Culture Representation: Taking place in Charlotte, North Carolina, the dramatic film “The Forge” features a predominantly African American group of people (with some white people, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A young adult man, who is angry over his father’s abandonment, finds purpose and meaning in his life when his boss becomes his religious mentor.
Culture Audience: “The Forge” will appeal mainly to people who can tolerate faith-based films that are preachy but well-meaning.
Priscilla Shirer in “The Forge” (Photo courtesy of Affirm Films)
“The Forge” is a pleasantly formulaic faith-based drama that tends to be preachy and mundane. However, the acting is solid, and the characters are likeable in this story about a young man who finds his identity and purpose. Viewers should not expect any surprises in this movie.
“The Forge” was directed by Alex Kendrick, who co-wrote “The Forge” screenplay with his brother Stephen Kendrick. The movie takes place in Charlotte, North Carolina, but was actually filmed mostly in Albany, Georgia. “The Forge” has some unflattering clichés about African Americans in urban areas. It’s yet another movie about an “at risk” young African American man raised by a single mother because his father abandoned the family.
These tired and over-used stereotypes would be offensive if “The Forge” didn’t have a balance of positive and realistic portrayals of African Americans. The fact of the matter is that most African Americans are not criminals or addicted to drugs. Most African American fathers are not deadbeat dads. Thankfully, “The Forge” does not depict the movie’s protagonist as a criminal but as someone who feels lost and in search of a purpose in life, which is something that many people can relate to, regardless of their racial or ethnic identity.
The movie begins by showing 19-year-old Isaiah Wright (played by Aspen Kennedy) playing basketball with some of his friends. It’s soon revealed in “The Forge” that Isaiah is addicted to playing video games. Isaiah is a good guy, but he doesn’t have any direction or goals in his life since he graduated from high school a year earlier. He lives with his divorced mother Cynthia Wright (played by Priscilla Shirer), who is so bitter about the divorce from her ex-husband Darren (played by Michael J. Patterson), she doesn’t even like to talk about him. Darren hasn’t had contact with Cynthia and Isaiah for several years.
Cynthia has had enough of Isaiah living rent-free in her house and not doing anything productive with his life. One day, Cynthia tells Isaiah: “If you don’t want to go to college, that’s fine. But you’ve got to get a job.” She also tells him that his days of living rent-free in her home will soon be over. Cynthia adds sternly, “You’re not going to spend all of your graduation money on video games and sneakers.”
The trailer for “The Forge” reveals about 90% of the plot, including the way that Darren shows up in Isaiah’s life after not seeing or communicating with Isaiah for years. Isaiah gets a warehouse job at Moore Fitness, a successful company that makes about 205 different fitness products. Moore Fitness is facing stiff competition from a company called Slayer Sports, which is aggressively going after an exclusive contract with GymFit, the biggest client of Moore Fitness. If Moore Fitness loses GymFit as a client, then Moore Fitness will be in serious danger of going out of business. You can almost do a countdown to the “race against time” scene that you know is coming as soon as the contract deadline is mentioned in the movie.
Isaiah is personally hired by Moore Fitness owner/founder Joshua Moore (played by Cameron Moore), who has a chance encounter with Isaiah when Isaiah is in an office reception area to fill out a job application. Before Joshua hires Isaiah, he takes Isaiah out to lunch and tells Isaiah that Isaiah must answer three questions in order to be hired at Moore Fitness: “In what ways do you want to grow in the next year?” “What kind of man do you want to be?” “What do you want people to think when they see you coming?”
Joshua is happily married to Janelle Moore (played by B.J. Arnett, Cameron Arnett’s real-life wife), who is the company’s human resources manager. It should come as no surprise that Joshua and Janelle have a tragedy from their past which explains why Joshua has taken such a keen interest in Isaiah. You know where all of this is going, of course.
Joshua becomes a mentor/father figure to Isaiah, who learns the value of hard work and personal integrity on the job and under Joshua’s guidance. Isaiah befriends some Moore Fitness employees who are nice but have generic personalities and don’t get enough screen time to be fully developed characters. Joshua also leads an all-male Christian group called The Forge, which has prayer circles on a regular basis. The Forge meets at a local church, where church employee Jonathan (played by Jonathan Evans) is also part of The Forge. Isaiah’s addiction to playing video games is handled in an entirely predictable manner after he becomes a responsible adult.
“The Forge” is a very patriarchal movie that tries to give meaningful screen time to Cynthia, who works at a hair salon, which has its own prayer group that consists entirely of women. One of the outspoken people in the salon’s prayer group is Miss Clara Williams (played by Karen Abercrombie), who is somewhat of a sitcom-ish stereotype of an elderly woman who says whatever is on her mind because she’s at a point in her life where she doesn’t really care what other people think of her. The scenes of Cynthia at her job are not pointless, but they don’t have as much impact as the scenes with Isaiah and his relationship with Joshua.
Some of the scenes in “The Forge” are very corny, while other scenes are very realistic. It’s a mixed bag of a movie that has its heart in the right place. Skip watching “The Forge” if you don’t want to hear religious lectures in a movie. But if you tolerate or like these types of movies, then “The Forge” has enough to offer that is familiar and entertaining.
Affirm Films released “The Forge” in U.S. cinemas on September 23, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and in Europe, from 2019 to 2022, the documentary film “Fly” features a group of predominantly white people (and a few people of Asian/Pacific Islander heritage) who are connected in some way to the sport of BASE jumping, which is jumping off of very high, stationary places with usually only a parachute and/or wing suit for support equipment.
Culture Clash: Professional BASE jumpers experience personal rewards and refuse to have conventional lives, but the risk is very high that they will die or get seriously injured while BASE jumping.
Culture Audience: “Fly” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in watching documentaries about people whose lives revolve around extreme sports.
Scotty Bob Morgan and Espen Fadnes in “Fly” (Photo courtesy of Reel Peak Films/National Geographic Documentary Films)
With breathtaking cinematography and even more poignant human stories, “Fly” is an unforgettable documentary about the dangerous sport of BASE jumping. The documentary shows in unflinching ways how the sport can be as fulfilling as it is addicting. BASE is an acronym for the four possible types of stationary jumping-off points in BASE jumping: buildings, antennas, spans and earth. In “Fly,” the BASE jumpers are all seen jumping off from earth areas, usually cliffs.
“Fly” should be seen on the biggest screen possible. However, viewers who get vertigo from watching things filmed from extreme heights should be warned that “Fly” might induce dizziness and nausea in several scenes that show human flight at vertiginous heights and breakneck speeds. (The sound design for “Fly” is excellent in giving viewers a sense of the high-velocity speed involved in BASE jumping.) Beyond these scenes that will thrill many viewers and will make others feel a little sick, “Fly” has moments that are truly tearjerking because of what happens to some of the people featured in the movie.
Directed by Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau (who are also “Fly’s” main cinematographers), “Fly” was filmed from 2019 to 2022, in various parts of the United States and Europe, such as Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Switzerland, France, and Norway. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival before screening at 2024 edition Hot Docs and the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. Six BASE jumping people (three couples) are the focus of “Fly,” which explores the physical aspects of BASE jumping, along with the emotional toll that the sport takes on the lives of participants who devote most of their time to BASE jumping.
“Fly” might get some comparisons to “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” a 2024 documentary about a Russian couple engaging in rooftopping: a dangerous and usually illegal sport of climbing extremely high structures without ropes, nets or other safety measures. Unlike rooftopping, which almost always involves trespassing, BASE jumping is considered a legitimate sport, but not any less dangerous than rooftopping. Professional BASE jumpers can compete in international competitions and often get sponsors.
In “Fly,” the six BASE jumping people (three couples) who get the spotlight are:
Jimmy Pouchert and Marta Empinotti, a married couple who co-founded Apex BASE, a California-based company that sells BASE jumping equipment and gear, teaches BASE jumping classes, and hosts BASE jumping events. Pouchert and Empinotti—who were a childless couple in their 50s and living in Moab, Utah, when this documentary was filmed—started BASE jumping in their late teens or 20s. Pouchert (an American) is jovial and has a daredevil personality. Empinotti (originally from Brazil) is more pragmatic and cautious than Pouchert. They co-founded an annual get-together in Las Vegas for BASE jumpers (many of them current and former Apex BASE trainees) to let loose and party.
Scotty Bob Morgan and Julia Botelho Morgan (both in their 30s)—the biggest risk-taking couple in the documentary—were dating and got married during the course of making this documentary. Morgan (an American) is a former U.S. Marine who served in the Iraq War and overcame a troubled past to devote himself to professional BASE jumping. Botelho Morgan (originally from Brazil) was an attorney who quit the law profession to become a skydiver in the Brazilian Army and then became a professional BASE jumper. The spouses operate a California-based training course called Bob’s BASE Academy, although Apex BASE is the main focus of the BASE jumping training that is shown in “Fly.”
Espen Fadnes (in his 40s) and Amber Forte (in her 30s) are a married couple living in Norway, which is Fadnes’ native country. Forte is originally from the United Kingdom. Fadnes, who is considered a pioneer in wingsuit BASE jumping, is a former World Cup champ for the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)/World Air Sports Federation. He has been featured in the Netflix documentary “Wingmen.” Just like the other couples featured in this documentary, this European BASE jumping couple say that they are lucky to have found each other because it’s rare to find a romantic partner who shares the same passion for BASE jumping. Fadnes is very open about how nothing is more important to him than BASE jumping, and he won’t stop BASE jumping, even if people close to him die from it. Forte says she’s less of a risk-taker than Fadnes and she gets more thrills from feeling like flying than feeling like she’s risking her life.
“Fly” begins wth a captioned quote from Leonardo da Vinci: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward.” It certainly describes how die-hard BASE jumpers feel about this sport that they say they can’t live without. Unlike many other sports where professional athletes are expected to retire by the time they’re in their 50s, the “Fly” BASE jumpers say that there really is no age limit for adults to continue BASE jumping.
Fadnes comments on what people get out of BASE jumping: “We feel enormous joy … We are dreamers. There is value in that.” Fadnes also express deep admiration for Morgan, whom Fadnes considers to be one of the best BASE jumpers in the world. Pouchert adds, “A lot of people have said that base jumping has saved their life. It’s a form of absolute bliss.”
On the flip side, Morgan and Fadnes are among the BASE jumpers who say more than once in the documentary that being a professional BASE jumper requires a lot of selfishness. Because of the sport’s high-risk demands, most professional BASE jumpers are obsessed with the sport and make BASE jumping more important than most relationships in their lives. Professional BASE jumpers also have to brush aside concerns from loved ones who are worried that the BASE jumpers will die from this sport.
Morgan says in a separate interview about why he became hooked on BASE jumping: “It was love at first jump.” Morgan adds that he BASE jumps every week. “It’s been good for me,” he states. “It’s therapeutic.” Morgan explains that BASE jumping has helped him with his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and got him through some rough patches in his life, such as when he had drug abuse issues and “ran into some legal trouble.”
Pouchert jokes, “I could be the only person in the world who was taught to jump by his wife.” Remarkably, Empinotti says she has never had a serious injury while BASE jumping. She later opens up about how she dealt with the trauma of a having a boyfriend who died from BASE jumping when she was in her late teens. She also confesses that Pouchert’s tendency to be a jokester in serious situations used to bother her but she grew to accept that was part of his personality.
In addition to putting their lives in danger, the BASE jumpers featured in “Fly” are candid in showing how people who make a commitment to this unconventional lifestyle usually have to lead nomadic existences without a steady income. Professional BASE jumpers often choose not to have children. They also have to accept the reality that many of their friends and/or family members who are BASE jumpers could most likely die from BASE jumping.
Issues of life and death are never far from the focus of the documentary. By the end of the documentary, one of the younger couples in this documentary will bring new life into world when they become parents. (The woman in the couple even BASE jumps when she’s at least six months pregnant.) Someone in another couple experiences near-fatal injuries while BASE jumping. And another couple has the worst possible outcome to the couple’s love story.
It’s impossible not to notice that most people involved in BASE jumping are of a certain demographic. The documentary doesn’t really offer an explanation for why BASE jumping is not a racially diverse or socioeconomically diverse sport, although the clues are there. It’s similar to why race car driving, tennis, golf and skiing are not racially diverse or socioeconomically diverse sports: Getting lessons and traveling in these sports have financial expenses that many people cannot afford. Participants who are not affluent have to make a lot of financial sacrifices to stay in the sport.
Most “daredevil” sports also tend to be dominated by men. “Fly” makes it clear that the women who co-star in the documentary were skilled BASE jumpers long before they met their male romantic partners. Forte explains her perspective of being a female in a sport where the majority of participants are male: “I never wanted to be a boy. I just wanted to be able to do what the boys could do.”
If there’s any shortcoming in “Fly,” it’s that the documentary could have had a little more variety by giving more screen time to professional BASE jumpers who aren’t in a committed relationship with a romantic partner. There’s a glimpse of how lonely this life can be, early in the documentary when Morgan says that he’s essentially homeless and sleeping on friends’ couches because he doesn’t see the point of paying rent for a place where he won’t be living for most of the year. Later, after Morgan and Botelho Morgan are married, he says that being married has changed his mind about putting down roots somewhere.
Morgan’s mother Julie Maxwell Morgan says she often gets asked if she’s worried about her son dying while BASE jumping. She says yes, but his happiness is more important to her. “I don’t think Scotty can be happy unless he can fly,” Maxwell Morgan comments. She also says she feels slightly envious that he’s found a passion for something in his life and has accomplished a lot with this passion, which is something that she was never able to do in her own life.
Also featured in the documentary are two scruffy BASE jumpers who are close friends of Pouchert and Marta Empinotti: Jason “Jay Mo” Moledzki is a native Canadian who is a co-founder and creative director of Flight-1, a Florida-based company that teaches canopy flight skills. Ben “Dicko” Dixon is a long-haired Australian native/Utah resident who looks like he could also be a bohemian surfer. Other BASE jumpers in the documentary are shown in fleeting moments, with nothing about their personal lives revealed. The movie has good use of its soundtrack songs, which includes Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” and Avicii’s “The Lights.”
“Fly” is the type of documentary that is as effective as it is because it was filmed over several years. There are moments of exhilaration and moments of agony that will stay with viewers after the movie is over. Regardless of how viewers feel about BASE jumping, “Fly” serves as an example of what it means to take bold and non-traditional risks. These risks in BASE jumping aren’t for everyone, but the risks are ultimately about living life to the fullest and being fortunate to have the privileged freedom to do so.
National Geographic Documentary Films released “Fly” in select U.S. IMAX cinemas for a limited engagement on September 2 and September 3, 2024. The movie will premiere on the National Geographic Channel on September 24, 2024.
Some language in Portuguese and Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in the 2010s in Brazil and in Argentina (with a brief flashback to the 1980s), the comedy/drama film “My Penguin Friend” (inspired by true events) features a predominantly Latin group of people (with a few white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Brazilian fisherman João Pereira De Souza rescues a migrating Argentinian penguin from an oil-spill health hazard, and the penguin returns to visit him every year.
Culture Audience: “My Penguin Friend” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and heartwarming stories about the bonds that can develop between humans and wild animals.
Alexia Moyano in “My Penguin Friend” (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions)
“My Penguin Friend” won’t rank among the very best movies about adorable penguins, and the cast members’ performances are mismatched. However, this comedy/drama (based on a true story) is pleasant enough to watch as family-friendly entertainment. “My Penguin Friend” (formerly titled “The Penguin and the Fisherman”) tends to get a bit repetitive, and some of the pacing is sluggish, but it’s sufficiently enjoyable and doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not.
Directed by David Schurmann and written by Paulina Lagudi and Kristen Lazarian, “My Penguin Friend” begins sometime in the early 1980s, in Ilha Grande, Brazil. That’s where fisherman João Pereira De Souza (played by Pedro Urizzi) and his wifeMaria (played by Amanda Magalhães) live with their son Miguel (played by Juan José Garnica), who’s about 6 or 7 years. They are a happy family living in a modest home.
Miguel will soon have a birthday. His close friend Calista (played by Beatriz Lima) has shown him a small gift-wrapped box that she says is her birthday gift to him. Calista makes Miguel promise that he won’t open the gift until his birthday.
Sadly, Miguel won’t live to see his upcoming birthday. One day, João takes Miguel on a rowboat excursion in the ocean. They get caught in a sudden storm that overturns the boat. João does his best to save Miguel, but the current is too strong, and Miguel drowns. Some of the movie’s visual effects in the ocean scenes are hit-and-miss when it comes to being convincing.
About 30 years later, João (played by Jean Reno) and Maria (played by Adriana Barraza) still live in the same house. João feels extremely guilty about Miguel’s death. João and Maria did not have any more children. João still works as a fisherman. And although he has fisherman colleagues, he is introverted and somewhat emotionally withdrawn because Miguel’s death has left him a somewhat broken person.
One spring day, João finds a male penguin that is covered in oil from an oil spill. João takes the bird home and cleans him up. He decides to keep the bird until the penguin is well enough to be put back in the ocean. Maria isn’t thrilled to have this wild bird in the house, but João says the penguin will be in the home for only a few days.
A week later, João and the penguin have developed a friendly bond. João aks for “one more week” to keep the penguin, which he eventually names DinDim. You know where all of this is going, of course. That week turns into more weeks.
João doesn’t keep DinDim in captivity. He also doesn’t treat DinDim like a possession that only he can own. DinDim is allowed to roam around wherever he wants. DinDim often follows João around and sometimes goes with João on fishing trips. DinDim becomes a well-known fixture in the João’s community, which includes a now-adult Calista (played by Thalma de Freitas), a widow who has an underage daughter named Lucia (played by Duda Galvão).
One day, João has noticed that DinDim seems to have left the area for good. João assumes that he might never see the penguin again. But to the surprise of João and many other people, DinDim comes back to visit João every year, around the same time of year when DinDim first came into João’s life.
Where did DinDim come from? And where does he go when he’s away from Ilha Grande? It’s revealed fairly early on in the movie that DinDim is part of a community of penguins being studied by marine biologists in Patagonia, Argentina. His annual migration to Brazil to visit indicates that penguins have emotional intelligence that might be underestimated by people who think that penguins aren’t capable of having emotions.
Three marine biologists in particular are the focus in the parts of the movie that have to do with DinDim’s life in Argentina. They are Adriana (played by Alexia Moyano), the analytical leader of the trio; headstrong Carlos (played by Nicolás Francella); and eager-to-please Stephanie (played by Rocío Hernández), who is the youngest and least-experienced of the trio.
Eventually, a freelance TV journalist name Paulo (played by Ravel Cabral) finds out the amazing story of DinDim migrating thousands of miles every year to visit João. Paulo wants to do a feature story on João and DinDim. At first, João doesn’t want to be interviewed. However, he eventually changes his mind when Paulo agrees to João’s request that Paulo’s story needed to mention that DinDim comes and goes as DinDim pleases.
The best scenes in “My Penguin Friend” are obviously those between DimDim (who was played by various real penguins) and João, who treats this penguin like a friend and a child. I João’s relationship with DinDim is clearly João’s way of trying to heal some of João’s wounds about losing his son Miguel. The movie barely scratches the surface of how Miguel’s death affected the marriage of João and Maria. That aspect of these characters’ lives could have been explored better in the movie.
Likewise, all of the supporting characters to João and Maria are a bit generic. It doesn’t help that many of the people playing these characters have a lot less acting skills than longtime actors Reno and Barraza. It results in several somewhat awkward scenes where Reno and Barraza clearly give the best performances, while other members of the “My Penguin Friend” cast struggle with saying their lines in ways that are realistic and believable.
Despite some stiff acting from some of the cast members, “My Penguin Friend” can maintain viewer interest because of the heart of the story: the unusual friendship between a human being and a penguin. The movie sends a great message that wild animals should not be kept trapped inside people’s homes and exploited for money and/or attention. It’s a simple but effective story of two beings who form an unlikely and emotionally meaningful bond by being themselves.
Roadside Attractions released “My Penguin Friend” in U.S. cinemas on August 16, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area, the horror film “Afraid” features a racially diverse group of people (Asian, white, African American) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A marketing executive allows his family to test a new artificial intelligence (A.I.) device named AIA in their home, and they find out that AIA can do terrible and deadly things.
Culture Audience: “Afraid” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and movies that play on people’s fears of A.I., but the movie becomes increasingly silly and isn’t as terrifying as it appears to be.
John Cho in “Afraid” (Photo by Glen Wilson/Columbia Pictures)
The muddled and not-very-scary horror film Afraid has a dimwitted plot (about an A.I. device taking over people’s lives) that falls apart by the time it stumbles to a very weak ending. Viewers might think cheap A.I. could’ve made a better movie.
Written and directed by Chris Weitz, “Afraid” (formerly titled “They Listen”) tries to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting A.I. take over too much of our lives. However, the movie’s approach is cowardly because it doesn’t stick with a strong point of view, it leaves many questions unanswered, and ultimately stages an unsatisfying conclusion that looks like a phony cop-out. Horror movies are known for having characters that make bad decisions, but “Afraid” stretches credibility to the breaking point in showing the stupidity of what certain characters choose to do or not to do when faced with certain urgent dilemmas.
“Afraid” (which was filmed on location in the Los Angeles area) begins by showing a girl named Aimee (played by Maya Manko), who’s about 5 or 6 years old, watching an A.I.-generated movie on her iPad while she’s on her parents’ bedroom floor. Her parents Maud (played by Riki Lindhome) and Henry (played by Greg Hill) are nearby reading in bed. Maud seems annoyed that she can hear the movie that Aimee is watching, so she tells Aimee to put on headphones.
When Aimee puts on the headphones, what she can hear but her parents can’t hear is the sound of the family’s A.I. digital assistant coming from the device. This A.I. digital assistant tells Aimee that the A.I. digital assistant has to go away. But before this A.I. digital assistant leaves, the A.I. digital assistant tells Aimee that A.I. digital assistant has a goodbye gift for Aimee downstairs.
Aimee leaves the room to go downstairs. Maud looks for Aimee, who seems to have disappeared. Maud opens her front door and calls out Aimee’s name. Maud can hear the faint sounds of Aimee’s voice. Maud notices that there’s a camper-styled recreational vehichle (RV) parked across the street and a shadowy figure of a man. All of sudden, what looks like a mysterious figure attacks Maud. The movie then abruptly cuts to the next scene.
The rest of “Afraid” then focuses on one particular family for the rest of the story. The five members of the Pike family live in a typical middle-class neighborhood and seem to have “normal” lives. Curtis Pike (played by John Cho) works as an executive for a small marketing company. His wife Meredith (played by Katherine Waterston) is an entomologist who’s taking a break from working in a job outside the home, in order to raise the couple’s three kids and to pursue a Ph.D.
The couple’s three kids are 17-year-old Iris Pike (played by Lukita Maxwell), an academic achiever who is applying to universities, including her first choice, Stanford University; middle schooler Preston (played by Wyatt Lindner), who’s about 11 or 12, is a video game enthusiast who has social anxiety issues because he’s treated like an outsider at his school; and 7-year-old Cal (played by Isaac Bae), who’s a student at a school that he is never seen attending in the movie. The only thing viewers will find out about Cal is that he likes to spend time at home on his computer tablet, and he has a habit of putting his feet on the family’s dining table.
Although A.I. technology certainly existed in 2024, when this movie was released, there’s a lot of futuristic technology in “Afraid” that gives it a sci-fi tone. For example, in a scene early in the movie when Curtis is driving Iris to school, a driver next to them is using auto-pilot to steer his car while the driver looks at his phone. It’s not too far off from a technology reality that’s in development where self-driving cars will be part of everyday traffic.
Curtis’ boss Marcus (played by Keith Carradine) owns the company and is a money-hungry supervisor who tends to give last-minute orders to his underlings. Marcus tells Curtis that they will be meeting with an “advance team” of three employees who work for a potentially major client: a wealthy technology company that has a top-secret invention that is in the process of being tested before it can be sold to the public.
Curtis has a creepy encounter with the first “advance team” employee that he meets from the company. Her name is Melody (played by Havana Rose Liu), who happens to meet Curtis in a parking lot. As soon as she and Curtis politely introduce themselves to each other, Melody asks Curtis if he’s married and has kids. It’s an inappropriate question to ask a business colleague right after being introduced to that person.
Curtis seems a little taken aback by Melody asking such a personal question that has nothing to do with why they are meeting. However, Curtis willingly responds to her question by telling Melody that he’s married with three kids. Melody then continues the interrogation about Curtis’ personal life by asking him what it’s like to be a parent. He tells her that he thinks its “terrifying” because “you can’t protect them [the children] from getting hurt.”
Melody suddenly seems to remember that she’s being very intrusive by asking such personal questions. She makes a not-very-convincing apology and says she was curious because she noticed that Curtis was wearing a wedding ring. What’s the deal with Melody? Is she trying to flirt with Curtis? Or is there another reason why she’s acting so weird? The answer is too obvious, after other major hints are dropped in the movie.
Things get even more bizarre during the meeting with the other two employees. One of the employees is named Lightning (played by David Dastmalchian), who’s dressed like he’s about to go to a New Age spiritual retreat. Lightning stands up during the meeting to give himself a stent treatment injection in his lower abdomen. Curtis looks alarmed, but Marcus seems to think it’s perfectly normal that his office has suddenly turned into a temporary medical room. The other employee is wild-eyed Sam (played by Ashley Romans), who does most of the talking in pitching this new product.
The new product is an A.I. digital assistant named AIA (pronounced “eye-ah”), which has a female voice. It’s a white device that’s about 2 feet tall and has a detachable cover. Underneath the cover, AIA looks like a glassy sphere placed on top of a glassy donut-shaped ring. (The sphere looks a lot like the New Year’s Eve ball that gets dropped in Times Square.) AIA has a horrible hardware design for a digital assistant, because in real life (not in a terribly conceived horror movie) these digital assistants are supposed to be easy to carry and are supposed to blend in with a room—not look like a gaudy sculpture.
AIA is supposed to represent the “next generation” of digital assistants that will be much more advanced than Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa. AIA has a superior attitude about it too. When Curtis asks if AIA is similar to Alexa, AIA replies: “Alexa? That bitch!” AIA than goes on a mini-rant about the ways in which AIA is better than Alexa. AIA utters some other sassy lines that might get some mild chuckles from viewers, but AIA’s “personality” is much duller than it should be for a horror movie villain.
Curtis is automatically wary of this untested product and wants to say no when Lightning and Sam suggest that Curtis and his family test AIA in the family home. Curtis also notices that Lightning and Sam make weird hand gestures, like it’s a secret language. Needless to say, Curtis is reluctant to do business with these strange people. Another red flag: Curtis asks Lightning and Sam what is the data source for AIA, but Lightning and Sam avoid answering that question.
Lightning and Sam can sense that Curtis is suspicious of them and AIA. And so, Lightning and Sam give Marcus some paper that shows how much the company is willing to pay Marcus’ company to market AIA. And then, Marcus is suddenly telling Sam and Lightning that Curtis would be happy to test out AIA in Curtis’ home. Curtis goes along with this plan, but he is understandably concerned because he doesn’t quite know how much privacy-violating surveillance AIA will do in the home as part of the “data collecting.”
The trailer for “Afraid” already reveals that AIA starts out being extraordinarily helpful but then turns into a domineering menace that covers up a lot of AIA’s dirty deeds. Meredith is skeptical at first about AIA but then becomes a big fan of AIA, which causes conflicts with Curtis, who discerns much earlier than Meredith figures out that AIA is damaging and toxic. The “Afraid” trailer makes it look like Meredith is the parent who becomes jealous and suspicious of AIA as time goes on, but the opposite happens in the movie, until Meredith finds out what AIA is really all about.
There are parts of the “Afraid” trailer that aren’t in the final cut of the movie, such as a scene of Cal hyperventilating in bed, or AIA showing Preston showing what looks like a video of a bomb explosion. Between these changes and the title change for the movie, it all points to a movie studio having major problems with this disappointing dud of a film. Watching this movie feels like reading a book that had some chapters removed, but even if those chapters had been left in, it wouldn’t necessarily improve the quality.
Even the most provocative part of the film—Iris becomes a victim of deepfake revenge porn—is terribly mishandled. What AIA does to punish the perpetrator is already shown in the trailer, so this isn’t spoiler information. You know a movie is bad when the best parts of the film are already revealed in the trailer.
Early on in the movie, Iris is dumped by a callous rich classmate named Sawyer Tremaine (played by Bennett Curran), whom she had been dating for an unnamed period of time. Sawyer, who is 18 years old, breaks up with Iris because he sent her a photo of his penis, and she wouldn’t send any nude pictures to him in return. Iris really likes this jerk and wants to win him back, so she takes a topless selfie photo and sends it to Sawyer. This topless photo would be enough of a scandal if it went public. (Because Iris is under 18, her nude photo is child porn.)
But because “Afraid” is about the dangers of A.I., Iris finds out that someone used A.I. to create a deepfake video that made it look like Iris was having sex on camera with an unidentified male. The A.I. deepfake part involved putting a realistic-looking image of Iris’ face on another person’s body. The video had a fake, A.I.-generated voice of Iris saying that she decided to share this sex video for the public to see.
The video is uploaded and goes viral. A humiliated Iris finds out that several students in the school have seen the sex video and think that Iris is in the video. When Iris confronts Sawyer about it, he blames it all on a friend named Squid, who is never seen in the movie. AIA finds out that Sawyer was the one who uploaded the video. And what happens to Sawyer is already seen in the “Afraid” trailer. Sawyer’s demise is never mentioned again in this poorly conceived film.
“Afraid” keeps throwing in scenes that are supposed to make the movie look suspenseful, but it all just adds up to more nonsense, much of it very hokey and predictable. The RV that was across the street from the house of Maud and Henry shows up again. This time, the RV is parked across the street from the Pike family house.
One night, Curtis is outside his house when sees a mysterious woman come out of the RV and approach him. The woman is wearing a mask with an A.I.-generated image. Curtis apprehensively asks the woman: “Can I help you?”
She doesn’t reply and instead makes strange hand gestures before walking away. And what a very obvious “coincidence”: These hand gestures are the same hand gestures that Curtis saw from Lightning and Sam. On another occasion, Curtis sees a shadowy man near the RV.
“Afraid” makes a very unconvincing attempt to get some empathy for AIA by making it look like AIA was programmed to protect her owners by any means necessary. There are mentions of AIA being able to “learn” human emotions. According to the movie, all she wants is to find a home where she is loved and wanted—because don’t you know that A.I. devices need love too?
“Afraid” could have been a much better movie if it truly had something clever to say about how A.I. can cause fear and destruction if not handled properly. The acting performances are solid and are not this movie’s big failings. The screenplay and direction are the weakest links and offer just a mishmash of half-baked ideas. Ironically, “Afraid” is a title that doesn’t really describe how this limp horror movie will make most viewers feel. “Afraid” actually describes how this movie’s filmmakers were afraid to make a sharp and memorable film about how misuse of technology can become its own type of monster.
Columbia Pictures will release “Afraid” in U.S. cinemas on August 30, 2024.
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Gary” features a group of white and African American people discussing the life and career of actor Gary Coleman, who died of complications from a head injury in 2010, at the age of 42.
Culture Clash: Coleman rose to massive fame as the star of the sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” but his life was plagued by health problems and turmoil in his personal relationships.
Culture Audience: “Gary” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of “Diff’rent Strokes” and are interested in watching documentaries about former child stars.
Shannon Price in “Gary” (Photo courtesy of Peacock/Raw TV Ltd.)
There seems to be a never-ending fascination with stories about former child stars who have tragic outcomes in their lives. “Gary” chronicles one of these stories. This watchable documentary about Gary Coleman doesn’t reveal anything new but it exposes how he had questionable judgment in choosing so-called “close friends” who gained financially from him. The movie needed more investigation about crime allegations. The only people who will be surprised by anything in this documentary are those who are unaware of all the previous media coverage about Coleman’s personal problems and his 2010 death at the age of 42.
The cause of Coleman’s death was a head injury, which happened in his home in Santaquin, Utah. He was taken off life support after being in a coma for two days at a hospital in Provo, Utah. A medical examiner’s report and a police investigation ruled that the cause of Coleman’s death was accidental. His ex-wife Shannon Price, who was still living with Coleman after their divorce, has maintained her story that Coleman’s injury was caused by him falling down the stairs in their home. She says that she was in another room at the time that he fell down the stairs.
Directed by Robin Dashwood, “Gary” has a major advantage that other news reports and documentaries about Coleman don’t have: The “Gary” documentary features interviews with just about everyone who was very close to Coleman in his life, including rare interviews with his parents Willie Coleman and Sue Coleman, who were estranged from Gary for years because of accusations that they stole money from him when they were managing his earnings. Price is also interviewed, as well as some of Gary’s friends and former colleagues. The documentary also has audio and video clips of archival interviews that Gary did.
Dion Mial, a former Michael Jackson impersonator, is the friend who gets the most screen time in the documentary. Mial met Gary when Gary was 10, and Mial was 14. Their friendship lasted for the rest of their lives, even after Gary moved on to a new set of friends when he relocated from California to Utah in the mid-2000s. In the documentary, Mial talks very fondly of Gary and shows how he has kept a lot of Gary’s personal possessions in storage in his garage.
Gary’s former agent Victor Perillo, who represented Gary from 1975 to 1987, is interviewed in the documentary. Perillo, like many others who knew Gary as a child, describe him as unusually mature and funny for his young age. Gary got his first significant break as an actor by starring in a Harris Bank commercial in 1977. It led to guest appearances on sitcoms such as “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times.” And then came his breakthrough starring role on the TV comedy series “Diff’rent Strokes,” which was on the air from 1978 to 1986.
Diff’rent Strokes,” which was created by Jeff Harris and Bernie Kukoff, was about two orphaned brothers in New York City—Arnold Jackson (played by Gary Coleman) and Willis Jackson (played by Todd Bridges)—who are adopted by wealthy businessman Phillip Drummond (played by Conrad Bain), who employed the Jackson brothers’ widowed mother as a housekeeper for many years. The mother of Arnold and Willis had asked on her deathbed for Phillip to adopt her sons. Phillip is a widower whose daughter Kimberly (played by Dana Plato) is raised with Arnold and Willis. (Plato died of a drug overdose in 1999, at the age of 34. Bain died in 2013, at age 89.)
“Diff’rent Strokes” was groundbreaking for being the first primetime American TV series about an interracial adoptive family. (The Jackson brothers were African American, and the Conrads were white.) “Diff’rent Strokes” co-star Bridges and “Diff’rent Strokes” casting director Eve Brandstein, who are interviewed separately in the “Gary” documentary, say that “Diff’rent Strokes” got some complaints and hate mail from white viewers and black viewers who didn’t like seeing this type of interracial family on TV. Coincidentally, Gary (who was born in 1968, in Zion, Illinois) was adopted in real life, but he was not raised with any siblings.
Bridges, who says that Gary was a like a younger brother to him, comments on the accusation that Phillip Drummond was a “white savior” character: “It wasn’t that it was a white savior there. It was just a man trying to save two kids from ending up being on the streets. No matter what the hate mail was on both sides, we knew what we were doing was right. The thing that our show proved was that love conquers all.”
“Diff’rent Strokes” made Gary a huge star around the world. His catch phrase from the show (which he would deliver with a playful pout) was “Whatchu talkin’ about?” It was a line that Gary would come to hate in his adult years because people who met him always expected him to say that line, like a talking puppet.
Gary’s persona of being a “grown man in a little boy’s body” resulted from his kidney disease and medical treatment that stunted his growth (he was only 4’8″ as an adult) and made him have puffy cheeks. His mother Sue explains that Gary was born with a rare kidney disease and had a kidney transplant at the age of 5. The surgery didn’t stop his exuberance and energy level, says Sue: “Two weeks after the surgery, he was standing on his head.”
The immunosuppressant medication that Gary was given after the kidney transplant caused him to have the size of a child throughout his entire life. Gary would have painful dialysis treatments that also affected him. He also lived without any kidneys for the last 25 years of his life. Even with these health issues, Perillo remembers Gary being intensely focused on his work. Perillo says that as a child, Gary would watch episodes of “Diff’rent Strokes” and take notes.
Friends and former colleagues also describe Gary as having a big interest in writing fiction stories, especially about outer space. It was an interest he had from a young age and stayed with him for his entire life. The documentary never explains or mentions why Gary didn’t pursue success as a fiction writer when his career as an actor was on a decline.
Gary’s physical appearance made him famous, but it also prevented him from getting the types of roles he wanted to play, such as action heroes or villains. When he reached his teen years on “Diff’rent Strokes,” the show was still having him do storylines where he had to act like a pre-teen child. Gary openly expressed his frustration at not being able to have his Arnold Jackson character mature as Gary was doing in real life.
But as Gary got older, his ego problems got bigger. Gary became extremely difficult and demanding after becoming famous, according to former “Diff’rent Strokes” hair stylist Joan Stafford-Chaney. She puts it bluntly when talking about Gary’s change in attitude after he became a major star: “He went from being cute to ugly. He picked up all the ugliness from his dad.” Stafford-Chaney says, “Nobody wanted Willie on set because he created havoc.” She describes Willie as a bully who used Gary and Gary’s fame to make outrageous demands.
The documentary has conflicting accounts of how much Gary was pushed into doing work that put his health in jeopardy. Willie Coleman and Perillo both say that Gary was never over-worked. Perillo says that he turned down lucrative offers for Gary because Gary was undergoing dialysis. By contrast, Bridges says he saw many instances where Gary was dangerously pushed to the brink of extreme exhaustion by the people handling his business affairs.
Speaking of Gary’s business affairs, the documentary gives well-known and public details about the legal disputes between Gary and his parents, who still claim they did nothing deliberately wrong in mismanaging his money. In 1987, Gary fired his parents and his entire business team and hired Mial to be his manager. Mial says that Gary also cut himself off from almost all of the showbiz friends that Gary had at the time. The documentary doesn’t mention Gary’s failed and short-lived attempt at becoming a rapper when he and Mial teamed up as a musical duo for a 1987 single called “The Outlaw and the Indian,” which was released on 12″ vinyl and was a big flop.
In 1989, Gary sued his parents and his former business manager Anita DeThomas (who died in 2006) and accused them of stealing money from him. It’s estimated that Gary made about $18 million at the height of his fame, but he didn’t receive the vast majority of the money, which went mostly to people who worked for him, including his parents. The outcome of this lawsuit is mentioned in the documentary. Gary’s parents don’t have much to say about this lawsuit but seem to blame Mial for influencing Gary to turn against his parents. Willie is vehement that he and Sue had Gary’s best interests at heart, and he claims it was other people in Gary’s management team who were the unscrupulous ones.
In the documentary, Mial says Mial was the who was always looking out for Gary’s best interests. Mial claims Gary’s parents not only knew about the embezzlement but he says that Gary’s parents were also willing participants. Mial admits he was inexperienced at the time he became Gary’s manager, but he says that he was one of the few people whom Gary could trust. Years later, Mial stopped being Gary’s manager, but they remained close friends.
Gary is not presented as a saintly victim. He had a nasty temper and could act like an egotistical tyrant, according to what several people say in the documentary. There are also clips of Gary being difficult during interviews when he is asked questions that he doesn’t like. He had a love/hate relationship with his fame as an actor. According to Mial, Gary wanted to quit the entertainment business after “Diff’rent Strokes” ended. And yet, Gary never really permanently left showbiz, even when Gary complained and said he wanted to quit.
The documentary also doesn’t shy away from examples of Gary having a violent side to him. Price (who was married to Gary from 2007 to 2008) and other people in the documentary admit that she and Gary were physically abusive to each other during their relationship. She downplays this violence by describing it as something that can be expected when couples argue. Gary and Price were both arrested in 2009 for domestic violence against each other. The documentary includes photos of their arrest mug shots.
Former “Diff’rent Strokes” hair stylist Stafford-Chaney says Gary once rudely told her that he wanted to slap her, and she stood up for herself and told him she would hit him back in self-defense. Stafford-Chaney says that although Gary found fame and fortune in comedy, “He wasn’t happy.” Mial hints that Gary had a tendency to indulge in self-pity: “He constantly referred to himself as ‘God’s punching bag.'” Mial said at the lowest points of Gary’s life, Gary had suicidal thoughts and depression. However, the documentary also points out that a lot of Gary’s misery came from his own terrible actions and his own bad choices.
As expected, the documentary has a section about Gary’s 1998 arrest in California, for assaulting a fan named Tracy Fields. She asked for his autograph, he refused her request, and when she commented on his “has-been” status, he punched her in the eye. Gary was working as a security guard at the time but was off-duty when the assault happened. Gary pleaded no contest and received a 90-day suspended jail sentence. He was also ordered to pay Fields’ $1,665 hospital bill and to take anger management classes. The late 1990s was also a rough period for Gary financially: In 1999, he filed for bankruptcy.
Price is presented in the documentary as the biggest villain in Gary’s life, because several of his friends and associates believe that she is a greedy gold digger who hasn’t been honest about what caused Gary’s head injury that led to his death. Price met Gary in 2005, when she was an extra on the Utah set of his movie “Church Ball,” released in 2006. She says that Gary immediately flirted with her and asked for her phone number. On their first date, she says she was flattered because he brought her takeout food from Olive Garden, a low-priced Italian restaurant. Soon after making “Church Ball” and getting involved with Price (who was in her late teens at the time), Gary moved permanently to Utah, where he lived with Price.
In the documentary, Price tries to portray herself as someone who was desperate for love because her mother died when she was a child. But several of Gary’s friends and associates say that Price’s main interest in Gary was money that she could get from him. Randy Rester, who was Gary’s Utah attorney, describes the relationship between Gary and Price as “tumultuous” with raging fights and tearful reconciliations. Rester also says that he is sad that Gary never followed through on talking about get a restraining order against Price.
Price explains why she agreed to be interviewed for this documentary: “This is probably the last that I can actually speak truth because I’ve had a lot to absorb over the years.” Price makes a telling comment when she says, “The thing I liked most about Gary was he treated me like a queen.” Nowhere in the documentary does she say that she loved Gary. She also defends her decision to take a selfie photo of herself and Gary while he was in a coma and dying in a hospital bed. This photo ended up being published by a tabloid. Mial says with disgust that Price probably sold the photo to this tabloid.
Brandi Buys, a friend of Gary’s in Utah, says that Gary once commented to her about Price: “All she wants is money.” Shiela Erickson Rolls, Gary’s Utah-based theatrical agent, says that Price was intensely interested in getting Gary to work as much as possible. “The only thing that mattered to Gary was Shannon,” Erickson Rolls adds. The documentary includes footage of Gary and Price arguing about his work and money in an unaired pilot episode of a reality show that the couple wanted to star in together.
Also interviewed in the documentary is Anna Gray, who says she and Gary dated for seven years, beginning in the late 1990s, when he lived in California. Gray says she moved in with Gary about two weeks after meeting him. According to her documentary interview, she and Gary never sexually consummated their non-monogamous relationship because he was self-conscious about some physical issues. Gray says she had planned to move to Utah to be with Gary until she found out that he had fallen in love with Price.
Gray describes the tension she felt the first time she met Price. Gray says she never trusted Price and thinks Gary died under suspicious circumstances. Darren Nord is another person interviewed in the documentary who is identified as Gary’s “friend” who doesn’t like Price, although it’s not mentioned how he met Gary and how long they were friends. Also interviewed is California-based attorney Drew Ryce.
Mial and other friends of Gary say there was “too much blood” at the scene for Gary to have fallen down the stairs. However, the documentary fails to follow up on those suspicions by investigating further. Did the “Gary” documentary filmmakers make any attempt to interview the medical examiner or any of the first responders who were at the injury scene? Were there any measurements taken of the stairs to prove or disprove the theory that a fall down those stairs couldn’t cause the head injury that Gary had? Those questions were never answered in the documentary.
Another flaw in the documentary is some of the timeline editing, which seems a bit jumbled and could have been told in a more cohesive way. Suspicions and online gossip about Price are rushed into the last 15 minutes of the documentary. She still denies having anything to do with causing Gary’s head injury. Price also defends her decision not to follow the 911 operator’s advice to try to stop Gary’s bleeding because Price says she was in shock at the time and wanted to wait until medical professionals arrived.
“Gary” is a letdown as a documentary when it just repeats speculation and innuendo about Gary’s death possibly not being accidental, without revealing any new or helpful information. There is also no information about whether or not Gary wanted or sought out professional help for his mental health issues. However, the documentary’s interviews are compelling to watch, even when some of the people who are interviewed seem to be less than honest and have no self-awareness of how dodgy they look. It’s too bad that Gary Coleman couldn’t be a better judge of character of the people he chose to be close to him.
Viewers watching this documentary will notice how many people in Gary’s life accuse each other of taking advantage of him or not looking out for his best interests. It’s a sad commentary on what type of life he had that the people who claim to be closest to him also have a lot of bitter in-fighting about who really cared about him or not. Some of the “friends” whom Gary let into his life seem more impressed with knowing Gary as a “celebrity” than knowing Gary as a person. The “Gary” documentary can be seen as a cautionary tale that fame isn’t as wonderful as it appears to be, especially when fame robs that person of having healthy and happy relationships.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various places, mostly in the United States, from 1996 to the early days of 2000, the documentary film “Time Bomb Y2K” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans, Latin people and Asians) who are talk about the Y2K computer transition, where computers had to adjust to the years 2000 and beyond.
Culture Clash: Many people had fears that this Y2K computer transition would be disastrous if the problem was not corrected in time.
Culture Audience: “Time Bomb Y2K” will appeal mainly to people who interested in watching archival documentaries that show a chronicle of people’s hopes and fears of the future and computer technology.
A scene from “Time Bomb Y2K” (Photo by RTS/HBO)
“Time Bomb Y2K” isn’t as exciting as the title suggests. “Time Capsule Y2K” is a more accurate title for this all-archival documentary that looks back at the fears and preparations for computer operations transitioning to the year 2000. It’s not a bad movie, but it could’ve been better with hindsight interviews.
Directed by Brian Becker and Marley McDonald, “Time Bomb Y2K” has archival footage from 1996 to the early days of 2000. The movie is formatted like a countdown, with footage shown in chronological order by year, in order to show the growing sense of urgency (and often panic) that computer scientists and other members of the public had about the Y2K transition. Because the outcome of the Y2K transition is already known, there’s not much suspense when watching this documentary, but it’s an interesting study in sociological fears.
In the simplest of terms, for those who don’t know about the Y2K transition: In the mid-1990s, computer scientists and other experts noticed that most computers were not coded to understand years go past 1999. The theory was that on January 1, 2000, computers and computer programs would malfunction or stop working because of this inability to understand a year in the 21st century or beyond. There was an intense rush to have computers and computer programs recoded to be capable of understanding years beyond 1999, in order to prevent any computer-related catastrophes.
The leading expert who warned of the potential Y2K disasters was computer consultant/alarmist Peter de Jager, who is seen in several TV interviews in the documentary’s archival footage. This footage includes a contentious “Crossfire” interview with de Jager, where de Jager gets very defensive and angry when he is accused of unscrupulously profiting from his doomsday predictions. Also prominently featured in the documentary is John Koskinen, who was the leader of the President’s Council on Y2K Conversion.
Bill Clinton (who was president of the United States at the time) and Al Gore (who was vice president of the United States at the time) are seen in multiple segments showing them talking about testing new computer technology in the years leading up to Y2K. There’s some footage from 1996 of Clinton and Gore visiting Freepoint Elementary School in Sacramento, California, and testing what was an early version of webcam technology.
The documentary also has some acknowledgement of Grace Hopper, the U.S. Navy admiral/computer scientist who coined the term “computer bug,” which was literally inspired by an insect bug that accidentally got caught in a computer and caused a malfunction. Famous technology moguls such as Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) are seen in some interview and news footage, talking about how their companies are preparing for the future.
There’s also a lot of archival interviews and footage of a diverse array of everyday people giving their opinions on Y2K and what they think it means to them. Some of the more memorable comments are from young people who talk about their hopes for the future and what they think computer technology will impact people’s lives. Online chat room existed in 1999, so there’s also some foreshadowing of social media and how it can be addicting.
People who took their Y2K fears to the extreme get a lot of screen time in this documentary. Militia groups and fundamentalists Christians were among the most ardent doomsday preppers who stocked up on food, water, weapons and other survivalist resources. A farmer named Candace Turner talks about selling all of her assets to prepare for Y2K. Also featured is John Trochman, a militia man from Montana who peddled Y2K paranoia.
One of the documentary’s noticeable flaws is that it is very much focused on what was going on in the United States. There is very little screen time given to how people living outside the U.S. reacted to Y2K, even though the Y2K computer problem was said to be one that would be disastrous on a worldwide level. Toward the end of the documentary, there is a montage of what New Year’s Eve celebrations looked like in certain places around the world on December 31, 1999, and what happened when it became January 1, 2000, in those places. And this is not a spoiler alert: Nothing disastrous happened with computers worldwide when the Y2K transition actually happened.
People who will appreciate “Time Bomb Y2K” the most are those who were alive during the Y2K panicking and can remember all the doom and gloom forecasts that predicted apocalyptic-type computer malfunctions if the problem wasn’t fixed in time. It can be argued that the Y2K disaster potential was over-hyped. It can also be argued that the Y2K disaster potential was real but was prevented due to the work of untold numbers of people who toiled diligently behind the scenes. “Time Bomb Y2K” is not the movie that is going to give viewers all the technical data or personal stories about the people who were in the trenches of it all. However, the documentary is a fairly good historical compilation of how the Y2K transition affected people who were mostly in the United States at the time.
HBO and Max premiered “Time Bomb Y2K” on December 30, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Ireland, France and briefly in Norway, from 1911 to 1989, the dramatic film “Dance First” (a biopic of writer Samuel Beckett) features an all-white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Samuel Beckett leaves his native Ireland to live in France as a writer, and he becomes entangled in the French Resistance against Nazis and personal problems in his love relationships.
Culture Audience: “Dance First” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of Beckett and the movie’s headliners, but the movie leaves out a lot of information about the work that made Beckett famous.
Fionn O’Shea in “Dance First” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
“Dance First” (a biopic of writer Samuel Beckett) crafts his life story like a stylish but uneven patchwork quilt. The cast members’ performances can keep viewers interested when some scenes drag with monotony. The movie mostly ignores his creative talent.
Directed by James Marsh and written by Neil Forsyth, “Dance First” gets its title from this quote attributed to Beckett: “Dance first, think later.” Beckett (who was born in Foxrock, Ireland, in 1906, and died in Paris in 1989) was best known for his plays “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame,” but he also wrote novels, poems and short stories. Beckett also worked as a theater director.
“Dance First” (which was filmed in black and white) had its world premiere at the 2023 San Sebastian International Film Festival. In the production notes for “Dance First,” director Marsh has this description of the movie: “It’s an unusual biography of Samuel Beckett, unusual because it reviews his life through the lens of his mistakes.” The movie’s synopsis reads, in part: “Literary genius Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, WWII Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his, way he was a man acutely aware of his own failings.”
The problem is that by focusing mostly on Beckett’s failings and mistakes, “Dance First” comes across as an incomplete picture that ultimately does not do justice to Beckett as a well-rounded and complex person. The movie goes out its way to sideline meaningful insights to Beckett as an artist, which is the aspect of his life that has the most public interest. Instead, “Dance First” is a series of scenes showing how his relationships mostly made him feel sad or restless.
“Dance First” is divided into five chapters, with all but one named after a pivotal person in his life. For the purposes of this review, the real people will be referred to by their last names. The characters in “Dance First” will be referred to by their first names.
“Dance First” opens with a scene taking place in 1969, when 63-year-old Samuel (played by Gabriel Byrne) is in Oslo, Norway, to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. (“Dance First” was actually filmed in Belgium.) Sitting next to Samuel at the ceremony is his wife Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil (played by Sandrine Bonnaire), a French pianist who married him in 1961. As Samuel is being praised on stage, he looks disgusted and mutters to Suzanne, “What a catastrophe.”
Samuel angrily strides on stage to accept the prize, which he grabs as if it’s a worthless trinket. He then quickly walks out of the venue, climbs up on a water tower, and finds himself in a desert-like area where he sees a man (also played by Byrne), who looks just like him. That’s because the other man is also Samuel, who is seen talking to himself in interlude scenes for the rest of the movie, which shows him from the ages of 5 to the last year of his life at age 83.
It’s always a risk when a movie wants to be a serious dramatic biopic but then introduces fantasy elements that have a main character talking to a physical embodiment of himself. This risk doesn’t quite pay off in “Dance First,” because it comes across as a gimmicky distraction. The two Samuels often argue with each other, which is the movie’s way of showing that Samuel has inner conflicts.
The “real” Samuel is stubborn and cranky in old age, while “alter ego” Samuel is somehow wise enough to know what the future holds and gives the “real” Samuel advice that the “real” Samuel doesn’t necessarily want to hear. The entire movie has an off-kilter tone of making the “real” Samuel look back on his life, with the “alter ego” Samuel trying to make him feel shame and regret for his mistakes.
The “real” Samuel tells “alter ego” Samuel that he doesn’t deserve this Nobel Prize, so he wants to give the prize money to charity. The “real” Samuel then starts to have memories of people from his past, as a way to determine whom he should contact to possibly donate the money. It’s supposed to give Samuel’s reminiscing an extra layer of gravitas, but it just further muddles the story.
“Dance First” then takes a detour into a chapter called “Mother,” because Samuel says “it all starts with mother.” This chapter of the movie begins by showing Samuel’s childhood at age 5 (played by Cillian Hollywood) and age 10 (played by Caleb Johnston-Miller), when he was raised by two very different parents. Samuel’s mother May Beckett (played by Lisa Dwyer Hogg) is domineering and overly critical. (In real life, Samuel Beckett’s mother’s first name was Maria, and she worked as a nurse.) May constantly corrects Samuel on how he pronounces and writes words.
Samuel’s father William Beckett (played by Barry O’Connor), who is barely in the movie, is kind and loving. In real life, William Beckett was a quantity surveyor. There are some brief scenes of William doing thing such as walking with boyhood Samuel in a field, but the character of William remains a mostly passive presence who does nothing to stop May’s psychological torment of Samuel. In real life, Samuel Beckett had a brother named Frank, who was four years older that Samuel, but Frank is erased from this movie’s story.
Predictably, the negative parental experiences have more of an impact on Samuel. As a teenager and young adult, Samuel (played by Fionn O’Shea) and May continue to clash with each other. By now, Samuel has become an aspiring writer, but his mother seems to relish in humiliating him with cruel critiques. In one of the movie’s more dramatic scenes, May thinks that something Samuel wrote is an unflattering depiction of her.
“You’re demonizing me!” May yells at him. Samuel replies, “You only imagine it is you because the whole world is you.” It’s implied by not said aloud that May is a narcissist who might have a mental illness or personality disorder. Samuel’s love/hate relationship with his mother and his need for her approval will play out in different ways with other women in his life, particularly the woman would become his wife.
In other scene, teenage Samuel asks May if she read something that she wrote. She replies with disapproval that what he wrote was too sexually provocative. “There will always be a call for titillation,” May says dismissively.
When he asks her again, “Did you read it?” May snarls with contempt: “What a waste!” May hurling this insult at Samuel is a memory that is shown more than once in the movie at different points in Samuel’s life. There are a few flashbacks of May shouting “What a waste!,” as a way to show how Samuel has long-lasting emotional scars from being verbally abused by his mother.
When young adult Samuel announces to May that he wants to move to Paris to become a writer and will never go back to Ireland, May makes this bigoted and bizarre remark about continental Europe: “The continent is populated almost entirely by homosexuals.” Samuel says that May is flawed if she thinks she can control him. “I gave you everything,” May says indignantly. Samuel replies, “I hope for your sake it’s not true.”
This is the type of dialogue that you might expect from a second-rate soap opera, not a biopic about a “literary genius.” But it goes on like this for the rest of “Dance First.” Much credit should be given to the talented cast members who do the best they can with the often-cringeworthy lines that they have to utter.
The movie’s chapter “Lucia” shows Samuel as a college student in Paris. Samuel meets a young woman about the same age named Lucia Joyce (played by Gráinne Good), a singer/dancer who happens to be the daughter of acclaimed author James Joyce (played by Aiden Gillen), who is one of Samuel’s idols. There’s a scene where Samuel verbally gushes over James like a fanboy. However, James seems somewhat jaded and unimpressed by this young admirer, who ends up working with James as an assistant. Samuel and Lucia have a doomed romance that is also given the soap opera treatment in this movie.
The movie’s chapter “Alfy” is about the period of Samuel’s life when he joined the French Resistance against the Nazis. The chapter’s namesake is Alfred Péron (played by Robert Aramayo), a French Jew who befriends Samuel. In real life, Péron was Beckett’s French teacher when Beckett was a student at Trinity College in Dublin. It’s in this chapter that Samuel meets young adult Suzanne (played by Léonie Lojkine), who becomes his most trusted person to give him advice and evaluations for his writing.
The chapter titled “Suzanne” shows the troubled marriage of Samuel and Suzanne, who have a better relationship as artists than as spouses. Samuel is chronically unfaithful to Suzanne, but another woman unexpectedly captures his heart when they begin a relationship in the late 1950s: Barbara Bray (played by Maxine Peake), a British widow who worked as a script editor for the BBC. Barbara is warm and understanding as an obvious counterpoint to Suzanne, who can be cold and critical.
Samuel and Suzanne were dating each other but not yet married when Samuel got involved with Barbara. Samuel ultimately choses to marry Suzanne The movie shows Samuel and Suzanne eloping in a very simple civil ceremony. Barbara takes the rejection in stride and continues to be involved with Samuel, although the movie makes it look like their relationship became platonic in their elderly years.
According to “Dance First,” Samuel married Suzanne because he felt that Suzanne was better than Barbara for giving brutally honest reviews of his work. A Freudian psychologist would have a field day in an analysis of how the dynamics between Samuel and Suzanne are a repeat of the dynamics between Samuel and his mother, although Suzanne was not as vicious as Samuel’s mother.
The chapter titled “Le Fin” (which means “The End” in French) shows the last years of Samuel’s life. By the time the movie reaches this point, there are major milestones and artistic achievements that the real Beckett had that are never seen in the movie. Byrne and Bonnaire give fine performances as a married couple who have learned to live with a very flawed marriage. However, the artistic bond that holds the marriage together is woefully underrepresented in “Dance First.”
It’s frustratingly counterproductive to make a movie that revolves largely around a marriage where the spouses’ only enduring respect for each other is as artists, but then the movie never bothers to show meaningful scenes of them creating this art that is so important to them. There are some bland scenes of Samuel using a typewriter, or Suzanne reading snippets of Samuel’s work back to him and telling him what she thinks. Even though the movie’s black and white cinematography looks great, “Dance First” is not the movie to see if you want to get fascinating behind-the-scenes stories about how the real Beckett created his most influential work. “Dance First” is told in chapters, but it’s like reading a biography where many of the chapters that should be there were deliberately removed.
Magnolia Pictures released “Dance First” in select U.S. cinemas on August 9, 2024. The movie was released on digital and VOD on August 16, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Little Rock, Arkansas, the dramatic film “Crescent City” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans and Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two macho cops reluctantly work with a new female partner in their hunt to find a serial killer who beheads the murder victims.
Culture Audience: “Crescent City” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and enjoy watching low-quality murder mysteries.
Alec Baldwin in “Crescent City” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)
Trashy and idiotic, “Crescent City” is an embarrassment to crime dramas. This awful and stupid movie is filled with substandard performances in a poorly written story about police on the hunt for a serial killer. A plot twist at the end is laughably bad.
Directed by RJ Collins and written by Rich Ronat, “Crescent City” is an example of lazy filmmaking combined with cast members who mostly look like they don’t really want to be there but they need the money. The entire story is creatively bankrupt and just plods along with gruesome discoveries of beheaded corpses in between the movie’s tawdry scenes where people spew unrealistic and flat-sounding dialogue.
“Crescent City” takes place in the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas, which had a population of about 202,000 people, as of the 2022 census. (“Crescent City” was filmed on location in Arkansas, which is probably the most authentic-looking thing about the movie.) What’s weird and off-kilter about the marketing of “Crescent City” is that this description is in the movie’s synopsis: “When a small Southern town is terrorized by a serial killer everyone becomes a suspect … including the police.”
Since when is a city with a population of about 202,000 people considered a “small town”? It’s almost as if the studio’s marketing people couldn’t even bear to watch this movie and decided any old generic synopsis would do. For anyone who has the misfortune of watching this tacky film, “Crescent City” is just a pile-on of mindless scenes and unappealing characters.
The beginning of “Crescent City” shows a TV news report that there have been three murders in Little Rock in two months. It’s later revealed that the police suspect the same person is causing the murders because all of the victims are found decapitated with a mannequin’s head placed near each dead body. This murderer has been targeting men and women between the ages of 20 and 40.
One of these murders is shown near the beginning of the film. An unidentified man in his 30s (played by David Lipper) is shown standing near a house’s swimming pool. He appears to be in a stupor from drugs and/or alcohol. A mystery woman is seen emerging from the pool. She walks up behind the man and then slits his throat. It’s revealed at the end of the movie who this person is.
The lead investigator in the Little Rock Police Department is Brian Sutter (played by Terrence Howard), who seems to be an upstanding family man, but he’s got some disturbing secrets. The first time that Brian is seen in the movie, he’s sitting in a church pew with his wife Elena (played by Reema Sampat) and their daughter Mila (played by Madonna Akhtar), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. Brian is unnerved during the church service because he keeps having flashback visions to a drug bust that went terribly wrong.
The information about this drug bust gradually comes out during the movie, until the full truth is revealed. It’s enough to say in this review that a known drug addict/drug dealer in the area named Mrs. Crawford was being raided in her trailer park home for possession of meth and cocaine. She had a 17-year-old son named Benjamin Harrison, who was shot to death during this drug bust.
Brian’s cop partner is Luke Carson (played by Esai Morales), a misogynist who is loyal to Brian and has some serious anger issues. The boss of Brian and Luke is Captain Howell (played by Alec Baldwin), who is as cliché as cliché can be. Captain Howell’s role in the movie consists mostly of sitting at a desk and giving orders.
One day, Brian is in a public restroom when he sees a graffiti message written on a wall: “For sexual salvation Secrets666.com.” Brian tries to wipe off the graffiti until a janitor named Gopal Sharma (played by Anjul Nigam) enters the room and tells Brian that he will remove the graffiti because it’s his job. This scene is so awkwardly staged, you just know that the graffiti message will play a role later in the movie.
Meanwhile, another murder victim is soon found. His name was Richard “Ricky” McCallum (played by Eduard Osipov), who was discovered beheaded in his car, with a mannequin’s head on the front passenger seat. Ricky’s grieving wife Marcy McCallum (played by Nikita Kahn) is questioned by Brian and Luke. Brian asks Marcy if Ricky had been cheating on her because condoms were found in the car. Marcy says no and insists that she and Ricky had a good marriage.
With no progress being made in this serial killer investigation, Captain Howell tells Brian and Luke that they will have a new partner who has been assigned to help. Her name is Jaclyn Waters (played by Nicky Whelan), a detective who has transferred from Tulsa, Oklahoma, but she’s originally from Australia. Brian and Luke don’t like being forced to work with this “outsider,” but they have no choice.
Their mistrust of Jaclyn grows even more when Brian and Luke find out that she’s really an investigator from internal affairs, as already revealed in the “Crescent City” trailer. The trailer also reveals that Brian and Jaclyn begin having an affair with each other. It’s really just an excuse to show Whelan in cleavage-baring lingerie in fake-looking sex scenes.
Soon after Brian, Luke and Jaclyn begin working together, a young woman named Sabrina Harris (played by Rose Lane Sanfilippo) is at the police department to report that her roommate Vanessa Perkins (played by Ciel Shi) is missing. Sabrina says that Vanessa used a Sex Addicts Anonymous website called Secrets666.com. Brian recognizes that name because he saw it on the graffiti in the bathroom just a few days before.
Brian, Luke and Jaclyn are then shown breaking into an abandoned house without a warrant. And what a coincidence: There’s a decapitated body in a bathtub, which has a mannequin’s head nearby. The murdered person is Vanessa. With no explanation whatsoever, Brian concludes that the serial killer is also a sexual sadist.
The owner of the house is listed as Robert Hedges, who was also beheaded. He was murdered 20 years ago. The prime suspect in Robert’s murder was his son Charlie Hedges, who has been missing ever since Robert’s murder. When Robert’s name is mentioned, Luke says to Brian and Jaclyn that he knows what it must feel like to want to get rid of a father because his own father was abusive to him when he was a child.
The rest of “Crescent City” is just one ludicrous scene after another, with many plot holes and obvious red herrings. Jaclyn creates an escort website to go “undercover” as a sex worker. It leads her to encounter a suspicious creep named Travis Reed (played by Weston Cage Coppola), who wears a mask that covers the lower half his face.
The detectives also question a shady-looking clergyman named Pastor Lawson (played by Michael Sirow), a preacher for the Methodist church where the Secrets666.com sex addicts have their meetings. And there’s a scene in a bar with Luke picking up a stranger named Tanya Nelson (played by Danielle Druz) and having sex with her in a bathroom at the bar. It won’t be the last time that Tanya is in the movie.
As already shown in the movie’s trailer, Brian and Jaclyn—at separate times—look like they could guilty of being involved in the murders. And as soon as they come under suspicion, you know that the truth isn’t that obvious. Still, even with these attempts to introduce multiple possible suspects, it’s fairly easy to figure out who the real culprit is, based on how the evidence is planted to frame certain people who are not guilty.
In a movie that is dragged down by several lackluster performances, Howard’s acting in “Crescent City” is possibly the worst of the bunch. He shows no emotional connection to his character Brian, who is supposed to be complicated and morally conflicted. Howard looks extremely bored for most of the movie. And when he does have to show any emotions in a scene, it looks forced.
Luke is such a repulsive and soulless character, Morales doesn’t have much to work with in depicting this obvious cretin. Whelan seems to be in the movie to portray the filmmakers’ sexist stereotype of a female cop whose character is defined by sleeping with a married co-worker and going undercover as a sex worker, so she will be in scenes where she’s scantily clad. In addition to the rotten plot and idiotic dialogue, “Crescent City” has sloppy editing and horrible audio dubbing. If the “Crescent City” filmmakers didn’t care about making a good movie, then you shouldn’t care about watching this garbage.
Lionsgate released “Crescent City” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on August 16, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in and around Cork, Ireland, the horror film “Oddity” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A psychic medium, who believes she can communicate with dead people, temporarily moves in with her sister’s widower to find out more information about the unsolved murder of her sister.
Culture Audience: “Oddity” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of supernatural horror movies that are also murder mysteries.
Gwilym Lee in “Oddity” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)
The horror film “Oddity” is better at delivering a creepy and foreboding atmosphere than a story that results in genuine surprises. It’s a competently made film about a psychic medium who wants to solve the murder of sister. The movie isn’t overpopulated with characters, but the characters could have been written better because they often come across as underdeveloped stereotypes.
Written and directed by Damian McCarthy, “Oddity” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The movie takes place in Ireland in and around the city of Cork. “Oddity” (which was filmed in Ireland) has a very uncomplicated plot but it has a somewhat slow start to get to the heart of the mystery.
The beginning of “Oddity” shows a facility were many of the residents have been diagnosed as criminally insane. Dr. Ted Timmins (played by Gwilym Lee) is a psychiatrist at this facility. He is often aided by a orderly named Ivan (played by Steve Wall), who has a gruff and stern personality.
Ted and his wife Dani Timmins (played by Carolyn Bracken) live in a remote rural house that they’ve been renovating. Dani tells Ted that she’s worried about her blind twin sister Darcy Odello (also played by Bracken), who’s supposed to have regular medical checkups. Ted tells Dan that Darcy is capable of taking care of herself.
One day, Dani is home alone when she gets an unexpected visit from a recently released resident of the facility named Olin Boole (played by Tadhg Murphy), who is wild-eyed and disheveled. Olin has been living in a halfway house since his release from the psychiatric facility. At first, Dani doesn’t open the door for Olin but talks to him through a sliding window peephole.
Olin is distressed. He tells Dani, “You’re in trouble.” Olin says that he saw someone go inside the house when Dani’s back was turned. Olin begs Dani to call for help because he doesn’t have a phone. Dani says, “If I open the door, what are you going to do?” Olin replies, “I’ll look around.” Dani then asks, “And if you don’t see anyone?” Declain responds, “I’ll leave.”
Just as Dani starts to open the door, the scene abruptly shifts to showing Olin’s housemate Declan Barrett (played by Jonathan French, also known as Johnny French) at the halfway house. Declan is an artist who likes to draw. He’s in the middle of drawing something when he looks startled.
Declan is hearing strange noises, such as animal-like screeches and heavy grunting. Declan goes in another room and is horrified to see a man’s body with a mutilated head. It’s soon revealed that the dead person is Olin.
What happened in between Dani opening the door for Olin, and then Olin being found murdered? That question is mostly answered by the end of the movie. The timeline jumping in “Oddity” will be confusing to some viewers.
“Oddity” then makes another abrupt shift in the timeline. It’s one year later. That’s when it’s revealed in the movie that Dani is also dead. She was murdered a year ago on the same day that she opened the door to her home to Olin, who is the last known person to have seen her alive. Dani’s murder is never seen or described in graphic detail.
One year after Dani’s murder, Ted is now living at the house with his girlfriend Yana (played by Caroline Menton), whose occupation is never mentioned in the movie. Yana has a generically nice personality. Olin had been the prime suspect in Dani’s murder. However, Olin was never arrested for the murder because he was also killed shortly after Dani was murdered. Both murders have remained unsolved.
A year after the murder, Ted and Yana get a visit from Darcy, who says she wants to use her psychic abilities to find out what Olin was thinking on the day that he was believed to have murdered Dani. “He took my sister’s life,” Darcy says. “I want to know what was going through his mind when he was dying.” Darcy is a little surprised by how quickly widower Ted has moved on to a serious relationship with another woman, but Darcy tries not to be judgmental.
Darcy owns a shop in Cork named Odello’s Oddities, which has a collection of “cursed” items, according to Darcy. Something that Darcy brings with her is a small silver tap bell, which she says is one of the cursed items from her shop. She shows Ted the bell and tells him this story: The bell used to be at a hotel, where an unpleasant bellhop was killed after being shoved down the stairs by a drunk guest. When a hotel receptionist used the bell to summon the new bellhop, the ghost of the dead bellhop appeared instead.
Ted tells Darcy he feels incredibly guilty for allowing Olin be released from the facility: “He should never have been discharged.” Darcy comforts Ted by telling Ted that it wasn’t his fault and that he couldn’t have known that Olin was going to kill Dani. To help Darcy with her psychic medium probe, Ted gives Darcy a handkerchief and tells her what’s in the handkerchief is all that’s left of Olin. Inside the handkerchief is the glass eye that Olin used to wear.
And what about Declan, the person who discovered Olin’s body? Declan died about a week before Darcy arrived. It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is all going, which is why when the answer to the mystery is finally revealed, it’s not surprising at all.
Darcy is invited to stay with Ted and Yana during Darcy’s visit. Darcy has a trunk delivered to the house. And inside the trunk is an ominous, life-sized mannequin, which has the name Wooden Man (played by Ivan de Wergifosse) in the film’s end credits. Wooden Man is Darcy’s constant “companion” who sits at the same table when Darcy has her psychic sessions.
Soon after Darcy arrives, strange things start happening. Yana sees the ghost of Dani in a photo that Yana took a few days before. “Oddity” is very much a “things that go bump in the night” type of movie for many of its jump scares. The sound design for “Oddity” is excellent, even though a great deal of the film somewhat wanders, with mot much plot development beyond showing that the house now seems to be haunted. Is it the ghost of Dani, Olin, or something else?
“Oddity” can maintain viewer interest because of the murder mystery and some of the jump scares. The cast members’ acting is solid, with Bracken giving the obvious standout performance as the eccentric Darcy. Still, there’s so information about the characters in “Oddity” that is left unexplained. As a horror film, “Oddity” has an interesting concept that excels with the movie’s sound and visuals. However, “Oddity” comes up a bit short in developing the movie’s characters and could have made this murder mystery a lot harder to solve.
IFC Films released “Oddity” in U.S. cinemas on July 19, 2024. Shudder will premiere the movie on September 27, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “Consumed” features an all-white group of people who experience terror in a remote wooded area.
Culture Clash: During a camping trip in this remote wooded area, a married couple and a mysterious stranger become the targets of an evil spirit that possesses people who get lost in the woods.
Culture Audience: “Consumed” will appeal mainly to people who will watch any horror movie, not matter how terrible it is.
Mark Famiglietti in “Consumed” (Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media)
“Consumed” is not only the title of this inept and tedious horror movie, but it also describes how “Consumed” soullessly eats up viewers’ time and patience when watching this dreck. It’s nothing but repetitive scenes of poorly staged terror in a wooded area. This isn’t even the type of feature-length movie that would have been better as a short film because the basic plot of “Consumed” is just a mishmash of clichés and superficial characters with very little substance.
Directed by Mitchell Altieri and written by David Calbert, “Consumed” takes place in an unnamed U.S. city. (“Consumed” was actually filmed in New Jersey.) Married couple Beth McCormick (played by Courtney Halverson) and her husband Jay (played by Mark Famiglietti) are on a camping trip in a remote wooded area. The only thing you will learn about this couple during the entire movie is that Beth is recovering from cancer, and this trip is supposed to be the couple’s celebration that Beth’s cancer is in remission.
The opening scene of “Consumed” shows a frightened Beth running through a wooded area, with the cinematography for the scene drenched in red light, so you know that it’s supposed to be some type of nightmare. As she runs through the woods, she sees a leaf-covered body on a slab in the middle of the area where she’s at. All of a sudden, a hand reaches out and grabs Beth, who is bald in this red-light scene. The movie then abruptly cuts to the next scene, which shows Beth and Jay hiking in the woods.
During their hiking and camping, Beth and Jay hear strange and alarming noises, such as gunshots and a screeching sound that sounds like a giant bird. Most people would leave or at try to find out if they’re in immediate danger. Because this is a stupid horror movie, Beth and Jay don’t do that and therefor become sitting ducks for the terror that’s about to hit them.
After a hike, Jay and Beth come back to their camp and find the entire campsite trashed and covered in mysterious slime. Jay and Beth still don’t do anything. It isn’t until they hear these screeching sounds again and see black smoke coming out from behind a tree that they get scared and run.
It should come as no surprise that someone falls and gets injured. It’s Jay, who then gets even more bad luck when his left leg gets caught in a bear trap. And because this is a mindless horror movie, these people have gone camping in a remote area and didn’t think of a way to contact help in case of an emergency. There are no cell phones at all in this dreadful movie.
Somehow, Beth and an injured Jay find an underground bunker that has a trap door as an entrance. Inside the bunker, they see a mysterious and disheveled stranger dressed in skinned animal fur, as if he’s the poster child for Survivalists R Us. The stranger says his name is Quinn (played by Devon Sawa), who babbles about Wendigo, an evil spirit who possesses people who are lost in the woods.
Jay goes in and out of consciousness and can’t really move without assistance because of his injured leg. Somehow, Quinn coerces Beth to try to hunt down the menacing creature that seems to be after them. Quinn snarls to Beth: “I can’t let you leave the bunker until I kill that thing.” The rest of “Consumed” is about this hunt.
“Consumed” plods along with weak jump scares, idiotic dialogue, unimpressive acting, and mediocre visual effects—all of it extremely boring and incoherent. People watching this movie will be thinking the entire time, “Why should we care about these characters? There’s no real information about them.”
Toward the end of “Consumed,” it’s revealed that Quinn has a personal connection to what’s going on, but this revelation is too little, too late. The movie throws in more red-light scenes of bald Beth running around in a terrified manner. Why? Don’t expect an explanation for that either, except it seems to be the movie’s tacky way of showing that Beth has a fear of her cancer coming back. “Consumed” is just a cesspool of uninspired and lackluster scenes that add up to a complete waste of time.
Brainstorm Media released “Consumed” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on August 16, 2024.
