Tag: drama

Review: ‘Nina Wu,’ starring Ke-Xi Wu

March 27, 2021

by Carla Hay

Ke-Xi Wu in “Nina Wu” (Photo courtesy of Film Movement)

“Nina Wu”

Directed by Midi Z

Taiwanese and Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Taiwan, the dramatic film “Nina Wu” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An unknown actress gets her big break with a starring role in a movie, but she has to cope with sexual predators in the industry and secrets in her personal life.

Culture Audience: “Nina Wu” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in stylish-looking arthouse movies that are character studies with unsettling subject matter.

Ke-Xi Wu and Hsia Yu-Chiao in “Nina Wu” (Photo courtesy of Film Movement)

“Nina Wu” is an artistically filmed movie-within-a-movie story that takes an unflinching and often-disturbing look at the compromises and indignities that entertainers, particularly women, experience in their quest for fame. The movie tells the story of Nina Wu (played by Ke-Xi Wu), a struggling actress in Taiwan who gets a big break by landing her first starring role in a feature film. But she has to confront what this role will cost her when she finds out that it comes with a heavy price to her dignity and self-worth.

Ke-Xi Wu co-wrote the screenplay of “Nina Wu” with the movie’s director Midi Z, and she says the story is inspired by some of her real-life experiences. She gives a very compelling performance in this movie, which contrasts its beautifully styled aesthetic with the ugly truths of what often goes on behind the scenes in showbiz. The movie tends to be a little jumbled in story structure, but the message behind the film is clear.

Nina’s backstory comes out in bits and pieces in flashbacks and other descriptions. Viewers will have to be comfortable with movies that play out in a non-linear manner. Nina is an aspiring actress who moved from a suburban area to the big capital city of Taipei. Her father (played by Cheng Ping-Chun) runs a factory in Taiwan. And she was discovered by a talent agent when she working at a market stall.

However, Nina’s life as an actress isn’t go so well for her in Taipei. In the movie, Nina (who also goes by the name Sufen) works as a cam girl to pay her bills. Nina has been hiding her struggles as an actress from her family and other people she knows in her hometown. As far as they know, she’s been getting respectable work as a small-time actress and is living a pretty good life in Taipei.

In a meeting with her agent (played by Rexen Cheng), who’s been working with Nina for the past six years, he reminds her that she hasn’t been in a feature film the entire time that he’s worked with her. She has only been in short films. However, the agent (who doesn’t have a name in the movie) tells Nina that he’s gotten an offer to audition for a starring role in a feature film (a spy thriller set in the 1960s) where she would be required to do explicit sex scenes. It’s not a pornographic film, but it’s a movie where there’s little left to the imagination when it comes to sex.

Nina is hesitant to do the audition, but the agent says that any good actor wouldn’t turn down a role because of nudity. (What he doesn’t mention is the reality that women are much more likely than men to be required to have nude scenes in non-pornographic films.) The agent says that he will leave the decision up to Nina. And he tells her that big Hollywood stars take a role for two reasons: It’s a good character or it’s good pay.

Nina decides to audition for the role. And what she goes through in the rest of the story is an emotionally draining experience that also forces her to confront secrets that she’s denied or kept from other people in her life. During the audition process, she meets with a female casting director (played by Hsieh Ying-Hsuan), who tells Nina that Nina’s performance should be as natural as possible. By way of comparison, she asks Nina, “When you take a shower, do you worry about being naked?”

Nina then auditions for a panel of filmmakers. The casting director is the only woman in this group of decision makers. Nina gets the role, but that’s the easy part of making the film. Things get much harder for her when she has to work with the very demanding and sexist director (played by Shih Ming-Shuai), who doesn’t hesitate to be derogatory to her. Most of the characters in “Nina Wu” do not have names. It might be the “Nina Wu” filmmakers’ way of showing how these experiences are so common that they could apply to many people without specific names attached.

Nina’s starring role in the movie is as a woman in a troubled love affair that nearly drives her character to violence with a knife. She threatens to kill her lover and herself. The director is abusive in the name of getting the performance that he wants out of Nina. He chokes her to get her in an agitated mindset. In another incident, he slaps Nina.

Because the director is a highly acclaimed filmmaker in the industry, people on the movie set act as if Nina should feel lucky to work with him. And so, Nina starts to second-guess her discomfort at how she is being treated in this very male-dominated and demeaning work environment. Everyone around her acts like this physical abuse is “normal,” so Nina doesn’t complain about it. It’s also her very first feature film, and she doesn’t want to be perceived as a “difficult person,” which could ruin other career opportunities for her.

At a New Year’s dinner with her family (including her parents, aunts and uncles), they give a toast to Nina to congratulate her on the movie role and wish her success. But as Nina’s career seems to be taking off and she gets some media attention for being cast in the movie, she becomes more miserable inside. Nina’s movie is expected to be a critically acclaimed hit, but this possibility of becoming a famous actress doesn’t bring Nina the true happiness that she expected.

Nina doesn’t say it out loud, but she’s thinking about how her family might react when they find out about the explicit sex scenes that she has in the movie. And she wonders how this high-profile role might affect how she’s perceived in the entertainment industry. Will she be typecast as someone who does sexually explicit performances? Nina is also having nightmares that a woman is chasing her in a life-threatening way.

On the movie set for one of the sex scenes, the director says that the scene is supposed to convey the hopelessness of life. Far from being passionate, the scene is coldly and clinically choreographed. In a set-up for a threesome in the movie, Nina and two male actors pose in sexual positions to test the lighting and are told not to show any emotions while posing.

Instead of feeing like a glamorous movie star, Nina feels like an exploited piece of meat. Nina has no real friends in Taipei, so she turns to a longtime friend of hers named Kiki (played by Sung Yu-Hua, also known as Vivian Sung), a school teacher she knows from her hometown. Nina confides in Kiki about a dream that she had where Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman told Nina to hold on to a tree during a storm. And then, Kidman disappeared and Nina was washed away in the storm.

Kidman was probably in Nina’s dream because in real life, Kidman has done several nude/sex scenes in her career. Kidman is often named as an example of a highly respected and versatile actress who’s able to do big-budget studio films and edgier independent films. The storm in the dream is a metaphor for the inner turmoil that Nina feels about doing the sex scenes in the movie. And it’s a problematic situation where Kidman isn’t going to come to Nina’s rescue.

There’s something else that Nina has to come to terms with as she deals with her conflicted feelings about starring in this sexually explicit movie: Nina is a lesbian and she’s in love with Kiki. Nina’s family doesn’t know about her true sexuality. Ultimately, Nina has to decide if she wants to live openly as a lesbian and how she wants to handle her feelings for Kiki.

In the midst of these issues in her love life and career, Nina has to deal with some crises in her family. Her father’s factory has gone bankrupt and her mother (played by Wang Chuan) has a heart attack. Nina then visits her hometown to help her family during this difficult time. And it should come as no surprise that Nina sees Kiki again during this visit.

The movie-within-a-movie part of “Nina Wu” offers some chilling parallels to the character that Nina plays on screen and who she is off-screen. Both Nina and her on-screen character are tortured in some way by love and sexuality. “Nina Wu” takes a very dark turn toward the end of the film when it shows how women are often pitted against each other by rich and powerful men for their own perverse pleasures. Nina and some other actresses who were in a group of auditioners, including a woman identified in the credits by the name Girl No. 3 (played by Hsia Yu-Chiao), are abused in this sick and twisted game.

Not all the villains in the story are men, because the movie shows that some women can be just as complicit or active in sexual misconduct as men can be. However, within the realm of the entertainment industry, as depicted in “Nina Wu,” men tend to have the most money and power. What’s most haunting about the movie is that the sexual harassment and other degradation portrayed in the movie are all too-often what many desperate and vulnerable people experience in real life when predators abuse their power and exploit people who want to achieve their dreams.

Film Movement released “Nina Wu” in New York City on March 26, 2021. The movie’s release expands to more cinemas in U.S. cities and on digital and VOD on April 2, 2021. The DVD release date is May 18, 2021.

Review: ‘The Courier’ (2021), starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan and Jessie Buckley

March 26, 2021

by Carla Hay

Merab Ninidze and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Courier” (Photo by Liam Daniel/Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

“The Courier” (2021) 

Directed by Dominic Cooke

Some language in Russian with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in the 1960s in Moscow, London and briefly in Langley, Virginia, the spy drama “The Courier” features an all-white cast of characters representing the middle-class, primarily those who work for the government.

Culture Clash: A British businessman becomes a spy for MI6, as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and Western countries begins to escalate under the possibility of nuclear weapon attacks.

Culture Audience: “The Courier” will appeal primarily to people who like espionage movies that go beyond the political intrigue and examine the toll that spying can take on family life.

Benedict Cumberbatch, Angus Wright and Rachel Brosnahan in “The Courier” (Photo by Liam Daniel/Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

“The Courier,” which is inspired by true events, aims to put a spotlight on people who have been historically underrated in preventing a nuclear war between the then-Soviet Union and countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. The main characters of this movie just happen to be spies. Elevated by above-average acting, “The Courier” is not an essential spy movie, but it’s good enough for people who enjoy this genre.

Politicians tend to get the most credit for de-escalating international tensions that could turn into war. However, “The Courier” (directed by Dominic Cooke and written by Tom O’Connor) makes a case that spies have also been instrumental in preventing wars. It’s pretty obvious why spies don’t get as much credit as politicians do: Because spies’ work is secretive and undercover, their identities as spies cannot be revealed, unless their cover is blown in some way.

That’s what happened to the two spies who are at the center of this story: Greville Wynne (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) from the United Kingdom and Oleg Penkovsky (played by Merab Ninidze) from the Soviet Union. Their paths collided in 1960, when Oleg, a longtime bureaucrat, became increasingly alarmed over then-Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushchev’s nuclear threats against Western countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. (The partnership between these two spies was also portrayed in the 1985 BBC miniseries “Wynne and Penkovsky,” which A&E televised in the U.S. under the name “The Man From Moscow.”)

“The Courier” opens with a scene in Moscow on August 12, 1960, showing Premier Khrushchev giving an inflammatory speech in a closed-door meeting with other Russian bureaucrats. What’s said in that meeting is enough for Oleg to do what he had probably been contemplating for quite some time: He becomes a whistleblower who warns the United States about these imminent nuclear weapons threats. Oleg meets with two unidentified American men at night, gives them some paperwork, and urges them to take this paperwork to the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

Four months later at MI6 headquarters in London, a briskly confident and young CIA operative named Emily Donovan has a meeting with two MI6 operatives: Arthur Temple “Dickie” Franks (played by Angus Wright) and Bertrand (played by Anton Lesser), whose last name is not mentioned in the movie. (In real life, Franks would later become the head of MI6 from 1979 to 1982.) Emily walks into the meeting and tells these older men, “I’ve brought you boys a present.”

The “present” is information that’s a dream come true for any intelligence agency that wants to spy on the Soviet Union: A Soviet spy has offered to become a double agent for the CIA because of his concerns over Khrushchev’s erratic personality and increasing possibilities that Khrushchev will start a nuclear war against the nations that are the Soviet Union’s enemies. This Soviet spy is Oleg, who wants to smuggle out information by a courier.

The CIA can’t send an American courier to be Oleg’s contact in the Soviet Union, because it would be too obvious. And so, the CIA has sent Emily to enlist the help of MI6 to send a Brit to Moscow to become Oleg’s courier. In the meeting with the MI6 officials, Emily says that the selected courier should be someone whom the Russians would least expect: a person with no history of working for a government agency.

Greville’s name comes up in the meeting because he’s a businessman who frequently travels outside of the United Kingdom. In real life, he had already visited Moscow several times by the time he became a spy. In the movie, Greville is portrayed as someone who is so unfamiliar with Moscow, that Oleg is the first person to introduce Greville to the city. And in the movie, Greville doesn’t know any Russian when he first arrives in Moscow, so Oleg is often his translator.

In the meeting between the CIA and MI6 operatives, Emily gives Dickie and Bertrand a brief background on Oleg so that they know that he’s a government insider who can be trusted. Oleg is a former military colonel and artillery officer who was decorated 13 times during World War II. He lives in Moscow and works for the GRU, the Soviet Union/Russia’s military intelligence agency. But since Oleg is a spy, his cover is overseeing the state committee on scientific research.

“The Courier” was originally titled “Ironbark,” which is Oleg’s code name as a spy. The title change was no doubt to shift the focus more on the Greville Wynne character, who gets more screen time and who is portrayed by a better-known actor. The movie is a story about two very different spies who become unlikely partners with a common goal: to protect their respective countries from engaging in a nuclear war. However, “The Courier” shows more of Greville’s personality and home life than it does for Oleg.

Oleg lives a quiet and unassuming life with his wife Vera (played by Maria Mironova) and their daughter Nina (played by Emma Penzina), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. Later in the story, it’s revealed that Vera knows that Oleg is a spy.

Greville has a very different personality and marriage. A hard-drinking businessman, Greville is sometimes quick to lose his temper. And his marriage to his wife Sheila (played by Jessie Buckley) has become troubled due to Greville past infidelity. At the beginning of the story, Sheila and Greville have become distant from each other. It’s mentioned several times throughout the movie that Greville’s infidelity has broken Sheila’s trust in Greville, but she’s slowly trying to trust him again.

Sheila and Greville have a 10-year-old son named Andrew (played by Keir Hills), who sometimes becomes the target of Greville’s verbal tirades if Andrew does something harmless to set off Greville’s temper. For example, a scene in the movie shows Sheila, Greville and Andrew spending some family time together on a camping trip. Because the weather forecast predicted possible rain, Andrew was put in charge of bringing the family’s raincoats on the trip, but Andrew forgot to bring these items. When Greville finds out, he berates Andrew until Sheila tells him to stop, and she comforts Andrew by saying that Greville didn’t really mean his insulting remarks.

These glimpses into Greville’s home life show that he wasn’t the type of ideal hero that he could have been portrayed as in this movie. Rather, he was a very flawed human being who found himself caught up in a situation that ended up spiraling out of his control. When Greville is first approached by MI6 and the CIA to become a spy, these intelligence agencies already know that he’s a heavy drinker, but they want to take a chance on him because he can have a very charming personality and because he adapts quickly to foreign environments.

In the movie, it’s portrayed that MI6’s plan to lure Greville into becoming a spy starts with a phone call from Dickie, using the alias James Dobby and pretending to be an official from the U.K.’s board of trade. Greville had met “James” the previous year at some type of business conference. In the phone call, Dickie/James asks to meet with Greville for lunch to discuss a possible business opportunity.

When Greville arrives for the lunch, he’s surprised to see someone else is with Dickie: a young American woman, who introduces herself as Helena Talbot. Of course, that’s not her real name. Helena Talbot is really CIA operative Emily Donovan.

During this lunch conversation, “James” and “Helena” ask Greville how he would feel about doing business in the Soviet Union and what he would do to ingratiate himself with the government officials in Moscow. It doesn’t take long for Greville to figure out that “James” and “Helena” are really spies, but they won’t tell Greville their real names when he asks. And he wants no part of what they seem to be proposing.

Dickie tries to persuade Greville by saying that Greville’s spy work would be “nothing dodgy, nothing illegal. It would be a real service to Great Britain.” Emily adds, “And to the world.” Greville is told repeatedly that all he has to do is conduct business in Moscow as a salesman and bring back some paperwork that will be given to him by a contact person.

Greville still isn’t convinced because he thinks his life might be in danger if he becomes a spy. Dickie/”James” tells Greville that Greville being a middle-aged, non-athletic man who has a drinking problem doesn’t make him a spy stereotype of a dashing, physically fit hero with combat skills. Dickie adds, “My point is if this mission were the least bit dangerous, you really are the last man we’d send.” Greville replies with a sarcastic tone, “Thank you for putting it so delicately.”

Of course, Greville ultimately agrees to the mission. It’s implied that he said yes out of a sense of patriotism but also out of a sense of curiosity and probably to boost his ego. In that fateful first meeting, Dickie mentioned that he knows Greville spent time in the military doing office work only and not being in combat. Agreeing to this spy mission was probably Greville’s way of proving to himself that he really could be useful to the U.K. government.

“The Courier” tends to drag a little when it shows the actual back-and-forth of Oleg and Greville doing their spy transactions. After all, there’s not much excitement to be had when all Greville has to do is bring some paperwork back with him to the United Kingdom and hand off the documents to MI6. Oleg and Greville grow to like and respect each other, and they eventually meet each other’s wives and kids.

The real tension in the movie begins when Oleg and Greville are in danger of being exposed and punished by the Russian government. People who already know what happened in real life won’t be surprised by how it’s portrayed in the movie. (This part of the movie won’t be described in this review, since it’s considered spoiler information.) But it’s enough to say that the greatest strength of “The Courier” is in how it skillfully portrays the often-complex layers of loyalties that spies often have and how they have to choose between betraying a government or betraying an individual.

Greville keeps his spying activities a secret from Sheila for as long as possible. He tells her that his frequent trips to Moscow are because he wants to “open a door to the West” for Russians to do more business with Western companies such as his. Greville is described as working in sales, but the movie never really makes clear what he’s selling. (In real life, he was electrical engineer who became a business salesperson.)

At first, Greville’s trips to Moscow seem to boost his confidence. When he gets home, he’s much more amorous with Sheila, who is pleasantly surprised that their sex life has markedly improved. But as time wears on, the stress of his spy work starts to get to him, and he becomes more short-tempered. And because he is so vague with Sheila about what he does while he’s in Moscow, it isn’t long before Sheila starts to suspect that Greville is cheating on her.

“The Courier” also covers how the 1962 Bay of Pigs crisis in Cuba had a drastic effect on this spy mission. This political development ramps up the urgency, as well as the life-threatening risks, in what Oleg and Greville are doing. The last third of “The Courier” is the best part of the movie, as Cumberbatch in particular shows a range of emotions under extreme circumstances that make “The Courier” a compelling story to watch.

Under the solid direction of Cooke, “The Courier” isn’t a groundbreaking movie and follows a lot of conventions that are often seen in spy films. For example, there are the inevitable scenes of a spy making copies of important files and furtively looking around out of fear of being caught. The movie might be considered a bit dull in some areas for anyone who won’t have the patience to see the whole film.

What’s not conventional about “The Courier” and is actually quite refreshing is that it doesn’t have the tired cliché of the primary female spy character using her sexuality to get what she wants. The character of Emily is both intelligent and charismatic, but she’s not perfect, as she makes a critical error in judgment during one part of the story. There are some veiled references to the sexism that Emily no doubt experienced as a woman in the male-dominated CIA. But since she’s not the center of the story, the movie doesn’t expound on any gender discrimination within these types of government agencies in the U.S., the U.K. or in the former Soviet Union.

Through the Emily character, “The Courier” shows that even though the U.S.’s CIA and the U.K.’s MI6 teamed up for this mission, there was still some rivalry between these two allied countries. In a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, she is seen giving a briefing to one of her supervisors. Emily tells him that she’s good at fooling the Brits by making the Brits think they’re in charge, because she often plays the part of someone who’s a naïve agent who’s eager to learn from her more experienced counterparts. The point of this scene is to demonstrate that Emily’s loyalty will be to the U.S., first and foremost.

All of the cast members play their roles well, but since Greville’s perspective is the one that gets the most importance, Cumberbatch’s performance is at the heart of the film, and he admirably rises to the challenge. The movie could have used more insight into Oleg’s character to show how being a double agent affected his state of mind. For example, the scene with the Wynne family on a camping trip wasn’t essential and could have been substituted with a more relevant scene showing Oleg’s personal trials and tribulations. As it stands, “The Courier” has a few areas that needed improving, but the overall end result is a worthwhile option if people are in the mood to watch a retro spy movie.

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions released “The Courier” in U.S. cinemas on March 19, 2021. The movie’s VOD release date is April 16, 2021. “The Courier” will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 1, 2021.

Review: ‘Little Fish’ (2021), starring Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell

March 23, 2021

by Carla Hay

Jack O’Connell and Olivia Cooke in “Little Fish” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Little Fish” (2021) 

Directed by Chad Hartigan

Culture Representation: Taking place in Seattle from 2020 to 2022, the sci-fi drama “Little Fish” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos and African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A British woman and her American husband struggle with fear and health issues during a global pandemic of the fictional disease Neuroinflammatory Affliction (NIA).

Culture Audience: “Little Fish” will appeal primarily to people interested in well-acted apocalyptic dramas that have romance and surprises.

Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell in “Little Fish” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Little Fish” is the type of plot-puzzle drama that appears to be straightforward in its intentions but turns out to be quite different from what was initially presented. The movie succeeds largely because of commendable acting from Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell, who play a newlywed couple struggling with a health crisis when one of them becomes afflicted with the fictional disease Neuroinflammatory Affliction (NIA) during a global pandemic. Because the movie takes place primarily in 2022, with flashbacks to previous years, the parallels are eerily similar to the real-life COVID-19 pandemic, although “Little Fish” was written and filmed before the COVID-19 pandemic existed.

Written by Mattson Tomlin (who adapted the screenplay from Aja Gabel’s short story) and directed by Chad Hartigan, “Little Fish” is told from the point of view of a lively Brit named Emma (played by Cooke), who works as a veterinary technician in Seattle. The movie’s tone is fraught with anxiety because Emma starts to see signs that her worst fears are coming true: The two people she loves the most have become afflicted with NIA, a viral disease that causes dementia.

The movie is a series of scenes in non-chronological order, with the “present day” scenes taking place in 2022. Emma gives voiceover narration during much of the story, and there are many scenes where she is articulating her memories so that she can write them down for herself and her American husband Jude (played by O’Connell), a photographer who is slowly showing signs of having NIA. It’s an activity that she does with a heavy heart because she knows it might be a matter of time before Jude will forget who she is and everything about their relationship.

In addition, Emma’s mother, who lives in England, is also showing signs of NIA. Emma’s mother (whose name is not revealed) is never seen in the movie, but her voice is heard when Emma speaks to her on the phone or leaves a voice mail message for her. Emily Stott is the voice of Emma’s mother in the movie.

In the world of “Little Fish,” NIA does not have a vaccine or cure. And there doesn’t seem to be much knowledge about how it is spread, although people occasionally wear masks as a precaution. Because a lot of the movie takes place in flashbacks, viewers see in bits and pieces how Emma and Jude met and how their relationship evolved.

Emma and Jude met while she was sitting by herself on a deserted beach. She sees a dog nearby and asks the man walking near her if the dog is his. He says no. The way that Emma and Jude look at each other, there’s an obvious attraction. Emma is talkative, while Jude is a little bit more emotionally reserved.

Jude has a camera with him and asks if he can take her picture. She obliges, they talk, flirt a little, and they exchange numbers. There’s only one problem. Emma already has a boyfriend, but she doesn’t tell Jude that the first time that they meet.

Shortly after Jude and Emma meet each other at the beach, Emma is at a Halloween costume party. She’s dressed as Claude Bourgelat, the French doctor who was considered a pioneer of veterinary medicine in the 1700s. Emma looks bored at the party, and her boyfriend Tim (played by David Lennon), senses that she’s become emotionally distant. However, Emma insists that everything is just fine.

While at the party, Emma gets a call from Jude, who asks her to come over to his place because he’s feeling kind of lonely at his apartment. Emma doesn’t hesitate, so she ditches the Halloween party and goes to Jude’s place. Once he sees her, he immediately guesses that she’s dressed as Claude Bourgelat. It’s one of many indications of why Emma fell for Jude so quickly.

Jude and Emma then head to a nightclub, where she tells him that she has a boyfriend named Tim. When Jude asks Emma if she loves her boyfriend, she says no. Jude asks Emma why she’s with this boyfriend if she doesn’t love him. Emma tells Jude that it’s complicated. More than once Jude gets Tim’s name wrong (Jude calls him Tom), which could be a mental block or a deliberate attempt to show Emma that he’s so unconcerned about Tim that he can’t be bothered to remember Tim’s name.

While hanging out at the nightclub together, Jude and Emma’s attraction to each other continues to grow. They share a similar sense of humor, such as pointing out people in their sight and trying to guess what these people’s stories are. The movie doesn’t delve too much into Jude’s family background, but it’s implied he’s on how own, while Emma (who has a working-class northern England accent) only has her mother has her closest living relative.

During their flirtatious conversation at the nightclub, Jude asks Emma if she can kiss her. She says no because she has a boyfriend. Not long afterward, Emma says she has to leave, and then she surprises Jude by giving him a romantic kiss on the mouth.

Needless to say, Emma’s relationship with Tim doesn’t last. Jude and Emma’s romance quickly heats up, they end up moving in together, and then they get married. Emma mentions in the movie that their wedding was on October 14, 2021, which means that they were married for a year or less when Jude began showing signs of having NIA.

At first, Jude’s forgetfulness is about little things. For example, Emma and Jude have a dog named Blue. One day while riding together on a bus, Emma says it would be great if they could adopt another dog as a companion for Blue. Jude says no because they don’t have room in their apartment. They get into a minor argument about it, but Jude is firm in saying it’s not a good time for them to get a second dog.

But then, on another day not long after that argument, Jude mentions to Emma that they should think about adopting a second dog. Emma is shocked and reminds Jude that this has been an ongoing disagreement with them, with Jude being the one who was against the idea of getting a second dog. Jude tells Emma that he honestly can’t remember them disagreeing about this issue.

Emma and Jude never do get a second dog, because they have much the more pressing matter of how to deal with Jude’s disappearing memory. Jude shows other signs that his memory is slipping. He forgets where he lives and doesn’t think about looking at his driver’s license to get his home address. On another occasion, he’s very late for an important job to take photos of a wedding. And speaking of weddings, there’s a pivotal scene where Jude and Emma have very different memories of their wedding day.

While all of this is going on, Emma confides to her mother about her suspicions that Jude might have NIA. But to Emma’s horror, her mother starts to forget names and experiences too. And then, Emma gets a phone call from England and finds out how much her mother’s health is deteriorating. Emma has to decide if she should go to England to try to help her mother (who apparently has no other relatives to turn to) or stay in the U.S. to help Jude.

Emma and Jude’s closest friends are a couple named Ben Richards (played by Raúl Castillo) and Samantha (played by Soko), an alternative rock duo who are musical partners and love partners. Ben plays guitar and Samantha is the singer. Ben and Samantha knew Jude first, because Jude used to go on tour with them as the duo’s photographer.

As Jude reveals later in the story, during their touring days, Jude and Samantha got caught up in partying too much with alcohol and drugs, and they decided to “dry out” in Seattle, where Samantha’s parents live. By the time Jude met Emma, he had been clean and sober for a few years. In flashbacks, Samantha and Ben are shown to have a loving and harmonious relationship.

Unfortunately, things change when Ben’s mental state does downhill because he has NIA. At first, Ben’s forgetfulness shows up as not remembering the musical notes of his guitar strings, so Jude comes up with an idea to tattoo this information on Ben’s arms. But then, Ben’s memory loss results in a very disturbing incident that has Samantha questioning if she should continue to be in a relationship with Ben. And the dark turn in Samantha and Ben’s relationship has Emma worrying about how she and Jude need to prepare in case something similar happens to them.

Shortly after Jude began losing his memory, it’s in the news that the government is doing a clinical trial for a possible NIA vaccine. The clinical trial is open to people who show NIA symptoms. Emma immediately encourages Jude to apply for this clinical trial, but he’s reluctant, because he’s still somewhat in denial that he has NIA. How this issue is resolved is one of the turning points in the movie. There are a few scenes that also show how desperate people can become when they think there’s a chance that they or their loved ones have a chance to be cured of this terrible disease.

The heart of “Little Fish” is in the scenes that show Jude and Emma’s romance. They have a relationship that’s very realistic, such as an ease with one another in how they live as a couple, share emotional intimacy, and even how they handle disagreements. Despite their occasional conflicts, Emma and Jude are very much in love and committed to each other. And as NIA starts to take over their lives, the decisions they make are a direct result of their fear of losing each other.

The movie is titled “Little Fish” because of a scene in the movie where Jude proposes marriage to Emma. They are at a fish aquarium store when he pops the question, and she enthusiastically says yes. However, Jude tells her that he doesn’t have an engagement ring.

Emma is so happy that she doesn’t mind. She replies, “Then buy me a fish.” Later, Emma and Jude get matching tattoos of little fish on their respective right ankles to commemorate this special day. It should come as no surprise that there’s a scene in the movie where these tattoos are a way to see how much Jude remembers about his relationship with Emma.

“Little Fish” can be described as a sci-fi romantic drama, but there are parts of the movie that have the qualities of being an apocalyptic horror movie without all the bombastic “run for your lives” scenes that are usually in these types of apocalyptic movies. In “Little Fish,” the NIA horror sneaks up on people but shows up in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

In one of the flashback scenes, Emma is at her job and signs paperwork for a stray dog that is turned in by a city employee named Frank (played by Toby Hargrave), who works for the city’s animal control department. Emma is a little surprised that Frank can’t remember her name. Observant viewers will not be surprised later in the movie when another driver named Annie (played by Angela Moore) shows up and tells Emma that she’s Frank’s replacement because he stopped showing up for work. The implication is that Frank has NIA.

The horror of NIA is exemplified in real life-or-death situations. While taking a tourist-type boat ride to get their mind off of their troubles, Emma and Jude witness a woman run hysterically toward them because the woman doesn’t remember her husband and thinks he’s a stranger trying to kidnap her. The woman on the boat is so distraught that she does something desperate and tragic.

And there are also missing-person flyers that start to become more prevalent as the NIA pandemic worsens. That’s because the disease has spread at such a rate that more people forget who they are, wander off, and go missing. It’s something that Emma fears might happen to Jack, her mother, and other people she know, including herself.

Cooke and O’Connell (who are both British in real life) have the type of natural chemistry with each other that give their performances considerable authenticity. Because Jude and Emma are a very believable couple, audiences will be rooting for Jude and Emma to somehow make it through this crisis against all odds. “Little Fish” director Hartigan and film editor Josh Crockett skillfully weave the story in such a way that viewers of “Little Fish” will be engrossed in putting all the flashbacks together to find out who Jude and Emma are. What makes this movie memorable is how these perceptions compare from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie.

IFC Films released “Little Fish” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on February 5, 2021.

Review: ‘The Fallout,’ starring Jenna Ortega, Maddie Ziegler, Niles Fitch, Will Ropp, Shailene Woodley, Julie Bowen and John Ortiz

March 21, 2021

by Carla Hay

Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler in “The Fallout” (Photo by Kristen Correll)

“The Fallout”

Directed by Megan Park

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in California’s Los Angeles County, the dramatic film “The Fallout” features a racially diverse cast of characters (Latino, white and African American) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: After experiencing a devastating school shooting, a teenage girl, her schoolmates and her family have different ways of coping with this tragedy.

Culture Audience: “The Fallout” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted and realistically written dramas about how a mass murder has psychological effects on survivors, particularly young people.

Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler (Photo by Kristin Correll)

There have been several documentaries about how survivors of school shootings in the U.S. are coping with these tragedies. “The Fallout” is a fictional drama, but the movie achieves a rare balancing act of handling this sensitive subject matter with realistic emotions and above-average acting. What makes the movie also stand out is that it’s not a non-stop barrage of depression. It’s able to convey, with occasional touches of levity, how life can go on for survivors, even if their lives will no longer be the same.

Written and directed by Megan Park, “The Fallout” had its world premiere at the 2021 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, where it won the top jury prize as the best movie in the narrative feature competition. Writer/director Park, who made her feature-film directorial debut with “The Fallout,” also won the 2021 SXSW Film Festival’s Brightcove Illumination Award, given to a filmmaker on the rise. Park previously directed music videos, such as Billie Eilish’s “Watch.” Eilish’s brother/musical collaborator Finneas O’Connell wrote “The Fallout” musical score.

The beginning of “The Fallout” gives the appearance of being a typical teenage story. The movie’s protagonist Vada Cavell (played by Jenna Ortega, in a standout performance) and her openly gay best friend Nick Feinstein (played by Will Ropp) are driving in Nick’s car to their high school. They live in an unnamed city in California’s Los Angeles County. (The movie was filmed in Los Angeles.)

Vada (pronounced “vay-da”) and Nick appear to be 16 or 17 years old, probably in their third year of high school. If they were in their last year of high school, movies like this would make a point of telling the audiences that these students are high-school seniors because Vada and her classmates would be talking about their plans after they graduate. All of the main characters in the movie come from stable, middle-class homes.

Vada and Nick have the type of comfortable rapport that best friends have with each other, where they discuss things they wouldn’t talk about with just anyone. In their conversation while going to school, Nick and Vada talk about drinking coffee, which leads to Vada mentioning that coffee gives her the urge to defecate. Vada and Nick laugh and say that they should have a code for that bodily function when they talk about it in front of other people.

When Vada and Nick arrive at school, it seems like it’s going to be a normal day. The biggest problem that Vada thinks she’ll have to deal with that day is how to comfort her younger sister Amelia (played by Lumi Pollack), who has texted Vada a “911” emergency alert while Vada is in one of her classrooms. Vada quickly excuses herself from class to go in the hallway and call back Amelia, who attends another school and appears to be about 13 years old. Amelia is hiding by herself in one of her school’s restrooms.

It turns out that Amelia called because she’s surprised and embarrassed that she got her first menstrual period while in school, and she’s confused about how to handle it. Vada mildly scolds Amelia for scaring Vada into thinking it was a real emergency. Vada calms Amelia down and gives her a “big sister pep talk” on what do next. And like any good older sister would do, Vada offers to take Amelia out for a meal after school, so they can talk some more about this milestone in Amelia’s physical growth toward womanhood.

Feeling satisfied that she handled the situation correctly, Vada then goes into the ladies’ restroom. She sees a fellow classmate named Mia Reed (played by Maddie Ziegler) doing her own makeup in the restroom mirror. Based on the way that Vada stares at Mia, Vada is slightly in awe of Mia, who has the look of an Instagram model and a reputation at school for being somewhat of a social media influencer. The other students talk about Mia as if she’s a mysterious and glamorous loner, who gives the impression that she’s more sophisticated than the average student in high school.

Mia comments to Vada: “Photo day,” to explain why she’s doing her makeup instead of being in class. Vada replies before she goes into a stall, “I’ve got to get my shit together.” It’s Vada’s way of saying that she thinks she should pay more attention to her own hair, makeup and wardrobe. When Vada comes out of the stall, she says to Mia as a compliment, “You don’t even need to wear makeup.” And that’s when they both hear gunshots.

During the next six minutes of terror, which are shown from the point of view of the students trapped in this restroom, viewers can hear that people in the school are being killed by a gun. There are screams and cries for help amid the gunshots. This violence is never shown on camera because it doesn’t need to be. It’s a massacre that has occurred all too-often in real life.

Vada and Mia hide in the same bathroom stall together and stand up on the toilet, in case the shooter comes in and looks for feet underneath the stalls. As Mia and Vada clutch each other in horror, someone bursts into the room in the stall next to them. At first, the girls think it’s the shooter, but it’s really a fellow classmate named Quinton Hasland (played by Niles Fitch), who quickly identifies himself.

Mia and Vada tell Quinton that he can hide with them in the same stall. The girls are shocked to see that Quinton’s clothes are covered in blood spatter. He tells them that he hasn’t been shot, but he’s panicking because he witnessed his brother getting shot. Quinton is understandably anguished over the decision to run for his life or stay behind to try to help his brother.

The movie doesn’t show how long Vada, Mia and Quinton were crouched in fear in the bathroom stall. Nor does “The Fallout” show what happened when the police and medical emergency teams arrived. A visual clue later in the movie indicates that eight people died in this massacre.

And “The Fallout” isn’t about what happened to the shooter and why he committed this heinous crime, except to indicate that he was a male student from the school. The shooter is never seen or heard in the movie, although his name is mentioned in one of the movie’s most emotionally powerful scenes. It’s implied that the shooter died at the scene, most likely by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The rest of the film is from Vada’s perspective about how Vada, Mia, Quinton, Nick and Vada’s immediate family (her parents and Amelia) deal with the aftermath of tragedy, including coping with survivor’s guilt. Vada goes into school-appointed counseling with an empathetic therapist named Anna (played by Shailene Woodley), who tries to break down the emotional walls that Vada puts up in their first few sessions together. Vada tries to persuade Anna that she’s doing as well as she can in her recovery.

In her first session with Anna, Vada talks about how she sleeps up to 14 hours a day, but insists (not very convincingly) to Anna that it’s only a few more hours of sleep per day that was part of her normal routine before the shooting. Vada gives this self-evaluation of her personality: “I feel like I’m very good at managing my emotions. I’m very low-key and chill.” Anna patiently advises without sounding judgmental: “It’s really good to show your emotions.”

Despite what Vada told Anna, there are signs that Vada isn’t coping well at all. When Vada is awake in bed, she shivers and twitches in fear. Her excessive sleeping is a sign of depression. And when her parents—Carlos (played by John Ortiz) and Patricia (played by Julie Bowen)—try to talk to Vada about what happened, she shuts them down and tells them that she’s going to be fine. Vada avoids her family by sleeping in her room as much as she can.

During family time together, such as during meals, Amelia talks as if nothing bad really happened, perhaps in a way to try to get things back to normal. But based on Vada’s angry reactions to Amelia’s nonchalant small talk, Vada is offended that Amelia acts oblivious to how this tragedy is affecting Vada. Although Vada doesn’t want to open up to her family about what she’s going through, she doesn’t want them to completely act as if the school shooting didn’t happen either.

Shortly after the massacre, Vada found out that the shooter (whom she didn’t know) had followed Vada on Instagram. It’s a small detail, but how Vada reacts when she finds out is indicative of how she doesn’t like to show many of her emotions on the surface. She expresses some surprise, but then is quick to add that she never knew the guy and never followed him on social media. Her response is to brush it off, but deep down, this information must be disturbing to her.

After the shooting, Mia and Vada begin texting each other and become each other’s confidants. Mia invites Vada over to her house (it’s here that it’s obvious that Mia’s family has more money than Vada’s family), and this invitation leads to Vada going to Mia’s place for regular visits. Both girls are afraid to go back to school, but Mia’s anxiety is more severe, since she tells Vada that she’s afraid to leave her bedroom. Because of Vada’s visits, Mia gets over that fear and the fear of leaving her house.

Mia’s gay fathers, who are successful artists, are away in Japan on business. Mia, who is an only child, keeps in touch with them by phone, but they are never shown in the house with Mia. It’s implied that they leave Mia alone a lot, which is why she’s more independent than most of her teenage peers. But it’s also made her lonely, and it explains why she quickly bonds with Vada. After the school shooting, Mia’s parents grant Mia’s request to not go back to the school and to be homeschooled instead.

Vada is intrigued by Mia because before they became friends, she had a perception of Mia of being somewhat of a “badass,” based on Mia’s dance videos that Vada watches on the Internet. The first time that Mia and Vada hang out together, Vada remarks that in real life, Mia is very different than what Vada expected: “In the videos, you come off as so hard.” Vada is pleasantly surprised at how nice and down-to-earth Mia is when interacting with her. When Vada expresses anxiety about going to the funeral of Quinton’s brother, Mia offers to go to the funeral with Vada.

Because of what they went through together during the school shooting, Mia and Vada feel like they can openly talk to each other about it. During one such conversation, it’s revealed that while Vada’s way of dealing with the trauma is excessive sleeping, Mia’s anxiety has resulted in insomnia. Vada asks Mia, “Did you have the craziest nightmares last night?” Mia replies, “You have to be able to sleep to have nightmares.”

Mia is seemingly more confident than Vada, but Mia has her insecurities too. Mia guzzles wine and liquor and she smokes marijuana to block out whatever emotional pain she’s experiencing. Vada gets caught up in drinking alcohol and smoking weed with Mia.

And there’s a memorable scene in the movie where Vada impulsively tries Ecstasy for the first time when she’s at school. While flying high on Ecstasy, she gets blue ink from a pen all over her face, and she has trouble navigating her way down a flight of stairs. It’s one of the few scenes in “The Fallout” that’s intended to be funny. “The Fallout” infuses this slapstick comedy into the story as a way to show that life after a school shooting isn’t all gloom and doom for the survivors.

However, the movie also authentically shows in a non-judgmental way that drug use is often a coping mechanism for trauma survivors. Not much is shown or discussed about what Mia’s drug/alcohol use was like before the school shooting. But there are definite references to Vada being a good student before the shooting. Her “good girl” image begins to tarnish after the shooting took place when her grades start to slip, and she shows signs of minor delinquency.

Despite her occasional acts of teenage rebellion, there are signs that Vada identifies more with nerd culture. Vada mentions in a therapy session with Anna is that she has a celebrity crush on actor Paul Dano, who usually plays soft-spoken, geeky characters. And in a conversation between Vada and Mia, they ask each other if they prefer Drake as a sex-symbol rapper or when he portrayed a basketball-star-turned-misfit-paraplegic teen in the TV series “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” Mia and Vada both agree they prefer the wheelchair “Degrassi” version of Drake.

Vada’s parents try to do the best that they can to help her cope with the shooting tragedy, but Vada tends to avoid them. Vada’s relationship with her mother Patricia has more tension (Vada describes Patricia as “uptight”) than the relationship that Vada has with her father Carlos. There are also hints that some of this tension is because Vada thinks that Patricia prefers Amelia over Vada.

There’s a scene in the movie that exemplifies this tension. Vada sees Patricia and Amelia joking around together in the kitchen. Amelia and Patricia don’t see Vada though. Vada looks sad and a little jealous as she observes them and then walks away.

And in an earlier scene, Patricia tells Vada: “All I want is what’s best for you. I want to see that sparkle back.” Vada looks insulted by that comment, and then tells Patricia, as a way to hurt her mother emotionally: “You know that Amelia got her period?” Patricia looks surprised and says, “When?” Vada than smugly replies, “Like forever ago. I guess she just didn’t want you to know.”

But Vada is keeping secrets too. She doesn’t tell her family about her friendship with Mia. And as Vada spends more time with Mia, they become closer in a way that indicates that their relationship will become more than a friendship. Vada also expresses a sexual attraction to Quinton. (This isn’t spoiler information because it’s in the movie’s trailer.)

Vada doesn’t define her sexuality in this movie, but at one point in the story, she describes herself as a socially awkward virgin, and she expresses some disdain at the thought of herself having a husband in the future. It’s interesting that the two people who are her possible love interests are also the ones who were hiding with her in the restroom during the school shooting. The movie leaves it open to interpretation if Vada showing a romantic attraction to them after the shooting was a direct result of this shared trauma or if she was already attracted to them anyway.

Meanwhile, Kevin and Vada start to become distant from each other. He’s aware that Vada is spending more time with Mia. But he’s become an anti-gun-violence activist (there are scenes of Kevin doing things that will remind people of the real-life David Hogg), while Vada avoids going to the activist rallies that Kevin now enthusiastically attends. Vada admits to Mia that she feels a little guilty over not doing more to speak out against gun violence. But the movie shows that, just like in real life, not every survivor of a gun shooting is going to become an activist.

Before Vada’s life was turned upside down, she was closest to Kevin, her sister Amelia, her father Carlos and her mother Patricia. After the shooting, the movie shows an emotionally resonant moment that Vada has with each of them, as she comes to terms with how she’s changed since the tragedy and how her relationship with each of them has changed. When Vada has a heart-to-heart talk with her father, she says something that rings true to anyone who’s survived a mass shooting: “I had no idea one guy with a gun could fuck up my life so hard in six minutes.”

What will stick with people who watch “The Fallout” is how the main characters in the story seem like they could be based on real people, thanks to writer/director Park’s terrific handling of this story and the superb acting by the cast members. It’s not an easy thing to do a coming-of-age drama about people affected by a school massacre. And the last five minutes of “The Fallout” is a harrowing example about how “getting back to normal” is something that’s hard to define and even harder to experience.

UPDATE: HBO Max will premiere “The Fallout” on January 27, 2022. Warner Bros. Pictures will release “The Fallout” in cinemas in countries where HBO Max is not available.

Review: ‘Boogie,’ starring Taylor Takahashi, Taylour Paige and Bashar ‘Pop Smoke’ Jackson

March 13, 2021

by Carla Hay

Taylor Takahashi and Bashar “Pop Smoke” Jackson  (shown in center) in “Boogie” (Photo by David Giesbrecht/Focus Features)

“Boogie”

Directed by Eddie Huang

Some language in Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2019 in New York City, the dramatic film “Boogie” features a racially diverse cast of characters (Asian, African American and white) representing the middle-class and working-class.

Culture Clash: A Chinese American teenager, who’s in his last year of high school, has conflicts with his parents about his dreams of becoming a professional player in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Culture Audience: “Boogie” will appeal primarily to people who want to see a different type of basketball coming-of-age story, but the movie could be a turnoff because it doesn’t live up to the story’s engaging potential.

Taylor Takahashi and Taylour Paige in “Boogie” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli/Focus Features)

The dramatic film “Boogie” takes a good concept (a Chinese American teenager with goals to play NBA basketball) and squanders it on uneven acting, subpar filmmaking and an obnoxious main character. The movie tries to look gritty and unique. But in the end, it becomes a predictable mush of banality. And unfortunately, “Boogie” panders to some very negative and racist stereotypes of immigrants and urban people of color in the United States.

Written and directed by Eddie Huang, “Boogie” (which takes place in New York City in 2019) has many flaws, but one of the biggest is in the movie’s erratic casting. For starters, almost all the main characters who are supposed to be teenagers in the movie look like they’re in they’re mid-20s or older. It’s distracting and lowers the credibility of this movie, because not once does it look believable that these actors are in the same age group as students in high school.

“Boogie” has a cast that’s mixed with experienced and inexperienced movie actors—and it shows. Taylor Takahashi and the late Bashar Jackson (also known as rapper Pop Smoke), who portray basketball rivals in the movie, make their feature-film debuts in “Boogie,” which is also Huang’s first feature film as a writer/director. Takahashi’s and Jackson’s acting skills are far inferior to those of “Boogie” co-stars Jorge Lendeborg Jr. and Taylour Paige, who also portray high-school students in the movie.

Lendeborg and Paige are way ahead in their acting talent, compared to Takhashi and Jackson. This discrepancy results in some awkward-looking moments in the movie where the more talented/experienced actors have to share scenes with those who are less talented/experienced. It doesn’t help that a lot of the dialogue is just plain awful.

Takahashi portrays the movie’s title character—Alfred “Boogie” Chin (whose Chinese first name is Xiao Ming)—as an entitled, arrogant “not as smart as he thinks he is” brat, who often shows disdain for women and willful ignorance of what it takes to be a respectful and respected human being. He is singularly focused on his goal of becoming a basketball player for the NBA. And he doesn’t seem to care much about learning about life beyond basketball, dating, and getting the perks of possibly becoming rich and famous.

It’s no secret that Asians are rare in the NBA, so the filmmakers of “Boogie” used that hook to make it look like the movie is an “against all odds” story. But one of the lousiest things about this movie is that it’s not even convincing in showing any dazzling basketball skills that Boogie supposedly has. There are too many cutaway shots with obvious body doubles. And so, viewers are left wondering what’s so special about Boogie. He’s definitely not the extraordinary basketball player that the filmmakers want people to think he is.

Most of the movie consists of Boogie getting into conflicts with his family. His parents are Chinese immigrants who’ve settled in the New York City neighborhood of Flushing, Queens. It’s shown in the beginning of the movie that in 2001, when his mother was pregnant with Boogie (who is an only child), Boogie’s parents went to see a fortune teller to get advice about their crumbling marriage and to find out the baby’s gender. The fortune teller said that she didn’t know the gender of the child, but she advised these two spouses that if they stay together, “Love will melt the sharpest sword.”

Boogie’s parents did stay together, but they don’t have a very happy marriage. They also have very different approaches to parenting and how Boogie should reach his NBA goals. Boogie has major issues with his mother, which explains why Boogie has misogynistic tendencies. The movie doesn’t even bother to give Boogie’s mother a first name.

Boogie’s father Lawrence Chin (played by Perry Yung) is fairly lenient with Boogie, except when it comes to basketball. Mr. Chin is an ex-con who is obsessed with the idea that the best way for Boogie to get to the NBA is by defeating a local teen named Monk (played by Jackson), who is a star basketball player at a rival high school in Brooklyn. Mr. Chin believes that basketball talent scouts will flock to Boogie if Boogie triumphs over Monk. It sounds very illogical (because it is), but Mr. Chin is fixated on Monk as the biggest obstacle to Boogie’s basketball dreams.

Boogie’s mother Mrs. Chin (played by Pamelyn Chee), who is a homemaker, thinks that Boogie’s best way to the NBA is through a college basketball scholarship, preferably at a Big 10 university. She’s the family’s disciplinarian and planner. But apparently, she’s terrible at finances because Boogie’s parents are heavily in debt, to the point where they’re past due on their utility bills. Even though Boogie’s parents can’t afford to pay for any college tuition, Boogie and his parents don’t want to apply for financial aid. They want a full scholarship for Boogie, or else he doesn’t want to go to any college.

Mr. Chin has spent time in prison for operating an illegal gambling business of sports betting. He’s still making money this way, but he and his brother Jackie (played by “Boogie” writer/director Huang) have been laundering their gambling money by operating a small business as town car drivers. It’s too bad that this movie uses the very tired cliché that a working-class family of color in a big American city has a patriarch who’s a criminal and/or an absentee father. Because Boogie’s father spent time in prison, he’s trying to make up for that lost time with Boogie.

Mr. Chin tells Jackie about their illegal gambling business, “Keep taking bets through the end of the current football season. Then I want to wash my hands of it. We’re in the basketball business now.” And by that, he means that he expects Boogie to make it to the big leagues of the NBA, so that Boogie can become rich and pass on some of the wealth to his parents.

Early on in the movie, Mr. Chin reminds Boogie that Boogie’s parents transferred him to City Prep, Boogie’s current high school, so that Boogie could have a better chance of being discovered by basketball scouts. Boogie is in his last year of high school, so the pressure is on for him to get an opportunity that will eventually take him to the NBA.

At school, it’s unclear what type of grades that Boogie is getting, but it’s clear he’s not getting into any university on an academic scholarship. In his Advanced Placement English class (the only class that he’s seen attending in this movie), Boogie mouths off at the teacher Mr. Richmond (played by Steve Coulter) in a “know it all” way that’s not endearing. It just makes Boogie look like a pompous idiot.

There are plenty of ways that Boogie shows his crude and offensive side outside the classroom. This is what he has to say about real-life NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin: “Jeremy Lin can suck my dick. He’s more model minority Jesus freak than Asian.”

One of the students in the English class is named Eleanor (played by Paige), who is Boogie’s obvious crush. Boogie’s best friend Richie (played by Lendeborg) is in the same class and is on the school basketball team with Boogie. One day after class, Boogie and Richie are at a school gym and ogling Eleanor and her friend Elissa (played by Alexa Mareka), as they do some weightlifting.

Here’s the way that Boogie tries to make a move on Eleanor: Boogie says to her, “Nice pants.” Eleanor replies, “You’ve got a staring problem.” Boogie replies, “You’ve got a nice vagina.” Eleanor angrily says, “Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit! You better respect my mind!” As Eleanor and Elissa walk away, Boogie smirks to Richie, “She wants it.”

Any self-respecting person would be put off by Boogie’s rude sexism. But one of the many things that’s so annoying about this movie is it brushes off and excuses Boogie’s blatant hostility toward women and makes Eleanor fall for him. A dumb movie like this with a jerk as the main character usually likes to show how he can get a love interest who will roll over and be submissive, no how matter how this jerk insults her.

It’s hard to take Eleanor seriously when she acts like an attention-starved girl who’s willing to overlook Boogie’s disrespectful and selfish attitude, just because she wants a boyfriend. Sure, the movie does the very predictable back-and-forth banter between Boogie and Eleanor, in a very weak attempt to make it look like she’s playing hard to get. But in the end, based on the way that Eleanor is written in this movie, she does exactly what Boogie predicts and expects. Any “romance” in this movie looks very fake.

The movie tries to make it look like Boogie is just trying to have the same mindset of a “thug” rapper, since he and so many of his peers admire rappers. But his disrespectful attitude toward women just makes him look pathetic and ignorant. “Boogie” predictably has a hip-hop soundtrack featuring multiple Pop Smoke songs, such as “AP,” “Fashion” and “Welcome to the Party.” (The movie’s end credits have a dedication to Pop Smoke, who was tragically murdered during a home invasion in 2020.) Pop Smoke does not rap in the movie.

Boogie’s horrible personality isn’t shown in just one isolated incident. When Monk deliberately assaults another player on a street basketball court (the other player’s ankle is broken during the attack), Eleanor expresses her disgust with this bullying, but Boogie tells her that Monk did what he had to do to win. Boogie is so arrogant that he calls his other team members “hot trash” to the team leader Coach Hawkins (played by Domenick Lombardozzi), because Boogie thinks the team would be nowhere without him. And later in the movie, Boogie shows how ill-tempered he is during a crucial basketball game at school, and this temper tantrum costs him dearly.

How do we know that Boogie is a legend in his own mind? He’s not getting any scholarship offers. And the feedback from college basketball scouts, including one named Patrick (played by Lenard McKelvey, also known as real-life radio personality Charlamagne Tha God) is that they might want to recruit Boogie, but not on a scholarship. After witnessing Boogie’s on-court tantrum, another college basketball scout questions Boogie’s mental stability. Coach Hawkins also has reservations about Boogie’s temperament and reliability.

If this movie is supposed to be about Asian cultural pride, it has an odd way of showing it, because it makes most of the Asian characters look like self-hating caricatures. There’s a Chinese insult scene of Boogie and Richie going to Manhattan’s Chinatown and Boogie complaining that he almost forgot how much Chinatown smells bad.

Boogie then sneers, “How is Chinatown next to SoHo? These gremlin keepers ain’t learned how to boutique their shit.” (It’s a reference to the 1984 horror movie “Gremlins” about gremlin creatures that are sold in Chinatown.) Imagine if a white person said this very racist and degrading comment. Just because an Asian person says it doesn’t make it okay.

Boogie is an immature twit who doesn’t have much to offer to the world except basketball skills that definitely are not ready for the NBA. His mother is written as a domineering and lazy shrew, while his father is a morally dubious hustler. The only Asian character in the movie who seems to show common sense is someone named Melvin (played by Mike Moh), an acquaintance of Boogie’s mother whom she asks to become Boogie’s manager.

And here’s an example of the movie’s terrible dialogue. Boogie whines to Eleanor about his ethnicity, with no self-awareness that he perpetuates negative stereotypes: “Chinese people would be so much better if this country didn’t reduce us to beef and broccoli.” Eleanor replies, “You could be so much more too.” Boogie then says, “It’s so hard. I feel like a piece of beef surrounded by sprouted greens and MSG.”

So with all of the family drama, ethnic drama and dating drama that are badly written and sometimes poorly acted in “Boogie,” that leaves the basketball scenes to possibly salvage this dreadful movie. But “Boogie” fails to deliver as a thrilling sports movie too. There’s a big showdown at the end that checks all the boxes of predictable and unimaginative clichés of a basketball game filmed for a movie.

There’s also some phony sentimentality thrown into the story, which contradicts the crass and raw tone that the movie was trying to push on the audience for most of the film. “Boogie” looks like it wanted to be a vulgar and tough portrayal of urban life, as well as a sweet family film. You can’t really have it both ways, or else you end up with a movie like “Boogie,” which is a jumbled, fake-looking and shoddily filmed mess.

Focus Features released “Boogie” in U.S. cinemas on March 5, 2021. The movie’s VOD release date is March 26, 2021.

Review: ‘Trust’ (2021), starring Victoria Justice, Matthew Daddario, Katherine McNamara and Lucien Laviscount

March 12, 2021

by Carla Hay

Victoria Justice and Matthew Daddario in “Trust” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Trust” (2021)

Directed by Brian DeCubellis

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City and briefly in Paris, the dramatic film “Trust” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians, Latinos and black people) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: An art gallery owner and her TV journalist husband are both suspicious of and tempted by possibilities that they could cheat on each other.

Culture Audience: “Trust” will appeal primarily to people who like formulaic stories about marital problems that have all the characteristics of a mediocre made-for-TV movie.

Lucien Laviscount in “Trust” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

People who watch the dramatic film “Trust” might be wondering why this conventional and trite movie wasn’t made for the Lifetime network. The only difference between “Trust” and a Lifetime movie is that “Trust” has some curse words that can’t be in a Lifetime movie. The entire story is as predictable as you might expect. The plot twist in the movie isn’t too surprising.

The entire plot of “Trust” (directed by Brian DeCubellis) revolves around a topic that’s a familiar staple of Lifetime movies: A woman begins to wonder if her husband or boyfriend is keeping secrets from her. In the case of “Trust,” the doubts are about marital fidelity. The entire film would have been more entertaining if there weren’t such long stretches of dullness and if the movie had a more talented cast of actors.

In “Trust,” the New York City married couple at the center of the drama are Brooke Gatwick (played by Victoria Justice) and Owen Shore (played by Matthew Daddario), who are going through a big transition in their lives. Brooke has quit her job at auction house Sotheby’s to open her own self-titled art gallery. It’s a major gamble because Brooke and Owen have poured their entire life savings into the gallery.

Owen is a TV news anchor at a local station, but he’s become bored by all the “soft” news stories (such as dog weddings) that he’s been given to report. He completely supports Brooke’s career ambitions. But Brooke is insecure about Owen’s job situation because he’s surrounded by attractive young women who work with him as producers or other employees. It isn’t made clear how long Brooke and Owen (who are in their late 20s or early 30s) have been married, but they have been a couple since they were in high school.

The opening scene of “Trust” is a sex scene where viewers don’t see the faces of who’s having sex, but it’s clear that it’s a man and a woman. It’s a foreshadowing of what happens later in the movie, when it’s revealed who these sex partners are. While they’re going at it, someone’s phone is on a nearby table. Someone else is sending text messages that are going unanswered on that phone.

The next scene shows Brooke coming home from a business trip that she took in Paris. She looks exhausted. Owen and Brooke hug and tell each other, “I missed you.” It’s revealed later in the movie that Brooke was in Paris to sell some art by an up-and-coming Irish painter named Ansgar Doyle (played by Lucien Laviscount), whom Brooke has paid to relocate to New York City. Brooke is also acting as Ansgar’s official agent.

Laviscount, who is British in real life, tries very hard to be sexy in this role, but his terrible Irish accent is very distracting and almost laughable. Most of the time, he sounds British, and a few times he sounds as if he’s bungling an Italian accent. Based on what happens in this movie, the character of Ansgar didn’t have to be Irish.

It shows bad decision making from the “Trust” filmmakers that they didn’t just let Laviscount keep his natural British accent. No one watching this movie will care what nationality Ansgar is, but they will care if the acting is good or not. It’s not.

Ansgar, whose specialty is sexually themed art, is the first artist whose work is showcased in Brooke’s gallery when it opens. He was a Dublin street artist who was starting to make a name for himself in Europe, but Brooke “discovered” him online and decided that she’s going to make him a star in the United States. Ansgar is arrogant and an obvious playboy.

You know where this is going. And if isn’t obvious enough that Ansgar is going to try and seduce Brooke, his first exhibit at her gallery is titled “Sexual Truth and the Myth of Fidelity.” It’s a series of painted portraits of women who are completely naked.

The first time that viewers see Ansgar, he’s at Brooke’s gallery for a photo shoot and an interview for an unnamed publication. He’s being interviewed by a journalist named Diana (played by Nathalie Carvalho), as he lounges on a chair with his legs spread in a suggestive manner. During the interview, Ansgar brags that he’s slept with all of the models whose nude portraits he’s painted.

Diana asks him, “Is that moral?” Ansgar smirks as he replies, “Why? Are you a model?” When Diana asks him if his art is just all about sex, Ansgar responds, “I only paint those women that are particularly special to me. It’s intimate, sexual, yes. But it’s more than that. It’s the exact moment of ultimate connection that’s captured forever in the painting.”

Watching this interview nearby are Brooke and Owen. As soon as Ansgar starts talking about sleeping with his models, Brooke get uncomfortable. She steps in and cuts the interview short and tells Diana, “No personal questions.”

Diana takes Brooke aside and gives her opinion of Ansgar and his art, “Look, Brooke, he’s brilliant. But as your friend, I’m calling it. The other critics will tear this apart.”

Brooke replies with a certain amount of pretension: “Picasso, Klimt, Lucian Freud—they were all called pornographers. Look, I know what I believe in. And if the critics don’t understand this, then they’re wrong!”

Meanwhile, Ansgar stands next to Owen as they watch Brooke. Ansgar tells Owen that Brooke is hot. Ansgar then adds with his usual smirk, “When women get absorbed in me, you can’t talk to them.” Owen has an expression on his face as if to say, “I can’t believe this clown just said that out loud, but whatever.”

After leaving the gallery, Brooke and Owen have dinner at a Chinatown restaurant with another married couple, who are their closest friends. Adam (played by Ronny Chieng) and Eleanor (played by Lindsey Broad) are both divorce attorneys who are cynical about marriage except their own. For example, Adam and Eleanor tell Brooke and Owen that almost all marriages experience infidelity at one point or another.

The dinner is to celebrate the opening of Brooke’s gallery, and the two couples raise their glasses to toast Brooke. However, Owen chimes in that he deserves a toast too because he thinks Brooke’s gallery will be such a success that Owen half-jokingly says that he will get to “retire early and fulfill my life’s purpose to be a trophy husband.”

The conversation gets a little bit uncomfortable when Eleanor comments that Ansgar is a “hunk” and asks if Owen is okay with Brooke working so closely with him. Adam and Eleanor then rudely talk about how they’ve learned as divorce attorneys that “everyone cheats” in marriages. It’s a buzzkill turn of the conversation for Brooke and Owen.

Do Brooke and Owen have a perfect marriage? Of course not, because there would be no “Trust” movie if they did. Brooke sometimes checks Owen’s phone or iPad when he’s not looking. She questions him if she sees a woman’s name whom Brooke doesn’t recognize. For example, when Owen gets a text from a woman named Susan, Brooke asks Owen who it is, and he says it’s a new co-worker.

But something happens that deepens a crack in Owen and Brooke’s marriage. It’s close to the Christmas holidays, and Owen surprises Brooke with plane tickets for both of them to spend Christmas in Paris. However, Brooke declines the offer when she says that she’ll be too busy with her art gallery work.

And this raises Owen’s eyebrows: Brooke says she also doesn’t want to go to Paris because she doesn’t want to be too far away from Ansgard, who’s never lived in the U.S. before. “He needs me!” Brooke tells Owen, who tries not to get jealous and angry at this remark. Owen expresses disappointment in Brooke’s decision, but ultimately he says that he understands.

Not long after Brooke tells Owen that she doesn’t want to go to Paris, she gets some news that changes her mind. Ansgar tells her that a famous movie director named Damien Light wants to buy some of Ansgar’s art. Damien is filming a movie in Paris, and Ansgar says the best way to seal this art deal is to go to Paris for a meeting that’s set to take place in two days.

At first, Brooke says that she can’t go because she’s too busy and can’t afford the trip. Ansgar says that he’s going with or without her. Brooke then has a conversation with Eleanor, who tells Brooke that she would be crazy not to go to Paris for this trip. And so, Brooke relents and agrees to go to Paris with Ansgar.

Brooke goes to the TV station where Owen works. And when he’s on a break, she brings him coffee and tells him the news that she’s going on a weekend trip to Paris with Ansgar. When Owen hears about it, he’s understandably upset, even though Brooke swears the trip is strictly business.

As “revenge,” Owen announces to the staffers nearby that he’s now available to take a work trip to Las Vegas that same weekend to cover a Christmas event hosted by The New Yorker. A young and attractive female producer cheers and says she and the other women want to sit near Owen on the plane. And now, it’s Brooke’s turn to feel jealous.

Ansgar is an egotistical jerk, but in a movie like this, he’s supposed to be a “bad boy” some women can’t resist. There are hints that Brooke is attracted to and/or intrigued by Ansgar. For example, she doesn’t immediately pull away when he stands too close to her, or when he puts his hands on her legs or on her back, very close to her rear end. Before Brooke leaves for her Paris trip, Owen notices that she’s packed a very slinky red dress. Brooke tells Owen that he has to be understanding.

Owen and Adam have drinks together at a bar during the first night that Brooke is away in Paris. While they’re minding their own business, a pretty blonde in her 20s approaches Owen and says she recognizes him from TV. She introduces herself as Amy (played by Katherine McNamara), and she says she’s a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Amy mentions that she’s an aspiring TV news journalist and that she admires Owen, even if she doesn’t agree with some of his journalistic opinions. She acts very star-struck and asks Owen for his autograph and if she can take a photo with him. He’s surprised and flattered, so he willingly obliges.

It soon becomes clear from Amy’s flirtations that she wants more than career advice from Owen, who tells her that he’s married. Amy doesn’t seem to care that Owen has a wife. Meanwhile, Adam nervously drops hints that he doesn’t want to stick around for any infidelity shenanigans. He makes an excuse to leave and asks Owen if he wants to leave with him. How Owen handles this situation is the catalyst for the rest of the drama in the story.

“Trust” over-uses a technique of repeating a scene as a flashback or as a flashforward to show how the scene takes on a different meaning once certain secrets are revealed. The movie is based on Kristen Lazarian’s play “Push,” and this flashback/flashforward technique works better in a movie than it would in a play. However, all of this time-jumping in “Trust” (whose screenplay was written by Lazarian, DeCubellis and K.S. Bruce) comes across as clunky storytelling.

There are some plot developments in “Trust” that are unnecessary and not very well-constructed. For example (and it isn’t spoiler information to say this), Owen’s business trip to Las Vegas is never seen or mentioned again, even though it was set up to look like it would be a possible opportunity for him to cheat on Brooke. It doesn’t make sense to have an entire scene of Owen deciding to take this trip when it’s a plot development that’s then ignored.

There are plot holes galore. For example, one of the suspicious spouses goes to the trouble of tracking a rideshare that the other spouse took late one night. It’s later revealed in the movie what that spouse was doing sneaking out so late at night. But the way the truth is revealed is so common-sense basic that the snooping spouse should have found out the truth sooner.

As for the acting, Justice has a few good scenes as the conflicted Brooke, but Justice and Daddario have a “Ken and Barbie doll” type of chemistry that comes across as too plastic. Some of their acting together is monotonous, with awkward pauses. The Adam and Eleanor characters are very smug and grating (especially when they seem to take pleasure in other people’s marriages going bad), but Broad shows more talent in her acting than Chieng does.

Laviscount is woefully miscast for the reasons stated above, and he is in serious need of more acting lessons. His Ansgard character tries too hard to be sexy, which actually makes him very unsexy. It doesn’t help that Ansgard’s costume design includes Ansgard wearing a fur coat and gold chain, as if he’s trying to look like some kind of pimp. And unfortunately, McNamara (who co-starred with Daddario in the Freeform fantasy drama series “Shadowhunters”) is cast as a stereotypical blonde seductress in “Trust,” so she doesn’t have much depth to work with for her Amy character.

The last 20 minutes of “Trust” are a rush job that sloppily crams certain things into the plot to quickly resolve the conflicts in the story. Up until a certain point in the movie, viewers are kept guessing over whether or not Brooke cheated, Owen cheated, or both of them cheated. But by the end of the movie, the only people who should feel cheated are those who wasted their time watching this tedious and unoriginal film.

Vertical Entertainment released “Trust” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on March 12, 2021.

Review: ‘Long Weekend’ (2021), starring Finn Wittrock and Zoë Chao

March 12, 2021

by Carla Hay

Finn Wittrock and Zoë Chao in “Long Weekend” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)

“Long Weekend”

Directed by Steve Basilone

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the romantic drama “Long Weekend” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Asian and a few African Americans) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A depressed man meets a mysterious and fun-loving woman, but their budding romance is threatened by secrets.

Culture Audience: “Long Weekend” will appeal primarily to people who like fantastical elements to romantic stories and are willing to tolerate a movie that can be cliché-ridden and doesn’t live up to its ambitious potential.

Damon Wayans Jr. and Casey Wilson in “Long Weekend” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)

The romantic drama “Long Weekend” makes a fairly well-intentioned attempt to be a deep, philosophical movie about the meaning of life, but the results are a shallow and very stereotypical movie about two people who meet and quickly fall in love. Even with a talented and appealing cast, “Long Weekend” is filled with too many plot holes and cloying moments to be anything but a lightweight and forgettable movie. There’s a sci-fi element of the film that’s also badly mishandled.

“Long Weekend” writer/director Steve Basilone says in the movie’s production notes that the film is loosely inspired by events he experienced in real life, when he went through a divorce and his mother had cancer around the same time. It’s too bad that so much of the movie feels very contrived, from the flimsy plot twists to the too-cutesy dialogue between people in their 30s. There’s nothing wrong with bringing some science fiction into a romantic drama, as long as the characters are believable and the sci-fi works well for the plot overall. (The 2004 classic “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is one example of a sci-fi romantic drama that was done right.)

The beginning of “Long Weekend” starts out by showing how a Los Angeles writer named Bart Waters (played by Finn Wittrock) is experiencing a major slump in his life. A series of voicemail messages from a psychiatric facility are heard in voiceovers in the opening scenes. The messages indicate that Ben recently spent some time as a patient in the facility, but he’s been avoiding making a follow-up appointment so his doctor can evaluate his out-patient progress.

It’s revealed a little later in the movie that Bart is recovering from some kind of nervous breakdown. His beloved mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he had problems coping with this crisis. His emotional distress caused his fiancée Whit (played by Jess Jacobs) to leave him. And that’s when Bart really had a meltdown, which led to his stay in the psychiatric facility. Fortunately, the movie doesn’t show any of this trauma in flashbacks, because it would ruin the optimistic tone that this film is trying to convey.

Sometime during this psychiatric breakdown, Bart lost his job and could no longer afford his apartment rent. And so, in the beginning of the film, he’s shown already packed up and ready to move, as the apartment building’s no-nonsense manager Patricia (played by Wendi McLendon-Covey) tells Bart that she’s about to show his apartment to a prospective tenant. The role of Patricia is very small, underwritten and actually unnecessary. It’s a waste of McLendon-Covey’s talent.

It’s unclear how long Bart was in the psychiatric facility, but his mother is now dead, and Bart apparently has no other family to turn to in this personal crisis. And so, Bart ends up moving into the garage of his best friend Doug (played by Damon Wayans Jr.), who was the person who recommended that Bart get psychiatric help. Doug lives with his wife Rachel (played by Casey Wilson) and their two kids. Doug and Rachel have a toddler daughter named Eve (played by Ellison Randell) and an energetic son named Teddy (played by Carter Morgan), who’s about 5 or 6 years old and likes to dress up as imaginary superheroes.

When Bart arrives at the house to move in, Doug generously tells Bart, “You can stay here forever.” Bart insists that his stay will be temporary, because he has a potential job lined up, and he plans to get his own place as soon as he can afford it. Bart gets the job, but it’s not his ideal gig.

Before his meltdown, Bart was a screenwriter. The first job that he gets after checking out of the psychiatric facility is writing for a medical supply catalogue. The interview is a blandly written scene showing the office manager named Larry (played by Jim Rash) reading a sample of a screenplay that Bart wrote about a man who has a nervous breakdown after his fiancée left him.

Larry remarks that although the screenplay is impressively realistic, catalogue writing is very different because it’s a form of advertising/marketing. Larry asks Bart if he’s up for this type of work, since catalogue writing isn’t as creatively exciting as writing a screenplay. Bart assures Larry that he wants the job. And then, Larry shows Bart a catheter and tells Bart that the job includes describing how to use a catheter. If this movie were a sitcom, that’s about the moment the fake-sounding laugh track would play.

One day, Bart decides to go by himself to a local arthouse movie theater that’s playing his favorite film: the 1979 satire “Being There,” starring Peter Sellers. Bart falls asleep during the movie. And when the movie ends, he is woken up by a woman named Vienna (played by Zoë Chao), another customer who was in the room. As he leaves the theater, Vienna runs after him because Bart left behind his denim jacket and a half-empty bottle of liquor. She returns these items to him. He thanks her, and they begin talking.

Now that Bart and Vienna have had this “meet cute” moment, it’s only a matter of time before they go through all the clichés that so many other romantic dramas like this tend to have when two young and attractive people inevitably get together. Someone in the would-be couple is socially awkward and introverted, while the other is bold and extroverted. These opposites attract and fall for each other, but then someone is reluctant to make a commitment. In this case, it’s because there’s a “big secret” that could ruin the relationship.

Immediately after returning Bart’s jacket and liquor bottle to him, Vienna tells him that she’s visiting Los Angeles. She asks Bart where she can get some of the liquor he has, because Vienna tells Bart that he looks like he could be fun. Judging by the way she’s smiling and flirting with him, it’s obvious she’s giving him a chance to ask her out on a date.

But gloomy Bart is too oblivious to these signals and tells Vienna about two nearby bars. She then says enthusiastically, “Let’s go!” And that’s when it dawns on Bart that Vienna is attracted to him. She laughs at all of his cheesy jokes and celebrity impersonations too. (Bart does lukewarm imitations of Al Pacino and Jimmy Stewart.)

The corny situations continue when they walk through a park and see some kids running past them with some sparklers. Vienna is fascinated by this sight, as if she’s never seen sparklers before. Bart is a little surprised that Vienna is acting as if sparklers are incredible inventions, and he starts to wonder if Vienna has led a very sheltered life.

During their walk through the park, he buys two sparklers from the kids and gives the sparklers to Vienna. And then, Bart and Vienna run around the park with the sparklers. How old are these people again? Twelve?

Vienna and Bart then go bar-hopping and discuss their favorite pop culture and guilty pleasures. Bart confesses that he’s watched “Being There” about 100 times since he first saw it a few years ago. However, Bart can’t really explain why he loves the movie so much, other than that seeing it makes him feel better about his life. Vienna does a terrible impersonation of Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver,” for no other reason than to show Bart that she can do celebrity impersonations too.

Bart then tells Vienna about his mother dying of cancer the year before and how he’s still grieving. He also tells Vienna about the painful breakup with his ex-fiancée and how it’s left him in a dark emotional place. Vienna shows some sympathy, as an indication that she and Bart are starting to have an emotional connection other than doing bad mimicry of celebrities in movie scenes.

“Long Weekend” has a very self-aware moment when Bart, who’s starting to think that Vienna is too good to be true, asks her: “Are you for real? Are you one of those Manic Pixie Dream Girls?” Well, yes, in fact she is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a well-known movie stereotype of a quirky, upbeat female character who comes along to cheer up the male protagonist while he’s going through a tough time in his life. Just because “Long Weekend” brings up this Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype in a line of self-referencing dialogue, that doesn’t make the glib way that this stereotype is handled in the movie any better.

Bart notices that Vienna has some unusual quirks: She doesn’t own a cell phone, she says she left her ID at home, and she’s carrying around a huge wad of cash. Vienna explains to Bart that she has a lot of cash with her because her bank card isn’t working. Some more alcohol is consumed, Vienna and Bart play some pool, and they take pictures together in a photo booth. And when Bart walks Vienna back to the motel where she’s staying, he gives her his phone number, and they end up sleeping together.

What’s very contradictory about “Long Weekend” is that it wants people to believe that Vienna and Bart are a perfect match and it’s “love at first date.” But during their first date, Bart is very self-absorbed and doesn’t ask Vienna hardly anything about herself. It isn’t until the next day, when Bart happily tells Doug about Vienna, that Bart realizes that he doesn’t know basic things about Vienna.

Bart doesn’t know where she’s from, what she does for a living, and what she likes to do in her free time besides watching movies and drinking at bars. These are the kinds of things that two strangers should talk about on a first date if they’re interested in a romance beyond sexual attraction. It makes you wonder why this movie is trying so hard to convince viewers that this is supposed to be some grand love story when, by all indications, this was an impulsive hookup.

The day after Bart and Vienna first have sex, Bart describes Vienna to Doug as if Vienna isn’t just a one-night stand but could possibly be his next big love. Therefore, it’s odd that Bart doesn’t really ask her how long she’ll be in town after their first night together. If this relationship is supposed to blossom, Bart isn’t curious enough about Vienna to ask her how far away she lives. It’s an example of how there needed to be significant improvements to this movie’s screenplay.

Of course, Bart does see Vienna again. He goes back to the motel and asks her the questions that he should have asked before, including why she’s visiting Los Angeles. But she’s deliberately vague. In answer to Bart’s questions, Vienna says, “I work for this government agency. I work up north. I came to town to escape … work, everything, my mom.”

Vienna says that her mother has cancer, and the stress of taking care of her is what motivated Vienna to take this getaway trip. Just as Bart and Vienna start to form an emotional bond over their knowing what it’s like to have a mother with cancer, he freaks out when he sees that Vienna has thousands of dollars of cash in her purse. He demands to know if Vienna is hiding from the law or is up to something illegal. And that’s when Vienna tells Bart her big secret.

The rest of “Long Weekend” is a bit of a slog, as this secret affects the relationship between Bart and Vienna. There’s also a couple of more plot twists, with one more predictable than the other. Because Bart and Vienna got together so quickly after barely knowing each other, there are many parts of the movie that make the relationship look like it’s based more on lust than true love. For example, instead of dealing with the problems caused by Vienna’s secret, she just suggests to Bart that they have sex.

The movie is fairly problematic in how Bart and Doug constantly describe Vienna as a “girl.” They do not use the word “woman” to describe her. The couples in this movie are supposed to be in their mid-to-late 30s, but they act like Vienna is straight out of a sorority party and her purpose in life is to lift Bart out of his depression.

There’s very little thought in this story about Vienna’s problems (and she has quite a few), because it’s mostly about Bart’s wants and needs. Bart does an act of kindness to help Vienna with one of her problems. But then, the movie goes back to trying to make the audience believe that Bart’s wants and needs should matter more than Vienna’s, instead of them being equal partners.

And there’s a very strange scene of Doug and Rachel in their kitchen, shortly after they found out that Bart and Vienna hooked up. Bart is there too, when Rachel tells her kindergarten-age son Teddy, “Uncle Bart got laid!” And then Doug repeats it to Teddy, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world to blab about a family friend’s sex life to a child of that age. The scene is supposed to be funny, but the comedy falls flat.

Fans of the ABC comedy series “Happy Endings” (which was on the air from 2011 to 2013) might be delighted to see “Happy Endings” co-stars Wayans and Wilson on screen together again. But their Doug and Rachel characters in “Long Weekend” are underdeveloped and written as a sitcom couple in a movie that’s supposed to be a romantic drama. And almost all of Doug and Rachel’s conversations in the movie are either stale one-liners or talking to Bart about his love life.

As for Wittrock and Chao, they certainly make an attractive-looking couple, and there’s some chemistry between them, but not enough to make it convincing that Vienna and Bart have fallen madly and passionately in love with each other. Chao has a lot of on-screen charisma (and Vienna is supposed to be more exuberant than Bart), but there’s a level of immaturity that Vienna and Bart have that makes their romance look very “only in a movie” phony. Maybe if their characters were in their teens or 20s, it might be more believable. But Vienna and Bart both look like they’ve experienced too much of life to act so willfully naïve about love, dating and romance.

And since Bart and Vienna got together so quickly in the movie, there’s no “will they or won’t they” suspense. And that means the movie drags out in very uninteresting ways, as Bart and Vienna go on some very stereotypical dates in the limited time that they have together. These dates could have been opportunities to bring more depth to the characters of Bart and Vienna, but these dates are superficial and actually quite monotonous.

The dialogue throughout “Long Weekend” is very trite, and the story skips over a lot of details that would make certain plot developments believable. The direction of the movie is pedestrian at best. Vienna and Bart barely know each other before they jump into a love relationship. By the end of this hackneyed and derivative movie, viewers will feel like they barely know these characters too.

Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Stage 6 Films released “Long Weekend” in U.S. cinemas on March 12, 2021.

Review: ‘Crisis’ (2021), starring Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer and Evangeline Lilly

March 7, 2021

by Carla Hay

Greg Kinnear and Gary Oldman in “Crisis” (Photo courtesy of Quiver Distribution)

“Crisis” (2021)

Directed by Nicholas Jarecki

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Detroit and Montreal, the dramatic film “Crisis” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: The lives of three different Americans—a scientist, a Drug Enforcement Agency undercover officer and a recovering opioid addict—all collide when a new “non-addictive” opioid prescription drug called Klaralon is being rushed to market.

Culture Audience: “Crisis” will appeal primarily to people who like to watch formulaic dramas about the “war on drugs” that have some ridiculous plot developments.

Armie Hammer and Evangeline Lilly in “Crisis” (Philippe Bosse/Quiver Distribution)

It seems as if the dramatic thriller “Crisis” (written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki) was made to be a “cautionary tale” about how big pharmaceutical companies are just greedy, corporate drug dealers in the so-called “war on drugs.” However, the movie becomes so enamored with showing enmeshed storylines of the three main characters that it all just becomes a tangled mess that tries to tie up loose ends neatly in a very unrealistic way, in order to have a cliché movie ending. The acting performances are solid, but the movie’s writing and direction are bloated and messy.

The story goes back and forth between the perspectives of three Detroit people, who all end up being connected to each other in some way in the opioid crisis. It’s a crisis that has fueled demand for opioids, whether they’re sold as legal prescriptions or through the illegal drug trade. Much of the story revolves around a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sting to take down a cartel of Armenian gangsters in Montreal who traffic drugs to and from the U.S. and Canadian border. You can tell already that this movie is more convoluted than it needs to be.

Dr. Tyrone Brower (played by Gary Oldman) is a scientist (presumably in biochemistry, because the movie never says), who teaches at an unnamed university in the Detroit area. This university has had a long-term business relationship with a corporate pharmaceutical company called Northlight, which has hired the university to do research on drugs that Northlight wants approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Tyrone is in charge of these research studies, and he prides himself on having high ethical standards.

Tyrone’s latest research study for Northlight is for a painkiller called Klaralon, which is supposed to be the world’s first “non-addictive” painkiller. Of course, there are caveats to using Klaralon. It’s only “non-addictive” if taken in the correct doses. And there’s some cockamamie explanation later in the story that Klaralon won’t become addictive if patients stop taking Klaralon after 30 days.

It’s an example of a poorly thought-out screenplay, because it doesn’t factor in the reality that most patients who are prescribed painkillers need to take the drugs for longer than a month. And no legitimately greedy pharmaceutical company would want to market a drug with such short-term usage. The goal would be to keep people on these drugs as long as possible to make the maximum amount of money from selling these drugs. And there are plenty of plot holes and other illogical missteps in this movie, which ruin any credibility that “Crisis” might have intended to look like a gritty drama that’s supposed to be taken seriously.

The second person in this trio of main characters is Jake Kelly (played by Armie Hammer), a hardened DEA officer who’s undercover in the Canadian city of Montreal. He’s invested a lot of time in a DEA sting to bust an Armenian gang that has been cornering the market with illegal OxyContin sales and is trying to do the same for Fentanyl. The leader of this drug cartel is named (try not to laugh) Mother (played by Guy Nadon), and his right-hand goon is named Guy Broussard (played by Éric Bruneau). “Crisis” writer/director Jarecki portrays Stanley “Stan” Foster, who is Jake’s closest and most-trusted DEA colleague in the sting.

Jake has a personal reason for wanting to bust this drug-dealing cartel: His younger sister Emmie (played by Lily-Rose Depp) is a needle-using opioid addict. During the course of the story, Emmie starts off in rehab but then ends up leaving rehab early to go back to her junkie lifestyle. You can easily predict the scene in the movie where Emmie goes missing, Jake finds her strung-out in a drug house, and he forces her to leave while she has a temper tantrum.

And speaking of drug addicts, the third person whose perspective is shown in “Crisis” is that of single mother Claire Reimann (played by Evangeline Lilly), a recovering opioid addict who’s still struggling with staying clean and sober. Claire is shown in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, where she confesses to the attendees about her urge to use opioids and how it affects how she raises her 16-year-old son David (played by Billy Bryk).

Claire says, “I can’t even sit through a hockey game without even thinking about it. I would like to be a better person for him. And I’m working on that.” David’s father is not seen or mentioned in the movie, so it’s implied that he’s an absentee father who has no contact with Claire and David.

The university that Tyrone works for relies heavily on funding from Northlight to keep the school financially afloat. Therefore, Tyrone is under pressure to deliver lab results that will be pleasing to Northlight. However, there’s a problem with the trial studies for Klaralon. The mice that were tested in the experiments died after 10 days of being administered the drug. The trial period was extended to 30 days, and led to the same results. There’s also evidence that Klaralon is more addictive than Fentanyl.

Tyrone finds out this bad news at the worst time, because Northlight is soon going to present the university’s research on Klaralon to the FDA for approval to sell the drug. In good conscience, Tyrone refuses to lie and pretend that Klaralon is safe to sell to the general public. He meets with Northlight executives Dr. Bill Simons (played by Luke Evans) and Dr. Meg Holmes (played by Veronica Ferres), who are portrayed as soulless and money-hungry. Tyrone tells them that the drug is dangerous and not ready for FDA approval, and asks them for more time to do more lab tests.

Not surprisingly, the Northlight executives refuse and even come up with a ludicrous idea to sell Klaralon anyway. Despite all the signs that it’s a deadly drug, the Northlight executives justify this rush to market for Klaralon, by saying that the company won’t be responsible for any deaths if they include a warning that the drug cannot be taken for more than 30 days. Tyrone thinks it’s a terrible idea and isn’t afraid to say so.

After this meeting, Bill tries to entice Tyrone to sign a “modified” lab report with a “corporate donation” of $780,000. Of course, it’s really a bribe to sign a falsified report. Tyrone knows he’s being offered a bribe, but he doesn’t want to alienate Northlight, so he asks for a little more time to look over the agreement.

When Tyrone tells his boss Dean Talbot (played by Greg Kinnear) about this ethical problem, Tyrone is surprised and disappointed when the dean sides with Northlight. Dean Talbot essentially tells Tyrone that if he doesn’t sign off on the report and take the money, Northwell will cancel its contract with the university, and it will ruin the university financially.

Dean Talbot also says that just because some mice died in the lab experiments for Klaralon, that doesn’t mean that people will die from taking Klaralon too. Anyone with basic knowledge of science might be yelling at their screen at this dumb part of the movie. And the dean reminds Tyrone that the university isn’t responsible if people become addicted or die from the drugs that the university researches.

Dean Talbot also strongly hints that Tyrone will be fired if he doesn’t do what he’s told. Tyrone can’t afford to lose this job because his much-younger wife Susan (played by Mia Kirshner) is pregnant with their first child together. He’s also at an age (in his 60s) where it would be difficult to find work somewhere else. And Tyrone loves his job and doesn’t want to leave.

“Crisis” tries to do too much during its nearly two-hour running time. The story goes off the rails when tragedy strikes Claire and she turns into a vigilante. With the help of a private investigator, Claire finds out some information to try to solve a mystery. And then, she starts acting as if she’s a one-woman DEA crime-busting team. She goes back and forth between the U.S. and Canadian border. And a lot of nonsense ensues. It’s just all so ridiculously portrayed in the movie.

There are inevitable shootouts that are also badly handled in the movie. And for a powerful drug cartel led by a guy named Mother, they have a lot less people handling their business than they would in in real life. But that’s because this is a low-budget independent film, so apparently the filmmakers probably didn’t want to hire any more actors because they spent a great deal of their budget hiring an Oscar winner such as Oldman.

Oldman’s Tyrone character is supposed to be the “moral center” of the story. He’s the type of professor who tells his students: “Without us crazies, where would the world be?” As far as his big ethical dilemma about Klaralon, he might as well wear a sign that says, “Whistlebower.” Hammer and Lilly are serviceable in their roles, which don’t make much of an impression in this fairly generic movie.

Michelle Rodriguez has a small role as Jake’s DEA supervisor Mia Garrett, who doesn’t do much but scowl when she hears some of the updates that Jake gives her. Scott Mescudi, also known in real life as rapper Kid Cudi, has a much smaller role as Ben Walker, an investigator for the FDA. These two characters don’t have memorable personalities. Even the chief villain Mother is a banal stereotype of the type of elder “mob boss” that’s been seen in dozens of other crime-related dramas.

“Crisis” tries to be somewhat preachy about the far-reaching effects of the opioid crisis and the “war on drugs.” Claire is supposed to represent the “everyday person” who’s affected by this crisis. But by having her do some outlandish and very unrealistic things in this story, it actually makes her character and this movie less relatable to everyday viewers. Claire also crosses paths with Jake in some of the movie’s most preposterous scenes.

“Crisis” would have been a better movie if it focused only on Tyrone’s storyline and was a drama inspired by 1999’s “The Insider,” the Al Pacino/Russell Crowe movie about a whistleblower in the tobacco industry. “Crisis” could have been an intriguing story, because it’s rare for a dramatic movie to give an in-depth look at any corruption that goes on behind-the-scenes when drugs are being tested for FDA approval. Instead, “Crisis” overstuffs the plot with a run-of-the-mill “let’s take down a drug cartel” storyline that so many other movies have done before and done much better.

Quiver Distribution released “Crisis” in select U.S. cinemas on February 26, 2021, and on digital and VOD on March 5, 2021.

Review: ‘The Affair’ (2021), starring Carice van Houten, Hanna Alström, Claes Bang, Karel Roden and Roland Møller

March 5, 2021

by Carla Hay

Hanna Alström and Carice van Houten in “The Affair” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“The Affair”

Directed by Julius Sevcík 

Culture Representation: Taking place in Czechoslovakia and Germany from the 1930s to 1960s, the dramatic film “The Affair” features an all-white cast of characters representing the middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Two women (one wealthy, the other middle-class) in Czechoslovakia fall in love with each other and hide this secret from almost everyone they know (including their husbands), and their relationship is tested when one of the women moves to Germany.

Culture Audience: “The Affair” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in slow-moving European arthouse dramas where the cinematography and production design are better than the story.

Clockwise, from left to right: Hanna Alström, Carice van Houten, Claes Bang and Karel Roden in “The Affair” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

The dramatic film “The Affair” is truly a case of style over substance. The movie is gorgeous to look at, with stunning architecture and dreamy cinematography, but when it comes to the overall pacing and story structure, “The Affair” comes up very short. Directed by Julius Sevcík, “The Affair” is supposed to be about a longtime secret romance between two women, but there’s no convincing passion between any of the characters in this movie, whose story spans about 30 years.

“The Affair” is based on Simon Mawer’s 2009 novel “The Glass Room,” which was the original title of the movie. Mawer adapted the book into the movie’s screenplay, which is a dull and dreary slog that is further impeded by Sevcík’s haphazard direction. Many of the actors speak in awkward cadences, with too many uncomfortable pauses in the dialogue. There is very little chemistry between the actors, so that’s already a setback for a movie that’s supposed to be about love and romance.

“The Affair,” which takes place from the 1930s to 1960s, is set primarily in Brno, Czechoslovakia, but some of the story also takes place in Germany. In the beginning of the movie, it’s the 1930s, and wealthy newlyweds Liesel (played by Hanna Alström) and Viktor (played by Claes Bang) meet with famed architect Von Abt (played by Karel Roden) about commissioning him to build their dream home. The meeting takes place in Von’s own ornate and formal house.

Von asks the couple if they would like a house designed like his own home. Liesel politely but firmly says no. She says she wants her and Viktor’s house to have “simplicity, clarity, light.” And that’s what they get: It’s a modern minimalist house with many walls made of glass.

Liesel is the type of woman who is attractive to many people, but she is fairly modest and doesn’t like to call too much attention to herself. She could be considered a “trophy wife.” Von is one of the people who is attracted to her, but she has rebuffed his advances.

Von made a pass at Liesel one night, before he built Liesel and Viktor’s house. Von showed her his architecture sketches to a pregnant Liesel, who expressed her excited approval of the sketches. She then gave him a ride home in her car.

Before Von got out of the car, he leered at her and asked her if she would like go inside the house with him. He made it obvious that what he wanted was not an innocent chat with a cup of tea. Liesel turned him down nicely and he got the message that she was not interested in having an affair with him.

Liesel and Viktor (who is a businessman) have settled into their marriage and are anticipating the arrival of their first child. They live near another married couple named Hana (played by Carice van Houten) and Oskar (played by Martin Hoffmann), who are middle-class. While Liesel is introverted and likes to play it safe, Hana is more of an extrovert and is more likely to take chances.

Liesel and Hana have grown close, although the movie never really shows how this friendship has developed. By the time Hana is shown in the movie, she’s already expressing that she has romantic feelings for Liesel. Hana looks at Liesel lovingly. And when they’re alone together, Hana starts rubbing Liesel’s pregnant belly and starts to put one of her hands underneath Liesel’s clothes, but Liesel stops Hana before anything sexual can happen.

These types of encounters happen a few more times, where Hana makes the first move (such as trying to give Liesel a romantic kiss), but Liesel stops her. Liesel doesn’t express enough about what she’s feeling to say if what bothers her more is the thought of cheating on her husband or having a same-sex romance or if it’s equally both. Hana doesn’t press the issue, but Liesel makes it clear her feelings for Hana are more than friendship, because they kiss each other’s hands in a romantic way.

There are many ways to express repressed passion, but unfortunately Alström and von Houten are not convincing as two people who are longing to be lovers but can’t because of their circumstances. When Hana caresses Liesel’s pregnant belly, Hana looks more like she’s giving an obstetrician exam than someone who is in love. Liesel seems to be in love with her husband Viktor in the beginning of their marriage, but Alström and Bang aren’t able to portray much of a romantic spark between Liesel and Viktor.

Liesel gives birth to a girl named Otilie (played by Anouk Christiansen), and then two years later gives birth to a boy named Martin (played by Evan Cregan). Viktor and Liesel have a live-in nanny named Kata (played by Alexandra Borbély), who is a refugee single mother of a daughter named Marika (played by Tabitha Campbell). The movie doesn’t do a very good job of introducing these characters.

One minute, Liesel is a first-time mother. And then in a subsequent scene, three children are playing together with Kata in Liesel and Viktor’s spacious backyard. Viewers won’t know who the other two children are until it’s mentioned later in the story. The children are Martin at age 4, Otilie at age 6 and Marika at age 8.

Meanwhile, Hana and Oskar have been unable to have children together. Hana tells Liesel that she’s happy for Liesel to be able to have children. However, it’s fairly obvious that Hana is envious, but she doesn’t want to say it out loud. The movie is vague about the nature of Hana and Oskar’s relationship, since they aren’t shown together very much.

For example, in one scene, when Liesel was pregnant with Otilie, Hana is having dinner over at Liesel and Viktor’s house. Hana mentions to Liesel that Von has asked her out to dinner. Hana asks Liesel, “Do you mind?” The implication is that Liesel told Hana about Von making a pass at her.

Liesel says she doesn’t mind if Hana goes to dinner with Von. The implication is that Hana knows exactly what Von’s intentions are. And it’s not to talk about architecture. But in this scene, there’s no mention of why married Hana is going out on a potentially sexual date. Is she sneaking around on Oskar, or do they have an open relationship? It’s never explained.

One thing that’s clear though is that Hana spends more time with Liesel than she does with Oskar. From the outside, it looks like Hana is the one in the unhappy marriage, while Liesel’s marriage is the stable one. But something happens that rocks Liesel’s world and she can’t look at her own life in the same way again.

It’s enough to say that things take a drastic turn in Liesel and Viktor’s marriage. They stay together, but they move to Germany. And it’s heartbreaking for Liesel and Hana, who continue to write to each other and express their love for one another. As time goes on, they completely fall out of love with their husbands but don’t get divorced because of the stigma.

While all this is happening, Nazi Germany has been invading various countries throughout Europe. Liesel and Hana, who are not Jewish, are worried because their husbands are Jews. As a wealthy man, Viktor has the resources to hide his Jewish identity while he lives in Germany.

Oskar is more vulnerable, since he’s well-known in the neighborhood for being a Jew. There are signs that he is being marginalized and targeted, such as Nazi soldiers showing up to interrogate him. Oskar and Hana’s bank accounts also become frozen. It’s part of Nazi discrimination that the Nazis call “Aryanization.”

Hana grew to love the dream house where Liesel and Viktor used to live in Czechoslovakia. It not only reminds her of Liesel, but Hana also thinks the house is a work of art. After Liesel and Viktor moved to Germany, the house went into somewhat of a state of disrepair. However, Hana keeps going back to the house to visit when she can.

The house then became a school for architecture students. And then, an airplane designer named Stahl (played by Roland Møller) moves into the house. Hana and Stahl meet and it isn’t long before they become lovers. Stahl is a widower, and he tells Hana when they become closer that his wife committed suicide after their baby died while still in the womb.

Meanwhile, Hana and Liesel continue to write love letters to each other. Liesel confesses in one of the letters that when she and Viktor have sex, she thinks of Hana. It’s an indication that if Hana and Liesel ever see each other in person again, Liesel might not stop anything sexual that could happen between them.

“The Affair” goes about telling the story in a jumbled fashion. There are some scenes that are completely useless. And then there are other parts of the story that need to be explained by scenes that aren’t in the movie. The movie’s pacing really drags near the middle of the film. And the romance that’s supposed to be the main storyline is very bland.

And worst of all, there’s a storyline involving Viktor that is a big turning point affecting all the main characters, but then this storyline fades away without being fully resolved. Perhaps with more compelling acting, a more interesting screenplay and better choices in editing, “The Affair” wouldn’t be so monotonous. As it stands, it’s the kind of movie that people can watch and probably forget about a few days later, if they can get through the whole movie without falling asleep.

Vertical Entertainment released “The Affair” on digital and VOD on March 5, 2021. The movie was released in the Czech Republic in 2019.

Review: ‘Safer at Home,’ starring Jocelyn Hudon, Emma Lahana, Alisa Allapach, Adwin Brown, Dan J. Johnson, Michael Kupisk and Daniel Robaire

March 1, 2021

by Carla Hay

Pictured from left to right (top row): Dan J. Johnson, Jocelyn Hudon, Adwin Brown and Daniel Robaire. Pictured from left right (bottom row): Alisa Allapach, Michael Kupisk and Emma Lahana in “Safer at Home” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Safer at Home”

Directed by Will Wernick

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Los Angeles and partially in New York City and Austin, Texas, the dramatic film “Safer at Home” features a racially diverse cast (white, African American, Asian and Latino) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: While quarantining during a coronavirus pandemic, a group of young urban professionals take Ecstasy during a nighttime videoconference chat, and something terrible happens that causes the night to spiral out of control.

Culture Audience: “Safer at Home” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching terribly written, dull movies that exploit a real-life deadly pandemic.

Pictured from left to right (top row): Dan J. Johnson, Jocelyn Hudon, Adwin Brown and Daniel Robaire. Pictured from left right (bottom row): Alisa Allapach, and Michael Kupisk in “Safer at Home” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

In the obnoxious and boring movie “Safer at Home,” a group of young people take Ecstasy during a video chat, and their drug-induced states of mind might explain some of the grossly illogical decisions that they make when they have to deal with an unexpected crisis. Viewers of this garbage movie will wonder if the filmmakers might have also been in an impaired state of mind to think that this junk was anywhere near approaching the level of “interesting to watch.” It’s one of those movies that was clearly made to cash in on the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s just an incoherent mess that’s a waste of time.

Directed by Will Wernick, who co-wrote the moronic screenplay with Lia Bozonelis, “Safer at Home” begins with a montage that’s a blend of real-life news footage taken in 2020 (at the start of the real-life COVID-19 pandemic in the United States) and fabricated news footage that’s supposed to depict 2021 and 2022. According to what’s shown, by January 23, 2022, a second coronavirus strain called COVID 20-B has spread, and the pandemic death toll in the U.S. has totaled 12.3 million people.

By August 4, 2022, a third coronavirus strain has appeared, and 31.2 million people in the U.S. have died from the pandemic. For those who don’t want to do the math, that’s 18.9 million people who died from the pandemic in the U.S. in just eight months. And there’s no vaccine for the second and third coronavirus strains that have decimated the population.

In Los Angeles, where the main action of the film takes place, a news report mentions that the Los Angeles Police Department’s newly appointed police chief Charles Yates has mandated an earlier curfew. (The movie doesn’t say what the current curfew cutoff time is.) If anyone is caught outside after the curfew and doesn’t have the proper credentials, that person will be arrested and sent to a detention center.

Considering the extreme death toll happening around them, this group of seven friends who are on the video conference call seem just a little too lighthearted and upbeat about the serious enormity of the pandemic. They view the pandemic as an inconvenience that has interrupted their party plans. Their biggest complaint in life is that their group trip to Las Vegas had to be cancelled twice because of the pandemic.

While millions of people are dying, these self-absorbed dimwits, who are in the early 30s age range, tell each other how hard it is that their own lives just aren’t the same because they can’t party together in person anymore. It shows how willfully tone-deaf this movie is with these shallow and idiotic characters. On the night of September 12, 2022, these empty-headed pals gather for a video conference call, which ends up being an excuse for all of them to take Ecstasy together on the call.

The doltish pals who are this conference call are:

  • Evan (played by Dan J. Johnson), who ends up being at the center of the poorly written action in this story.
  • Jen (played by Jocelyn Hudon), who is Evan’s live-in girlfriend. Evan and Jen live in Los Angeles.
  • Oliver, nicknamed Ollie (played by Michael Kupisk), who is Evan’s best friend. Oliver lives in nearby Venice, California.
  • Mia (played by Emma Lahana), who is Oliver’s girlfriend in a fairly new relationship. Mia is in the process of divorcing her husband (who’s not seen or heard in the movie), and she’s moved in with Oliver, although Mia and Oliver are calling their living arrangement “quarantining together.”
  • Harper (played by Alisa Allapach), who seems to be Jen’s best friend. Harper is a stoner who lives by herself in Austin, Texas.
  • Ben (played by Adwin Brown), who is an attorney and the most level-headed one in the group, although that’s not saying much because he makes some very dumb decisions, like everyone else in this movie.
  • Liam (played by Daniel Robaire), Ben’s live-in boyfriend, who’s a lot more reckless and flamboyant than Ben is. Ben and Liam live in New York City.

Before the videoconference starts with all of the members of this group, Jen and Harper have a private conversation where Jen tells Harper some news that she’s very happy and excited about: Jen is pregnant, but she hasn’t told Evan yet. Jen makes it obvious that she hopes that when she tells Evan about the pregnancy, it’ll be the extra motivation he needs to propose marriage to her. Harper congratulates Jen, who asks that Harper not tell anyone else about the pregnancy until Jen has a chance to tell Evan.

And it just so happens that this videoconference call is taking place on Evan’s birthday. To celebrate, Oliver has arranged for a drug dealer he knows to mail all of them packets of designer Ecstasy, also known as molly. Oliver insists that they take the Ecstasy pills at the same time during the call. (By the way, the cinematography lighting in this movie is horrendous and unrealistic, since all of these friends have the same type of dark lighting in their rooms, as if they’re about to have a séance by videoconference.)

Ben is very reluctant to indulge in doing drugs, but he eventually gives in to peer pressure and takes Ecstasy at the same time as everyone else. Why is pregnant Jen doing Ecstasy and drinking beer? That’s hurriedly explained at one point in the movie, which becomes buried in a cesspool of bad plot developments.

As the Ecstasy starts to take effect, it leads to some useless scenes of awkward dancing (Ben, Jen and Harper do an embarrassing version of twerking), and then some people in the group make gossipy comments about each other’s relationships. The characters in this movie are so hollow and badly written, viewers won’t find out what any of these friends (except for Ben) does for a living, and there’s no backstory on how they all know each other.

It’s mentioned without going into too many details that Ben cheated on Liam in the past. And it’s apparently still a sore spot in their relationship, because Liam brings up the infidelity as an example of how Ben shouldn’t act so morally self-righteous about Liam wanting to do Ecstasy. Jen is leery of Mia, who’s a newcomer to their social circle, because Jen thinks Mia might be an inappropriate rebound for Oliver, whose most recent ex-girlfriend Rachel is someone who had Jen’s approval. Meanwhile, Liam makes a catty comment about Harper not being part of a couple.

This group of immature friends then move on to playing “Never Have I Ever.” How old are they again? Fifteen? First, the confession is “Never have I ever had a one-night stand.” Then it’s “Never have I ever slept with two people in the same day.” This leads Jen to confess that when she was in high school, she had a threesome with two guys.

Evan is shocked because it’s the first time he’s hearing about it. He’s also hurt because he expected Jen to tell him something like that in private first instead of blurting it out to to him and their friends. This threesome confession leads to Evan and Jen arguing, while their videocamera is still on in their living room.

During this argument, Oliver and Mia have gone to another room to have sex. Ben and Liam have gone into their bathroom because Ben is feeling ill and panicky from the Ecstasy. Harper is still on the call. She’s turned off the video but she can hear Evan and Jen arguing.

In the heat of the quarrel with Evan and Jen shouting at each other, Jen steps back and accidentally falls backward on the hard floor of the living room and gets a severe head injury. It’s bad enough where there’s the sound of a cracked skull. Evan panics because Jen isn’t responding, and blood is coming out of her head.

Evan frantically tells Harper that Jen is dead from an accidental fall. Harper didn’t see what happened but she heard Jen fall. And even though Evan is wailing that it was an accident, Harper isn’t sure what to believe. She turns the video back on, sees Jen bleeding on the floor, and Harper starts to panic too. Although the audience can see that Jen’s fall was an accident (Evan didn’t even touch her), no one else outside of Evan and Jen’s apartment saw her fall.

However, the movie has a plot hole in not explaining that the video camera in Evan and Jen’s living room still captured what happened during the livestream, so that would be enough proof that it was an accident. But if the characters in this movie thought that logically, there would be no “Safer at Home” movie because the rest of this dumb story is about all of them panicking over the thought that Evan will be arrested. Evan and Harper frantically shout for the other people to get back on the conference call, in order to tell them what happened.

Why didn’t they call 911 to get medical help for Jen? Oliver shouts, “They won’t send an ambulance! They’ll send the police!” Evan doesn’t want to call for help either. Adding to their panic, Evan and Jen’s nosy neighbor (who’s an ex-cop) in their apartment building comes over to find out what’s going on because he said he heard Jen and Evan arguing. The neighbor tries to go inside the apartment to snoop, but Evan manages to prevent him from coming too far into the apartment to see Jen lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Evan, who’s paranoid about being arrested, then stupidly decides now would be a good time to go somewhere and break the curfew, thereby putting himself at risk of being arrested. He decides to drive to Oliver’s apartment, but he doesn’t forget to take the video camera with him while it’s still logged on to the videoconference chat. Because that’s apparently what you do when you want to run from the law: Keep the video chat going with your friends.

Meanwhile, Oliver jumps in his car to go to Evan’s place before finding out that Evan is on the way to Oliver’s place. Oliver also makes sure that he’s still logged into the video chat while driving. Just like Evan, Oliver keeps looking into the video camera while driving and talking during the video chat.

It’s as if Evan and Oliver want to make sure the camera angle looks great when they’re talking to the camera during this crisis, instead of keeping their eyes on the road while driving. And while they’re outside in public places during this deadly pandemic, Oliver and Evan don’t wear masks, but they keep the video chat going. Priorities.

Mia, who doesn’t know Evan very well, thinks it’s possible that Evan could have killed Jen, so she doesn’t want Evan anywhere near her. She’s also very uncomfortable about Oliver wanting to help Evan, but Oliver scolds Mia and tells her that Evan is a good guy who wouldn’t kill Jen. At one point, Oliver advises Evan to go to Griffith Park so Evan can be by himself. To do what? Meditate?

Of course, as soon as Evan drives outside, you know what’s going to happen. And it does: Police helicopters see his car, so he’s followed by the police. The rest of the movie gets even more ridiculous, and it leads to two mind-numbingly atrocious plot twists. And viewers will either be howling with laughter and/or yelling at the screen over how bad the acting is throughout “Safer at Home.”

One of the worst things about the movie is how Evan (who is African American/biracial) and his racial identity are used by the “Safer at Home” filmmakers in a disgusting, exploitative way. There’s nothing remotely entertaining about this mindless and dull film, which shamefully tries to make money off of deadly issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. The only real safety lesson that can come from “Safer at Home” is to avoid this toxic trash dump of a film altogether if you value your time and your intelligence.

Vertical Entertainment released “Safer at Home” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on February 26, 2021.

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