits, but whoever it is should be sending a diplomatic apology. It seems vaguely located in Russia, based mostly on the mention of roubles as currency. However, it starts with a tank rampaging through the countryside. Why? Like so much here, it’s never explained.

The meat of the story has a group that kidnap people, then turn them loose for others to hunt down in a forest, streaming the results on the “dark web” side of the Internet [the film’s on-screen title inexplicably loses the space]. But they bite off more than they can chew when the kidnap Anna (Seul) and her brother. Holding him hostage, she’s set loose for the sport, only for infighting and the unexpected presence of a “ringer” among the hunters, to disrupt proceedings. Can she survive? Or will she just keep tripping over things and falling down?

Oh, dear. Despite the cover which promises an adequate quota of butt-kicking, what we get is much more like a bad level of Tomb Raider, with Anna jogging around the forest, as if looking for a goddamn key. Everyone in the film is incredibly dumb, failing miserably to utilize obvious chances for taking out their enemies, typically just leaving them unconscious instead. The dialogue is barely functional, while the two “names” who appear in minor roles – Oliver Gruner and, inexplicably, Danny Glover – have clearly fallen on hard times. The latter literally Skypes in his entire performance.  Much of what happens makes no sense, such as Anna’s sudden prowess with a longbow, which is used once then never mentioned again.

The film doesn’t look too bad; it’s nicely shot, and the wooded location offers a good range of terrain. The problems lie elsewhere, and are far more numerous. The title is more or less irrelevant, for starters, and the action sequences are generic and unimpressive. Few of the characters make any impression at all. If they’d given Anna some kind of back-story that could have made subsequent bad-assery plausible, that might have helped. Instead, she’s just a goat herder, and we’re given no reason to root for or care about her and her brother. But lengthy sequences of tank rampage? The film fits that in, no problem. The film doesn’t so much build to a climax as peter out. You likely won’t even think “Is that it?” so much as “Thank god that’s over.”

Dir: Bruno Vaussenat
Star: Nina Seul, Petra Silander, Sebastien Vandenberghe, Tristan Robin
a.k.a. Survival

Relentless Justice

  By

★★
“1980 called. They want their action film back.”

relentlessBefore his death last August, Prior had a long career churning out straight-to-video action flicks with amazingly generic titles. Have a few samples. Deadly Prey. Death Chase. Invasion Force. Raw Justice. You get the idea. He was also responsible, on this site, for Mankillers, and returns to the female fray with this, which also mines another popular trope of the action film genre, the “hunting of humans”, which dates back to 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game.

Victoria De Vries (Sarelle) is a quiet suburban mom – albeit, one who happens to be the owner-operator of a martial-arts gym, and who used to be a member of Australian special forces. Her daughter heads off for a weekend’s camping with her boyfriend, but runs afoul of the local rednecks, led by local mayor Jason Macendale (Wells). They slit his throat and kidnap her – but when they discover mom’s background, use her daughter as a lure for their next bit of sport. Little do they know what they are getting into, however, and may have bitten off a lot more than they can chew, even with help from another special forces veteran, Joe Mangine (Rolston).

I had to think for a while and figure out why Sarelle’s name was familiar, and eventually remembered she played Sharon Stone’s girlfriend in Basic Instinct, back in 1992. Hardly seen her in anything since, and she’s certainly changed a bit – now, all “mumsy” and sporting an Australian accent for some reason that serves no apparent purpose, not even a  “That’s not a knife…” joke. The main problem here, is it takes way too long to get to the crunchy stuff, of Victoria kicking ass and breaking bones – literally, the final ten minutes of the movie have all the good stuff there. Up until then, you’ve got a lot of sitting around chit-chatting, with Roberts wheeled on for a role of absolutely no relevance at all, playing a big city mobster.

Sarelle isn’t actually too bad; from what I’ve read Kathy Long, five-time world kickboxing champion, was in charge of stunt coordination and fight choreography, and seems to have done a decent job in making the heroine look credible. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for everyone else, and in particular there’s one knife fight, which is among the most cringe-inducingly terrible of all time [names redacted to protect the inept]. This all might have passed muster in a more innocent time, when audiences were happy to put up with low-rent former stars running around a forest, while someone shoots them with a video camera, accompanied by a low-fi synth soundtrack (courtesy here of the workmanlike Chuck Cirino, who has been a staple for the likes of Jim Wynorski over the past three decades). Now, viewers are… well, if I’m reluctant to say “more sophisticated”, this kind of second-tier production needs to be a good deal more self-aware, or at least provide something not findable in better quality with three clicks on Netflix.

Dir: David A. Prior
Star: Leilani Sarelle, Mark Rolston, Vernon Wells, Eric Roberts

Curve

  By

★★★
“A feature-length advert for NOT wearing your seat-belt.”

Mallory (Hough) is driving to Denver for her wedding, though has some qualms about the upcoming event. She opts to take the scenic route, but her car breaks down – she’s startled, but delighted, when back-packer Christian (Sears) shows up out of nowhere to fix it. She offers him a lift, only to find once they hit the road, he’s a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. Realizing the dire straits she’s in, and that she’s wearing her seat-belt while he isn’t, she opts to crash the car into a ravine. However, the result is the exact opposite of what she wants: Christian is thrown free, and Mallory trapped by her ankle in the wreckage. Realizing he has a captive toy, Christian wanders off to terrorize the residents of a nearby cabin, but pops back occasionally to taunt his victim, who is forced to extreme measures to survive, while trying to figure out a way to escape.

curveIt’s a perfectly reasonable way to pass the time, and given its obvious limitations – there are barely a handful of speaking parts and the bulk of the running time takes place in and around the single location of Mallory’s car – works within them reasonably well. It’s a little weird to see Hough, whom we recently watched play Sandy in a televised “live” version of Grease, cooking and eating rat, and contemplating going all 127 Hours on her leg, but she pulls it off decently enough. Less effective is Sears, though he has the problem of walking in the footsteps belonging to the pinnacle of psychotic hitch-hikers, Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher; it’d be hard for anyone not to be overshadowed by that comparison. On the other hand, I like the way Mallory is thrown entirely on her own resources: there’s no knight in shining chain-mail coming to her rescue here.

For obvious, ankle-related reasons, this only kicks into high gear once the heroine has extracted herself from the car, and the boot goes, at least somewhat, onto the other foot (hohoho), as she begins to hunt Christian – the still, above, is obviously from the later section. It likely does take a little too long to reach this point, and once it gets there, offers at least one element of shamelessly obvious foreshadowing, which had me rolling my eyes when it appeared, then again when it came to pass. Yet I can’t say this affected the overall respectable level of enjoyment provided here. No-one could ever describe this as ambitious, and I was surprised to discover this was by the director of Hackers, as it seems a much smaller work. That aside, there’s something to be said for aiming low and hitting your target, rather than over-estimating your resources and talents, then falling short. This definitely falls into the former categoty.

Dir: Iain Softley
Star: Julianne Hough, Teddy Sears

Survival Instinct

  By

★★
“Gratuitous violins.”

survival-instinctStacey and and Thom are on their way to a friend’s wedding, where she’ll also be providing the music, when their car breaks down. Stacey walks back to a garage they passed, but while she’s away. Thom is accidentally shot by father and (unwilling) son hunting duo, Weaver (Coughlan) and Rex (Smith). Realizing their victim was not alone, they wait for Stacey to return, so her presence as a loose end can be tidied up. But Rex’s reluctance to pull the trigger gives her a lifeline, and begins a game of cat-and-mouse through a remote, wooded area of the Derbyshire Peak District.

I guess the aim is something like a British version of Deliverance, but the resources aren’t there – and neither are the performances, direction and script, none of which reach above workmanlike at best. The worst offender is the script, which frequently had me rolling my eyes at the stupidity of the characters, who frequently behaved in ways that made no sense in real-life, purely for cinematic purposes. Not the least of these is the way Stacey suddenly opts to start carrying her precious violin around with her for the final sequence, having not apparently given a damn about it before that point. You don’t have to be a seer to predict why this is needed.

The idea isn’t a bad one, and the cinematography is solid, with the locations used photogenic. However, the action is nothing short of awful, possessing absolutely no impact. While Crevel’s performance as Stacey is okay, she needs to be a much more pro-active heroine, trying to turn the tables on her attacker. Instead, she spends the first hour doing virtually nothing but running away, save for dropping a sign with a nail on it, hoping Weaver will stand on it. [Spoiler alert: inevitably, he does!] Coughlan does exude a nice, unhinged menace as the villain, and the script does attempt to give him both motivation and a back-story. Unfortunately, this isn’t conveyed organically, rather in large gobbets of monologue that tend to bring the film to a halt.

Clocking in at 75 minutes, including credits, is likely a wise decision given the paucity of the material present. It’s clear the budget here was limited – simply because how expensive can four people running around a forest be? Lawson deserves credit for not letting those resources be too obvious. On the other hand, money doesn’t excuse the apparent lack of effort put into a lazy script, apparently worked out on the back of a beer-mat one Friday lunch-time. The fact it had different titles while shooting (Rites of Passage), from its limited cinema run, then a third name for its DVD release, is perhaps another indication more forethought would have been helpful.

Dir: Steve Lawson
Star: Helen Crevel, Andrew Coughlan, Sam Smith, Jay Sutherland
a.k.a. Footsoldier

Camino

  By

★★★½
“Flash, bang, wallop – what? A picture!”

caminoFollowing up on their successfully crunchy collaboration in Raze, director Waller and star Bell head into the jungle and back to the eighties – an era before cell-phones and digital cameras – for this story of one woman’s fight for survival against a band of Colombian rebels, led by Spanish immigrant, Guillermo (Vigalondo). In this case, the woman is Avery Taggart (Bell), a lauded war photographer whose latest mission is to cover the enigmatic yet charismatic Guillermo, whose mission initially appears as much philanthropic as military. Keyword: initially. For Avery stumbles into the rebel’s darker side, witnessing, and worse, photographing him carrying out a drug deal, then slitting the throat of an inconveniently-passing local child. Knowing this revelation would destroy him, Guillermo blames Avery for the murder, and sets out after her with his group, intent on preventing the incriminating film from getting out of the jungle. However, it won’t be easy: Avery has picked up a few survival skills from her life during wartime, and some of Guillermo’s foot-soldiers are unconvinced by his explanation.

I think the first surprise here is the opening chunk, before she goes into the jungle, which has Bell delivering the most intense acting of her career. Quite a discomforting performance too, it has to be said, and I did wonder if I was watching the right film for a bit. Fortunately, we’re eventually on the right track; nobody will exactly have rented this to watch Zoë emote in a hotel room, surprisingly impressive though it is. The action here is brutal: while the body-count is relatively small – compared, say to Raze – nobody dies quickly here at all, with demises which seem to stretch out forever. The peak is probably the first fight, in which Avery is stalked by Guillermo’s psychopathic lieutenant. This turns into a knock-down, drag-out brawl that is relentless and hardcore. Nothing after can quite compare, to be honest. The ending of the main story thread is, entirely deliberately, understated and almost casual, though a coda delivers a satisfactory payoff.

You do wonder how a photographer is able to do more than hold her own against jungle-hardened soldiers; I was half-expecting a further appendix scene where Avery turned out to be a CIA agent of some kind. [Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded!] Vigalondo makes for a decent villain, if a little too verbose; had this had actually been made in the mid-80’s, rather than just set there, it would have been a perfect role for Klaus Kinski, and Nacho puts over a similar mix of thinly-disguised psychopath. The jungle almost becomes a supporting character here, abetted by an unusual, crunchy yet chewy soundtrack from electronic project Kreng. The film might have benefited from some editing and the script an additional polish. But, as expected, it’s Bell’s show and she delivers the convincing mix of elegance and physicality we have come to appreciate, like a tightly-wound spring inside a camera case.

Dir: Josh C. Waller
Star: Zoë Bell, Nacho Vigalondo, Francisco Barreiro, Sheila Vand