Alex Trebek, who was best known for hosting the trivia game show “Jeopardy!,” died at his Los Angeles home on November 8, 2020. In 2019, he announced that he had advanced pancreatic cancer, but that he would continue to host the show. The Associated Press reported that Sony Pictures Television, the production company behind the syndicated “Jeopardy” announced that Trebek was with family members when he died.
Born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, on July 22, 1940, Trebek graduated from the University of Ottowa in 1961. He began his career that year as an employee for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He became a news reader for CBC national radio news and then became a correspondent for CBC Radio and CBC Television.
Trebek moved into the entertainment television as the host of the Canadian music program called “Music Hop” in 1963. In 1966, he began hosted his first TV game show: quiz show called “Reach for the Top.” He continued to work for CBC for the remainder of the 1960s and through the early 1970s. During this time period, he hosted the game show “Strategy” and the morning radio show “I’m Here Til 9.”
In 1973, Trebek moved to the United States, where he hosted several game shows over several decades, including “To Tell the Truth,” “The Wizard of Odds,” “Double Dare,” “High Rollers,” “Battlestars” and “Classic Concentration.”
The original incarnation of “Jeopardy!” was on NBC from 1964 to 1975, with Art Fleming as the host. Trebek began hosting a revival of “Jeopardy” in 1984. Trebek’s last episode as host of “Jeopardy!” is set to premiere in December 2020.
Trebek, who became a U.S. citizen in 1998, was married twice. His marriage to first wife Elaine Trebek Kares lasted from 1974 to 1981, and ended in divorce. During their marriage, Trebek adopted Kares’ son Nicky. Trebek married his second wife Jean Currivan-Trebek in 1990. They had two children together: Matthew and Emily.
Trebek is survived by his three children and widow Jean Currivan-Trebek.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Norway, the sci-fi thriller “Mortal” features an almost all-white cast of characters (and one Indian) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: A mysterious young man is hunted by authorities because he has a lethal ability to conduct energy and electricity through his body.
Culture Audience: “Mortal” will appeal primarily to people who like formulaic sci-fi flicks that put more emphasis on visual effects than in crafting a good story.
Priyanka Bose in “Mortal” (Photo courtesy of Saban Films)
“Mortal” starts off as a run-of-the-mill sci-fi flick before it turns into a ludicrous off-the-rails story. Even before the plot twist is revealed in the last third of the movie, “Mortal” had too many weak links for it to be strengthened by the “surprise” ending. This plot twist actually makes the movie worse, because the ill-conceived, drastic turn in the story looks very tacked-on and rushed. It’s as if the filmmakers were desperate to come up with an ending to bring “Mortal” out its repetitive rut.
Directed by André Øvredal (who co-wrote the screenplay with Norman Lesperance and Geoff Bussetil), “Mortal” is essentially a sci-fi chase movie that doesn’t really go anywhere. The movie centers on an American man in his mid-20s named Eric Bergland (played by Nat Wolff), who is in Norway looking for his relatives. The details of his family aren’t revealed until toward the end of the movie, because it’s part of the plot twist.
And so, for almost the entire movie, viewers don’t know anything about Eric except that he’s homeless in Norway and he has a very strange and deadly power: He can conduct and transport energy (especially electrical energy) through his body, giving him the ability to start fires and cause electrical storms. In the beginning of the film, Eric is by himself, looking like he’s a dirty and disheveled vagrant who’s trying to hide from the world.
He trespasses into a home to steal some scissors, medicine, bandages and candy. He eats the candy as if he’s been starving for days. He uses the scissors to cut his hair. And he uses the medicine and bandages to treat a festering wound on his leg.
It’s revealed later in the movie that Eric can get burns on his body when he’s at his peak of energy-conducting power. Viewers will have to suspend disbelief that Eric can be burned everywhere on his body except his face, because nothing bad ever happens to his face except for the unfortunate straggly beard that Eric has at the beginning of the film.
At a gas station in the municipality of Odda, Eric catches the attention of four teenagers (three boys and a girl) in a car. A bullying guy named Ole (played by Arthur Hakalahti), who’s the leader of the group, taunts Eric for looking like the dirty transient that he is. The car then happens to follow Eric to an open field.
Ole gets out of the car, while the other teens follow him and Eric into the field. Ole continues to harass Eric, who warns Ole in an ominous voice: “If you touch me, you will burn.” But of course, Ole touches Eric. And when he does, Eric stares at Ole intensely, while Ole appears to be suffocating without Eric touching him. Ole then immediately collapses and dies.
Eric is quickly apprehended by authorities, who don’t find out much about Eric except for these three things: (1) He’s a backpacker from the United States, but he’s of Norwegian heritage; (2) He’s in Norway to look for his relatives; and (3) He was seen at a farmhouse in Årdal, a municipality in Norway’s Vestland county, where three years before, a fire killed five people at the house. Eric is suspected of starting the fire, but he’s not talking to law enforcement about what happened at that house.
The sheriff of Odda is Henrik Jondal (played by Per Frisch), who’s in charge of the investigation into the death of Ole. The police aren’t making any progress in interviewing Eric, because he refuses to say much to them, so Henrik has the idea to call someone who has experience counseling teenagers and other young people. The hope is that this counselor will be able to break through to Eric and get him to open up about the death of Ole.
The counselor’s name is Christine Aas (played by Iben Akerlie), and she looks like she’s approximately the same age as Eric. And as soon as she appears on screen, it’s easy to see that she’s going to be Eric’s love interest because she has the stereotypical physical appearance (young, blonde and pretty) of a love interest in a formulaic movie like this one.
Even though Christine looks young enough to only be a few years out of college, the movie has made her a whiz at diagnosing medical conditions because she figures out very quickly what Alex’s superpower is. Not long after Christine is put in a police interrogation room with Eric to ask him some questions, he goes from being mute to gasping remorsefully about Ole, “I tried to tell him not to touch me.”
Meanwhile, Henrik is in another section of the police station, where he’s dealing with the parents of Ole, who want answers about what caused Ole’s death. Ole’s father Bjørn (played by Per Egil Aske) is very angry because he knows that the police have Eric in custody as a suspect. (The arrest has been all over the news.) Bjørn demands to be in a room alone with Eric, but Henrik refuses. It’s pretty clear at this point that this won’t be the last we see of Bjørn, who might as well have worn a T-shirt that says “Vigilante Justice,” because that seems to be the only purpose for his character in this movie.
Back in the police interrogation room, Eric reaches for a glass of water, and Christine sees that he’s able to lift the water out of the glass, just by putting his hand above the glass. This gives him such electrical energy force throughout his body, that when Eric places his hands on the wooden table, it scorches the table. And then, Eric gets so upset, the entire room lights up with an electrical storm caused by Eric.
Christine tells Eric the obvious: The energy comes out when he’s experiencing negative emotions, such as fear, anger or anxiety. She tells him that he can control the energy if he just breathes and calms down and gets to a relaxed emotional state. Now that Little Miss Expert has diagnosed Eric’s problem in a matter of minutes, you almost expect her to say, “I’ll be right back. Let me get a yoga mat for you so we can do some breathing exercises.”
Henrik rushes in and witnesses the “electrical storm” in the room, and everyone rushes out before more damage can be caused. The authorities sedate Eric with medication. And a U.S. Embassy official named Cora Hathaway (played by Priyanka Bose) is summoned to take Eric by helicopter to a place that isn’t made clear in the movie because this movie’s screenplay is kind of a sloppy mess. However, viewers can assume that he’s going somewhere for scientific tests.
Eric is strapped to a gurney during the helicopter ride. But when he wakes up and sees that he’s essentially being imprisoned against his will, he goes crazy and creates such a big electrical storm that it causes the helicopter to crash into the ocean. Everyone on the plane dies except for Cora (who ends up in a hospital) and Eric, who has temporarily disappeared. Cora eventually gets released from the hospital and makes it her mission to track down Eric so he can be put back into the custody of the government.
Meanwhile, Eric shows up in the outdoor parking lot of the apartment building where Christine just happens to be at that moment. Somehow, in the short time that Christine and Eric have known each other, Eric has managed to find out where Christine lives. Viewers will have to assume that he was able to look up that information in between causing electrical storms, surviving a helicopter crash in the ocean, finding his way back to land, and then showing up at Christine’s place in the hopes that she’ll want to hang out with him while he’s a fugitive.
It turns out that Christine does want to hang out with Eric and help him elude capture by law enforcement. She tells him, “I’m going take you to my friend’s cabin, and we’re going to figure it out.” The rest of the movie is basically Eric and Christine going on the run together. There’s only one moment when Christine doubts her decision to help Eric, but she shows the kind of immediate loyalty to him that makes it obvious she’s romantically attracted to him. Eric and Christine’s inevitable “big moment” kiss comes later in the movie.
Wolff is serviceable in this poorly written role. He tries to infuse a “lost soul” persona into Eric’s character, but the character is so vague that it’s a wasted effort to try to bring gravitas to the role. The problem is that “Mortal” tells almost nothing about Eric and his background until toward the end of the film, which makes it hard for viewers to root for Eric while he tries to evade capture. The other actors in the film are mediocre, while Bose is just plain awful with her emotionless, wooden delivery of her lines.
And speaking of the U.S. Embassy official Cora, it doesn’t make sense that she would be heading up the task force to find Eric. Embassy officials are political diplomats, not law enforcement or part of a government’s military defense. Based on all the destruction that Eric causes in the movie, the Norwegian military would be the ones to take over if a seemingly crazy guy was out there causing electrical storms that are bad enough to burn bridges, roads, buildings and people.
Even though Cora has seen firsthand how dangerous Eric can be, she wears no protective gear the entire time that she’s trying to hunt him down. She’s dressed as if she’s about to go for a nature hike. And the only indication that she survived a traumatic plane crash in the ocean is that she has a small band-aid on her forehead. Yes, this movie is that stupid.
As for Eric’s big “secret” at the end of the movie, it looks like a blatant cash grab to latch on to the popularity of a certain blockbuster movie franchise. It’s too bad that the filmmakers of “Mortal” couldn’t come up with a more original story. The visual effects and cinematography in “Mortal” are fairly good, but because of the moronic way that this story is told, it doesn’t matter how good the movie’s visuals might look if the dialogue and basic storyline are of such low quality that it’s embarrassing. All the electrical storms and fires concocted for this movie still can’t ignite the film’s very dull and unimaginative plot.
Saban Films released “Mortal” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 6, 2020. The movie’s Blu-ray and DVD release date is November 10, 2020.
French, Russian, German and English with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Russia and Germany, the sci-fi drama “Proxima” has an all-white cast of characters representing members of the middle-class scientific community.
Culture Clash: A French female astronaut, who will be the only woman in an international team of astronauts going to Mars, has difficult coping with how her year-long absence from home will affect her underage daughter.
Culture Audience: “Proxima” will appeal primarily to people who like movies about astronauts and their missions in outer space but with the added gravitas of how these missions affect the family members who are left behind on Earth.
Eva Green and Matt Dillon in “Proxima” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)
Whenever there’s a movie about astronauts and a journey they take in outer space, people usually expect the movie to have some thrilling scenes of the astronauts in space or landing on another planet. “Proxima” is not that movie. Although the film is about an astronaut mission to land on Mars, “Proxima” takes a close look at a far more emotionally perilous journey: how an astronaut prepares to leave behind loved ones for several months. There’s always a possibility that something could go wrong with the mission and people might not make it back alive. And in the movie, it’s mentioned that the astronauts on this mission will experience a major physical toll on their bodies: Their body cells are expected to age 40 years in six months.
Directed with graceful aplomb by Alice Winocour (who co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Stéphane Bron), the heart and soul of “Proxima” are centered on the relationship between French astronaut Sarah Loreau (played by Eva Green) and Sarah’s daughter Stella Akerman Loreau (played by Zélie Boulant), who’s about 8 or 9 years old. Sarah, who has a background in engineering, is ambitious, determined and someone who has dreamed of being an astronaut ever since she was a child.
At the beginning of “Proxima,” Sarah is seen testing out hi-tech artificial limbs at work and being a dutiful mother at home in Germany with Stella, her only child. Sarah is separated from Sarah’s father Thomas Akerman (played by Lars Eidinger), who also works in the scientific field, but it’s not specified in what type of science. Sarah has primary custody of Stella, who is a bright, inquisitive and emotionally empathetic child. Thomas, who lives several miles away, has weekend visitations.
But at the beginning of the movie, Sarah has already been selected for an important outer-space endeavor called the Proxima Mission, which will be the first time that humans are expected to land on Mars. The entire mission will take approximately one year for the chosen astronauts to live on Mars. And so, Sarah has to make arrangements with Thomas for Stella to live with Thomas while Sarah is away.
There’s some mild tension between Thomas and Sarah, because he seems a bit resentful that he suddenly has to make major adjustments to his life as a single parent with temporary full custody of his child. But overall, Sarah and Thomas have a cordial relationship and seem to be handling co-parenting responsibilities in the best way that they can.
Luckily, Stella is a kind and obedient child who doesn’t give her parents any trouble. She’s very proud of her mother’s accomplishments as an astronaut. However, Stella doesn’t yet seem fully aware of any long-term impact that Sarah’s absence might have on her and the rest of the family. Stella is more curious than angry about Sarah having to be away from home for a long period of time. Boulant does a good job in her role as Stella.
Sarah has to enroll Stella in a new school that’s close to where Thomas lives. During a meeting with that Sarah and Stella has with an administrator at this new school, Stella mentions that she’s dyslexic, dyscalculic and dysorthographic. Sarah worries that Stella might not be able to adjust to the standards of this new school. Meanwhile, Stella is worried about their female tabby cat named Laika because Stella’s father Thomas is allergic to cats. Sarah keeps reassuring Stella that everything will be fine and that Thomas will get used to having the cat in his home.
Spending a year away from Stella is a decision that weighs heavily on Sarah. Because although no one really comes right out and says it in this story, women who have to spend a lot of time away from their loved ones because of work responsibilities are judged more harshly than men who make the same decisions. Sarah might be feeling guilt or trepidation about how her absence will affect her relationship with Stella, but Sarah is not going to pass up this rare opportunity to not only go to Mars but also to be the first woman on Mars.
The majority of “Proxima” is about Sarah’s preparing herself and Stella for this long separation. Sarah often keeps her feelings bottled up inside, but Green gives an impressive performance where she is able to convey a lot of Sarah’s emotions through her eyes and facial expressions. “Proxima” is not a big adventure story with a bunch of astronauts flying through the universe in a spacecraft. This is a much more specific psychological portrait of someone who’s rarely seen on screen as the main character of a movie: a female astronaut who also happens to be a mother.
Before Sarah goes to Russia, where she and the other Proxima Mission astronauts complete the final phase of their intense training, a conference meeting is held at the space facility to introduce her as the newest member of the team. Members of the press have been invited. And making the introduction is Mike Shannon (played by Matt Dillon), an American astronaut who considers himself to the “alpha male” of the Proxima Mission group.
Mike makes it clear from the get-go that he has a sexist attitude toward women who are astronauts. When he introduces Sarah at this event, Mike makes sure to mention that Sarah is a “last-minute crew member,” implying that she wasn’t a first-choice candidate. And he comments that he’s glad that Sarah is French, “because French women are apparently really good at cooking.”
There are a few groans from the audience when Mike makes these micro-aggressive comments. Mike’s snide remarks, which he tries to cloak in a joking manner, are obviously meant to belittle Sarah, her accomplishments and her earned place on the astronaut team. Sarah is gracious about the backhanded insult and doesn’t confront about Mike about it, because she knows that she’s going to be stuck in outer space with this guy for a year. And given Mike’s attitude that men are superior to women when it comes to being astronauts, Sarah wisely figures it probably would not be a good idea to start off on Mike’s bad side.
Later at an outdoor party for the space-facility employees, Mike introduces Sarah to his wife Naomi Shannon (played by Nancy Tate), and they mention that they have two sons who are close to Stella’s age. When Naomi and Sarah are briefly talking alone together at the party, Sarah mentions her separated marital status and that her estranged husband will be taking care of Stella while Sarah is away. Naomi comments that it must be an special challenge to be a single parent and an astronaut.
Aside from her marital status and whether or not she has any children, Sarah reveals very little of her personal life to her colleagues. In a scene that happens later in the movie, Sarah and Mike are alone in a locker room together, and he tries to get her to reveal her sexual orientation and what’s going on in her love life. Mike asks Sarah if she has a boyfriend or a girlfriend. She plays it cool and doesn’t really answer his questions, while he tells her that he’s just trying to get a handle on who she is.
Astute viewers can see that the only reason why Mike is asking these questions is to see if Sarah has an vulnerabilities that he might be able to exploit. That’s because although Mike acts as if Sarah is inferior to him as an astronaut, he still sees her as a threat because she’s mostly been excelling in the training sessions. During one of the final training sessions in Russia, Mike gloats when it looks like Sarah might fall short of expectations. And Mike openly smirks in the rare occasion that Sarah is late for a training session (because she was on the phone with Stella), and the instructor curtly punishes Sarah for her tardiness by sending her away and not letting her participate in the session.
The other Proxima Mission astronauts whom Sarah meets when she arrives in Russia are Anton Ocheivsky (played by Aleksey Fateev), who’s a compassionate Russian, and Jurgen (played by Trond-Erik Vassal), a German whose personality is hard to read since he doesn’t have much dialogue in the movie. Anton and Jurgen are minor supporting characters whose main purpose in this story is to show that not all of the men on this astronaut team are sexist jerks.
Sarah has a quiet determination to prove herself to everyone on the team. Mike acts more like a rival than a team member. And although he doesn’t blatantly do anything to sabotage Sarah, he does make little digs here and there to try and irritate her on a psychological level. Almost everything that Mike does to get on Sarah’s nerves to to try to make her feel inferior, just because she’s a woman.
For example, when Stella comes to visit Sarah during the final training sessions, Mike expresses irritation (and perhaps some jealousy) that Stella can be seen around the training facility. In a condescending tone, Mike tells Sarah that she needs to “cut the umbilical cord” and get Stella used to the idea that she won’t be able to see her mother for a long time once they’re in outer space. Aside from the fact that Mike doesn’t really have a right to tell Sarah how much time she should spend with her daughter before this momentous trip, the “cut the umbilical cord” comment is completely misogynistic. Obviously, Mike wouldn’t use those words with a man in the same position as Sarah.
Fortunately, “Proxima” doesn’t turn the tension between Mike and Sarah into a ridiculous melodrama. After all, these are professionals who are largely focused on common goals for this mission. “Proxima” also realistically shows that Sarah doesn’t act too shocked by Mike’s sexist attitude, because in her very male-dominated profession, she’s probably used to dealing with men who have the same misogynistic mindset that Mike does. There are also indications that Sarah has a strong sense of self and won’t compromise who she is, such when she rejects a male colleague’s suggestions that she cut her hair or take hormones that would suppress her menstrual cycle while she’s in outer space.
What has more of an emotional impact on Sarah is the fear of not knowing if her year-long absence might permanently damage Stella and her close relationship with Stella. No relationship is perfect, but the love between this mother and daughter is genuinely the most important thing in both of their lives. Amid all the intense training that Sarah has to go through for this mission, “Proxima” shows this mother/daughter love in a way that is touching without being overly sentimental. (Viewers who watch the movie should stay for the end credits, which features a photo montage of real-life female astronauts with their children.)
As a drama set in the world of astronauts, “Proxima” can be considered very low-key if compared to the way astronauts and their work are portrayed in other fictional movies. However much “Proxima” might lack in action scenes, it more than makes up for in its realistic depiction of humanity and relatable emotions. It presents the point of view of a woman astronaut in a male-dominated profession, without taking the cliché route of making gender discrimination the primary focus of the story. “Proxima” is inspiring and effective without being a heavy-handed and preachy movie.
Vertical Entertainment released “Proxima” on digital and VOD on November 6, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Montana and North Dakota in the early 1960s, the dramatic thriller “Let Him Go” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Native American) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A retired sheriff and his wife in Montana travel to North Dakota to rescue their grandson and their former daughter-in-law from an abusive and violent family.
Culture Audience: “Let Him Go” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted, well-written dramas where family issues intersect with crime.
Lesley Manville in “Let Him Go” (Photo by Kimberly French/Focus Features)
Movies about child-custody issues usually focus on the parents of the child, but “Let Him Go” is a well-made, taut thriller whose protagonists are grandparents who want to rescue their grandson from an abusive home and raise him in their own loving and safe home. Written and directed by Thomas Bezucha, “Let Him Go” is adapted from Larry Watson’s novel of the same name. It’s a very good cinematic interpretation of the book, because the movie adeptly shows the contrasts of the wide open landscapes with the almost-suffocating anxiety that the grandparents experience as their quest to rescue their grandson becomes increasingly dangerous.
The story takes place in the early 1960s, before mobile phones, email and the Internet would make it easier for the couple at the center of the story to track down the violent clan members who have control of the child. It was also in a time and place (the rural Midwest) when custody battles weren’t very likely to go to court by people who didn’t have the money for legal fees and who preferred to take the law into their own hands. The beginning of “Let Him Go” shows what life was like for the grandparents before this family feud turned their life upside down.
George Blackledge (played by Kevin Costner), who’s a retired sheriff, and his wife Margaret Blackledge (played by Diane Lane) are living a tranquil life on their rural Montana ranch. Also living in their home are George and Margaret’s 27-year-old son James (played by Ryan Bruce), who is their only child; James’ wife Lorna (played by Kayli Carter); and James and Lorna’s infant son James Jr., also known as Jimmy.
George and Margaret have been married about the same amount time (30 years) that George was in law enforcement. Even though George is retired and probably has a pension, the family has an additional household income because Margaret and James have a business where they break/train horses. Lorna is a homemaker, but there’s tension between her and Margaret, because Margaret tends to do things (such as take care of the baby) in the way that Margaret thinks is best.
One day, Margaret and George notice that James has not come back from a horse ride that wasn’t supposed to take very long. George goes out looking for James, and he tragically finds James lying dead on a creek embankment with the horse nearby. James has a broken neck, apparently because he was thrown off by the horse.
The movie then fast-forwards three years later. George, Margaret and Jimmy are the only witnesses to a small wedding ceremony between Lorna and a local man named Donnie Weboy (played by Will Brittain), whose last name is pronounced “wee-boy.” The Weboy surname can be interpreted as an interesting play on words, since Donnie and his three siblings are brothers who live in the shadow of their domineering mother.
It’s never explained in the movie how Donnie and Lorna got to know each other, nor is it mentioned what Donnie does for a living. At the wedding ceremony, Donnie’s personality is indiscernible, and his family is not mentioned until George and Margaret have an urgent reason to find Donnie’s relatives. Even though George and Margaret don’t seem to know much about Donnie’s side of the family, George and Margaret attending this wedding ceremony is a sign that they approve of Lorna and Donnie’s marriage on some level.
After Donnie and Lorna get married, Lorna and Jimmy move out of their comfortable home on the spacious ranch and into a small apartment with Donnie in the closest big city. It’s a move that hits Margaret especially hard emotionally, because she has raised Jimmy as if he were her own son, and she won’t be able to see Jimmy as often as she would like. Margaret and George don’t live close to the city, but they live close enough that they can take a trip by car to visit.
One day, Margaret has driven to Donnie and Lorna’s apartment for a surprise visit. Before she can get to the apartment, Margaret sees Donnie, Lorna and Jimmy walking down a nearby street. She’s shocked and dismayed to see Donnie angrily hit Jimmy in the face and then do the same thing to Lorna. Donnie also grabs Lorna and Jimmy in a forceful and abusive way.
Margaret is so upset that she drives away. When she gets home, she tells George what she saw, but they do nothing but worry about how Jimmy (played by twins Bram Hornung and Otto Hornung) is being raised. It’s a sign of the times, when domestic abuse was a lot less likely to be reported than it is now. Margaret and George also didn’t report the abuse because it’s possible that Lorna and Jimmy would deny the abuse happened, out of fear, and then it would be Margaret’s word against Donnie’s.
After witnessing the abuse, Margaret goes back to the apartment on another day. And she’s in for another shock. A neighbor tells Margaret that Donnie, Lorna and Jimmy abruptly moved away to stay with Donnie’s family in North Dakota. It’s at that point that Margaret makes up her mind to not only track them down but also to get Jimmy and possibly Lorna to move back in with Margaret and George.
At first, George is reluctant to interfere, and he expresses concern that he and Margaret are too old to raise Jimmy. But when George sees that nothing will stop Margaret from this mission, he goes along with her because he thinks that she will need protection. And so, George and Margaret go on a road trip to find Jimmy and rescue him from what they’re sure is an abusive household. “Let Him Go” has several impressive panoramic scenes of the open roads and land during this journey.
The first order of business is to find out where the Weboy family lives in North Dakota. George gets help from his connections in law enforcement. Through this investigation, George and Margaret discover that the Weboy clan is a family of troublemakers with a history of illegal violence. Early on in the trip, George got upset when he found out that Margaret brought a loaded gun. But later on, that gun might come in handy.
During their travels on the open road, George and Margaret meet a young Native American man named Peter Dragswolf (played by Booboo Stewart), who’s in his late teens or early 20s, and has been living on his own for the past three years due to some problems in his family. Peter has a stallion as his only companion. Margaret and Peter bond over their love of horses, and it brings back bittersweet memories of Margaret and George’s son James.
George and Margaret eventually continue on their journey and part ways with Peter. But is this the last time that Peter will be in the story? Of course not.
During many parts of this movie, George and Margaret, who both have very stoic and strong-willed personalities, share silent moments that are neither awkward nor out-of-place. George and Margaret are people who are used to living simple, uncomplicated lives. And their longtime marriage has given them a comfort level where they don’t need to be chattering nonstop to be in tune with each other.
It isn’t long before George and Margaret track down the Weboy relative who will introduce them to the rest of the clan: Billy Weboy (played by Jeffrey Donovan) is one of Donnie’s older brothers. When Billy first meets George and Margaret, Billy comes across as smarmy and deceptive and as someone who likes to play mind games. George and Margaret tell Billy who they are, but don’t tell him about their plans to take Jimmy away. The grandparents just pretend that they only want to visit Jimmy and Lorna.
George is immediately suspicious of Billy and doesn’t try to hide his wariness. Margaret has a different approach because she figures that if she’s nice to Billy, he is more likely to cooperate with them. Margaret’s tactic works. Billy takes them to the Weboy family home, where George and Margaret have a very brief and uncomfortable reunion with Jimmy and Lorna, who appear to be very afraid of living in the Weboy home.
Why was this meeting so awkward? Because the Weboy family’s widowed matriarch Blanche (played by Lesley Manville, in full villainous mode) insists that they stay for dinner, but she sternly orders Jimmy to go to bed because he didn’t finish eating something. Blanche makes it very clear to George and Margaret that she expects all of her sons (and any of her son’s children) to live in her home and abide by her overbearing rules.
Blanche also reveals that she holds a grudge because she and the rest of the Weboys weren’t invited to Donnie’s wedding. Even when George and Margaret explain that Donnie never mentioned his family, and they didn’t know about the Weboy family until recently, Blanche still acts resentful toward George and Margaret. This menacing grandmother also suspects the real reason why George and Margaret have come to town.
Blanche is one of these villains who tries to mask her wickedness with smiles, but her hateful personality can still be seen underneath the fake politeness. Her late husband Henry is briefly mentioned in the movie, but not much else is said about Henry except that he’s dead. In addition to Billy and Donnie, Blanche’s other children are Elton (played by Connor Mackay) and Marvin (played by Adam Stafford).
Donnie is the youngest brother, and he’s the only brother who seems to be married with a child. Donnie definitely acts like a control freak with Lorna and Jimmy, but the one person who has control over Donnie is Blanche. Considering the very restrictive lifestyle imposed on Lorna, it might be a little surprising to some viewers that Donnie has let Lorna take a job outside of the home (she works as a sales clerk/cashier in a clothing store), but that might be out of necessity since it’s never made clear what Donnie does for a living, if he works at all.
Movies about adults fighting over custody of a child tend to be argumentative and at times overly melodramatic. “Let Him Go” avoids the usual stereotypes of making this family feud play out in the court system or in public shaming. Instead, the grandparents want to keep this battle as private as possible. The issue of domestic violence is handled in a way that it’s expected to be handled in a story that takes place in an era when survivors of domestic violence didn’t have shelters and assistance programs to the extent that these resources exist now.
There are moments of rage and gripping suspense in “Let Him Go,” but that emotional turn in the movie doesn’t really come later until Margaret and George come to the conclusion that the Weboys are irredeemably abusive and evil. Writer/director Bezucha skillfully brings a “slow burn” quality to this film that leads up to a gripping showdown by the end of the movie.
A lot of the beauty of “Let Him Go” is in how Lane and Costner express the internal resolve of these very determined grandparents. Manville has a fairly predictable villainous character in Blanche, but Manville portrays Blanche as someone who truly believes that what she’s doing is what’s best for her family. What most people would see as abusive, Blanche would describe as “tough love.”
Carter’s portrayal of Lorna character isn’t always the domestic-abuse stereotype of being constantly fearful and meek. She has moments of wanting to assert her individual identity, but she’s usually shut down by an older person (usually Blanche or Margaret), who tells her what she should do instead of asking her what she thinks. Lorna’s background as an orphan is mentioned, and it gives viewers some context over why she doesn’t have any biological relatives who can help her. Later in the story, Lorna and Margaret have an emotionally touching scene where they come to terms with their tension-filled relationship. It’s one of the highlights of the film.
“Let Him Go” has moments that might be a little too quiet or slow-paced for people who expect thrillers to have a lot of non-stop action. But just like Margaret and George in the movie, “Let Him Go” has a steady and deliberate pace that people should not mistake for weakness. Underneath is the type of grit and courage that won’t back down from a fight.
Focus Features released “Let Him Go” in U.S. cinemas on November 6, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City and in upstate New York, the romantic comedy “A Rainy Day in New York” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos) representing the upper-middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A college student and his schoolmate girlfriend spend the day in New York City and experience unexpected entanglements with other people.
Culture Audience: “A Rainy Day in New York” will appeal primarily to die-hard fans of writer/director Woody Allen and star Timothée Chalamet, because this movie is clearly not their best work.
Timothée Chalamet and Elle Fanning in “A Rainy Day in New York” (Photo by Jessica Miglio/MPI Media Group)
“A Rainy Day in New York” is writer/director Woody Allen’s very misguided attempt at making a teenage romantic comedy, but the results are as phony and pretentious as many of the characters in the film. Movie aficionados who are familiar with Allen’s work already know that he sticks to certain formulas and themes in his movies. His movies are usually about privileged people in a big city who are preoccupied with their spouses or lovers cheating on them. There’s usually at least one much-older man in the story who makes sexual advances toward a much-younger woman—or the older man at least makes it known that he’s sexually attracted to her. And there’s always jazz in the soundtrack because Allen is a big fan of jazz music.
And even though Allen’s movies usually take place in the racially diverse city of New York, he excludes African Americans and Asians from being in his films in any significant speaking roles. Occasionally, as he did in “A Rainy Day in New York” and in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” he might have a few Latinos in his films. The elitist and pseudo-intellectual worlds that Allen has in his movies are usually filled with people whining about personal problems that they create for themselves because they are addicted to self-sabotage.
You don’t have to see the poster for “A Rainy Day in New York” to know exactly who’s going to end up together by the end of the story. But until viewers get to that point, they have to sit through about 92 minutes of college-age people in their late teens and early 20s talking as if they’re about 10 years older, with very affected mannerisms. Unfortunately, much of the movie’s screenplay sounds exactly like what it is: dialogue written for young people by a senior citizen who doesn’t know how today’s young people really talk. Even though these young people are supposed to be privileged and well-educated, they still sound like an old person wrote their words for them.
All of the actors in “A Rainy Day in New York” are very talented, but they perform in this movie as if they’re all too self-aware that they’re in one of Allen’s films. And so, they all act is if they’re trying to conjure up the same neuroses and quirks of characters that were in classic Allen films, such as 1977’s “Annie Hall” and 1986’s “Hannah and Her Sisters,” which are considered two of Allen’s best movies.
“A Rainy Day in New York” follows the usual Allen formula of having the male lead character act like how a young Woody Allen would act, by being neurotic and showing some kind of intellectual snobbery. In this case, Timothée Chalamet plays the Allen surrogate with a character whose name is as pompous as his personality: Gatsby Welles.
Gatsby sees himself as quite the rebel because he dropped out of an unnamed prestigious university (presumably an Ivy League university) and is now enrolled in a small liberal-arts college in upstate New York called Yardley College. He likes to sneak off on a semi-regular basis to gamble with older men of dubious occupations. In reality, Gatsby isn’t that rebellious. He’s spoiled, a bit wimpy, and way too impressed with himself for someone who really hasn’t accomplished much and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life.
Viewers can immediately see how self-absorbed Gatsby can be, but there’s no subtlety at all in this film. Allen over-amplifies Gatsby’s personality because he makes Gatsby have a constant stream of voiceover narration every time Gatsby is on screen. Other characters talk out loud to themselves when they wouldn’t need to do that if Allen trusted the actors enough to express emotions with their faces and body language.
In the opening scene, which takes place on the Yardley campus, Gatsby says in a voiceover: “This is Yardley, which is supposed to be a very good liberal college, which is supposed to be tony enough for my mother, which is total bullshit, because you get ticks [from] walking in the grass.” Gatsby further comments about his mother: “She says I have a high IQ and I’m not living up to my potential, even though last weekend I made 20 grand playing poker.”
Viewers will hear quite a bit about Gatsby’s domineering mother, because Gatsby can’t stop talking about her, even as he tries to avoid her. Gatsby’s parents (played by Cherry Jones and Jonathan Hogan) don’t have names in the movie, but viewers soon learn that Gatsby’s parents and his older brother Hunter (played by Will Rogers) live in New York City. Gatsby’s mother is a high-society influencer who’s presenting her big annual charity gala that Gatsby desperately does not want to attend.
There’s a scene in the last third of “A Rainy Day in New York” where Gatsby and his mother have a heart-to-heart talk, and it’s the best scene in the movie. Jones is fantastic in this role. Her performance is one of the few highlights of this meandering and often-dull film that recycles a lot of the same love-life problems and dilemmas that have been in other films by Allen.
Gatsby has a girlfriend named Ashleigh Enright (played by Elle Fanning), who also attends Yardley. On paper, Gatsby and Ashleigh both seem like a great match for each other. They both come from well-to-do families (Ashleigh’s father owns several banks in Arizona) that are politically conservative and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Gatsby and Ashleigh are both very intelligent and curious. However, Ashleigh tends to be very giggly, forthright and effervescent, which is in contrast to Gatsby’s more brooding, secretive and angst-filled personality. Ashleigh is a movie buff, while Gatsby is more of a literature enthusiast.
Gatsby and Ashleigh have been dating each other for a few months. He says in a voiceover that he’s in love with Ashleigh and she’s perfect for him. Gatsby also says that Ashleigh is the type of girlfriend his mother would approve of, which is why he plans to introduce Ashleigh to his mother for the first time at the big gala event.
It just so happens that Ashleigh, who’s a journalist for the Yardley student newspaper, has landed an interview with a famous New York City-based film director named Roland Pollard (played by Liev Schreiber), and she couldn’t be more ecstatic about it because she’s been a longtime fan of his. Ashleigh tells Gatsby that she’s going to New York City to interview Roland, so Gatsby decides the time is right to go to the city for a couple of days with Ashleigh and make a romantic trip out of it.
Gatsby takes charge of their trip. He tells Ashleigh that they’ll be staying at the Pierre Hotel, and he’s made plans for them to have dinner at Daniel, an exclusive, five-star French restaurant. It’s implied that Gatsby is so well-connected that he can easily get reservations at Daniel, which is a restaurant that’s known to take reservations weeks in advance. Gatsby also wants to possibly stay at the Carlyle Hotel, or at least have lunch there, during the trip.
Ashleigh’s meeting with Roland isn’t really an interview as much as it is a talk session where she nervously gushes over him like a fangirl. Based on how Roland’s movies are described, he’s an “auteur” who prefers to direct creatively challenging films instead of crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Roland is flattered that this young reporter knows a lot of about his work, but he’s wracked with insecurities about his latest film. He also mentions to Ashleigh that his ex-wife’s name was Ashley and she also went to Yardley.
Because Ashleigh is so nervous around Roland, she starts babbling some “too much information” personal details to him. For example, she tells him that she starts to hiccup when she’s anxious. “When I’m sexually anxious, I’ll hiccup indefinitely,” she adds. And, of course, that’s a signal that this nervous tick will definitely happen later in the film.
Ashleigh is such a neophyte journalist that when Roland tells her that he’d like to give her a scoop, she naïvely asks, “A scoop of what?” When Roland explains that a “scoop” is a journalist term for exclusive information, she can’t believe her luck that he chose her. Roland says that the “scoop” he wants to give Ashleigh is that he’s not happy with the film he’s working on, and it might be the last film he directs because he’s thinking of quitting the movie business.
Ashleigh is shocked and tells Roland that he shouldn’t quit. Roland invites Ashleigh to go with him to a private screening room to watch a rough cut of the film and to tell him what she thinks of the movie. The only problem for Ashleigh is that the time it would take to watch the movie would conflict with the lunch date that she made with Gatsby.
The offer from Roland is too good to pass up, so Ashleigh apologetically cancels her lunch date with Gatsby and explains why. Gatsby is disappointed, but he understands why Ashleigh wants this opportunity to get a great interview with one of her idols. And so, Gatsby and Ashleigh make plans to meet up later.
Gatsby now has unexpectedly a few spare hours of time where he’s free to do what he wants. He wanders outside the hotel and happens to see a former classmate from high school: a gossipy jerk named Alvin Troller (played by Ben Warheit), who is an elitist snob yet he has no manners. Gatsby isn’t too enthusiastic about seeing Alvin, but they make some small talk where they give updates on what they’ve been doing with their lives and why Gatsby is visiting in the city. Alvin tactlessly insults Gatsby and some other mutual acquaintances who are mentioned in the conversation.
Alvin tells Gatsby that a mutual former classmate from high school is directing a student film outside on a nearby street and that Gatsby should check out what’s going on with this movie if he’s curious. Before they part ways, Alvin tells Gatsby that if he were Gatsby, he’d be nervous about having his girlfriend alone in a room with a powerful movie director. It plants a seed of doubt in Gatsby about what might happen during the interview with Ashleigh and Roland.
When Gatsby arrives on the film set, the former classmate, whose name is Josh (played by Griffin Newman), is happy to see him. Josh convinces a reluctant Gatsby to make a cameo in the movie. Gatsby doesn’t feel comfortable about being in the movie because he tells Josh that he’s not an actor, but Gatsby agrees to the role only because it won’t take long and he won’t have to say any lines. All Gatsby has to do in the scene is kiss a young woman in a car.
And who is this young woman? Her name is Chan (played by Selena Gomez), and she happens to be the younger sister of Gatsby’s ex-girlfriend named Amy, whom Gatsby briefly dated when he was 16. Chan, who is a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, is dryly sarcastic and comes from the same well-to-do type of family that Gatsby has. Before Gatsby and Chan start filming their kissing scene, Gatsby and Chan exchange the kind of teasing banter that makes it obvious that they’re thinking, “I’m attracted to you but I’m not going to admit it.” And you know what that means for a romantic comedy like this one.
Gatsby and Chan’s kissing in the scene starts off being very awkward. But then, eventually Gatsby and Chan become more relaxed with each other before the director tells them that he has the footage that he wants. Gatsby and Chan go their separate ways. But what do you know, they happen to see each other again when it starts raining and they both end up hailing the same taxi for their second “meet cute” moment. Gatsby and Chan decide to share the taxi ride, and then they have more banter filled with sexual tension.
During their conversations, Gatsby tells Chan that he’s in New York City with his girlfriend Ashleigh because Ashleigh is interviewing Roland Pollard for the Yardley student newspaper. Gatsby somewhat brags about Ashleigh coming from a wealthy family, but Chan shows some East Coast snobbery when she hears that Ashleigh and her family are originally from Arizona. Chan then proceeds to mock Ashleigh, whom she hasn’t even met, with jokes that imply that Chan thinks Ashleigh is an unsophisticated hick, even if Ashleigh’s family is rich.
It should come as no surprise that for the rest of the day, Chan and Gatsby find themselves spending time together, while Ashleigh gets more caught up in hanging out with Roland and his associates. Various hijinks ensue as Gatsby and Ashleigh make plans to meet up multiple times, only to have those plans changed because of a variety of circumstances. It’s all very predictable and formulaic because people who’ve seen enough romantic comedies know exactly what’s going to happen at the end of this movie.
At the screening room to watch the rough cut of Roland’s latest movie, Ashleigh meets Ted Davidoff (played by Jude Law), the screenwriter of the movie. Roland gets so distraught by what he sees in the rough cut that he storms off. Ted and Ashleigh take off in Ted’s car to try and find Roland. During this hunt for Roland, Ted sees his wife Connie (played by Rebecca Hall), who appears to be on a date with Ted’s best friend Larry Lipshitz. Connie told Ted that she was going to be hanging out with one of her female friends, and now Connie has been caught in a lie.
And so, Ashleigh finds herself tagging along and observing some of this marital drama, as Ted tries to find out if Connie is cheating on him or not. And speaking of infidelity, Ashleigh gets caught up in a situation where she has to decide if she’s going to be faithful to Gatsby or not. During the search for Roland, Ashleigh goes to Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, where she meets and is immediately dazzled by a sex-symbol movie star named Francisco Vega (played by Diego Luna), who’s almost twice the age of Ashleigh.
Francisco, who is in Roland’s latest film, doesn’t waste time in asking Ashleigh out on a dinner date. Francisco says he’s recently broken up with his actress girlfriend Tiffany (played by Suki Waterhouse), and when he and Ashleigh go outside together, they’re surrounded by paparazzi and news cameras. You don’t have to be psychic to know who will eventually see this footage.
During the time that Gatsby and Ashleigh are apart, there’s a minor subplot of Gatsby visiting his older brother Hunter and Hunter’s fiancée Lily (played by Annaleigh Ashford) in their spacious home. The wedding invitations have already been sent out, but Hunter confides in Gatsby that he doesn’t want to marry Lily. Why? Because Hunter says he doesn’t like Lily’s laugh, which Hunter describes as “a cross between Dad’s sister Betty and Lenny from ‘Of Mice and Men.'”
It’s yet one of numerous examples of how superficial, status-conscious and image-obsessed so many people are in this story. And it’s why this so-called romantic comedy isn’t very romantic when almost everyone in the story does not seem capable of loving anyone but themselves. Anyone who doesn’t meet their standard of wealth just isn’t worthy enough of their time.
Chalamet and Fanning do their best to bring some relatable humanity to their roles. But Gatsby is just too conceited and Ashleigh is just too fickle to go beyond the “spoiled rich kid” caricatures that writer/director Allen has constructed for them. Gomez doesn’t have much to do with the character of Chan, whose personality is just an empty shell that only exists to lobby semi-insults back and forth with Gatsby as they pretend they’re not attracted to each other. A good romantic comedy will have audiences rooting for the protagonists, but most of the characters in “A Rainy Day in New York” are so insufferable that audiences will wish these people would just shut up and go away.
MPI Media Group and Signature Entertainment released “A Rainy Day in New York” in select U.S. cinemas on October 9, 2020. The movie’s digital, Blu-ray and DVD release date is November 10, 2020. “A Rainy Day in New York” was released in several countries outside the U.S. in 2019.
Sean Connery, the Oscar-winning Scottish actor who was best known for being the first James Bond in the movies, died of natural causes at his home in the Bahamas. He was 90. According to the Associated Press: “Connery’s wife and two sons said he ‘died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by family’ in the Bahamas, where he lived. Son Jason Connery said his father had been ‘unwell for some time.'”
Born on August 25, 1930, in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland, Connery had working-class roots. His father Joseph was a factory worker and truck driver, while his mother Euphemia (also known as Effie) was a house cleaner. After a stint in the Royal Navy as teenager, Connery had various jobs, including being a truck driver, a lifeguard and a model. In the early 1950s, Connery became a bodybuilder who competed in the Mr. Universe contest, before he decided to try acting on a whim.
With no formal training, he landed a role as a chorus boy in a British stage production of “South Pacific.” He first film role was a small part as a gangster in the 1957 movie “No Road Back.”
Connery’s most iconic role was as James Bond, a British playboy spy, based on the character of Ian Fleming’s novels. Connery was the first actor to portray James Bond in movies, beginning with 1962’s “Dr. No” and continuing with 1963’s “From Russia With Love,” 1964’s “Goldfinger,” 1965’s “Thunderball,” 1967’s “You Only Live Twice,” 1971’s “Diamonds Are Forever” and 1983’s “Never Say Never Again.”
Other notable films featuring Connery in a starring or co-starring role include 1964’s “Marnie,” 1974’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in 1987’s “The Untouchables.” It was first and only Oscar nomination. He was also the recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement at the 1995 Golden Globe Awards. Connery’s last role in a live-action film was in 2003’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” His last role as an actor was in the 2012 animated movie “Sir Billi.”
Connery was married twice. His first marriage to Australian actress Diane Cilento lasted from 1962 to 1973 and ended in divorce. Their son Jason, who was born in 1963, became an actor and a director. Connery married his second wife Micheline Roquebrune in 1975, and they remained married until his death. Connery is survived by his wife Micheline. brother Neil and son Jason.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Cambodia, the action flick “The Prey” features an almost all-Asian cast (with one white person) representing law enforcement, criminals and the wealthy.
Culture Clash: An undercover cop from China is arrested and sent to a Cambodian prison, where he is selected with other prisoners to be part of a deadly game for wealthy men who want to hunt humans.
Culture Audience: “The Prey” will appeal primarily to people who like pulpy action movies that are very formulaic and don’t do anything original.
Pictured in front, from left to right: Nophand Boonyai, Byron Bishop and Sahajak Boonthanakit in “The Prey” (Photo courtesy of Dark Star Pictures)
The good news about “The Prey” is that it’s an action film with a plot that’s very easy to understand. The bad news is that the plot is so simplistic, it’s dumbed down to the lowest common denominator and it becomes yet another generic action movie that does nothing to progress the genre. Even with the usual suspension of disbelief that’s required for movies that rely heavily on flashy, choreographed stunts, “The Prey” is very unimaginative and predictable, as it recycles ideas and concepts of movies that have done these gimmicks before and done them better.
“The Prey” (directed by Jimmy Henderson), just like any movie about rich people who hunt humans for sport, is loosely based on “The Most Dangerous Game,” the 1924 Richard Connell novel that was made into a 1932 movie of the same name. Henderson wrote the unimaginative screenplay for “The Prey” with Michael Hodgson and Kai Miller.
The protagonist of “The Prey” is Xin (played by Gu Shangwei), a cop from China who’s doing undercover work in Cambodia to bust a Mafia phone scam operation that’s targeting Chinese citizens. Xin is apparently so good at his job that he’s mistaken for a real criminal, and he’s arrested and thrown in a prison in Phom Penh City, Cambodia. The obligatory prison fight scene with Xin and another prisoner then ensues.
The prison warden (played by Vithaya Pansringarm), who doesn’t have a name in the movie, is a sadistic and corrupt tyrant who doesn’t hesitate to torture any prisoner who shows signs of rebellion. As soon as there’s a scene with an announcement blaring to prisoners over the public-address system that anyone who doesn’t follow orders will be “reformed,” you just know that Xin will do something to get punished, so that the movie can have the inevitable prisoner torture scene. Xin is hung upside down and given electroshocks, as the warden gleefully oversees this punishment.
An unintentionally laughable scene in the movie is when all the prisoners are gathered in a courtyard, and instead of getting some exercise, they all break out into choreographed fights. It looks like this prison has locked up a bunch of stunt men, not real criminals. This fight sequence is contrived for the movie because it’s the scene where a group of wealthy men, who’ve been invited by the warden to the prison, can observe how the prisoners fight.
Unbeknownst to the prisoners, they are being evaluated because the rich guys want to choose the prisoners who will be taken to a remote jungle and hunted by the wealthy men. The warden gets paid a hefty fee to hand over these prisoners for this deadly game. Some of the warden’s closest prison cronies know about it too. According to the warden, the location where the men will hunt has about 30 kilometers of wilderness in every direction.
There are about 10 of these wealthy men who are participating in this killing spree, but three of the men consider themselves to be the best hunters in the group. Of the three men, Mat (played by Byron Bishop), who’s in his 40s, is the one who knows the warden the best and has participated in this hunting game before. Mat introduces the warden to two of the other members of the hunting team who are also very competitive about which one of the group will kill the most prisoners.
Payak (played by Sahajak Boonthanakit) is a middle-aged guy who tends to be a bit pompous, while T (played by Nophand Boonyai) is Mat’s cocky nephew who is in his 20s. T has recently inherited a fortune from his late father, who was Mat’s brother. Mat and T don’t particularly get along because Mat thinks T is an entitled, spoiled brat. It’s also revealed later in the movie that T’s own father didn’t respect T either. T is determined to “win” this game by killing the most prisoners because he wants to show his uncle Mat how tough he can be.
It should come as no surprise that Xin is one of the approximately 10 prisoners who are chosen for this homicidal game. The prisoners are taken to the jungle, where they are lined up and told to run away. One by one, all of them are shot to death by the hunters, except for Xin and another prisoner named Mony (played Rous Mony), who gets injured when he is shot in the leg.
Xin and Mon escape deeper into the jungle, and the rest of the movie is a life-and-death battle between the hunters and the hunted. Of course, Xin and Mony don’t stay unarmed for long, so there are the inevitable shootout scenes between the hunted and the hunters. This movie is so filled with stereotypical tropes, you can easily predict that the story’s hero is the one who’s the least likely to get shot.
The hunters split up to find their prey, and T accidentally falls into a deep hole, and he can’t get out on his own. A local man named Chay just happens to be walking nearby with his mute son Sambath (played by Nget Kakada), who’s about 12 or 13 years old. T shouts for help, and Chay rescues T from the hole.
T asks Chay if he would like to help him find some people in the jungle. Chay is reluctant to help, until T flashes a wad of cash to offer to Chay, who changes his mind when he sees how much he’s getting paid. T says that he can pay more money after they find the people he wants to find.
Meanwhile, two of Xin’s law-enforcement colleagues at China’s Ministry State of Security have noticed that he’s gone missing and they try to find him. Inspector Wong (played by Jai Ling) and Detective Li (played by Dy Sonita) have figured out that something probably went wrong with Xin’s undercover work. Through GPS tracking and some investigating, they discover that Xin was taken to the prison. But when they interview the warden and show Xin’s photo to him, the warden lies and says that he’s never seen that person before and that Xin was never in the prison.
The action sequences in “The Prey” are nothing special. And no one in this movie seems to have a distinctive personality, except for possibly rich kid T, who’s very insecure about proving himself in trying to be the most ruthless killer in the hunting group. A movie like this doesn’t have to go deep into character development, but it should at least make more effort to have action sequences that do something unique and don’t insult viewers’ intelligence.
One of the worst sequences is when Xin is cornered by one of the armed hunters near a waterfall. Instead of shooting Xin, the hunter puts aside his gun and decides to do hand-to-hand combat with Xin. It seems like the filmmakers knew that if all the hunters acted the way real hunters would act, everyone would be dead too quickly and there wouldn’t be enough time for a feature-length movie. The most violent scenes in the movie are utterly generic.
“The Prey” also has the same outdated stereotypes of action films that only have one woman in the entire cast. Detective Li just happens to look more like a model than a police investigator. And when Detective Li and Inspector Wong end up in the jungle too, she’s dressed like an office worker who’s about to have lunch with some corporate colleagues rather than someone who’s prepared to spend time in the rough terrain of the wood.
If you want an embarrassingly cliché action flick that has no memorable characters and an extremely derivative story, then “The Prey” should fulfill those expectations. But if you prefer action movies with people who have actual personalities and a compelling plot, then don’t waste your time with “The Prey.”
Dark Star Films released “The Prey” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on August 21, 2020, and on digital and VOD on August 25, 2020.
Culture Representation: The documentary “How to Fix a Primary,” which is about Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 campaign to become governor of Michigan, features a racially diverse group of people (white people, African Americans, Asians and Latinos), who are mostly political progressives, discussing the campaign.
Culture Clash: El-Sayed, who is a progressive Democrat, contends that he faced an uphill battle against well-funded establishment factions of the Democratic Party that unfairly squeeze out upstart “outsider” Democratic candidates.
Culture Audience: “How to Fix a Primary” will primarily appeal to people who like watching political documentaries about progressive liberals or “underdog” political candidates.
Abdul El-Sayed in “How to Fix a Primary” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)
It’s really no secret that campaign funds and political connections play major roles in the likelihood that a political candidate can get elected. But is the system rigged for “establishment” candidates to get unfair advantages over “outsider” candidates, even those who are from the same political party? In the case of medical doctor Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat who lost the 2018 primary election to become Michigan’s governor, the answer is a resounding “yes,” according to the documentary “How to Fix a Primary.”
Directed by Brittany Huckabee, “How to Fix a Primary” is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at El-Sayed’s ill-fated campaign, although at times the movie looks more like an electronic press kit to promote El-Sayed than an objective documentary that takes an unflinching look at any of his flaws. People don’t have to be a Democrat or a progressive liberal to enjoy watching this documentary. However, people who watch “How to Fix a Primary” are more likely to enjoy it if they’re inclined to root for “outsider” political candidates who take bold risks to fight for what they believe, even if the odds and many naysayers/doubters are stacked against these “outsider” candidates.
El-Sayed (who is known as a CNN commentator) is an Egyptian American who is also Muslim. He is very proud of and unapologetic about who he is, but he is also well-aware that some voters automatically won’t support him because of his ethnicity and religion. However, his campaign was geared largely to open-minded progressives who wanted something different from the “status quo” in a Michigan governor.
Born in Detroit in 1984, El-Sayed is a Rhodes Scholar with degrees from the University of Michigan, Oxford University and Columbia University. He served as executive director of the Detroit Health Department, as well as Health Officer for the city of Detroit, from 2015 to 2017. He also used to be an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University. El-Sayed married his wife Sarah Jukaku while they were in college in 2006 (she is shown as a supportive spouse in a few scenes in the documentary), and their first child (a daughter named Emmalee) was born during his 2018 Michigan gubernatorial campaign.
Despite his background as a privileged professional, El-Sayed’s overall campaign message was that he was a champion for “everyday people,” and he refused to take campaign money from corporate donors. His candidate platform was largely about reforming Michigan’s government policies to be more uplifting and beneficial to the working-class and poor and to fund his proposed programs mainly by increasing taxes on the wealthy.
Health care, criminal-justice reforms, infrastructure and Michigan’s polluted water crisis were among the top priorities on his agenda. (He is a big proponent of Medicare for All.) If El-Sayed had won the general election, he would have been the first Muslim to become a state governor in the United States. In the movie, he’s shown to be a political candidate who is passionate, articulate and approachable. However, compared to his main Democratic opponents, the documentary portrays him as an under-funded “doomed” candidate because he wasn’t willing to go to certain lengths in order to win.
Within the Democratic Party, he faced stiff competition from two very different middle-aged candidates. Gretchen Whitmer, who won the 2018 primary election and general election to become Michigan’s governor, was considered the “establishment” candidate who got millions in campaign money from corporate donors. She served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 2001 to 2006, and in the Michigan Senate from 2006 to 2015. Shri Thanedar, an Indian immigrant and self-made millionaire entrepreneur, spent his own money on his political campaign. Thanedar used his experience in business and his “political outsider” status as reasons to vote for him because, just like El-Sayed, he promised to shake up Michigan’s government with progressive changes.
Because “How to Fix a Primary” is obviously sympathetic to El-Sayed and his campaign, the documentary takes a very scathing critical look at Whitmer and Thanedar. Whitmer is portrayed as a political hack, a corporate sell-out and someone who relied too heavily on her “Fix the Damn Roads” catchphrase for her campaign. El-Sayed says in the documentary that Michigan’s water crisis should’ve been Whitmer’s bigger priority than fixing roads. Thanedar is portrayed as a power-hungry opportunist, with a history of shady business practices, who wanted to buy his way into becoming Michigan’s governor. El-Sayed’s campaign also accuses Thanedar of not being a true Democrat, based on reports that he chose to run as a Democrat instead of as a Republican because Thanedar thought he would have a better chance of winning as a Democrat.
However valid those criticisms might or might not be, the movie’s biggest shortcoming is that the filmmakers place almost no scrutiny on El-Sayed, who’s portrayed as morally righteous and as close to “perfect” as a politician can be. The reality is that no politician is as “perfect” as this documentary wants El-Sayed to look. In the documentary, the filmmakers do not ask him to reflect on any past personal or professional mistakes and what he learned from them. All of the televised debate footage in the documentary is carefully edited so that only El-Sayed’s best soundbites are used.
It seems like the filmmakers were afraid to expose anything that would make El-Sayed look less than perfect. But by conveniently erasing or not mentioning anything in the film that makes El-Sayed look like a human being who makes mistakes like everyone else does, it actually undermines his calculated efforts to appear to be a “regular guy” fighting for Michigan communities who are underrepresented and often-overlooked. El-Sayed mentions in the documentary that he gets hate mail and he had to hire a security staffer, but that’s standard for anyone running for a high-profile public office.
The people on El-Sayed’s campaign team who get the most screen time are also portrayed as social justice warriors who think they’re immune to corruption and are ready to accuse their opponents of playing dirty. (Almost all of his campaign workers are under the age of 40.) The top-level people on El-Sayed’s team who are featured in the documentary are campaign manager Max Glass, deputy campaign manager Claire Sandberg, policy director Rhiana Gunn-Wright and communications director Adam Joseph.
There’s only one scene in the documentary where El-Sayed is personally confronted by a critic. After a campaign appearance, while he is surrounded by people recording him with their phones, an extreme right-wing YouTube personality named Laura Loomer asks El-Sayed how he can claim to be a devout Muslim and also be an ally to the LGBTQ community, since the Muslim religion teaches that homosexuality is morally wrong. El-Sayed is tactfully gracious in his response: “What’s beautiful about this country is that I choose my own faith, and you choose yours or none at all.”
Loomer tries to press the issue, but El-Sayed eventually cuts off her line of questioning and ends up leaving. As he departs in the hallway, he says to his security personnel about being ambushed by Loomer: “You guys have got to jump on that way faster.” Loomer, who is known for expressing conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim rhetoric, eventually became a political candidate herself: In the 2020 elections, she was the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives to represent Florida’s 21st congressional district, where Donald Trump lives.
If you were to believe everything presented in this documentary, El-Sayed was the only Democratic candidate who had a “clean” campaign in this Michigan gubernatorial election. Meanwhile, there’s a reason why so many voters mistrust all politicians: There’s a widespread belief that all politicians eventually do secret deals that benefit the politicians, not the people they’re supposed to serve.
But according to Sandberg, progressive Democrats are the most honest factions of the Democratic Party, compared to moderate Democrats who are part of the establishment. In the documentary, she compares the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to feuding crime families: “The best analogy that I can think of for the situation progressives are in to compete in these types of elections is that there’s a war going on between two different crime families. And progressives are legitimate business operators trying to compete against these two warring crime families.”
Sandberg adds of establishment politicians, “They control the process. They control the media. They control the money. And it’s incredibly difficult to take them on.” Later in the documentary, in one of the movie’s most compelling scenes, Sandberg attends a Michigan board of elections hearing where she presents her campaign team’s case that Thanedar should be removed from the ballot because he allegedly collected thousands of fraudulent signatures. El-Sayed’s team wanted the board of elections to investigate and find that Thanedar did not have the minimum 15,000 legitimate voter signatures required to be a candidate for Michigan governor.
Leading up to this crucial hearing, the documentary showed the painstaking work that El-Sayed’s campaign workers put into comparing thousands of signatures against voter registrations, to see if the signatures matched what was on file, and to find any signatures that could be disqualified. For example, voters could not sign election petitions for more than one gubernatorial candidate. Signatures could also be disqualified if they belonged to people who weren’t registered voters at the time they signed.
The board’s decision is what El-Sayed’s team did not expect. But in hindsight, El-Sayed’s campaign staffers say in the documentary that the decision was rigged from the beginning. Sandberg places most of the blame on board of elections member Julie Matuzak, a Whitmer supporter who was an American Federation of Teachers lobbyist and someone whom Sandberg says was also running a “dark money” group that was funneling donations into Whitmer’s campaign. It’s a conflict of interest that would be one of the reasons why Whitmer’s fundraising for this campaign came under legal scrutiny in 2019.
The documentary also shows how El-Sayed’s opponents tried to discredit his eligibility by claiming he hadn’t lived in Michigan long enough to be qualified to run for governor of Michigan. Under Michigan law, a candidate for governor must be a Michigan resident who lived in Michigan for the four consecutive years before the election year. El-Sayed lived and voted in New York City in 2012, but he had been living in Michigan for at least four years when he declared his gubernatorial candidacy in 2017.
However, this question over his eligibility (which was eventually resolved in his favor by a Michigan court) and the media attention about this issue ended up damaging El-Sayed’s campaign, according to Glass, who previously worked on campaigns for Democratic politicians Tulsi Gabbard and Seth Moulton. Gunn-Wright comes right out and says that racism was at the root of the accusation against El-Sayed. Even though the accusation against El-Sayed was proven to be false, it decreased voter confidence in El-Sayed and hurt his fundraising. At one point in the documentary, Glass dejectedly tells campaign workers in a meeting that they only have $474,000 in campaign funds, while Whitmer is estimated to have raised $4.5 million for her campaign.
Money can make or break a campaign, but that’s true for politicians of any political leaning, not just progressive Democrats. And plenty of white politicians have been accused of carpetbagging or not being eligible for a campaign, based on previous residences, so it’s not an accusation that’s unique to non-white candidates. El-Sayed and Glass both comment that when El-Sayed raised $1 million in donations earlier in the campaign, that’s when El-Sayed’s political opponents (Democrats and Republicans) began to see him as a threat, and accusations soon followed that El-Sayed was not an eligible candidate based on his residential history. In other words, money played more of a role than racial identity in El-Sayed being perceived as a threat and targeted for elimination by the competition.
Although the documentary would like to portray Whitmer and Thanedar as the villains in this campaign, it’s clear that high-profile progressives in the Democratic Party weren’t exactly rushing to align themselves with El-Sayed in this campaign. El-Sayed’s campaign team tried in vain for about a year to get the endorsement of Bernie Sanders, who held off on endorsing El-Sayed until just a few days before the primary election day. El-Sayed’s campaign manager Glass comments in the film that although Sanders’ endorsement was appreciated, that public vote of confidence from Sanders was too late.
One exception to El-Sayed’s relative lack of support from high-profile progressive Democrats was Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who was an early political ally of El-Sayed’s, before she became a star in the Democratic Party. Ocasio-Cortez and El-Sayed share a kinship because they were in similar situations in the 2018 elections: As young people of color running for political office for the first time, they branded themselves as progressive “outsiders” who want to shake up the establishment. An early scene in “How to Fix a Primary” shows El-Sayed giving Ocasio-Cortez a friendly tour of Detroit. (The Netflix documentary “Knock Down the House” gives further insight into why Ocasio-Cortez won her 2018 election.)
Despite the flaw of being heavily biased in portraying El-Sayed in the best possible light, “How to Fix a Primary” does an admirable job of putting his campaign in a larger context of how much can be bought and sold in an election in order for a candidate to win. It’s not a new issue, nor will this documentary solve the problem. Political corruption and voter mistrust will continue to affect the outcome of elections. But at least the film takes a unique look at the journey that one political candidate took to try to push back against what he sees as a rigged system.
Gravitas Ventures released “How to Fix a Primary” on digital, VOD, Blu-ray and DVD on October 20, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in the rural Appalachian area of West Virginia, the horror flick “Spell” has a predominantly African American cast of characters (with a few white people) representing the poor, middle-class and upper-middle-class.
Culture Clash: After a plane crash, an attorney who’s a family man finds himself held captive by a hoodoo priestess who uses body parts for her potions.
Culture Audience: “Spell” will appeal primarily to people who like to see gory movies with voodoo/hoodoo themes, but the movie has too many dumb plot holes to be considered a quality story.
Omari Hardwick and Loretta Devine in “Spell” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)
The horror movie “Spell” has an interesting social theme that is rarely seen in narrative films: The class divide and prejudices that can exist between African Americans who are upper-middle-class and African Americans who have less financial advantages. Unfortunately, this theme, which could have made “Spell” a more interesting film, is squandered and buried in order to go to down yet another predictable and gory horror path. Even the suspenseful scenes are badly handled with plot holes that ruin any credibility that “Spell” hoped to have.
Directed by Mark Tonderai and written by Kurt Wimmer, “Spell” begins with the introduction of the family who will be involved in the fateful plane crash that sets off this movie’s horror. Marquis T. Woods (played by Omari Hardwick) is a successful corporate attorney working in an unnamed big city in the United States. He’s well-respected by his boss Wyman Thatcher (played by Andrew Jacobs) at the law firm.
Marquis is a very tough and very competitive lawyer who doesn’t let the fact that he’s African American get in the way of wanting to win a case if the opponents are also African American. During a conversation between Wyman and Marquis, they discuss a class-action lawsuit where the plaintiffs are African American and the plaintiffs’ attorneys are white. The law firm that Marquis works for is representing the defendants in the lawsuit, and Marquis is the lead attorney in the case.
The exact details of the lawsuit aren’t revealed in the story, but it’s implied that it has to do with accusations of racial discrimination. In other words, Marquis doesn’t really care if people might think of him of being a “race traitor” for representing the defendants in this case. He just wants to win.
He might be a ruthless attorney in the courtroom, but at home, Marquis is a loving and loyal family man with a disciplinarian streak and hints of being a control freak. The movie opens with a somewhat odd scene of Marquis’ wife Veora Woods (played by Lorraine Burroughs) accidentally locked in their bedroom. She pleads with Marquis, who’s on the other side of the door, to break down the door and let her out. He refuses because he says the door cost $1,500.
As a prank, Marquis pretends that he can’t do anything to help her, and he says that he’s going to call a locksmith. It could take more than an hour for a locksmith to come over and break the lock and then replace it. Veora says she doesn’t have that kind of time.
After some more begging and pleading from Veora, Marquis finally puts Veora out of her misery and uses a pin to unlock the door. She rushes out with relief, but she’s slightly irritated that Marquis would put her in this uncomfortable situation as a joke. It shows a manipulative side to Marquis that may not be violent, but it demonstrates how he might get some pleasure out of seeing people squirm.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Marquis has an abusive past. When he was a child, his father often beat, tortured and emotionally abused Marquis, who is so haunted by these memories that he still has nightmares about the abuse. (In flashback scenes, Ri-Karlo Handy plays Marquis’ father, while twins Bodhi Tonderai-Hodges and Sahara Tonderai-Hodges portray Marquis as a child.)
Marquis also grew up very poor in the Appalachian area of West Virginia. It’s a past that he left behind 25 years ago and doesn’t want to go back to anytime soon. Marquis hasn’t lied about his personal history of growing up poor and abused, but he’d rather forget that it happened. And it fuels his drive to be as wealthy and successful as possible.
That’s why he’s instilled in his teenage kids—son Tydon “Ty” Woods (played by Kalifa Burton) and daughter Samsara “Sam” Woods (played by Hannah Gonera)—who are both in their mid-teens, a strong sense of wanting them to become high achievers. But with that ambition also comes a certain snobbery where Sam and especially Ty look down on people who are poor and unsophisticated. Ty doesn’t hesitate to call other black people the “n” word if he thinks they’re of a lower class than he is. When Veora hears Ty use this racial slur, she scolds him and tells him that she doesn’t want him to use that language.
In another scene, Veora tells Marquis in front of their kids that she’s worried about the children turning into entitled jerks. Marquis responds by saying, “If I had my way, your son and daughter will spend their lives in a boardroom, not in some jungle I couldn’t get out of fast enough.” Veora says, “Except sometimes, Marq, that jungle comes back to find you, no matter what boardroom you’re hiding in.”
This conversation takes place on a private single-engine, four-seat plane that Marquis is piloting, with Veora, Ty and Sam as the passengers. They are on the plane because Marquis has been notified that his father has died, and the family is going to back to Marquis’ hometown in West Virginia for the funeral and to take care of some other matters related to the death.
Marquis makes a pit stop in a rural area at a small-strip gas station with a convenience store. An elderly man (played by Leo Wringer) who works at the gas station and a young man (played by Tafara Nyatsanza) who happens to be there too are exactly the type of “country” African Americans who make Marquis and Ty uncomfortable. Ty doesn’t do much to hide his condescension, while these two local men think that Marquis and his family are stuck-up city folks.
Marquis and his family aren’t at the gas station for long, when the local sheriff (played by Tumisho Masha) pulls up to find out why this small plane has landed in his jurisdiction. Marquis reminds the sheriff that it’s legal for him to land there, since it’s a single-engine plane. Marquis also shows his pilot license and tells the sheriff why they’re at the gas station. The sheriff is friendly but a little wary of these newcomers.
After the plane is back in the air, a massive storm hits and the plane looks like it’s in danger of crashing. The crash is actually never shown in the movie. The next thing that happens is that Marquis wakes up in a bed in a house attic, with a head injury and his left foot bleeding and bandaged. Where is he and what happened to his family?
Marquis finds out that he’s being held captive at a farmhouse by a woman named Eloise (played by Loretta Devine), a demented voodoo priestess who has a dual persona of being a friendly “church lady” and a wicked witch. Her mood swings are unpredictable, but largely based on whether or not she thinks she’s in control of a situation. She can get menacing very quickly if she thinks Marquis is trying to escape.
Eloise tells Marquis that he was found in the plane crash, and she insists that no one else was with him. Marquis doesn’t quite believe her and he desperately wants to escape and find his wife and kids. Eloise, who calls herself a “root worker,” says that she doesn’t believe in a lot of technology and inventions, such as phones, computers, radios and television.
The rest of the movie is basically a series of attempted escapes by Marquis, who finds out that Eloise uses body parts (human and animal) for her potions and spells. She tells Marquis she can nurse him back to health with the Boogity, a hoodoo doll that she has made from his skin and blood. She blows powdered potion in Marquis’ face to drug him. And later, Marquis witnesses a revival meeting with Eloise working her magic on some local people with disabilities.
Ms. Eloise has two accomplices who help her keep Marquis captive on her run-down farm: Earl (played by John Beasley), who seems to be Eloise’s love partner/common-law-husband, and a hulking handyman named Lewis (played by Steve Mululu), who looks like he’s strong enough to permanently injure someone with his bare hands. Miss Eloise says of Lewis, “People think he’s slow, but there’s nothing slow about him.”
Later, when Marquis asks Eloise if she really believes in the hoodoo that she practices, she responds in an irritated tone, “I guess I have to. We don’t have much in the way of Obamacare around here.” She also responds to Marquis’ obvious condescension toward her beliefs and lifestyle: “You a city boy. You better than all of this.”
There are a few moments where “Spell” goes from being a mildly interesting horror movie to being a disappointing dud with too many plot holes to ignore. The first big nonsensical moment comes when Marquis gets a chance to run away and escape, but instead he sticks around to watch one of Eloise’s revival gatherings. The second and more improbable scenario that plays out is when Marquis removes a very long nail from his injured foot (the nail is so long that it would definitely destroy tendons) and then shoves it back in his foot, for reasons that are shown in the movie.
What’s ludicrous about these scenes with Marquis removing the nail and then putting it back in his foot, is that in real life, he would go into medical shock if he performed those procedures on himself and would most likely pass out from the shock and infections. And yet, he’s still able to run around (with a limp) before and after this self-surgery. It can’t be stressed enough that this is not a tiny nail. The nail is almost as long as his foot. The only reason to have these unrealistic scenes of Marquis removing the nail and slamming it back in his foot is to just have a gross-out scene that people will remember about this movie.
As for the acting in “Spell,” Devine at least seems to be having some fun hamming it up in this role as the unhinged hoodoo priestess Eloise. However, there’s absolutely no real backstory for this character (there’s only a small hint), and Eloise ends up being a generic villain after a while. In fact, all of the characters are fairly generic, as are most of the performances in this movie. There are hints of Marquis’ complicated and traumatic personal history, but any further exploration of his troubled past is largely abandoned when the rest of the story becomes about his kidnapping ordeal.
“Spell” needed to bring something fresh and creative to the story, considering that the 1990 Oscar-winning horror film “Misery” already set a gold standard for a movie about a man held captive by an evil woman who does something awful to his legs. The ending of “Spell” is very unimaginative, predictable and feels too rushed. The movie’s production design and cinematography are very effective, but the screenplay and overall direction lack the spark, cohesiveness and personality that are needed to make a better-than-average film. The good news for people turned off by “Spell” is that it’s highly unlikely to get a sequel.
Paramount Pictures released “Spell” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and on VOD on October 30, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror flick “Chop Chop” has almost all-white cast (with one Latina) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: A husband and a wife go on the run after they get involved in a killing spree.
Culture Audience: “Chop Chop” will appeal primarily to people who have the tolerance to watch any horror movie, no matter how terribly made it is.
David Harper in “Chop Chop” (Photo courtesy of Kamikaze Dogfight/Gravitas Ventures)
There are some movies that are so bad that they’re not just excruciating to watch. They’re also the types of movies that are so pointless and nonsensical that even describing them seems like a waste of time. The dreadfully dull and horribly acted “Chop Chop” is one of those movies.
“Chop Chop” is the feature-film debut of Rony Patel (who co-wrote the “Chop Chop” screenplay with Andrew Erickson), and it’s the kind of movie that’s so amateurish that it probably wouldn’t get a passing grade at a mediocre film school. There isn’t one single redeeming quality of “Chop Chop,” except the feeling of relief that it’s over by any viewers who’ve managed to stay awake to watch the movie from beginning to end.
“Chop Chop” is an extremely derivative horror movie that is neither scary nor suspenseful in any way, shape or form. The only reasons why it’s a horror movie are because of the bloody murders and because of the movie’s creepy characters, who are actually more annoying than fearsome. There are some horror flicks that are bad, but at least they’re entertaining because the filmmakers know the movie is bad and have fun with it anyway. “Chop Chop” doesn’t have this self-awareness.
The sloppily written story of “Chop Chop” essentially comes to down to this premise: A married couple named Chuck Matthews (played by Jake Taylor) and Olivia “Liv” Matthews (played by Atala Arce) are home at their apartment one night when an unexpected fateful encounter with a pizza delivery guy sends them on a badly conceived journey where people are kidnapped, assaulted and sometimes killed.
The movie is filled with long, awkward pauses between dialogue. All of the characters often stand around as if in a daze, move slowly, and do things that make no sense whatsoever. The pizza guy is hinted at being someone who’s sinister (he’s seen in the beginning of the movie carrying a plastic bag that seems to have a bloody head in it), but viewers never find out for sure what the pizza guy’s story is, because he dies in the beginning of the movie. In fact, no one in this movie has any backstory or real personality.
The death of the pizza guy, whose name is Teddy (played by David Harper), happens when he shows up unexpectedly one night at the apartment of Chuck and Olivia. When the doorbell rings, Chuck is on the toilet and listening to music on his headphones. Olivia answers the door and tells Teddy (who looks like he’s an Uncle Fester reject from the Addams Family) that they didn’t order any pizza.
As Olivia is about to shut the door, Teddy prevents her. At this point, most people in a situation like this would forcibly shut the door because it’s starting to look like a possible home invasion. But Olivia just stands there and stares at Teddy, while he says of the pizza box he’s holding in his hand, “It’s for you.”
Olivia finally manages to shut the door, but just seconds later, she sees Teddy on the living room couch, watching TV with the remote control in his hand. He gives her a sleazy smile and says, “I have abilities.” How did Freddy get in the apartment so quickly? Is he a supernatural being? “Chop Chop” is so dumb, it never answers those questions.
It isn’t long before Freddy has a meat cleaver in his hand and is about to attack Olivia, but she stabs him in the leg with a kitchen knife. Chuck comes out of the bathroom and overpowers Freddy and hits Freddy until the pizza guy is unconscious on the floor. Instead of calling 911, Chuck says, “God, I’m out of shape.”
And then, Chuck and Olivia talk about what just happened and still don’t call for help. If the movie had a campy or satirical tone, it might be easier to take. But the sense of humor in the film is almost non-existent. “Chop Chop” also has an out-of-place music score that sounds like it came from an obscure, cheesy detective movie from the 1970s.
It comes as no surprise that Freddy suddenly regains consciousness and is about to attack again while he’s lying on the floor. Olivia steps on Freddy’s neck, which kills him. While Chuck thinks that they should call the police, Olivia is completely against the idea. And then, “Chop Chop” takes the point of no return into the Garbage Dump of Irredeemably Bad Horror Movies. Chuck and Olivia, who could easily claim self-defense in this killing, decide not to call for help. Instead, they decide to dismember Freddy’s body in their shower.
Meanwhile, a plainclothes police officer named Detective Minaya (played by Jeremy Jordan, not to be confused with the Broadway/TV actor Jeremy Jordan) has been looking for the pizza guy, who is apparently suspected of murder. He has the pizza guy’s description and license plate number. Detective Minaya does not have a cop partner in this movie, not just because this low-budget film probably couldn’t afford to hire another actor, but mainly because this movie has too many other problems with its illogical plot.
Chuck and Olivia are suddenly seen in their car in a dark and empty outdoor parking lot. And who happens to roll up in his car and ask what they’re doing there? Detective Minaya, of course. Without giving away too much of this movie’s almost non-existent plot, Olivia ends up hitting Detective Minaya on the head with a tire iron, and Chuck and Olivia put him in the back of the trunk because the cop appears to be dead.
And so begins Chuck and Olivia’s outlaw life on the run, where they encounter more boring and stupid people just like them. Chuck calls a shady female friend named Rex (played by Natasha Missick) to help him and Olivia. Rex tells Chuck to pick up a package from a lowlife named Jeffrey (played by James McCabe), and then Chuck has to deliver the package somewhere else.
When Chuck arrives at Jeffrey’s scuzzy place, he’s followed around suspiciously by Jeffrey’s jealous boyfriend (played by Nicholas Correnti), who keeps asking Chuck: “You ain’t fucked my man, right?” While at Jeffrey’s place, Chuck meets someone named Butch (also played by Harper), who looks exactly like the pizza guy Teddy. (Butch and Teddy are supposed to be twins.)
Jeffrey describes Butch as “the best sword craftsman in the business.” It’s at this point that you know that Butch is going to pull out a sword at some point in the movie. But before that happens, Chuck leaves Jeffrey’s place with the “package,” which is really the size of a cologne box, because he has to deliver it to another sleazeball named Clark (played by Mikael Mattson), who lives on an isolated farm.
The movie doesn’t get any better, as it slogs from one tedious scene to the next. Even the violence in the movie is monotonous. In addition to the soulless acting, “Chop Chop” has nothing but cringeworthy dialogue. At one point, Chuck and Olivia are held captive somewhere, and their kidnapper says to Olivia: “I can’t wait to slice you like string cheese.” And then he makes a slurping noise. “Chop Chop” is the worst type of mindless horror movie, because instead of viewers reacting with screams or chills, viewers are more likely to react with yawns and snores.
Kamikaze Dogfight and Gravitas Ventures released “Chop Chop” on digital and VOD on October 20, 2020.
