Monday, March 25, 2024

DAMSEL**


Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) returns to our small screens with a rather disappointing Young Adult-aimed feminist fairy tale. I really loved the wit and pace of MBB's ENOLA HOLMES, but this film lacks any kind of energy or pace.  It also suffers from the fact that the heroine basically has to do her escape journey not once but twice, the first time saving her own skin from a dragon, and the second time saving her little sister.

MBB plays earnest, resourceful Princess Elodie, who agrees to an arranged marriage with a Prince from a far richer kingdom to save her own people.  Problem is, that kingdom is sacrificing Princesses to assuage the vengeful nature of an evil dragon. As Elodie finds herself thrown into a dragon pit slash cave system she realises just how many young women have been thrown to their fate before her. And thanks to their wall-carved advice, she somehow manages to escape and get her own revenge.

The message of this film is admirable. No handsome Prince is coming to rescue you. The sisterhood will save you. Maybe the vengeful dragon is just hurting too. Maybe the wicked stepmother is actually wonderfully protective. Maybe the beautiful blonde Queen is the real villain.

It's just a shame that the earnest good message and MBB's high-energy performance is tethered to Dan Mazeau (FAST X)'s extremely thin and repetitive script.  I had also expected more from pace and invention from genre director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 WEEKS LATER).

DAMSEL is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 110 minutes. It was released on Netflix a few weeks ago.

SHIRLEY***


Writer-director John Ridley (12 YEARS A SLAVE) has created a straightforward but nonetheless important biopic of the pathbreaking American politician Shirley Chisholm. It features a powerhouse performance by Regina King (IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK), ably supported by Terrence Howard (HUSTLE & FLOW) and Lance Reddick (The Wire).

Regina's Shirley is a self-motivated, powerful, centred, charismatic woman who fills every inch of the screen. It's testament to both the real woman and the performance that we somehow believe in her chances to take the Democratic nomination for the 1972 Presidential election. Those of us who know our US political history know that this battle was in some ways beside the point, because Nixon would go on to win in a landslide and probably would've done whoever the Dems put up against him. BUT Shirley's career importance is so much more than the immediate campaign or the proximate goal. She was the first black woman to be successful and visible on the political stage at a time when it was dominated by white men. She inspired a next generation of activist politicians. You don't get AOC without Shirley.

This film efficiently essays what Shirley was up against. The scepticism of her own Party - a lack of finances - opposition even from black MALE political leaders. Seeing her up against the DNC machine makes one think of how the cards were stacked against Bernie Sanders, or how somehow Biden remains on the ticket this year. 

But I guess in a way that's my criticism of the film. It's just all so efficient and competently made. There is no kinetic passion of the kind that MUST have propelled Shirley to continue against insurmountable odds. I guess I wanted a more imaginative freer hand at the helm of this film. But maybe the material is so important that is stifles that creative freedom.

SHIRLEY has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG-13.

ROAD HOUSE (2024)**


The original 1989 ROADHOUSE is an iconic grungy sexy action movie starring Patrick Swayze at his hottest, and I have no idea why one would want to remake movie perfection.  This remake seems keen to distance itself ironically from its predecessor - it's a ROAD HOUSE that's on an island and accessible by boat - geddit?!  That lame joke just about sums up the level of scripting and intelligence this film is operating with. 

Jake Gyllenhaal takes the lead role as the buff but damaged loner with a talent for breaking up rowdy fights.  He just doesn't have any charm or charisma, so why would one root for him? Talented comedienne Jessica Williams is wasted as the bar owner trying to save the Road House from evil capitalist property developers. And Conor McGregor - well let's just say I have views about director Doug Liman (BOURNE) giving a platform to a UFC fighter that has had many accusations of sexual assault thrown at him.

The resulting film features a lot of decent music played behind a cage while well-choreographed fight scenes are played out.  I didn't care. I didn't enjoy it. And I don't know why it exists. 

ROAD HOUSE is rated R and has a running time of 121 minutes. It played SXSW and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

MADAME WEB**


New York, 2003. A tough cynical loner paramedic resents her dead mother for conducting dangerous experiments in South America while pregnant, so dying in childbirth. After an accident, the loner discovers she can see into the future and so prevent bad stuff happening. She also finds herself taking care of three young women who are being stalked by an evil villain in a spider suit. He's also had a vision that these wastrels are gonna kill him in the future. Meanwhile, our heroine's best friend and fellow paramedic Ben Parker's sister-in-law is about to go into labour.

The well known problem with MADAME WEB is that 15 years into the Marvel revolution nobody gives a shit. Dakota Johnson - whose low-key low-energy style suits many an indie film - definitely doesn't give a shit about a lead role she is miscast in. Tahar Rahim (NAPOLEON) and Zosia Mamet (Girls) is wasted as the baddie.  The three young women are given underwritten parts that are just a bag of tropes. Spoiled rich brat, nerdy shy girl etc. The action scenes from first-time feature director S J Clarkson are uninspired. The prologue is unnecessary. And the script is overlong with too many establishing examples of how being pre-cog works. The final shot features a now blind and paraplegic Madame Web hovering, masked, with her three proteges. It's a flash forward to a film nobody wants to see. 

MADAME WEB is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes. It is on global release.

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE**


Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (KING RICHARD) returns to our screens with a biopic that is limp and uninspired. I am not sure how you make a film such a boring film about a musician as talented as Bob Marley, let alone a musician as mired in the violence of his native Jamaica. It is even more disappointing when you realise that the film was written by iconic show runner Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET). The result is a Tab A into Slot B film that portrays Bob as a naive hapless fool and martyr who pumped out a classic album before succumbing to cancer. To be honest, I was relieved when he died. I came out none the wiser as to the political violence that forced Bob to flee Jamaica for England. And I was certainly not allowed to see the darker side of Bob's personality. This film is weak sauce hagiography. And while Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI) does a decent enough physical and verbal impression of Bob it just all feels very superficial and performative. 

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG-13. It went on global release last month.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

LOVE LIES BLEEDING**


British writer-director Rose Glass (ST MAUD) returns to our screen with a Tarantino-esque GRINDHOUSE movie where romance and violence sit together in a film in which earnest emotions, comic-book stylings and laugh-out-loud absurdism sit uneasily together. For me, the film was less than the sum of its parts, but there's no doubt that the BFI Flare crowd loved it, laughing uproariously throughout. My question is whether they were laughing at, or with, a film that seemed to waste Kristen Stewart's earnest performance.

Stewart stars as Lou - a gay woman who works at a gym in a dusty desert border town seemingly run by her gun-running badass father (Ed Harris in comedy hair extensions). Lou only sticks around to protect her sister (Jena Malone) from her abusive husband. This doesn't sit well with Lou's new lover Jackie (Katy O'Brian), who dreams of winning a body building championship in Vegas and driving to the coast with Lou for a new life. 

What could've been a deeply felt emotionally intense relationship drama becomes a nasty little crime movie when Jackie goes Hulk-Smash on Lou's scumbag brother-in-law and we discover Lou's talent for cleaning up murders. I love a grungy scuzzy crime caper, but what made this a bit frustrating is that I was being asked to take the central relationship with Hulk seriously. It felt like every tonal shift was pinging me about and what was so bad it's good finally just became it's bad.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING has a running time of 104 minutes and is rated R. It played Berlin, Sundance and BFI Flare 2024 and is currently on release in the USA. It opens in the UK on April 19th.