Review: ‘Madres’ (2021), starring Tenoch Huerta, Ariana Guerra, Evelyn Gonzalez, Kerry Cahill and Elpidia Carrillo

December 31, 2021

by Carla Hay

Ariana Guerra in “Madres” (Photo by Alfonso Bresciani/ Amazon Content Services)

“Madres” (2021)

Directed by Ryan Zaragoza

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1977 in California’s fictional Golden Valley, the horror film “Madres” features a predominantly Latino cast (with some white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A Mexican immigrant and his pregnant American-born wife relocate from Los Angeles to rural Golden Valley and find themselves caught in a dangerous mystery over why women in the area have a history of pregnancy trauma and infertility. 

Culture Audience: “Madres” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching movies that are based on real-life horror stories.

Tenoch Huerta and Ariana Guerra in “Madres” (Photo by Alfonso Bresciani/ Amazon Content Services)

“Madres” is a “slow burn” horror movie that’s bound to make people uncomfortable. Even though there are supernatural elements in the story, it’s based on real-life traumatic incidents involving motherhood. The final 20 minutes of the movie make up for the aspects of the story that tend to get repetitive. The cast members of “Madres” also capably handle the material.

“Madres” is part of Blumhouse Television’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series partnership with Prime Video to showcase horror/thriller movies directed by women and people of color. Directed by Ryan Zaragoza and written by Marcella Ochoa and Mario Miscione, “Madres” at first appears to be a standard ghost story about a couple who have seemingly moved into a haunted house. But by the end of the movie, viewers will know that even though “Madres” takes place in 1977, the film makes an impactful statement about a shameful problem in society that still happens today.

In “Madres,” happily married couple Beto Obregon (played by Tenoch Huerta) and Diana Obregon (played by Ariana Guerra) are shown arriving in the rural, fictional town of Golden Valley in the northern part of California. Beto (who is 30 years old) and Diana (who’s about the same age or slightly younger than Beto) have moved to Golden Valley because Beto is a farm worker who has been offered a job to manage a farm. It’s his first managerial job, so the couple is excited about this job opportunity and increased salary, especially because Diana is pregnant with their first child.

Beto is an immigrant from Mexico who has been living in the United States for the past five years. He comes from a poor family, but he has the ambition and work ethic to want to achieve the American Dream. Diana was born in the United States and comes from a middle-class family who was originally from Mexico. Because Diana doesn’t speak Spanish and because she has a light skin tone, she could be mistaken for being a white American. It’s mentioned in the movie that Diana’s parents discouraged her from learning Spanish, which implies that her parents want to distance themselves from their Mexican roots.

“Madres” doesn’t just look at nationality issues. The movie also touches on conflicts that arise because of social class and colorism. In a phone conversation between Diana and her sister Veronica, viewers find out that Diana’s parents do not approve of her marriage to Beto, because he’s uneducated, he’s dark-skinned, and because the parents think Beto will be nothing but a poor farmer. Because of this disapproval, Diana has kept her distance from her parents, who seem to prefer Veronica as the “favored child.”

Diana has a journalism degree. Before she got pregnant, Diana worked as a journalist, but she got fired from her job for being pregnant, but she plans to go back to work when she can. In the meantime, during her pregnancy, Diana has been working on a book. It isn’t long after Diana and Beto are settled into their fixer-upper home that problems start happening.

Diana starts having nightmares, including one shown during the movie’s opening scene where Diana dreams that she has a newborn baby who disappears when the baby’s crib suddenly fills with dirt. Diana also starts to see and hear frightful things at various times of the day and night, such as shadowy figures, a boy with a bloody eye who’s hiding in a tree, and some egg yolk that looks like it starting to bleed.

“Madres” is definitely a “things that go bump in the night” movie, since a lot of scenes are about Diana witnessing something and starting to question her sanity. Sometimes, Beto goes to investigate things that Diana says that she’s seen, but he doesn’t find anything. In the meantime, Diana and Beto become increasingly worried about all of this stress will affect their unborn child.

At his new job, Beto’s supervisor is Tomas (played by Joseph Garcia), who seems to have a lot of confidence in Beto as a new hire. Beto earns the respect of his co-workers (who are all Hispanics/Latinos), but Diana has a harder time fitting into this farm community. At a company picnic, Diana feels like an outsider because she seems to be the only one who doesn’t know how to speak Spanish. And as a newcomer to the area, she also finds it difficult to adjust to living in a rural way of life in this tight-knit community

Even though Diana doesn’t speak Spanish fluently, she does know some words in Spanish. Therefore, Diana can still understand that she’s getting catty and jealous remarks from some of the other wives at this gathering. They think that Diana is too uppity for this clique because she’s light-skinned, college-educated, and never bothered to learn how to speak Spanish. A woman named Rosa (played by Leydi Morales), who is married to a farm worker named Rafael Ernesto (played by René Mena), seems to be the most jealous one in this group of farm worker wives.

During this picnic, Diana finds out that pregnancy and motherhood are touchy subjects in this community. Many of the women in the area have had miscarriages or can’t get pregnant. There are stories going around that maybe the women of Golden Valley are cursed.

Not long after moving to Golden Valley, Beto and Diana go to a gift shop, where they are greeted by Anita (played by Elpidia Carrillo), the shop owner. She offers to give a blessing to the Beto, Diana and their unborn child. Anita sells a lot of trinkets in shop, which looks like she caters to a lot of people who believe in superstitions. It should come as no surprise that Anita is called “The Witch Lady” by many of the locals.

One day, Anita shows up unannounced at Beto and Diana’s house and tries to give Diana a necklace for “protection.” Diana, who is put off by this unexpected visit, says that she’s not superstitious and she firmly refuses this gift. Anita insists that she gives this gift to all pregnant women in the town, but Diana still refuses to take the necklace.

The rest of “Madres” follows Diana’s pregnancy journey that goes from hopeful to harrowing. At one point, Diana ends up in a hospital maternity ward where someone named Nurse Carol (played by Kerry Cahill) is exactly like the type of nurse that you think she is when she interacts with Diana. Along the way, she tries to get to the bottom of the mystery of the house’s previous resident: A woman named Teresa Flores, who died in 1955, and left many of her possessions behind.

Why was the house unoccupied for 22 years before Beto and Diana moved there? Is Teresa possibly haunting the house? And if so, why? And does Anita know more than she’s telling Diana? All of those questions are answered in the movie.

“Madres” is not the type of horror movie that has a lot of action and gore. Anyone looking for that type of content throughout the film will probably be disappointed. The movie overall doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, in terms of jump scares or cinematography. Guerra’s performance is believable and carries the movie. Whether are not viewers like “Madres” largely depends on how much they can connect with Guerra’s portrayal of Diana.

And it takes a while for the movie to pick up its pace. The second half of “Madres” is better than the first half. By the end of “Madres,” it will become clear that the movie isn’t the usual ghost story. The biggest horror in the film doesn’t come from the supernatural but from human beings who commit heinous acts of evil.

Prime Video premiered “Madres” on October 8, 2021.

Review: ‘Black as Night,’ starring Asjha Cooper, Fabrizio Guido, Mason Beauchamp, Frankie Smith, Abbie Gayle, Craig Tate and Keith David

December 30, 2021

by Carla Hay

Fabrizio Guido, Mason Beauchamp, Asjha Cooper and Abbie Gayle in “Black as Night” (Photo by Alfonso Bresciani/Amazon Content Services)

“Black as Night”

Directed by Maritte Lee Go

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Orleans, the horror film “Black as Night” features a racially diverse cast (Latino, white, African American and Asian) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Teenagers battle vampires that are plaguing their city. 

Culture Audience: “Black as Night” will appeal primarily to people who want to see botched preaching about racism in a low-quality horror movie.

A scene from “Black as Night” (Photo by Alan Markfield/Amazon Content Services)

The vampire flick “Black as Night” uses racism and colorism as punchlines in ways that aren’t very funny and end up being grating in how these jokes are repeated. It’s an awful horror movie that thinks it’s being clever, when it actually dumbs everything down for the audience in a very formulaic way. As an example of how shoddy and phony the filmmaking is in “Black as Night,” the movie takes place in New Orleans and was filmed on location in New Orleans, but no one in the movie sounds like they’re from New Orleans.

“Black as Night” is filled with degrading stereotypes of African Americans and gay men. The movie’s protagonist is an African American teenage girl who is constantly made to feel inferior because she has darker skin than her African American peers. (It’s the reason why the movie’s title “Black as Night” has a double meaning.) And when viewers find out who the chief villain is in the story, it just shows more terrible stereotyping of African Americans.

“Black as Night” is part of Blumhouse Television’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series partnership with Prime Video to showcase horror/thriller movies directed by women and people of color. Directed by Maritte Lee Go, and written by Sherman Payne and Jay Walker, “Black as Night” wants desperately to look authentic, when it comes to African American culture and how an African American female is supposed to act. However, the filmmaking team chose not to include any African American women as a director, writer or producer for this movie. It’s why so much of “Black as Night,” which centers on an African American female, smacks of so much inauthenticity.

The protagonist and narrator of “Black as Night” is a teenager named Shawna (played by Asjha Cooper), who’s about 16 or 17. Her best friend/classmate is an openly gay, Mexican immigrant named Pedro (played by Fabrizio Guido), who is every bit of the “sassy and gossipy gay best friend” stereotype that has been overdone in movies and TV. Shawna and Pedro spend a lot of their time making racist comments about white people, because they automatically think most white people are racists.

The first time that Shawna and Pedro are seen in the movie, they’re sunning themselves on the roof of a building that could be where Shawna or Pedro lives. In a hindsight voiceover, Shawna says, “We didn’t know it yet, [but] the summer I got breasts was the same summer I fought vampires.” That’s the first sign that this movie about a teenage girl was written by men.

Before the part of the movie happens where Shawna and Pedro fight vampires, their biggest worries are about school and their families. Shawna says she won’t try out for the school’s dance team because “90% of the girls they pick are Creole because of a certain look.” In other words, they look light-skinned or biracial.

Meanwhile, Pedro is a track athlete who’s been offered a full athletic scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in Texas, but Pedro doesn’t want to go because he says that doesn’t want to go to a school that has a lot of white people. He also says that he doesn’t want to move far away from his family in New Orleans. In other words, Shawn and Pedro deprive themselves of opportunities and want to blame their self-sabatoging on other people. Immediately, viewers can see how annoying these two characters are going to be with this negative attitude.

And it gets worse. Shawna has a crush on a good-looking and popular student named Chris Thompson (played by Mason Beauchamp), but she believes she doesn’t have a chance with him because she thinks that Chris is out of her league. Why? Shawna worries that her skin might be too dark for him. It doesn’t help that Shawna’s older brother Jamal (played by Frankie Smith) tells her that Chris prefers “Creole girls.” Jamal also taunts Shawna for her skin color by calling her “Wesley Snipes with braids.”

The negative stereotypes continue. Shawna and Jamal’s mother Denise (played by Kenneisha Thompson) lives in a separate household because she’s a drug addict. The filmmakers have Denise live in a “ghetto” building in a “ghetto” part of town. There is absolutely no good reason for why the filmmakers made Shawna’s mother be a drug addict, except to reinforce negative stereotypes that most African American kids have a parent who’s a drug addict and/or a criminal. In reality, that stereotype is not true for most African American kids and most African American parents.

Shawn and Jamal’s father Steven (played by Derek Roberts) has full custody and is raising Shawn and Jamal as a single parent. There’s a scene where Shawna visits her mother, who seems more concerned about how much money she can get from Shawna than spending quality time with Shawna. And since “Black as Night” is a movie has no use for showing any African American woman as a positive female role model for Shawna, viewers shouldn’t be surprised to find out what happens to Denise.

Meanwhile, community activists are protesting the impending demolition of the Ombreaux housing projects to make way for the construction of higher-priced residential buildings. The reconstruction will displace low-income residents, who won’t be able to afford the new housing that will be built. What does this all have to do with the vampire story in “Black as Night”? It’s because homeless or low-income African Americans in the area are being turned into vampires, as shown in the movie’s opening scene.

The “Black as Night” plot has a few twists and turns that aren’t very imaginative. But it’s enough to say that Shawna has very personal reasons for the “race against time” to find the head vampire to kill. Keith David appears toward the end of the movie as a character named Babineaux, who holds the key to the mystery.

Meanwhile, Shawna and Pedro enlist the help of another teen named Granya (played by Abbie Gayle), who’s the leader of a vampire book club for other teenage girls. Shawn and Pedro need Granya to teach them about how to hunt vampires. Pedro and Shawna make a lot of snarky racist comments about Granya because she’s white and comes from a well-to-do family—as if those are good-enough reasons to automatically ridicule someone.

Anyone who watches “Black as Night” has to endure a lot of bratty teen talk and politically correct preaching that tries too hard to make this low-quality horror flick look like it has a social conscience. It’s all so fake because of all the reverse racism that is condoned and celebrated in this movie. That’s not to say that the movie shouldn’t acknowledge that white supremacists exist, but the movie is unrelenting in repeating Shawna’s and Pedro’s belief that all white people are racists until proven otherwise. That belief is racist too.

The acting in “Black as Night” isn’t very impressive. Cooper shows potential if she’s given better characters to play. The rest of the cast members either play stereotypes or characters with bland and forgettable personalities. Shawna is supposed to be a hero, but the filmmakers have this misguided belief that it’s heroic to make African Americans blame everything on white supremacy. It’s an oversimplified and irresponsible portrayal about the complex issues surrounding racism and colorism. And it’s an understatement to say that this horror movie badly mishandles these issues.

The answer to the movie’s vampire mystery is a complete cop-out that just reinforces negative stereotypes of African Americans. The final battle scene isn’t very creative and actually quite irritating because the characters make wisecracking jokes during this fight. It’s one of many examples of how “Black as Night” can’t decide if it wants to be a social justice horror movie or a comedic horror movie. Trying to be both at the same time just cancels any credibility of either intention.

And arguably worst of all, “Black as Night” has an unbelievably weak and moronic ending. There are at least a dozen better ways that the movie could have ended. The ending is so bad, it’s like the filmmakers wanted to give a middle finger to viewers who wasted their time watching this smug trash dump of a film. If movie fans want to see a quality horror movie, then the best way that they can give a middle finger back to this filmmaker contempt of viewers is to avoid watching “Black as Night.”

Prime Video premiered “Black as Night” on October 1, 2021.

Review: ‘Bingo Hell,’ starring Adriana Barraza, L. Scott Caldwell, Richard Brake, Clayton Landey, Jonathan Medina, Bertila Damas and Grover Coulson

December 30, 2021

by Carla Hay

Richard Brake in “Bingo Hell” (Photo by Brian Roedel/Amazon Content Services)

“Bingo Hell”

Directed by Gigi Saul Guerrero

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional U.S. city of Oak Springs, the horror film “Bingo Hell” features a racially diverse cast of characters (Latino, white, African American and Asian) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A working-class city affected by gentrification gets targeted by a sinister gambling mogul, who promises to make people rich by playing bingo. 

Culture Audience: “Bingo Hell” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching horror movies that put more emphasis on campiness than being scary.

Clayton Landey, Bertila Damas, Adriana Barraza, L. Scott Caldwell and Grover Coulson in “Bingo Hell” (Photo by Brian Roedel/Amazon Content Services)

“Bingo Hell” takes a good concept for a horror movie and squanders it on a cheap-looking flick that’s short on scares and too heavy on campiness. It’s like a very inferior episode of “Tales From the Crypt” but made into a movie. Not even the charismatic talent of “Babel” Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza can save this misguided and monotonous film, because the “Bingo Hell” filmmakers make her protagonist character into a simplistic and annoying parody of a busybody senior citizen.

“Bingo Hell” is part of Blumhouse Television’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series partnership with Prime Video to showcase horror/thriller movies directed by women and people of color. The movie touches on issues that many underprivileged people of color face when they are priced out of neighborhoods that become gentrified. However, this social issue is flung by the wayside when the movie devolves into a predictable and dull story about a demon taking over a community, culminating in a badly staged showdown with no surprises.

Gigi Saul Guerrero directed “Bingo Hell” and co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Shane McKenzie and Perry Blackshear. For Hulu’s “Into the Dark” horror anthology series (another Blumhouse production), Guerrero directed and co-wrote 2019’s “Culture Shock,” which did a much better job of combining horror with socioeconomic issues of race and privilege in America. One of the worst aspects of “Bingo Hell” is the movie’s musical score, which sounds like irritating sitcom music. The score music (by Chase Horseman) is very ill-suited for a horror movie that’s supposed to be terrifying.

In “Bingo Hell,” Barraza plays a widow named Lupita, a feisty, longtime resident of the fictional U.S. city called Oak Springs. Most of Oak Springs’ residents are low-income, working-class people. Senior citizens and people of color are a large percentage of the city’s population. Lupita, who lives by herself, has been getting letters in the mail from real-estate developers asking her to sell her home, but she refuses.

As an example of how she feels about being unwilling to sell her home, an early scene in the movie shows Lupita getting one of these letters, from a company called Torregano Real Estate. She takes a lit cigar and stubs it on the letter. Lupita rants to anyone who listens that no amount of money can make her sell her home. She also doesn’t like that some of her friends have taken offers to sell their homes, and she fears that more of her neighborhood friends will also sell their homes and move away.

And if it isn’t made clear enough that Lupita hates that her neighborhood is being gentrified, when she walks down a street and sees a young hipster woman drinking coffee, Lupita deliberately bumps into the woman so that she spills the coffee. Lupita pretends to be sorry for this “accident,” but she really isn’t sorry. She has a smug grin on her face, as if she’s glad that that she caused this mishap. Lupita is a senior citizen in her 60s, but she has the emotional maturity of a 16-year-old.

Lupita is a stereotypical nosy old lady who has to be in everybody else’s business because she has too much time on her hands. One by one, she visits her four closest confidants. Yolanda (played by Bertila Demas) is a friendly owner of a hair salon, where gossipy grandmother Dolores (played by L. Scott Caldwell) is a regular customer. Just like Lupita, Dolores says she doesn’t want to sell her house.

Clarence (played by Grover Coulson) is a laid-back mechanic who’s been working on one of his vintage cars for years. He’s been working on it for so long, it’s become an inside joke among these friends. Morris (played by Clayton Landey) is a “regular guy” plumber who comes into the hair salon one day to do some pipe repairs. Morris has a crush on Yolanda. Since they are both single, there’s some flirtation between them that’s not very interesting.

The community has been talking about the mysterious death of a widower named Mario (played by David Jensen), who is shown dying in the movie’s opening scene. He is sitting at a table in his home with a crazed look on his face, as he says: “I sold the house to him. I love him.”

A sinister-sounding male voice in the distance can be heard saying, “She would be so proud,” in reference to Mario’s late wife Patricia. Mario suddenly begins gorging on bingo balls until he chokes and dies. Meanwhile, a suitcase of cash is seen nearby in the room where Mario has died. All of these are obvious clues about what’s to come later in the story.

Meanwhile, Dolores has been having some family drama at home. Her rebellious teenage grandson Caleb (played by Joshua Caleb Johnson) and Caleb’s single mother Raquel (played by Kelly Murtagh) have come to stay with Dolores because Raquel has been having financial problems. Dolores’ son is Caleb’s father, who is described in the movie as a deadbeat dad who is not involved in raising Caleb.

Raquel and Dolores frequently clash because Dolores thinks that Raquel is a terrible mother who’s too lenient with Caleb (who’s about 15 or 16), while Raquel thinks Dolores is too strict and a failure as a mother because Dolores’ son turned out to be an irresponsible person. The movie wastes a lot of time with this family squabbling. The only purpose is to show that Raquel is money-hungry but she’s too lazy to want to find a job, which is an attitude that affects her decisions later in the movie.

It’s also problematic that the one character in the movie who’s a young African American male is portrayed as someone who commits crimes. Caleb’s misdeeds include breaking into cars. It’s such a lazy and unnecessary negative stereotype that is over-used in movies and TV. This gross stereotype doesn’t accurately represent the reality that most African American teens are not troublemaking criminals.

Dolores spends a lot of time at Oak Springs Community Center East, where she and some of her friends like to play bingo. The community center is also a place for support-group meetings. Eric (played by Jonathan Medina) is a local man in his 30s who leads a support group meeting.

Lupita invites Eric to the next bingo game, but he declines, by saying: “Bingo is not my thing. Maybe in 50 years, when I’m your age.” Eric isn’t disrespectful to Lupita, because he calls Lupita and Dolores “legends” of Oak Springs. Lupita feels good enough about the community center that when she finds a $100 bill on the street (the bill is covered with a mysterious white gummy substance), she donates the $100 to the community center by dropping the bill in a donation box.

Not long after this act of generosity, a big black Cadillac shows up in town. The driver calls himself Mr. Big (played by Richard Brake), a gambling mogul who speaks in an exaggerated Southern drawl and has an evil smirk. Mr. Big has come to town because he’s opening Mr. Big’s Bingo, a gambling hall specifically for bingo games.

Mr. Big talks in the type of grandiose clichés that you might expect from a carnival huckster or an infomercial hawker. He shouts to a crowd in Oak Springs: “They say that money can’t buy happiness! I disagree! You know what kinds of people believe this nonsense? Losers! Now tell me, Oak Springs, are you losers?”

Mr. Big makes a big splash in the community by showing off his wealth and with a flashy ad campaign where he promises that people can win thousands of dollars per game at Mr. Big’s Bingo. After this bingo hall opens, people in the community who play at Mr. Big’s Bingo inevitably get greedy and competitive. Because it’s a horror movie, you know where this is going, of course.

The horror part of “Bingo Hell” is frustratingly undercut by hammy acting from Brake and the aforementioned sitcom-like musical score. Meanwhile, the characters in the movie act increasingly like caricatures, as the cast members give average or subpar performances. What started out as a promising portrait of how gentrification and greed can cause horror in a community turns into a silly gorefest with ultimately nothing meaningful to say and nothing truly frightening to show.

Prime Video premiered “Bingo Hell” on October 1, 2021.

Review: ‘The Cleaner’ (2021), starring King Orba, Shelley Long, Eden Brolin, Shiloh Fernandez, Luke Wilson and Lynda Carter

December 30, 2021

by Carla Hay

King Orba in “The Cleaner” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Films)

“The Cleaner” (2021)

Directed by Erin Elders

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the dramatic film “The Cleaner” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A down-on-his luck house cleaner gets mixed up in dangerous activities when he’s hired to find a woman’s missing and wayward adult son.

Culture Audience: “The Cleaner” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching a poorly constructed crime movie with subpar acting.

Lynda Carter in “The Cleaner” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Films)

There’s something dirty and rotten about “The Cleaner.” And it’s not just the scumbag characters in this movie. It’s a crime drama that tries to go for gritty realism, but it’s just a ridiculous mess of a story with terrible dialogue, lousy acting and uneven pacing. The ending is so cliché, it’s cringeworthy.

“The Cleaner” is the feature-film directorial debut of Erin Elders, who co-wrote the movie with King Orba. Unfortunately, Elders seems to have let his screenwriter collaboration with Orba cloud his judgment on who to cast as the movie’s protagonist/title character. Orba is the lead character in this movie, and his wooden acting is by far the worst in this cast, which has a random mix of longtime actors whose careers peaked years ago.

It’s also one of those movies that takes too long (the first third of the movie) to get to the point of the story. In “The Cleaner,” Orba portrays Buck Enderly, a down-on-his-luck house cleaner who lives alone in a trailer in an unnamed U.S. city. Before he was a house cleaner, he sold RVs, but he got fired from his job for being an underperforming salesperson. Buck is so broke that he has to get around by bicycle because his car blew its transmission, and he can’t afford to get the car fixed or buy a new car.

Enderly Cleaning is a company that Buck’s cranky mother Sharon Enderly (played by Shelley Long) founded years ago. She’s now retired but concerned that Buck won’t be able to keep the business going. And she has cause for concern: Business has been very slow lately. Because of a recession, people are making cutbacks on their household budgets, including housecleaning services.

“The Cleaner” is a slow-paced film with a rushed ending. Much of the slow pace is because the movie wastes a lot of time showing Buck’s somewhat tense relationship with his mother Sharon, and how he gets to know two new neighbors who move in next door to Sharon. These neighbors are live-in lovers Trent (played by Hopper Penn) and Becky (played by Eden Brolin), who have a volatile relationship because Trent physically and emotionally abuses Becky.

Becky invites Sharon to a housewarming party, where Sharon gets drunk and then sprains her ankle. And so, there’s some drama with Buck having to take Sharon to a hospital, but he doesn’t have a car, so he has to ask Trent and Becky for a ride. It’s all just a contrivance because it leads to a subplot where Sharon is prescribed medication that her insurance doesn’t fully cover.

That leads to Buck stealing batteries (don’t ask) when he goes to the pharmacy to get her prescription medication and finds out he doesn’t have the money to cover the cost. Buck gets arrested for shoplifting after a silly chase scene where he tries to get away. But what do you know: The cop who arrests Buck just happens to be his estranged younger brother Craig Enderly (played by Faust Checho), who hasn’t spoken to Buck in months because he thinks Buck is a loser.

Luckily for Buck, the pharmacy manager decides not to press charges, so Buck doesn’t spend any time in jail for the shoplifting. And did we mention that Craig has a girlfriend named Vanessa (played by Milena Govich), whom Sharon can’t stand, even though Craig plans to marry Vanessa? Craig and Sharon have a rocky relationship because Craig blames Sharon for her husband (the father of Craig and Buck) leaving the family when Craig and Buck were children.

All of this family drama with Sharon and her children has nothing to do with what this movie is really about, but the filmmakers clogged up “The Cleaner” with this storyline, in order to pad out a very thin plot. There are also several time-wasting scenes with Buck hanging out with his marijuana dealer James (played by James Paxton), who’s young enough to be Buck’s son. Even though Buck whines to a lot of people about how broke he is, he still has enough money to buy marijuana. Priorities.

What “The Cleaner” is really about is an unexpected job that Buck is hired to do: He agrees to be an unofficial private investigator (even though he has no experience in this area) to find a missing person. The job comes about when one of Buck’s housecleaning clients named Jim Russell (played by Luke Wilson) lays him off due to budget cuts. Jim feels bad about letting Buck go, so Jim refers Buck to a neighbor who might need housecleaning services.

This neighbor is a has-been/retired singer named Carlene Briggs (played by Lynda Carter), who lives alone and isn’t interested in hiring Buck for housecleaning services. When Buck goes over to Carlene’s house for the first time, she openly flirts with him and makes him listen to her croon in her living room, as if it’s some kind of cabaret lounge. She wears a frilly négligée and even has a microphone for this living-room performance. Yes, it’s that kind of movie.

Buck resists Carlene’s flirtatious advances, so she then asks him if he can provide some investigative services for her. Apparently, even though Buck has no experience in private detective work, Carlene thinks that Buck looks like the type who knows his way around the seedy underbelly of this community. And so, she asks Buck to find her missing adult son Andrew Briggs (played by Shiloh Fernandez), whom she describes as a drug addict and a thief.

Carlene is only paying $1,000 to Buck if he finds Andrew, which is an appallingly low amount of money for this type of private investigator work. Buck, like an idiot, doesn’t ask for more money. He’s so desperate for money, he says yes to the job. Carlene doesn’t seem concerned that she’s hiring someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s one of many eye-rolling aspects of this moronic movie.

“The Cleaner” then goes down a rabbit hole of stupidity as viewers are expected to believe some of the things that happen when a woefully incompetent Buck does some “detective work” that involves some “only in a movie” type of dumb luck. The only realistic thing about Buck’s “detective work” is that he has to ask his cop brother Craig for help in accessing information records that only law enforcement or real private detectives would be able to access.

The movie also has somewhat strange and random casting of actors that’s an awkward mix. Soleil Moon Frye, best known for starring in the 1980s sitcom “Punky Brewster,” has a cameo as a trashy-looking barfly named Kristi. She’s not believable in this role. And it seems like the only reason why Carter took the role in this film is to showcase her singing, which does not fit this supposedly gritty story well at all. The ending of “The Cleaner” ties in to the movie’s opening scene, where a shooting takes place at a diner. But it’s not enough to cover up all the loose ends and unnecessary scenes that make the movie an insufferable, tangled mess.

1091 Pictures released “The Cleaner” on digital and VOD on October 12, 2021.

Review: ‘The Sound of Identity,’ starring Lucia Lucas

December 29, 2021

by Carla Hay

Hidenouri Inoue and Lucia Lucas in “The Sound of Identity” (Photo courtesy of Shout! Studios)

“The Sound of Identity” 

Directed by James Kicklighter

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the documentary “The Sound of Identity” features a nearly all-white group of people (with one Asian person) discussing the life and career of Lucia Lucas, the first female baritone to perform a principal role on an American operatic stage.

Culture Clash: Lucas, who is a transgender woman, encounters obstacles and prejudice because of her transgender identity.

Culture Audience: “The Sound of Identity” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in stories of transgender people succeeding in traditionally conservative and elitist environments.

Lucia Lucas and Tobias Picker in “The Sound of Identity” (Photo courtesy of Shout! Studios)

You can count on one hand the number of female baritones who have been a principal cast member of a major operatic production. The revealing documentary “The Sound of Identity” tells the fascinating story of opera singer Lucia Lucas, the first female baritone to star in an American-produced opera. The fact that Lucas is a transgender woman makes her story even more unique and compelling.

Directed by James Kicklighter, “The Sound of Identity” follows a conventional format of interviews, archival footage and scenes that are exclusive to the documentary. Although Lucas talks about the part of her life before she began openly living as a transgender woman, the movie doesn’t dwell too much on her past. The focus on the movie is primarily on Lucas’ career as an opera singer.

Born in 1980, Lucas doesn’t talk too much about her childhood, except to say she still has emotional scars from her parents’ divorce. She half-jokingly says that one good thing that came out of her parents’ divorce was that her father gave her a Nintendo video game system because he felt bad about the divorce. Nintendo sparked an interest in playing video games that Lucas still has today.

Lucas, who is an only child from her parents’ broken marriage, says she still feels emotionally hurt by that her father, had a hard time accepting that she is transgender. Lucas is close to her mother, whom she describes as completely accepting of Lucas’ transgender identity. She and her mother speak frequently by phone, as shown in the documentary.

Lucas’ father, Jack Harbour, got remarried and gained a new family (including a stepson and stepdaughter) after the divorce. Lucas expresses some resentment that her father was more attentive to his younger children than he was to her. As soon as Lucas talks about her “daddy issues,” you just know there’s going to be a scene in the documentary where her father is going to see one of her performances. That scene happens toward the end of the film.

Lucas comments, “The worst time, absolutely, in my life was in junior high, because I felt like my body was betraying my mind.” The movie could have had more insight into how Lucas discovered her passion for opera and how she developed her craft when she was younger. And there isn’t much discussion about any particular performers had an influence on Lucas.

Despite some painful childhood memories, Lucas seems to be in a good place in her life. She’s happily married to her wife, Ariana Lucas, a former professional singer who stood by Lucas during her transgender transition. (Ariana is interviewed in the documentary.) The biggest challenge in the couple’s relationship is all the time that Lucia has to spend traveling because of her job. As Lucia says in the documentary: “Performing is not the job. The job is traveling all over the place and not getting sick.”

The portrait that emerges of Lucia is of someone is focused and determined to be the best opera singer that she can be. Her current performing home base is in Oklahoma, at the Tulsa Opera at the Tulsa Center for Performing Arts. The documentary chronicles Lucia’s journey as the star of the Tulsa Opera’s 2018 production of “Don Giovanni,” as a rare female singer to perform the opera’s title role.

Lucia says of the Tulsa Center for the Performing Arts: “This theater is sacred in a way.” She also comments on performing live: “There’s no substitute for it. [Performing virtually] is not going to make up for that energy when you are in person.” Lucia is also a Method actor, immersing herself into the role she has at the time, even when she’s not on stage.

But one of the challenges for this “Don Giovanni” production is selling tickets. As Tulsa Opera development associate Susan Stiff says in the documentary, the audience for opera is shrinking. The movie shows that Lucia is not a diva who thinks it’s beneath her to do grunt work tasks to sell tickets. In the documentary, she’s a tireless promoter: She doesn’t hesitate to handout promotional flyers for “Don Giovanni” and paying for the flyers herself. “I’ve been told it’s not my job to sell tickets,” Lucia says.

In her interactions with the public to convince random people to buy tickets to “Don Giovanni,” Lucia shows a natural curiosity and a flair for making an impression when she asks people what they think of a transgender woman starring in the show. She doesn’t convince everyone to buy tickets, but she seems to have opened up people’s minds a little bit to the idea that it’s not far-fetched for a well-known opera to gender swap in the character in the title role.

As for the idea of having a transgender woman in the role of Don Giovanni, Tulsa Opera general director/CEO Ken McConnell comments: “We’re not trying to make a political statement. We’re not trying to offend people.” Tulsa Opera artistic director/composer Tobias Picker adds: “It’s an added benefit that she’s trans. No trans singer has performed ‘Don Giovanni’ in the world.”

“Don Giovanni” director Denni Sayers comments, “It just shows that we’re not doing anything traditional here.” Later in the documentary, Sayers notes of having a transgender woman in the role of Don Giovanni: “We’re not saying that Don Giovanni is a transgender person. We’re saying that Don Giovanni is a master of disguise.”

As for how the public reacted to this unusual casting, “Don Giovanni” conductor Andres Cladera observes that the audience members seem to enjoy the singing, but they often have a hard time looking at Lucia. It’s no doubt because it’s difficult for some people to reconcile such a deep singing voice coming out of the mouth of a woman. Overall, the reaction to this version of “Don Giovanni” is very positive.

The documentary shows how Lucia and Picker have a close friendship not just because of their passion for opera but also because Picker is an openly gay man who is a tireless LGBTQ activist, just like Lucia is. Picker shares some of his personal story when he says that growing up gay and having Tourette Syndrome, “I felt like a freak.” Picker adds, “I am interested in helping people who are oppressed.”

The group of people interviewed for the documentary consists mostly of people directly involved in the “Don Giovanni” production. They include actor Hidenouri Inoue, who had the role of the Commendatore; actor Michael St. Peter, who had the role of Don Ottavio; actor Anthony Clark Evans, who had the role of Leporello; and Tulsa Opera vice chair Ronnie Jobe. Also interviewed are Lucia’s half-sister Kaitlin Schaars and Michael Cooper, who was theater editor for The New York Times at the time.

The documentary acknowledges that opera is not a genre of music that’s been embraced by popular culture. In North America and Europe, opera attracts people who are mostly affluent, mostly white and mostly over the age of 40. It’s briefly mentioned that the Tulsa Opera board of directors has struggled with its lack of racial diversity.

The board also has issues with attracting young people to become loyal opera audience members, because younger generations are needed to economically sustain the business over time when older people eventually pass away. It’s not said outright, but Lucia’s groundbreaking role in opera is a sign that opera institutions (at least in Tulsa and some other places) are open to progressive and open-minded casting decisions. It’s not just for idealistic reasons, but there are financial reasons too: Lucia’s starring role in “Don Giovanni” got a lot of publicity that helped sell tickets.

“The Sound of Identity” is a fairly straightforward and briskly paced film that doesn’t try to be anything that it’s not. It presents Lucia mostly as a performer but doesn’t dig too deep into her entire personal history. It’s not a comprehensive biography, which might disappoint some viewers.

Instead, “The Sound of Identity” is more of a capably made snapshot of what she was like while preparing for and performing a pivotal opera in her career. The performance scenes are expected highlights of the documentary. And thankfully, the filmmakers didn’t overstuff the movie with too many talking heads.

If there’s any big takeaway from the movie it’s that true happiness starts with being true to yourself. “I make art for me,” Lucia says of her philosophy on being an artist. “Your art has to be for you. You can’t make other people like you. You can’t live your life for other people. I tried that. It didn’t work.”

Shout! Studios released “The Sound of Identity” on digital and VOD on June 1, 2021. Starz premiered the movie on June 21, 2021.

Review: ‘The Only One’ (2021), starring Jon Beavers and Caitlin Stasey

December 29, 2021

by Carla Hay

Jon Beavers and Caitlin Stasey in “The Only One” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“The Only One” (2021)

Directed by Noah Gilbert

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of France, the dramatic film “The Only One” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An American winemaker, who owns a vineyard in France, finds his world rocked when a British ex-girlfriend who dumped him six years earlier suddenly comes back into his life.

Culture Audience: “The Only One” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching a tedious and predictable drama.

Hugo Armstrong in “The Only One” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

What would you do if an ex-love who abruptly left you unexpectedly showed up in your life again when you’re single and available? That’s the dilemma presented in the drawn-out and lackluster romantic drama “The Only One,” which makes it too easy to see how everything is going to end. In addition to the bland story, the movie fails to have interesting characters. In fact, the woman who’s supposed to be the movie’s charismatic heartbreaker is actually a selfish and flaky bore.

If you watch “The Only One,” it’ll be hard not to fall asleep or to resist the urge to fast-forward through the many dull scenes in the film. Some viewers might not even have the patience to finish watching the movie. This impatience would be understandable because it’s all too obvious what’s going to happen in this movie. The two main characters haven’t changed much or learned important life lessons after not seeing each other for six years.

“The Only One” (directed by Noah Gilbert and written by his brother Seth Gilbert) has the dubious claim of setting a romantic movie in France when the movie isn’t very romantic at all. Viewers with enough life experience can easily see that the mismatched, would-be couple at the center of the story is just a hollow prop for the “will they or won’t they get together” gimmick that’s the shaky foundation for this movie. In order for a movie like this to really connect with viewers, people have to care about the would-be couple in the first place.

It seems like “The Only One” filmmakers were going for a vibe that’s similar to director Richard Linklater’s 2004 romantic reunion drama “Before Sunset.” Linklater and “Before Sunset” co-stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for the movie. “The Only One” is nowhere near as witty, charming and intriguing as “Before Sunset” but is actually just the opposite in almost every way.

“The Only One” begins with the arrival of a British woman in her early-to-mid-30s named Tom (played by Caitlin Stasey) at a mid-sized vineyard somewhere in France. The first thing she sees is a dead horse in a field on the property. It’s later revealed that the horse was named Gwen and belonged to the vineyard owner David (played by Jon Beavers), who is American and Tom’s ex-boyfriend. Tom has shown up at this vineyard unannounced and uninvited.

As she casually saunters into the vineyard house where David lives, Tom appears to be somewhat smug when she encounters David and he’s surprised to see her. “I hate to be a bummer,” Tom says to David, “but your horse is dead.” David tries to play it cool and answers, “I know.” There’s a tedious part of the movie where David finds a new horse to replace the dead one, which died of old age.

Over time, it’s very obvious that David (who is in his mid-30s) can’t hide that he’s still in love with Tom. Through conversations and flashbacks, it’s revealed that David and Tom met in Dublin six years earlier during a bonfire party. David fell hard and fast for Tom, who is a longtime drifter. The movie tries to make Tom look like a “free spirit,” but she’s really just a soul-sucking manipulator who refuses to make any real commitments or have any real responsibilities in life.

Tom and David began living together during their time in Dublin. One day, she told him that she was going out for some cigarettes. And she never went back or said goodbye. She also never made contact with David or an apology for this cold-hearted breakup until she tracked David down six years later by finding out on Instagram where he was living. Even though Tom could’ve contacted David on social media, she chose not to and decided to show up at the vineyard as a “surprise,” without really knowing how David would react to seeing her again.

In the six years since they last saw each other, David ended up living in France, where he found work at a vineyard owned by an elderly man, who became a mentor to David. When the vineyard owner died, he left the business to David in his will. David says that the old man was an “asshole” but he treated David well enough to trust him with the vineyard. David also tells Tom that the vineyard’s previous owner has two estranged daughters who definitely were not in consideration to inherit the vineyard. These daughters also seem to have no interest in the business because they’re never seen in the movie or mentioned again.

Tom gives David a brief update on what she’s been up to in the six years that since they last saw each other. She mentions that she worked for a time as a barista in Auckland, New Zealand. Tom also that she signed a home lease with “an Argentinian chick” she was dating, but Tom left this lover too. “I’ve been everywhere man,” Tom says to David, as people with empty, aimless lives do when they want to appear more glamorous than they really are.

David has a little bit of pretension about himself too. He likes to brag that his vineyard is completely organic and operates exactly how it did when it was built more than 200 years ago. That means the vineyard and everything else on the property doesn’t have electricity. David is proud of the fact that he has no modern technology, but it seems like a questionable way of doing business when this lack of technology will just make things harder and more expensive for him.

Eventually, it’s revealed that Tom’s real name is Natalie. She began calling herself Tom shortly after she met David, because she had been drinking Old Tom Gin when they met. Not much is told about Tom’s family background except that her father was in the military, which might explain why she’s accustomed to moving around a lot. It doesn’t explain why she’s such so self-centered and unreliable.

Tom/Natalie is the type of heartbreaker who gets by and gets away with a lot because of her good looks. Based on the little information that’s revealed about her, she has a pattern of using lovers for a place to live, and then she suddenly leaves them when she grows bored with them. Whatever she wants from David, it’s obviously for her own selfish reasons.

Not everyone is charmed by Tom. David’s brother-in-law Rob (played by Hugo Armstrong) intensely dislikes her not just because she owes Rob money but mostly because of how she broke David’s heart. Rob is married to David’s older sister Em (played by Blake Lindsley), and Rob is the social media manager for David’s vineyard. Em and Rob live with their two sons (one is 7, the other is 4) somewhere in Oregon, but it just so happens Rob and Em are in France to visit David at the same time that Tom shows up. The children are not with Rob and Em on this trip.

Needless to say, Rob isn’t happy to see Tom at all. In private, Rob sarcastically asks David, “Do you think it’s a coincidence that she showed up hours after Gwen [the horse] passing?” Rob is also very suspicious of what Tom wants from David. Understandably, Rob doesn’t want Tom to hurt David again.

Meanwhile, David seems to easily forgive Tom and is embarrassed when Rob mentions in front of Tom how deeply hurt David was when Tom left him. Out of pride, David downplays how devastated he was by the breakup. And even if he told Tom how much she hurt him, she doesn’t seem capable of fully understanding the type of emotional wreckage she leaves behind when she decideds to leave lovers on a whim.

At one point, David and Tom discuss why their relationship ended. This conversation just further proves how self-obsessed Tom is. He asks her, “Why did you bail on me in Dublin?” She replies, “I wanted to see Asia.” She adds, “I’m sorry … I really did go out for cigarettes.” And as if to justify the awful way that she treated David, she reminds him: “I told you I suck at dating.”

Much of “The Only One” is about the tensions that Tom stirs up with her unexpected visit. Tom, David, Rob and Em have a somewhat awkward lunch where Em tells Tom she admires and somewhat envies Tom for having the freedom to go wherever Tom wants to go. Rob can barely contain his disgust because he can see Tom for who she really is: a homeless drifter who’s come back in David’s life to see what she can get out of him.

And what exactly does Tom want from David? She tests his willingness to drop everything to hang out with her. There’s a long stretch of the movie where he ditches his vineyard responsibilities to go off and travel with her. They “borrow” Rob’s motorcycle without his permission when they go on this impulsive trip.

A major problem with “The Only One” is that Tom is very shallow and doesn’t have a captivating personality. Most people who’ve traveled and lived in several countries learn a lot about different cultures and have fascinating stories to tell. Not Tom. She mostly talks about herself and tries to get David to think that he’s become boring, now that he’s found a steady job that he likes.

Meanwhile, viewers won’t have much respect for David either, because he acts like a spineless, easily manipulated wimp when he’s with Tom. Do people act this way in real life when they’re madly in love with a narcissist? Of course. But if you’re going to make a movie about it, at least make the dialogue intriguing, not a monotonous slog. All the warning signs are there about what will happen if David decides he wants to rekindle his romance with Tom.

“The Only One” has a rambling quality to it where viewers will keep wondering where the story is going and what kind of statement this movie is trying to make. There’s a useless character named Madame Gerard (played by Niseema Theillaud), a lonely, elderly neighbor who has lunch with David every Tuesday. She adds nothing to the story, unless the filmmakers wanted to have a token French character in a movie set in France but most of the main characters are not French.

“The Only One” has some nice scenic shots of France. But that’s not enough to make a movie interesting. “The Only One” doesn’t have much to offer, in terms of memorable characters and an engaging story. The acting and direction are mediocre. And most of all, this very un-romantic movie that’s supposed to be romantic will just make viewers feel like they wasted their time watching a pointless and forgettable story.

Vertical Entertainment released “The Only One” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on December 10, 2021.

Review: ‘Azor,’ starring Fabrizio Rongione, Juan Pablo Geretto, Stéphanie Cléau and Ignacio Vila

December 28, 2021

by Carla Hay

Juan Pablo Geretto and Fabrizio Rongione in “Azor” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

“Azor”

Directed by Andreas Fontana

Spanish and French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Argentina in 1980, the dramatic film “Azor” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A Swiss banker encounters mystery and controversy when he arrives in a politically chaotic Argentina after a banker colleague disappears.

Culture Audience: “Azor” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching “slow burn” movies about international politics and financial dealings.

Fabrizio Rongione in “Azor” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

“Azor” requires patience in getting to the bottom of the mystery presented in the film. It’s a dialogue-heavy drama about a Swiss banker who travels to Argentina when one of his business partners has disappeared. The story unfolds at a pace that might be too slow for some viewers, but it should hold the interest of viewers who are intrigued by how the worlds of politics and finance are intertwined.

Swiss filmmaker Andreas Fontana makes an assured feature-film directorial debut with “Azor,” which he co-wrote with Argentinian filmmaker/actor Mariano Llinás. This international collaboration on the screenplay serves the movie well, which shows how a Swiss banker navigates his visit to Argentina in 1980, during a politically volatile period in Argentina’s history. In 1980, Argentina was under a military dictatorship.

Under these circumstances, Swiss banker Yvan de Wiel (played by Fabrizio Rongione) has traveled from Geneva, Switzerland, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, with his wife, Inès de Wiel (played by Stéphanie Cléau), because of an urgent matter: Yvan’s business partner René Keys (played by Alain Gegenschatz) has disappeared. René also happens to be Inès’ cousin, but she tells Yvan that she doesn’t know where René is or when he’ll be coming back.

Yvan and René are among the owners of a private financial institution called Keys Lamar De Wiel Bank. Yvan inherited his share of the bank from his grandfather. There are part of “Azor” that show how Yvan has some insecurities about being perceived as an unqualified heir—someone who’s in this privileged banking position not because he earned it but because he happened to be born into the right family.

Much of “Azor” is about Yvan finding out that René left behind a mess of disgruntled customers and alienation among business colleagues. Yvan has to give apologies on behalf of René. Yvan even tells a client that René’s “attitude is deplorable.” Mr. Decôme (played by Gilles Privat), a former partner of the bank and a good friend of Yvan’s father, describes René as “brilliant” but “toxic” and someone who “lost his mind.”

Did René voluntarily disappear or did he run into foul play? Yvan starts to find some clues in René’s appointment book. He also gets some clues a collegaue named Dekerman (played by Juan Pablo Geretto), who gives Yvan some gossipy inside information about which clients might or might not be the most upset with René.

And he discovers that even though René wasn’t very well-liked by some business colleagues in Argentina, René had his share of fans. One of them is an elderly woman named Viuda Lacrosteguy (played by Carmen Iriondo), who tells Yvan that she and René had such a friendly rapport with each other, they’d play a game: She would start to a sing a song, and René would finish it.

Another admirer of René’s is a horse enthusiast named Anibal Farrell (played by Ignacio Vila), whom Yvan thinks is a difficult client. Anibal is such a fan of René’s, Dekerman describes Anibal’s attitude about René as being “like the drug addict who sucks the dealer’s cock.” This crude language in a world of elite bankers, ambassadors and society people is the first indication that things in this world might not be so genteel at first glance.

Yvan gets deeper and deeper into the a web of intrigue that eventually leads him to a clergyman named Monseigneur Tatoski (played by Pablo Torre Nilson), who is heavily involved in international politics. Although some scenes in “Azor” take place in an Argentinian jungle, much of the movie consists of conversations in lavish homes or corporate offices.

None of the acting is particularly outstanding, but Rongione does a capable job of keeping viewers guessing about the character of Yvan and how far he’s willing to go in his quest. The word “azor” is Spanish for “goshawk,” a bird that is defined by its keen ability to observe before attacking its prey. At one point in the movie, it’s mentioned that “azor” means “Be quiet and be careful what you say.” The film will keep people guessing up until a certain point about who’s the observant predator and who’s the unwitting prey.

Because “Azor” is a very talkative film, it might bore viewers who are expecting more physical action in this story. “Azor” is also not an appealing movie for people who don’t care about behind-the-scenes machinations of bankers and politicians. If viewers decide to stick with the movie and watch it to the very end, they’ll find some surprises proving that initial impressions aren’t always the correct impressions.

MUBI released “Azor” in select U.S. cinemas on September 10, 2021. The movie premiered on the MUBI streaming service on December 3, 2021.

Review: ‘The Gateway’ (2021), starring Shea Whigham, Olivia Munn, Frank Grillo and Bruce Dern

December 28, 2021

by Carla Hay

Shea Whigham and Olivia Munn in “The Gateway” (Photo by Antony Platt/Lionsgate)

“The Gateway” (2021)

Directed by Michele Civetta

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the dramatic film “The Gateway” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A well-meaning bachelor, who works for a city’s social services department, finds himself caught up in criminal warfare when he tries to protect a mother and her young daughter after the child’s father gets out of prison.

Culture Audience: “The Gateway” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in forgettable and formulaic crime dramas.

Shannon Adawn and Frank Grillo in “The Gateway” (Photo by Antony Platt/Lionsgate)

“The Gateway” is such a generic and unimaginative rehash of many other crime dramas, it’s likely to be soon forgotten after people see it. It’s yet another story about a hero who has an “against all odds” struggle against gangster thugs. In “The Gateway,” the protagonist does battle against drug-dealing goons, in order to save (cliché alert) a damsel in distress and her child. It’s all very hackneyed and boring. There’s absolutely nothing creative about this movie, which lumbers along until its very predictable end.

“The Gateway” was directed by Michele Civetta, who co-wrote the drab screenplay with Alex Felix Bendaña and Andrew Levitas. The movie is Civetta’s second feature film as a director. His feature-film directorial debut was the unremarkable 2020 horror flick “Agony,” which describes what any viewer might have felt if they watched that painfully dull film. And although Civetta says in “The Gateway” production notes that “The Gateway” was inspired by crime thrillers such as John Huston’s “Fat City” (released in 1972) and John Cassavetes’ “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” (released in 1976), “The Gateway” has none of the intrigue or style of those films.

The name of the U.S. city where “The Gateway” takes place is never shown or mentioned by the characters in the movie, which was actually filmed in Norfolk, Virginia. Wherever “The Gateway” is supposed to take place, it’s a city where gambling is legal, because the “damsel in distress” is a blackjack dealer in a casino. She’s not the movie’s protagonist though. The story’s main character is yet another stereotype of a “regular Joe” who suddenly has to battle gangsters as if he’s an experienced member of law enforcement. Yawn.

The protagonist of “The Gateway” is Parker (played by Shea Whigham), a lonely middle-aged bachelor whose life revolves around his job working as an investigator for the city’s social services department. In the movie’s opening scene, viewers see that Parker is compassionate when he responds to a complaint about child endangerment in a house that’s basically a drug den. Parker finds a boy at the house who’s about 7 years old, and he comforts the boy when it’s discovered that the boy’s mother has overdosed. Two men in the house are then arrested.

For an unspecified period of time, Parker has been looking out for another child named Ashley (played by Taegen Burns), who’s about 12 years old. His interest in Ashley extends beyond his social worker job. He has become somewhat of a father figure to Ashley, whose father has been in prison for an untold number of years. Ashley’s mother Dahlia (played by Olivia Munn) has been raising Ashley while Dahlia holds down a job as a blackjack dealer.

Viewers never see any flashbacks of how Parker became close to this family, so the relationship that he has with Dahlia and Ashley feels too rushed and contrived in this movie. As an example of how Parker goes beyond his social worker duties for Ashley, Parker volunteers to take Ashley to school when he’s needed. It’s hinted that maybe Parker is attracted to Dahlia, but he doesn’t cross the line into making any inappropriate and unprofessional moves on her.

Dahlia might have a substance abuse problem, because the reason why Parker takes Ashley to school in an early scene in the movie is because she seems to be drunk or high, and Parker doesn’t want Dahlia to drive under the influence. The dynamics between Parker, Dahlia and Ashley change when Ashley’s father Mike (played by Zach Avery) gets out of prison and makes it clear to Parker that Mike wants to be the only father figure in Ashley’s life.

Soon after Mike get out of prison, he goes right back into a criminal lifestyle. At a bar frequented by shady people, Mike meets up with a local drug kingpin named Duke (played by Frank Grillo, in yet another one of his “tough guy” roles) to set up a heroin deal. Mike tells Duke and Duke’s associate Louis (played by Alexander Wraith) that Mike knows about two bricks of heroin that were stolen from a Mexican drug cartel.

Mike offers to deliver this heroin to Duke. In exchange, Duke says that he will set Mike and Louis up with enough money for Mike and Louis to open their own bar. Duke also offers to lend out the services of his henchman Hector (played by Mounir Quazzani) to help Mike and Louis for protection in retrieving this heroin, which is hidden in a place that could be guarded.

“The Gateway,” which already has a very simple-minded plot that would barely be enough for a short film, stretches everything out to tedious levels with repetitious scenes of Mike and his cronies committing crimes; Mike and Dahlia having tensions in their already shaky relationship; and Mike threatening Parker to stay away from Ashley. Parker was assigned to check on the welfare of Ashley, so he tells Mike that it would be up to the city to decide when Parker will no longer have to check up on her.

This movie is so poorly written that it does little to show who Parker is as a person. The only thing about his personal life that’s shown is that he has a rocky relationship with his father Marcus (played by Bruce Dern), because (as shown in flashbacks) Marcus was a verbally abusive alcoholic to Parker when Parker was a child. In fact, all of the characters in the movie don’t have much depth or personality. They’re just hollow vessels to act out the movie’s unimpressive action scenes. Two police detectives named Detective Vaughn (played by Shannon Adawn) and Detective Bachman (played by Nick Daly) are essentially useless, since this movie is about making Parker the biggest hero.

Needless to say in a predictable movie like “The Gateway,” Parker, Dahlia and Ashley unwittingly get caught up in Mike’s big heroin deal when the heroin stash goes missing. Expect the usual chase scenes and shootouts that clog up substandard thrillers such as “The Gateway.” The cast members and the filmmakers don’t put much effort into bringing any creative spark to this tired story. With all the better-quality movies that have already been made about drug deals gone bad, viewers don’t have to waste their time on “The Gateway.”

Lionsgate released “The Gateway” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on September 3, 2021. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on September 7, 2021.

Review: ‘Red Rocket,’ starring Simon Rex, Bree Elrod and Suzanna Son

December 27, 2021

by Carla Hay

Simon Rex and Suzanna Son in “Red Rocket” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Red Rocket” 

Directed by Sean Baker

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2016 in Texas City, Texas, the comedy/drama film “Red Rocket” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and one Asian) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A washed-up and financially broke porn actor goes back to his Texas hometown, where he tries to hustle up enough money to leave town and go back to California, with the hope of making a comeback in the adult entertainment industry.

Culture Audience: “Red Rocket” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Sean Baker and tragicomic stories about people with unsavory lifestyles.

Simon Rex and Bree Elrod in “Red Rocket” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Red Rocket” continues writer/director/producer Sean Baker’s pattern of doing raw and restless films about people who live on the fringes of American society. Baker’s movies aren’t appealing to everyone, but his biggest strengths as a filmmaker are in creating very memorable characters and making smart casting decisions. Simon Rex (an actor/rapper who’s also a former MTV VJ) is an inspired choice to play a destitute and desperate former porn actor who goes back to his Texas hometown, with the intent to get enough money to go back to California, so he can jumpstart his career in adult entertainment. Rex has his own real-life history with doing porn, since it’s not a secret that he did solo/masturbation porn videos before he became famous on MTV in the mid-1990s.

In “Red Rocket” (which Baker co-wrote with Chris Bergoch), Rex gives a “go for broke” performance, even though many viewers might grow to dislike or get irritated by his self-centered and disreputable Mikey Saber character, a drifter in his mid-40s, who always seems to be on the hustle for something that benefits himself. Baker doesn’t make movies where audiences are supposed to expect that the protagonist will go through some kind of redemption. Instead, his movies are about how the main character gets stuck in a rut and often makes things worse through a series of misguided shenanigans.

That’s exactly what goes on with Mikey, who has suddenly moved back to his working-class hometown of Texas City, Texas, after years of living in California and working as a porn actor for the past 17 years. It would be overstating Mikey’s status in the adult entertainment industry by describing him as a “porn star,” even though he would like to think that he’s a “porn star.” Mikey might be somewhat well-known to porn aficionados, but he’s not famous enough to get automatic invitations every year to the Adult Video News (AVN) Awards, which are the Oscars of porn movies.

Whatever money he made as a porn actor is long gone, because by the time Mikey moves back to Texas City (the movie takes place in 2016), he’s broke and looking to make some quick cash, even if it’s through illegal means. The first clue that Mikey gets himself into violent trouble is that he has bruises on his face, as if he recently got into a fight. Mikey has some unfinished business that he left behind in Texas City when he moved to California, but now he has to face some realities that he’s been trying to avoid. Just like a true hustler, he tries to turn things around to his advantage.

The biggest unfinished business that Mikey has in Texas City is that he’s still legally married to his estranged wife Lexi (played by Bree Elrod), who wants to get back together with him. Even if Mikey could afford to go through with the divorce, Lexi doesn’t really want to get divorced. Mikey and Lexi used to do porn together, but Lexi is no longer in the adult entertainment industry, and she doesn’t want to go back to it.

When homeless Mikey shows up unannounced at Lexi’s house, she’s initially irritated with him, but she’s generous enough to give him a place to stay. Not much is said about Mikey’s biological family members, but it’s implied that he’s an only child. It’s briefly mentioned that his single mother is in a nursing home.

Lexi lives with her mother Lily, nicknamed Lil (played by Brenda Deiss), and it’s later revealed that they both smoke heroin or another opioid on a regular basis. Mikey doesn’t really approve of this drug use, but he’s not in a position to be preachy about illegal drug activities. He smokes weed, and he ends up doing some small-time drug dealing (mostly marijuana) for a local gang involved in drug trafficking.

Mikey has done this work before in Texas City, so he asks for his old job back from the dealer in charge: a gang maven named Leondria (played by Judy Hill), who leads a group of mostly young men, but she has her young adult daughter June (played by Brittney Rodriguez) working as the gang lookout and enforcer. It’s quite problematic that Baker chose to make the only African Americans in “Red Rocket” into gangsters and drug dealers, which are unimaginative and negative stereotypes. And for a movie that takes place in Texas, which has a large Hispanic/Latino population, it’s also appalling how there’s no Hispanic/Latino representation (in terms of speaking roles) in “Red Rocket.”

When Mikey first shows up at Lexi’s place, he begs to take a shower. “I just need a place to crash,” Mikey pleads. Soon enough, he tells Lexi that he doesn’t just need a place to crash for a few days. He needs to stay for at least 180 days (or six months), which is the legal minimum requirement to establish residency in Texas.

Why does Mikey want to establish residency in Texas? He wants to collect unemployment benefits and other government benefits from the state of Texas. Until that happens, Mikey turns to drug dealing for money.

Mikey and Lexi start having sex again. For Mikey, it’s convenient sex to keep Lexi happy and for his own physical pleasure. For Lexi, it’s reunion sex, which she thinks is Mikey’s way of showing that he still loves her and wants to get back together with her. For any adult who’s watching this movie, it’s sex that will obviously not end well for someone in this movie, because someone will get emotionally hurt in the end.

And sure enough, Mikey starts to lose interest in Lexi once he meets a nubile 17-year-old named Strawberry (played by Suzanna Son), who works behind the counter of a donut shop. It’s lust at first sight for Mikey, who sees Strawberry (yes, that’s her real name) as his meal ticket out of Texas City because he wants her to do porn with him and move with him to California when he has enough money. In Texas, the minimum legal age of consent to have sex is 17, but Strawberry will soon turn 18, the minimum legal age to do porn. Slowly but surely, Mikey charms and seduces his way into Strawberry’s life. And he finds out that Strawberry, who has a kind and open heart, is not as innocent as she looks.

Lexi has another reason why she wants Mikey back in her life. She has an underage son named Eric from a previous relationship. Lexi lost custody of Eric (it’s easy to see why), and she wants to convince Child Protective Services that she’s now living a stable life as a happily married woman. Lexi puts pressure on Mikey to give their marriage another chance, but he won’t fully commit to it.

At the same time, Mikey doesn’t want to alienate Lexi too much because she’s the only person who’s giving him a place to live in Texas City. Therefore, when Mikey and Strawberry start dating and having sex, Mikey thinks it’s best to hide this information from Lexi, because he knows that she’ll get jealous and possibly kick him out of the house. Lexi has a mean-spirited temper: It’s not unusual for her to throw things during an argument at the person who’s making her angry.

“Red Rocket” has a rambling tone that reflects Mikey’s haphazard life. Unfortunately, even though the cast members’ performances are believable, the movie tends to be repetitive in showing any of these three things: arguments between Mikey and Lexi; Mikey’s tensions with the gang members/drug dealers he’s doing business with while Mikey is tempted to steal some of their money; and Mikey’s manipulation of Strawberry, who is still in high school. Strawberry lives with her single mother (who’s not seen in the movie) and seems to have a fairly stable home life, but she’s bored with her dead-end job and can’t wait to get out of Texas City.

A problematic part of “Red Rocket” is how it has a tendency to present Mikey as a loveable bad boy, when he’s just a low-life sleaze (and not a very smart one), through and through. There’s really no good excuse for why a middle-aged person would want to persuade a barely legal teenager to start doing porn. Mikey doesn’t have much to lose by doing porn, but a teenager who hasn’t really found an identity yet and might be too emotionally immature to make this decision has a lot to lose by doing porn.

Mikey doesn’t care about the consequences for Strawberry though. He’s only thinking about how much money he can make if they do porn together. If anything, “Red Rocket” has some realism in showing how young women are easily manipulated by sexual predators to do this kind of sex work. Mikey effusively compliments Strawberry by telling her how beautiful and sexy she is. He also sells her on the idea that they can live a glamorous life in California, by getting paid for having sex on camera.

It’s obvious that Strawberry still has a lot to learn about life, because she falls for Mikey’s big talk, but she’s blind to the big picture. She seems to have some awareness of how doing porn will affect her, when she says, “I’m about to have a very awkward senior year. I’m not about to have a very awkward life.” But it’s almost like she’s in denial about how doing porn could really affect the rest of her life, in terms of job opportunities, what kinds of lovers might or might not accept her porn activities, and how her involvement with porn could affect any children she might have in the future.

More experienced or more emotionally mature people would be able to see right through Mikey’s scammer ways. After all, Mikey is pretending to be a big shot porn star, when in reality, he’s essentially homeless and trying to use an inexperienced teenager to peddle her flesh for his own financial gain. How much of a loser do you have to be to think this scummy exploitation is cool?

“Red Rocket” doesn’t really condone or condemn Mikey’s sleaziness, but Baker expects audiences to show a certain type of fascination with Mikey, by making an entire movie about this type of sexual predator. The movie puts an almost comical spin on the sordid antics of Mikey, by giving the movie a lightweight pop tune as its theme song: *NSYNC’s 2000 hit “Bye Bye Bye.” Audiences are supposed to see the irony in contrasting a song from a polished boy band with the very dirty and chaotic life of Mikey.

“Bye Bye Bye” is the first song heard blaring on the movie’s soundtrack when Mikey is shown on a bus on his way back to Texas City. The song is also heard in various forms in other parts of the movie, such as when Strawberry does a compelling, stripped-down version of the song while playing piano. Making “Bye Bye Bye” the theme song to “Red Rocket” is essentially a nod to the early 2000s, at the beginning of Mikey’s porn career, so the song probably reminds him of his youth. (Rex was no longer a VJ on MTV by the time *NYSNC hit it big.)

Physically, Mikey is still in great shape, compared to other men in his age group. But the rest of his life is a mess. (Viewers will see all of Mikey’s physique in a full-frontal nude scene that Rex does toward the end of the movie.) Baker invites audiences to laugh at Mikey, as this fast-talking hustler digs himself further into a self-destructive hole. But it’s not the kind of laughter that should make people feel good because it’s about laughing at pathetic people who are caught in a cesspool of degradation, often of their own doing.

What makes “Red Rocket” worth watching is to see how Strawberry navigates her relationship with Mikey. As Strawberry, Son gives an interesting performance that’s open to interpretation. Strawberry is grounded, open-minded and independent, yet she’s also unsophisticated, insecure about her place in the world, and susceptible to Mikey’s manipulations. Therefore, viewers might see her as a teenager who’s capable of growing up fast and handling herself well, or as teenager who could get easily mixed up in situations that she might end up regretting.

Truth be told, “Red Rocket” would have been a more compelling movie to a lot of people if it had been told from Strawberry’s perspective. She’s the only character in the movie who doesn’t veer into caricature territory. Lexi becomes a screaming shrew. The gangsters/drug dealers are depicted in a very predictable way. Other characters, such as Mikey’s hometown friend Lonnie (played by Ethan Darbone), aren’t in the movie long enough to have much of a personality or an impact on the story. Lonnie is essentially a sounding board for Mikey’s bragging about his sexual exploits.

There are so many movies already about egotistical jerks who are at the center of the story. “Red Rocket” just happens to have better acting than most of these movies. Baker seems enamored with doing films about people who exist on the seedy side of life. Let’s hope his future movies are centered on a more unique protoganist than the type of overrated toxic male who doesn’t earn filmmakers’ efforts to make viewers think that he’s just “misunderstood.”

A24 released “Red Rocket” in select U.S. cinemas on December 10, 2021.

Review: ‘Love Is Love Is Love,’ starring Rosanna Arquette, Kathy Baker, Maya Kazan, Chris Messina, Cybill Shepherd, Joanne Whalley and Rita Wilson

December 26, 2021

by Carla Hay

Pictured clockwise, from top center: Maya Kazan, Rosanna Arquette, Polly Draper, Joanne Whalley, Nancy Carlin, Cybill Shepherd, Elea Oberon, Alyson Reed, Valarie Pettiford and Rita Wilson in “Love Is Love Is Love” (Photo courtesy of Blue Fox Entertainment)

“Love Is Love Is Love”

Directed by Eleanor Coppola 

Culture Representation: Taking place in various U.S. cities, the dramatic anthology film “Love Is Love Is Love” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos and African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Challenges in sustaining loving relationships are presented in three separate and unrelated stories within the film. 

Culture Audience: “Love Is Love Is Love” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching a boring movie about love, featuring some well-known cast members.

Marshall Bell and Kathy Baker in “Love Is Love Is Love” (Photo courtesy of Blue Fox Entertainment)

“Love Is Love Is Love” should’ve been titled “Dull Is Dull Is Dull,” if people want an accurate description of this slow-moving train wreck. The movie wastes the talents of the cast in this badly conceived and clunky anthology film. Directed by Eleanor Coppola, who co-wrote the snooze-worthy screenplay with Karen Leigh Hopkins, this movie’s main purpose seems to be to give jobs to some well-known, longtime actresses, who unfortunately do not work enough due to age discrimination. These actresses deserve better than this misfire that does little to dispel the Hollywood movie stereotype that women over the age of 60 have boring love lives whenever they’re put in a movie.

What’s also off-kilter about the three-story anthology film “Love Is Love Is Love” is that the first two stories are much shorter than the third story. The first story, titled “Two For Dinner,” is 20 minutes long. Next is “Sailing Lesson,” which totals 16 minutes. Last but not least is “Late Lunch,” which is 49 minutes long and is the best story in the anthology. But that’s not saying much, because “Late Lunch” is still monotonous and ends in a very corny way.

“Two for Dinner” and “Sailing Lesson” are so inconsequential and forgettable, the movie would’ve been better off if it focused solely on the “Late Lunch” story, but only if it had gone through a major rewrite that improved the dialogue. Most of the cast members in the entire film do an adequate job in their performances. But they are hampered by playing characters who have the somewhat sad air of people who think that their best days are behind them.

“Two for Dinner”

“Two for Dinner” is literally about a video conference conversation that a bored and lonely wife named Joanne (played by Joanne Whalley) has with her film producer husband Jack (played by Chris Messina) while he’s away on location for a movie shoot in Whitefish, Montana. The movie never says exactly where Joanne is, but it’s supposed to be somewhere in the U.S., thousands of miles away from Montana. The conversation is supposed to be “cute” because Joanne and Jack have each taken their laptop computers to a local restaurant, so they can talk to each other while having dinner at a restaurant table.

If you think it’s romantic to watch a husband and wife make small talk about what to order on the menu and discussing whom their college-age daughters are dating while restaurant servers occasionally interrupt the conversation to take orders, then “Love Is Love Is Love” is the movie for you. You’ll find out more about the adult daughters’ love lives then you’ll find out about this longtime married couple.

For example, Joanne talks about a daughter named Kate, who’s dating a guy who rides a motorcycle. Joanne tells Jack that one day, the boyfriend asked Joanne for advice on how to have a long marriage. Joanne’s reply? “Don’t get divorced.” The end of this dull-as-dirt “Two for Dinner” segment ends with Joanne making an impulsive decision that’s supposed to show she wants to bring some spark to the marriage. Too late. Viewers might already be tempted to fall asleep or stop watching.

“Sailing Lesson”

Things don’t get much better in “Sailing Lesson,” which is about a married, retired couple who get stranded on a lake when they take what’s supposed to be a romantic boat ride by themselves. The movie doesn’t mention the name of the city where these spouses live. Diana (played by Kathy Bates) and John (played by Marshall Bell) have been together for 41 years, but John tells Diana that he’s gotten so bored with her, he openly jokes to Diana that he’s going to find a girlfriend.

Even though he’s only joking, Diana is alarmed enough to coax John to go a date with her on a boat where they are the only two people on the boat. While they sail on a lake, Diana and John have some bland conversations where they talk a little bit about their relationship. John doesn’t like that Diana seems to care more about her book club and going to gardening events than she seems to care about him.

And then, what do you know: The boat’s engine malfunctions, and it can’t start. There are no other people in sight to help John and Diana. Predictably, the boat is so basic, it doesn’t even have an emergency radio. John and Diana also can’t get any signals on their phones.

While Diana and John wait for any type of help to show up, the movie tries to have a sexy moment when Diana decides that she’s going give oral sex to John. (There’s nothing explicit shown, but it’s clear what Diana is about to do when she unzips John’s shorts and lowers her head.) It’s all so staged and phony that it’s anything but sexy. It doesn’t help that Bell is a supbar actor who just recites his lines in a robotic way.

It’s easy to predict what happens in the midst of this sex act. Let’s just say that after being “stranded” alone for hours, John and Diana suddenly don’t have privacy when they need it. By the time this plot development happens, viewers won’t care what really happens to John and Diana during and after this boat excursion. There are tidal waves that are more exciting than this couple.

“Late Lunch”

“Late Lunch” isn’t about a couple trying to spice up their marriage but it’s about a young social-justice attorney named Caroline (played by Maya Kazan), who has invited the dearest friends of her late mother, Claire Reynolds, to have a luncheon at Claire’s house, which is somewhere in California. Claire, who died a month earlier in a car accident, was a widow and a retired photo editor. The “love” in this story is about the love between friends and between a parent and a child.

Almost the entire segment consists of the conversation around the table during this lunch. One by one, the women talk about their lives and share their stories. Caroline, who’s lived on the East Coast since she was 18, had a tension-filled relationship with her mother. Claire disapproved when bachelorette Caroline broke up with a fiancé whom her mother wanted Caroline to marry. Caroline is filled with some guilt and regret because her last conversation with her mother was an argument.

The guests at the luncheon share their fondest memories of Claire and how she affected their lives. Anne (played by Rosanna Arquette) talks about how when she and Claire were teenagers, they made plans to lose their virginity around the same time. Jackie (played by Alyson Reed) is a lesbian who says that even though Claire was politically conservative, Jackie admired how Claire was so accepting of Jackie when Jackie came out of the closet about her sexuality.

Marlene (played by Polly Draper) had a sometimes-rocky friendship with Claire, whom she met when they both worked at Vogue. At the time, Marlene was an intern, and Claire was an assistant to the photo editor. Marlene says that Claire was a “bitch” to Marlene when they first got to know each other. Marlene and Claire found out that they were both dating the same guy at the same time, but Marlene and Claire ended up becoming friends. When Marlene reveals a secret that happened later in her friendship with Claire, it’s not too surprising, considering what happened early in their friendship.

Whalley, who was in the “Two for Dinner” segment, is in “Late Lunch” as another character named Joanne. The Joanne in “Late Lunch” says that her husband left her for another man. Nancy (played by Cybill Shepherd) confesses an emotionally painful secret from her past that has to do with parenthood. Mary Kay (played by Rita Wilson) is an aspiring singer, which means that Wilson promotes her own music in the movie. She sings a song during this lunch called “Because Love,” which Wilson co-wrote with Laura Karpman.

Wendy (played by Valarie Pettiford) is a doctor who often confided in Claire about the challenges and bigotry that Wendy experiences as an African American woman. Patty (played by Nancy Carlin) is Claire’s childhood friend from Dayton, Ohio, who feels self-conscious that her life isn’t as sophisticated and well-traveled as many of the other women’s lives. The other women try to reassure Patty that her life is just as interesting as theirs, but they don’t sound very convincing because no one really wants to hear about Patty’s life in depth.

Rose Simone (played by Elea Oberon) is a French woman from Paris who is a latecomer to the lunch. She brings a box of French chocolate as a gift. When the subject of forgiving infidelity comes up, Rose Simone offers this trite platitude: “Love. It’s bigger than the bedroom.” This is the type of mawkishness that the movie tries to pass off as “witty” conversation. Unfortunately, this luncheon, which was supposed to be a tribute to Claire, often sounds like a pity party of women expressing regrets about decisions they made in their youth.

“Love Is Love Is Love” misses the mark because viewers are left wondering what the point of the movie is when the movie presents love in such a passionless way. The movie basically just shows two stories about two longtime married couples having boring conversations while on a date, and a third story about women at a luncheon talking about themselves and a dead woman. Much like the tone of this movie, the “love” isn’t vibrant at all but is rather outdated and unaware of how lackluster it is.

Blue Fox Entertainment released “Love Is Love Is Love” in select U.S. cinemas on November 12, 2021. The movie’s release on digital and VOD was on December 14, 2021.

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