Tag: drama

Review: ‘News of the World,’ starring Tom Hanks

December 23, 2020

Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel in “News of the World” (Photo by Bruce W. Talamon/Universal Pictures)

“News of the World”

Directed by Paul Greengrass

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1870 in Texas, the dramatic film “News of the World” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Native Americans and African Americans) representing the working-class and the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A widower Civil War veteran who makes a living as a news reader is unexpectedly tasked with the responsibility of transporting an orphaned girl to her closest living relatives.

Culture Audience: “News of the World” will appeal primarily to people interested in dramatic stories about American life in the South during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era.

Tom Hanks in “News of the World” (Photo by Bruce W. Talamon/Universal Pictures)

“News of the World” solidly offers the tried-and-true concept of an adult who’s inexperienced with taking care of children but who’s suddenly forced to be responsible for the well-being and safety of a child for a considerable period of time. It’s usually the stuff of comedies, but “News of the World” is a serious-minded drama that once again has Tom Hanks playing a heroic figure. In “News of the World,” he’s a traveling Civil War veteran in Texas who’s never been a father, but he’s been given the responsibility of bringing an orphaned girl who doesn’t speak English to her closest living relatives whom she’s never met. You know exactly how this movie is supposed to end.

Directed by Paul Greengrass, “News of the World” is a well-made but not a particularly innovative film because so much of this story has been done before in other movies that are essentially “road trip” films. “News of the World” will satisfy people who like shoot ’em up Westerns (since there are several shootout scenes), and the film will also please people who like somewhat melancholy dramas about human perseverance under harsh conditions. The movie is nearly two hours long but sometimes feels like it’s longer because there are considerable stretches when it meanders at a slow pace.

“News of the World” is based on Paulette Jiles’ 2016 novel of the same name. Greengrass wrote the adapted screenplay with Luke Davies. It’s a good screenplay (but not outstanding) that all the actors handle with skill, even if at times the supporting characters come across as a little too generic because of the transient nature of the plot. The cinematic version of this story mostly does justice to the book because of the top-notch cinematography, costume design and production design. Greengrass and Hanks previously worked together in 2013’s “Captain Phillips,” which is based on a true story and is an overall better film than “News of the World.”

If you think Hanks is playing a stoic good guy who finds out that he’s a lot better at taking care of a child than he originally thought, then you would be absolutely correct. Hanks portrays Capt. Jefferson “Jeffrey” Kyle Kidd, a veteran of three wars and a widower with no children. He’s based in Texas and goes from town to town, making a living as a news reader: someone who reads news reports in newspapers for a gathering of townspeople and reads the reports with an engaging, storytelling style.

It’s 1870, five years after the U.S. Civil War has ended. It’s revealed later in the story that Jefferson’s wife died in 1865, at the age of 33. The Reconstruction Era is under way, but there’s a still a lot of resentment from Southerners toward the federal government and against the Union soldiers who defeated the Confederate soldiers during the war. The slaves have been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation, but white supremacy is still the law, and therefore people of color don’t have the same rights as white people.

Racism is addressed in this movie in a predictable way that might or might not be satisfactory enough, depending on your perspective. The movie begins in Wichita Falls in North Texas, where Jefferson has just had a very well-received reading session with the local white people. He seems to think it’s a friendly town, but then he gets a chilling reminder about the brutality of racism.

While riding his horse in a forest area, Jefferson sees some bloody drag marks on the ground. The marks look like a human body was being dragged. And sure enough, Jefferson finds out that the bloody drag marks lead to the body of a lynched African American man. (The man’s face is not shown in the movie, because it might have been too explicit.) Attached to the man’s body is a sign that reads: “Texas Says No! This is a white man’s country.”

Jefferson is very disturbed by this crime scene, but as someone who’s just passing through town, there’s nothing he can do about it. Suddenly, he sees a blonde girl (played by Helena Zengel), who’s about 9 or 10 years old. She’s wearing a deerskin dress, and she runs away in the woods when she sees Jefferson. He chases after her because she looks like an unaccompanied child who could be in danger. She’s a feisty child because she bites Jefferson’s hand when he catches up to her.

Jefferson sees that the girl has run back to the wreckage of a carriage accident that has resulted in the the death of the male driver. Jefferson finds some paperwork in the car wreck that reveals the girl’s birth name is Johannna Leonberger. She is an orphan whose parents were killed by an invasion of Kiowa Indians six years before.

And apparently, she was raised by the Kiowa Indians because she only speaks Kiowa. The girl’s Kiowan name is Cicada. Johanna’s Kiowa Indian family was massacred, so she is now an orphan again.

The paperwork found at the carriage accident indicates that Johanna was being driven to her closest living relatives: an aunt named Anna Leonberger and Anna’s husband Wilhelm Leonberger, who are German immigrants living in Castroville, Texas. Jefferson thinks he can just drop the child off at the Reconstruction Era version of Child Protective Services. But he finds out that the agent who’s supposed to handle this type of child welfare case is out of town and won’t be back for three months. Jefferson tells the office that he will handle the responsibility of taking Johanna to her aunt and uncle in Castroville.

Jefferson has enough compassion not to abandon Johanna, but he doesn’t want to change his plans to travel to the next town to do a news-reading session that was already scheduled. And so, he reluctantly brings Johanna with him, with the intention of devoting the rest of the journey to bringing Johanna to her aunt and uncle. Jefferson knows that he will be losing a lot of income by taking this unexpected trip, because he won’t be able to stop and do as many news readings as he’d like to do.

Jefferson asks a married couple he knows—Simon Boudlin (played by Ray McKinnon) and Doris Boudlin (played by Mare Winningham)—to look after Johanna while Jefferson is busy with the news reading session that he has scheduled for that evening. But in a story like this, you know that something will go wrong. And it does.

Jefferson comes back from the news reading session to find out that Johanna has run away, just as a rainstorm hits the area. It leads to Jefferson, Simon and Doris frantically looking for Johanna in the dark and rainy night. Across an embankment, Johanna sees a tribe of Indians traveling by horse and tries to get their attention because she thinks she belongs with them. But the tribe is too far away, and Jefferson soon catches up to her.

Johanna realizes that she needs Jefferson in order to survive because no one else is looking out for her. Before Jefferson leaves town with Johanna in an apothecary wagon given to them by the Boudlins, Simon gives Jefferson a loaded revolver. And you just know that gun is going to come in handy later on, because a trip like this won’t go smoothly.

The rest of the story is what you might expect from a tale about an adult and a child—both complete strangers and out of their comfort zones—who have been forced to travel together and slowly learn to trust each other. And because there’s the language barrier, it prevents these two travelers in “News of the World” from having the snap’n’crackle dialogue that makes the “True Grit” movies (another 1870s Western saga about a man and a girl on a road trip) so much fun to watch. “News of the World” is a mostly solemn and sometimes suspenseful story about what Jefferson and Johanna encounter in their travels.

Although they have plenty of dangerous experiences on this journey, Jefferson and Johanna also have some friendly encounters, demonstrating how generous people are capable of being to strangers. At a boarding house in Dallas, they meet the woman in charge who plays a key role in breaking through the language barrier between Jefferson and Johanna. This kind stranger is named Mrs. Gannett (played by Elizabeth Marvel), and she knows how to speak Kiowa, so she acts as a translator.

One of the most memorable parts of the story is an extended shootout sequence that happens between Jefferson and a creepy criminal named J.G. Almay (played by Michael Angelo Covino), who brings two cronies along for the shootout. The trouble with Almay begins one evening when Jefferson and Johanna are getting ready to leave Dallas at night.

Almay notices Johanna and offers to buy her from Jefferson, who immediately refuses. It’s implied that Almay has lecherous intentions, and Jefferson is well-aware that this scumbag probably wants to abuse Johanna. Almay doesn’t want to take no for an answer, so Jefferson and Almay get into a brief scuffle over it.

Two federal officers happen to notice the fight and break it up. Jefferson explains what happened and shows the paperwork to prove that he has the authority to bring Johanna to her relatives. Almay is then arrested, but before he’s carted off to jail, he yells at Jefferson: “I’ll be seeing you, captain! You hear me? I’m coming for you!”

Almay gets out on bail and soon has two other cowboy thugs (played by Clay James and Cash Lilley) accompanying him (each on a separate horse) to follow Jefferson and Johanna’s carriage. It’s now daylight, and somehow these three stalkers have found out where Jefferson and Johanna are and have already caught up to them. The chase scene leads to a clifftop shootout that’s the most action-packed part of the movie. It’s also a pivotal scene in the movie because it’s during this ordeal that Johanna shows that she’s willing and able to be of great help to Jefferson.

Another nemesis in the story is a town leader named Mr. Farley (played by Thomas Francis Murphy), who owns a lot of property and rules the town almost like a dictator. He has some sons whom he uses as his personal group of enforcers. And when Jefferson comes to town, Mr. Farley wants to tell Jefferson what kind of news he should read to the citizens: only news that will make Mr. Farley look good.

Jefferson doesn’t like being told what to do, so he lets the townspeople decide what stories they want Jefferson to read. It’s a power move that results in more conflict and another shootout. And someone with wavering loyalties ends up taking Jefferson’s side.

Not all of the adversaries on this trip are human. The weather plays a role in causing some frightening moments. A scene that’s a particular standout is when Joanna and Jefferson are caught in a dust storm and get separated from each other. The work of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski is put to excellent use in this tension-filled scene.

Because “News of the World” is centered on the evolving relationship between Jefferson and Johanna, viewers should not expect a lot of character development from any other people in the movie. And the only supporting characters who speak on camera are white people, perhaps as a way for the filmmakers to portray the deep-seated racial segregation in 1870 Texas. People of color in the movie (Native Americans and a few African Americans) are not given any significant dialogue, even in a scene where Johanna approaches some Kiowa Indians and talks to them. (What she says to them is not shown on camera.) Texas has always been a state with a significant Latino population, but inexplicably, there are no Latinos with speaking lines in this movie.

Hanks delivers a quality performance, as one might expect. But his co-star Zengel is especially impressive because she has to express a lot different emotions with very little dialogue. “News of the World” hits a lot of familiar tropes and has the type of sweeping musical score from James Newton Howard that is very much in the vein of traditional Westerns from Hollywood movie studios. The movie is the equivalent of American comfort food: People know what to expect, and there’s no real departure from the filmmaking recipe of a Western drama about an American hero.

Universal Pictures will release “News of the World” in U.S. cinemas on December 25, 2020. The movie’s VOD release date is January 15, 2021.

Review: ‘My Dad’s Christmas Date,’ starring Jeremy Piven

December 20, 2020

by Carla Hay

Jeremy Piven and Olivia-Mai Barrett in “My Dad’s Christmas Date” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

“My Dad’s Christmas Date”

Directed by Mick Davis

Culture Representation: Taking place in York, England, the comedy/drama “My Dad’s Christmas Date” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A 16-year-old British girl tries to help her lonely widower American father by signing him up for a dating service without his permission.

Culture Audience: “My Dad’s Christmas Date” will appeal primarily to people who like movies about father/daughter relationships that blend semi-realistic comedy with sentimental drama.

Joely Richardson and Jeremy Piven in “My Dad’s Christmas Date” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

The comedy/drama “My Dad’s Christmas Date” (directed by Mick Davis) is not as sappy and predictable as it first appears to be, but there are still some blatant formulaic, tearjerking moments in this family dramedy that’s elevated by a memorable performance by Olivia-Mai Barrett. The concept of the movie isn’t very original (a child plays matchmaker for a single and available parent), and any movie with the word “Christmas” in the title is almost guaranteed to have some schmaltz. Considering how badly it could’ve turned out, “My Dad’s Christmas Date” competently serves its purpose of offering inoffensive family entertainment without being too corny.

One of the better things about the movie is that it does not fall into the same predictable trap that comedic films tend to do when a teenager is one of the main characters: The teen is either a precocious brat or someone who’s too good to be true. Julia “Jules” Evans (played by Barrett), the 16-year-old at the center of “My Dad’s Christmas Date,” is neither. She’s a lot like girls her age: She’s embarrassed and frustrated by parental figures, and she’s just starting to find her identity when it comes to relationships.

Jules lives in York, England, with her American widower father David (played Jeremy Piven), a businessman who is lonely and sad enough to frequently drown his sorrows in plenty of alcohol. (He’s not an alcoholic though.) Jules and David are both grieving over the death of David’s wife/Jules’ mother, Claire Evans (played in flashbacks/hallucinations by Megan Brown), who passed away in a car accident two years before this story takes place.

Because Claire and David got married in York, it’s implied that David stayed in England permanently because of his relationship with Claire. (It’s never revealed in the movie how this couple met.) The marriage was very happy, and so Claire’s death has upended the lives of David and Jules.

Throughout the movie, David sees visions of Claire, and he goes in an almost trance-like state when he sees her. But thankfully, it’s not too over-the-top because Piven depicts it as someone basking in the glow of happy memories. The implication is clear though: David has had a hard time moving on with his life. And he thinks of Claire as an image of perfection that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to find again in another romantic partner.

Jules goes to a tuition school that requires that the students wear uniforms. Her best friend is an upbeat but gossipy fellow student at the school named Emma (played by Hadar Cats), who knows one of Jules’ biggest secrets: Jules has been dating her longtime crush Ben (played by Felix Butterwick), who has a reputation in the school for being a playboy. Later, it’s revealed in the story that Emma had been infatuated with Ben for at least two years before she and Ben started dating each other.

Jules isn’t sleeping with Ben, and there are big hints in the movie (based on what she says) that Jules is still a virgin and she wants to take things slow with Ben. Jules hasn’t told David about Ben being her boyfriend because she doesn’t know how to talk to her father about dating and the physical changes that are part of becoming a woman. She also thinks that David wouldn’t approve of Ben or any guy that she dates because David still wants to think of Jules as his little girl.

Jules is also at an age when she has to start thinking about future plans that she’ll have after she graduates from high school. Her desire for adult independence yet still being legally a child manifests in a frustration that’s very common with underage teenagers, when they argue with authority figures and act very embarrassed by what their own parents say or do. This parent/teenager bickering happens throughout “My Dad’s Christmas Date.”

For example, in an early scene where David is driving Jules to school, it’s close to the Christmas holiday season, and the arguing starts when Jules doesn’t want David to keep the car radio on while “Jingle Bells” is playing. The disagreement escalates into David expressing concern over Jules possibly making decisions because of peer pressure. “I want you to feel comfortable questioning things,” David tells Jules.

Jules snaps back, “Just because I’m a woman, I can’t think for myself, right?” David replies, “This has nothing to do with you being a woman. You know that.” Although the character of Claire is somewhat of a mystery in this story, there are signs that she influenced Jules to have a strong feminist sensibility, because it comes out in different ways throughout the story.

At school, Jules has a meeting with the headmaster Mr. Thompson (played by Roger Ashton-Griffiths), who expresses concern that Jules’ grades have gone downhill ever since her mother’s death. Mr. Thompson even has the trouble saying any words associated with the word death. It’s an awkward conversation, and Jules responds with her typical sarcasm, which she clearly inherited from her father.

Jules’ best friend Emma knows that Jules and David haven’t had a very good relationship lately. Emma thinks that David is sad and lonely and suggests that David should get set up with someone for a date. At first, Jules thinks it’s a bad idea, but she later changes her mind because she decides if David has the distraction of a new love, maybe he’ll be a happier person and he won’t get on her nerves as much as he does now.

Meanwhile, David is seen having a drink in a pub with his ex-girlfriend Sarah (played by Joely Richardson), who has reconnected with David since Claire died. Sarah and David’s dating relationship ended before David and Claire got together. Sarah went on to marry someone else.

For reasons that are never really explained in the movie, Claire despised Sarah, but David remained friendly with Sarah after he and Sarah ended their romantic relationship. Sarah is separated from her husband Mike (played by Michael Maloney), so she’s also feeling lonely and cynical about romance. Sarah and Mike are co-parenting their two kids (a girl and a boy), who look like they’re about 7 or 8 years old.

David complains to Sarah that he and Jules used to get along well, but now they constantly argue. He’s not sure if it’s because of typical teen rebellion, the death of Claire or both. David asks Sarah, “What’s the cure?” Sarah quips, “Menopause.”

Jules puts her plans into motion to find David a girlfriend or at least a date for the Christmas holiday season. Without David’s knowledge or permission, she signs him up for an online dating service. Jules also pretends to be David when she’s communicating with potential dates. While impersonating David, she makes arrangements for the women to meet David in public places while Jules is there too, so she can evaluate their potential.

It’s a scheme that results in women randomly coming up to David and knowing a lot about him but he doesn’t know who they are. Of course, these shenanigans can only last for so long before David finds out the reason for these not-so-random encounters. His reaction leads to even more drama, but it makes David confront some harsh realities that he’s been using Claire’s death as an excuse to feel sorry for himself and deprive himself of trying to find happiness.

Does that mean he’ll fall in love with someone new in this story? That question is answered in the movie, which doesn’t follow the usual stereotypes of what people think might happen. Jules also goes through some relationship drama with Ben. And there comes a time when she has to decide what she wants and deserves in a romance, as well as confront the reasons why she’s been hiding her relationship with Ben from her father.

“My Dad’s Christmas Date” was written by Brian Marchetti, Jack Marchetti and Toby Torlesse, who strike the right balance of a screenplay that can appeal to different generations of people. However, this movie is nowhere near being a masterpiece and has many elements of a made-for-TV movie, including a musical score that sometimes sounds like it was lifted from a generic sitcom. The movie could’ve veered into some insufferable slapstick, but thankfully, the story is mostly grounded in realism.

The father/daughter relationship is at the heart of the story. And what will appeal most to viewers is how relatable David and Jules are most of the time. Piven is known for playing sarcastic characters, but his role in the movie shows his range to portray vulnerability and someone who is damaged by grief. Barrett has the harder role, which she adeptly handles, because she has to express some very adult emotions for Jules without being too worldly for a relatively sheltered teenager.

David is not a perfect dad. He’s often gruff and cranky. Jules can be too. But it’s clear that they both love each other, and their communication problems are rooted in not being able to fully express the grief they have over the death of Claire. And if there’s a happy ending to this story, it might not be the perfect fantasy, but it’s a lot closer to real life than most other movies with the word “Christmas” in the title.

Gravitas Ventures released “My Dad’s Christmas Date” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on November 6, 2020.

Review: ‘Embattled,’ starring Stephen Dorff, Darren Mann, Karrueche Tran, Colin McKenna and Elisabeth Reaser

December 17, 2020

by Carla Hay

Darren Mann and Stephen Dorff in “Embattled” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Embattled”

Directed by Nick Sarkisov

Culture Representation: Taking place in various U.S. cities and in Quebec City, Canada, the drama “Embattled” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians and African Americans) representing the middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An arrogant superstar mixed-martial arts (MMA) fighter has an up-and-down relationship with his mild-mannered 18-year-old son, and the two men end up battling each other in a high-profile MMA fight.

Culture Audience: “Embattled” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in compelling sports movies that are also emotional family dramas.

Stephen Dorff, Chris Conolley and Ethan Melisano in “Embattled” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

It seems like in every other sports movie about an underdog who’s fighting a champion, the underdog has “daddy issues” from having an absentee, abusive or neglectful father. “Embattled” is one of those movies, but it’s a cut above the average film that takes place in the world of mixed martial arts (MMA), largely because of the impressive acting by the “Embattled” cast members. Directed by Nick Sarkisov and written by David McKenna, “Embattled” has enough gritty realism about a dysfunctional and damaged family to make up for the occasional hokey dialogue and the far-fetched but not entirely impossible scenario of a famous MMA champ doing a high-profile fight against his son.

The father and son at the center of this family feud are hard-drinking, trash-talking Cash Boykins (played by Stephen Dorff) and his kindler, gentler offspring Jett Boykins (played by Darren Mann), who live in their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and have had an unstable and unpredictable relationship for years. The story unfolds in layers over how their relationship has changed, in order to explain why they ended up fighting in a “death match” scenario on TV. “Embattled” is also a scathing look at the cycle of abuse in families and how one person can do damage that can last for years.

In the beginning of “Embattled,” all seems to be going fairly smoothly between Cash and Jett, who is 18 years old and in his last year of high school. Cash is a world-famous but controversial MMA welterweight champ in the fictional World Fighting Association (WFA) promotion, and he has been training Jett on how to become a professional MMA fighter. Jett is not as aggressive and ruthless as Cash, who is excessively crude, sexist and proud to flaunt his obnoxiousness. Cash sees life and treats people as if anyone who isn’t a straight, white, able-bodied American male is an inferior human being.

Cash’s bigotry is on full display in the first MMA fight shown in the movie. Cash is at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas to do battle against a Russian fighter named Timofei Kozlov (played by Ethan Melisano), who hails from St. Petersburg. The opponents’ stats are announced sometime before the fight. Cash is 5’9″ and 171 pounds, with a record of 37 wins and one loss. Timofei is 5’8″ and 170 pounds, with 18 wins and four losses.

In the walk-up to the fight, Cash yells about his Russian opponent: “I get to kill myself a Commie! Lock and load, motherfuckers!” And later, when Cash faces off against Timofei before the opening-round bell rings, Cash declares arrogantly, “This election-meddling son of a bitch won’t take long.” Timofei sneers in response, “America sucks dick.” This tradeoff of insults is the introduction to a brutal brawl that ends with Timofei’s crushing defeat.

On a private plane after the fight, Cash’s toxic masculinity continues as he celebrates his victory. With him on the plane is his small entourage of people which includes Jett; Cash’s second wife, Jade (played by Karrueche Tran), who’s about 20 years younger than Cash; and some assorted employees. Cash wastes no time in flirting with an attractive flight attendant named Desirée, who politely brushes off his unwanted sexual innuendos. When she brings a drink to Cash, he leers at her while saying, “Ooh, yummy yum yum. The drink looks tasty too.”

Cash also tries to get the flight attendant to take a sexual interest in quiet and unassuming Jett, who doesn’t want to get involved in any hookups that Cash wants to arrange. Cash begins to brag about Jett to Desirée, who keeps a friendly and professional demeanor. When the flight attendant walks to another part of the plane out of hearing distance, Cash scolds Jett, “Are you fuckin’ blind? She’s tighter than a 7-year-old Korean boy!”

When Jett tells Cash that he doesn’t need his help in finding a date, Cash replies, “Since when did throwing out a résumé for a tasty piece of hair pie become a goddamn crime?” Cash’s offers Jett the use of his mansion as a place to bring Desirée for a sexual tryst, but Jett declines the offer. Cash is also an extremely macho father who thinks that if he has a son who doesn’t think of women as sexual conquests, the son must be a wimp or possibly gay.

Cash acts this way in full view of his wife Jade. And what does she have to say when Cash makes blatant sexual advances to the flight attendant? Jade tells her: “Desirée, sweetheart, please do not encourage that cheese.”

Jade is fully aware that Cash can be a sexually aggressive jerk, but his “bad boy” persona seems to be part of the reason why she was attracted to him in the first place. And because Jade appears to be a “trophy wife,” Cash has a charming side that treats her like a sexy goddess. Cash and Jade also have a 9-year-old son together named Kingston (played by Jakari Fraser), who is sweet and adorable and so far seems untainted by Cash’s bullying ways.

But one thing that really bothers Jade about Cash is how he’s mistreated his ex-wife and his two children from this first marriage. The marriage ended very badly 10 years before, for reasons that are revealed in a flashback. Cash’s ex-wife Susan (played by Elisabeth Reaser) used to be a high-ranking tennis player. But since the divorce from Cash, Susan has been struggling to make ends meet.

When this story takes place, Susan is working as a waitress to support Jett and his 15-year-old brother Quinn, nicknamed Q (played by Colin McKenna), who has Williams syndrome. Quinn and Jett are very close to each other. Jett treats Quinn like a protective and loving older brother, even though Jett sometimes gets impatient with Quinn.

Cash is very ashamed to have Quinn as his son and treats Quinn as inferior to Jett. Cash cruelly calls Quin a “tard,” as shorthand for “retard.” Cash also has a lot of deep-seated anger against Susan, whom he calls “Looney Tunes,” even though there’s no evidence that Susan has any mental-health issues. It’s one of many examples of how Cash belittles and demeans people in order to boost his already overinflated ego.

Jade feels strongly that Cash should try to mend his relationship with Jett and Quinn, and she wants Kingston to get to know his half-brothers better. But Cash refuses to let Quinn be a part of Cash’s family activities with Jade and Kingston. And viewers will get the impression that the main reason why Cash and Jett are now back in each other’s lives is because Cash wants to mold Jett into being another version of Cash.

Even though Cash is a multimillionaire who has four houses and 10 cars, he refuses to help out Susan financially, even when Quinn needed heart surgery and back surgery. Susan has not remarried. But even if a remarriage made her ineligible for alimony, she’s still entitled to child support.

Did Cash and Susan have a rock-solid prenuptial agreement where she wasn’t entitled to any of his money that he made during the marriage? Did she have terrible legal representation in the divorce? Or did something else happen to explain why she got such a raw deal of not getting reasonable alimony and child support? Those questions aren’t really answered in the movie, but the flashback showing the turning point in Cash and Susan’s bad marriage implies that she very likely chose to walk away from the marriage with no money because she was desperate to be rid of her lousy husband.

Jade and Cash argue because Jade thinks that Cash should be more compassionate to Susan, Jett and Quinn. Cash firmly believes that Susan, Jett and Quinn don’t deserve his financial help or compassion because that would be “coddling” them. Cash and Jett have been recently connecting because Cash is training Jett to be a professional MMA fighter. But beyond MMA, their father/son relationship is still a work in progress.

Jett has been accompanying Cash to as many of Cash’s MMA fights as possible. And this frequent traveling means that Jett has been skipping a lot of classes at school. He’s on the verge of flunking out of a math class, and a failing grade in this class would mean that he can’t graduate from high school.

Jett’s math teacher Ms. Malek (played by Lindsey Garrett) recommends that he get a tutor. It just so happens that Jett has a crush on a pretty and smart student named Keaton Carmichael (played by Ava Capri), who is headed to West Point after graduation. Guess who ends up being Jett’s tutor?

Meanwhile, Quinn goes to the same school, but he’s in a class for kids with special needs. The class is taught by Dan Stevens (played by Donald Faison), a military veteran who is also a paraplegic. Dan treats his students with respect, and he has a special bond with Quinn. It’s one of the reasons why Jett decides to play matchmaker and encourages his mother Susan and Dan to start dating each other.

Jett and Cash have been trying to improve their father/son relationship, but Cash makes it difficult because he’s relentless with his criticism of Jett. During their training sessions, Cash even insults Jett’s taste in music to try to make Jett feel like a “sissy.” When Jett says he likes the music of Colbie Caillat (who’s best known for her 2007 hit “Bubbly”) and other female singer/songwriters, Cash admonishes Jett by telling him that he should be listening to hard rock/heavy metal acts like Rob Zombie, Deftones and System of a Down. Jett responds good-naturedly by telling Cash: “I love my girls. Deal with it.”

It’s clear that Jett is a good guy who both loves and fears his father. Jett wants Cash’s approval but doesn’t necessarily want to be like Cash. And it could be left up to viewers’ interpretation if Jett really has a passion for MMA or if his ambition to be a successful MMA fighter is mainly because he wants to impress Cash. Jett’s worries about his future after high school and his need to get Cash’s approval take a toll on Jett’s self-esteem, because there’s a point in the story where Jett breaks down and tells Susan that he thinks of himself as a loser.

Although it’s not completely explored in “Embattled,” there’s a layer of anxiety in Susan feeling torn about her animosity toward her ex-husband (whom she really distrusts) and allowing Cash back into Jett’s life. How long should she hang on to those resentments toward her ex-husband? How much can Cash be trusted?

Money is a huge motivating factor for much of what happens in this story. Susan expresses a lot of concern when Cash tells her one day that he’s entered Jett into a fight with a 12th-ranked MMA fighter. Susan doesn’t think Jett is ready to compete with someone on that level, but Jett is a legal adult, and they could use the prize money if he wins.

Cash is an apt name for this blowhard MMA fighter because he’s very money-hungry and sees himself as a know-it-all wheeler dealer. He goes to WFA co-owners David Adelsberg (played by Mark Fite) and Rami Elbahri (played by Adam Karst), and attempts to pressure them into giving him and other MMA fighters better perks, such as bigger minimum fees, health-insurance benefits, pensions and higher revenue sharing. Cash threatens to form a union for MMA fighters if the WFA owners don’t give in to his demands. As the most famous fighter of WFA, Cash tells them that they need him more then he needs them.

The story in “Embattled” becomes much more interesting in the last half of the movie. Jett is at Cash’s Birmingham mansion for a small house party, where he observes Cash teaching Kingston some basic fight techniques. Cash grows impatient with Kingston and becomes verbally abusive and physically aggressive with the child. It triggers a flashback memory in Jett that leads to him becoming estranged from Cash again.

This falling out results in greedy Cash coming up with the idea of pitting himself against Jett in a major televised fight. And because their estrangement has become very bitter, Jett decides to go to Quebec City to train with a French Canadian named Claude (played by Saïd Taghmaoui), who is a major rival from Cash’s past. (“Embattled” was really filmed in Alabama.) The battle between father and son in the ring is suspensefully filmed, but the real battle in this story is over trust and emotions.

What makes “Embattled” stand out is that it’s not a simple “good versus evil” story or a basic “champion versus challenger” sports movie. Cash can easily be considered a predictable villain, but there are several moments in the film where Dorff brings real depth to the character. Cash is a terrible husband and father, but is he evil or just really damaged?

And the abuse that Cash inflicts will make people wonder why he turned out that way. It should come as no surprise that Cash’s father abused him as a child. It doesn’t excuse Cash’s awfulness, but “Embattled” shows viewers in some harrowing ways how abuse can be denied or blocked out but can still have devastating effects.

Ultimately, the heart and soul of the movie belong to Jett. Cash might be a lost cause, but how much will Jett follow in his father’s footsteps? Mann gives an admirable performance representing the possibility that the cycle of abuse in a family can be stopped and the healing can begin.

IFC Films released “Embattled” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on November 20, 2020.

Review: ‘Songbird,’ starring KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stromare, Alexandra Daddario and Demi Moore

December 16, 2020

by Carla Hay

KJ Apa in “Songbird” (Photo courtesy of STX)

“Songbird”

Directed by Adam Mason

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles during a coronavirus pandemic in the year 2024, the sci-fi thriller “Songbird” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: During the pandemic, a minority of people have immunity to the disease but are also supercarriers of the virus, and this dichotomy affects relationships and has caused a black market to sell illegal immunity passes.

Culture Audience: “Songbird” will appeal primarily to people who like watching tacky disaster movies with ridiculous plot developments.

Peter Stromare in “Songbird” (Photo courtesy of STX)

In the horrifically tasteless disaster film “Songbird,” which takes place during a coronavirus pandemic that has killed millions of people and devastated the entire world, unscrupulous and greedy people have exploited the situation so that they can benefit financially. Ironically, it’s the same mindset that is obviously why this moronic film was rushed into production during the real-life COVID-19 pandemic—to cash in on people’s fears about the pandemic and use the movie’s pandemic storyline as a gimmick to sell it during a real-life pandemic. The results are a useless movie where every single second looks like it was based on an early, substandard screenplay draft, with none of the filmmakers caring about taking the time to improve the film’s quality.

“Songbird” (directed by Adam Mason, who co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Simon Boyes) takes place in Los Angeles in the year 2024. The worldwide mortality rate has risen to 56% and 8.4 million people have died because of COVID-23, which is supposed to be a deadlier strain than COVID-19. And there’s no vaccine. The desolate and devastated landscape of Los Angeles looks like a city in the aftermath of a tornado, and there’s a general atmosphere that a corrupt, totalitarian government is in charge. Because of this high mortality rate, Los Angeles has been on lockdown, with people ordered to stay at home, except for essential workers.

One of those essential workers is a bike courier in his mid-20s named Nicholas “Nico” Price (played by KJ Apa), who works for an online retailer called Lester’s Gets, which sells a variety of items that people can use in their homes. It’s not a giant company, because Nico’s boss Lester (played by Craig Robinson) is the only person shown in the dark video control room that monitors the movements of the company’s couriers, via GPS. In other words, the film’s budget was so low that the filmmakers didn’t bother to cast anyone else to work in this monitor room.

Lester communicates frequently with Nico and has to watch Nico like a hawk, because Nico often takes detours, goofs off, and is late with deliveries. For example, in one of the movie’s scenes, Nico randomly shoots hoops at a basketball court while in the middle of a delivery. Lester lectures Nico about Nico’s constant tardiness, but Nico acts like someone who knows he probably won’t be fired.

And why hasn’t Nico been fired because of his tardiness? Because he’s one of the small minority of people on Earth who are immune to COVID-23, and therefore he can freely go outside without needing any face coverings. However, these Immunies, as they’re nicknamed in this movie, are also supercarriers of COVID-23. And so, they’re both envied and shunned by the general population.

Immunies are identified by immunity passes (which look like yellow wristbands) that can be scanned to reveal their personal information. These immunity passes are highly coveted by people who want to be able to go outside whenever they want without fear of being fined or arrested. People are required to take frequent COVID-23 tests at home, which are done on government-issued hand-held monitors that can diagnosis people just by scanning their faces.

People who are found to be infected with COVID-23 are forced to go to the Q-Zone, which is not a health recovery center but it’s described in the story as a death detention center. These detentions are handled by the sanitation department, which is headed by Emmett D. Harland (played by Peter Stromare), who’s an Immunie. Emmett is such an over-the-top, creepy villain that you just know he’s involved in more misdeeds than just being rough and unmerciful with the people he detains.

Because of these drastic changes in society, Los Angeles (and presumably, most of the rest of the modern world) has become a place where people have become paranoid about going outside, for fear of being sent to the Q-Zone. Masked military soldiers patrol the streets and are ready to send people to the Q-Zone if they don’t have immunity passes. Some of these patrollers are quick to draw their guns if they see anyone on the street without a mask. It’s what happens to Nico when he tries his make his way to a home for a delivery, and he’s blocked by overzealous soldiers until Nico shows them his immunity pass.

The high demand for immunity passes has caused these passes to be sold on the black market at prices that can only be afforded by wealthy people or people who can come up with the cash any way that they can. Two of the people who are considered among the top-tier sellers of illegal immunity passes are unhappily married couple William Griffin (played by Bradley Whitford) and Piper Griffin (played by Demi Moore), who are already living an upscale life but apparently are greedy and want more money. William’s day job is as a high-ranking executive in the music industry, even though the movie never shows him doing any work except his illegal side hustle of selling immunity passes.

And because “Songbird” is a movie like the 2005 drama “Crash,” which eventually shows how everyone in the story is connected to each other in some way, the Griffins’ home is one of the places where Nico makes a delivery. People are not allowed to open their doors to delivery people. Instead, deliveries are dropped into a capsule outside a home, and the item in the capsule is then disinfected through ultra-violet rays.

Nico has been to the Griffin home enough times that the house residents recognize him when he arrives. William and Piper have a daughter named Emma (played by Lia McHugh), who’s about 11 or 12 years old and who has respiratory problems, because she always has to wear an oxygen tube. The implication is that she’s especially vulnerable to getting COVID-23.

Emma is really just a “token” underdeveloped character that doesn’t serve any purpose in the movie except to try to make William and Piper look more sympathetic. It’s a futile effort, because these two spouses, who have simmering hatred for each other, are ruthless and sleazy, although one of them turns out to be a lot worse than the other. An innocent and sweet kid like Emma doesn’t deserve the parents she has.

Meanwhile, although Nico might seem to have a cavalier and cocky exterior when he’s on the job, the movie slowly shows that he’s actually in a lot of emotional turmoil. His entire family is dead, presumably because of COVID-23. And before the pandemic, he was a paralegal with plans to become a lawyer, but he had to abandon those dreams. There’s a scene where Nico goes back to the now-deserted law office where he used to work and bitterly goes through some of the remnants of his past.

But more heartbreaking for Nico than the loss of his career dreams is the fact that he’s fallen in love with a woman who’s around his age, but they haven’t been able to be in the same room together because of the pandemic. Her name is Sara Garcia (played by Sofia Carson), who lives in an apartment with her beloved grandmother Lita (played Elpidia Carrillo), whom Sara calls Grammy. Sara’s parents are also dead because of COVID-23.

Nico and Sara met when he made a delivery to her apartment. They had an instant connection and fell in love through constant contact over the phone. Nico also visits Sara by going to her apartment, but not going inside and instead talking to her outside the apartment door. It’s explained that the apartment building is under heavy government surveillance, because it’s a “hot spot” for COVID-23 infections. Therefore, Nico and Sara know they could be arrested if he’s allowed inside her apartment, and Sara and Lita could be sent to the dreaded Q-Zone.

Sara sees firsthand (through her front-door keyhole) how brutal one of these arrests can be, when one of her female neighbors is dragged from her apartment, yelling and pleading for mercy, because the neighbor tested positive for COVID-23. Before the hazmat-suit-wearing sanitation workers arrive to take her to the Q-Zone, the neighbor begs Sara to let her inside Sara’s apartment to hide, but Sara refuses to hide the neighbor, on Nico’s advice. Emmett is supervising this particular detainment with sadistic glee. And he vows that he will be back to this apartment building to get more people because he’s convinced that the entire building is infected.

There are several scenes in “Songbird” where Nico talks to Sara through her apartment door, like he’s her pandemic Romeo to her quarantined Juliet. It’s supposed to be romantic, but Nico and Sara just utter cheesy soap-opera-type dialogue to each other that will make viewers roll their eyes or laugh at the corniness of it all. And when Lita starts having a persistent cough, you know exactly where this movie is going to go in the “race against time” part of the film that’s supposed to make this movie a suspenseful thriller.

Meanwhile, one of Lester’s employees who works from home is a lonely paraplegic named Dozer (played by Paul Walter Hauser), a military veteran in his mid-30s who lost the use of his legs during the war in Afghanistan. Dozer, who’s been a self-described shut-in for the past six years, uses a drone to keep track of Lester’s courier employees. Dozer has a strong sense of right and wrong and likes feeling as if he’s a “rescuer,” which all affect his actions later in the story.

Dozer has been a subscriber to a pretty YouTuber named May (played by Alexandra Daddario), who is a self-described struggling singer/songwriter. She has a YouTube channel called May Sings the Blues, where she sings cover songs and her own original music during livestreams and in prerecorded videos. People who watch her YouTube channel have the option to donate money to her, because she often tells her viewers that the pandemic has made it impossible for her to make money by performing in person.

Dozer has been one of her biggest donors, so May decides to connect with him online and reaches out to him to personally thank him. They begin chatting and soon get very candid with each other about the problems in their lives. Dozer tells May about being a shut-in: “I was in lockdown before it was fashionable.”

May tells Dozer that she moved to Los Angeles because a guy in the music industry promised to make her a big star. She and the guy ended up having an affair, which she now regrets, but the guy still wants to keep seeing her. And then the pandemic happened, and she’s been stuck in an uncomfortable limbo where she still needs the guy to help her with her career, but she wants to break off their affair.

Because of the strict lockdown, it’s illegal for people to have in-person social visits with other people who don’t live in the same household, but May’s lover insists on visiting her for their sexual encounters. May confides in Dozer that she’s afraid of getting infected and/or arrested because of this guy. Dozer offers to help her any way that he can. May’s “mystery lover” is eventually revealed, and it will be shocking to no one who’s seen enough of these types of formulaic, unimaginative movies.

Except for the COVID-23 pandemic aspect of the movie, there’s absolutely nothing unique about “Songbird,” which is a lot like many other badly made post-apocalyptic movies that have a weak, nonsensical plot and dumb action scenes. There’s a chase scene where Nico gets trapped in a building with Emmett and some of Emmett’s armed goons. And out of nowhere, Nico gets help from a gun-toting vigilante named Boomer (played by Paul Sloan), who randomly shows up in the scene and then is never seen in the movie again.

Viewers will also have sit through lots of inane dialogue, such as during another scene when Emmett has cornered some people he wants to capture. He taunts them by saying, “Roses are red. Violets are blue. You think you can hide? I’ll find you!”

One of the producers of “Songbird” is Michael Bay, who’s best known as the chief filmmaker for the “Transformers” movie franchise and the first two “Bad Boys” movies. Even though those movies had mediocre-to-bad screenplays, at least those films had high-octane action to keep people interested and wanting more. “Songbird” doesn’t even have memorable action scenes, unless you think it’s an improvement that at one point in the story, Nico ditches his bicycle and replaces it with a stolen motorcycle.

It all leads up to an ending that’s so terrible that it will make people either laugh or get angry, depending on how much it might bother people that their time was wasted by watching this garbage. And why is this movie called “Songbird,” when the only singer in the movie is a supporting character, not a leading character? Just like this entire ludicrous movie, it doesn’t make sense and it’s too lazy to try to give any logical explanations.

STX released “Songbird” on VOD on December 11, 2020.

Review: ‘Wild Mountain Thyme,’ starring Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Jon Hamm and Christopher Walken

December 11, 2020

by Carla Hay

Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt in “Wild Mountain Thyme” (Photo by Kerry Brown/Bleecker Street)

“Wild Mountain Thyme”

Directed by John Patrick Shanley 

Culture Representation: Taking place in Ireland and in New York City, the romantic drama “Wild Mountain Thyme” has an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Two oddball Irish farmers—one female and one male—have very different views of love and marriage, while the male famer’s rich American businessman cousin might be part of a love triangle for this would-be couple.

Culture Audience: “Wild Mountain Thyme” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching romantic movies that are pretentious and ridiculous.

Jon Hamm, Jamie Dornan and Christopher Walken in “Wild Mountain Thyme” (Photo by Kerry Brown/Bleecker Street)

The production notes for “Wild Mountain Thyme” describe the movie as a “comedic, moving and wildly romantic tale.” Comedic? The reality is that “Wild Mountain Thyme” is a drama with a lot of unintentionally so-bad-it’s-funny moments. Moving? This painfully dull movie doesn’t pour on the sentimental sap until the last 15 minutes of the film—and it does so in the corniest way possible. Wildly romantic? The characters in “Wild Mountain Thyme” are so dysfunctional and/or emotionally repressed that there’s almost no passionate romance in the film, and the characters spend most of the movie bickering about land ownership and who’s a legitimate farmer.

“Wild Mountain Thyme,” which takes place mostly in Ireland and partially in New York City, was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, who adapted the movie from his 2014 Broadway play “Outside Mullingar.” Even though Shanley has won an Oscar (for writing 1987’s “Moonstruck”) and a Tony and a Pulitzer (for the play “Doubt: A Parable”), those prestigious awards don’t mean that someone is incapable of making an embarrassing stinker. “Wild Mountain Thyme” is an overly verbose story that ultimately doesn’t have much to say and should have remained on the stage, where pretentiously worded dialogue is expected and therefore much more palatable than it is for a movie audience.

“Wild Mountain Thyme” (which was filmed primarily in Mayo County, Ireland) gets its name because there are scenes in the movie where people sing “Wild Mountain Thyme” in a pub. The cinematic version of the story also greatly benefits from showcasing the lush and gorgeous landscape of rural Ireland. There’s no denying that the film’s cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt is one of the movie’s few high points.

But right from the start, the tone of “Wild Mountain Thyme” is off-kilter, by having a dead character as the movie’s intermittent guide/storyteller. There’s voiceover narration from Irish farmer Tony Reilly (played by Christopher Walken, doing his usual eccentric schtick) explaining how the would-be couple at the center of the story first came to know each other. Tony announces at the beginning of the narration that he’s dead, so people will know that they’re supposed to be hearing the voice of a ghost. Very morbid.

Tony says, “They say if an Irish man dies while telling a story, you can rest assured, he’ll be back.” This movie is so unimaginative that, sure enough, toward the end of the film, Tony’s voice comes back into the narration to repeat the same line. The narration is really unnecessary because Tony doesn’t provide any insight that isn’t already presented in the movie characters’ actions.

“Wild Mountain Thyme” producer Martina Nilan is quoted in the movie’s production notes as saying that “Wild Mountain Thyme” is “a timeless fable with a heightened fairy-tale tone.” However, the movie isn’t timeless and actually is very outdated with its old-fashioned views of strict gender roles for men and women when it comes to love and romance. Based on what the “Wild Mountain Thyme” characters say and how they act, they believe that women’s ultimate goal in life should be to get married and have children, and women have to wait until men make the first move in a courtship.

The movie also has the sexist notion that women who’ve never been married by a certain age have to be desperate to get married. “Wild Mountain Thyme” also pushes a narrative that a woman isn’t considered a “real woman” unless she wants to become a mother or is a mother. Meanwhile, men who’ve never been married and have no kids by a certain age might be considered “strange,” but they don’t have to be desperate to find a spouse.

It’s this moldy concept that stinks up the “will they or won’t they” relationship of Rosemary Muldoon (played by Emily Blunt) and Anthony Reilly (played by Jamie Dornan), two Irish farmers who embody the old-fashioned stereotypes of what usually happens in romantic dramas: The woman wants to be romanced by the man and be in a committed relationship with him that leads to marriage, while the man spends almost the entire story resisting. In other words, the man always has the “upper hand,” because he’s the one who decides if there will be a romantic relationship or not.

The movie sticks to this formula like patriarchal glue. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a story about falling in love and wanting to get married and have kids. But the way this story is told in “Wild Mountain Thyme” is extremely off-putting because the filmmakers want to pretend that it’s a feminist movie, when it’s just the opposite. For almost the entire movie, Rosemary mopes around and sulks because she’s waiting for Anthony to show a sign that he wants more than a platonic relationship.

As Anthony’s dead father Tony explains in the narration, Rosemary has been in love with Anthony since they were both 10 years old. (In flashbacks, Abigail Coburn plays a young Rosemary, while Darragh O’Kane plays a young Anthony.) The Reilly family and Muldoon family are farmers who live right next door to each other in rural Ireland, so the kids grew up knowing nothing but life on a farm.

The adult Rosemary and Anthony in this story are now in their late 30s. Because of Tony’s ghostly narration, this entire story is a flashback. Tony’s death and funeral are eventually shown in the movie.

The Muldoon family owns a strip of land that overlaps into the entrance of the Reilly family’s home. Tony tries in vain to get the Muldoon family to sell that strip of land to him. The questions over who owns this strip of land and who will inherit the entire Reilly family property are sources of contention throughout the story.

Anthony’s widower father Tony wants Anthony to inherit the farm. However, Tony is having doubts about his son’s ability to handle the responsibility because Anthony is an emotionally immature loner who doesn’t seem very smart about the business side of running the farm. Tony also disapproves of Anthony not showing any interest in getting married and having kids, while Anthony is extremely unwilling to become a husband and father. In fact, Anthony shows no interest in having a committed relationship with anyone.

What’s odd is that later in the story, Tony mentions Anthony’s two other siblings: Trish and Audrey, who are never seen or heard in the film. It’s implied that these two sisters are still alive somewhere. But because the movie has a sexist tone to it, these female characters are easily dismissed and never mentioned again, as if Anthony is the only rightful heir in the family.

Tony’s wife Mary (played by Clare Barrett), who died when the children were young, is also sidelined. She’s only seen briefly in flashbacks, where she’s cheerfully singing or cooking in the kitchen by herself, with no lines of dialogue. Considering this film’s sexist attitude about women only existing to be wives and mothers, it’s no wonder that Mary is only seen in the kitchen.

At one point in the movie, Tony admits to Anthony that he married Mary out of loneliness, not out of love, but that Tony eventually came to appreciate his wife, who was the one who pushed for them to get married in the first place. It’s an obvious parallel to what’s going on with Rosemary and Anthony. The only time that Anthony mentions his mother is when he tells Rosemary: “When my mother died, I couldn’t see colors anymore.” Cue the violins.

Rosemary is an only child who lives with her widowed and very opinionated mother Aoife (played by Dearbhla Molloy), who also wants Rosemary to get married and start her own family. But Rosemary is pining over an emotionally stunted Anthony, because she thinks he’s “the one.” Aoife (who affectionally calls Rosemary “mad,” as in crazy) also thinks that Anthony is a good match for Rosemary, but you get the impression that Aofie mainly wants to see Rosemary become a wife and mother to any suitable man who might come along.

Rosemary won’t come right out and tell Anthony that she has romantic feelings for him because she expects him to do the “manly” thing and make the first move and ask her out on a date. When Anthony tells her that he’ll never get married, she says that she doesn’t believe him. Rosemary even tells Anthony that she will have her eggs frozen if necessary, until he comes around to the idea of being her husband and the father of her children. But Anthony just acts confused and slightly repulsed (apparently he’s ignorant about modern fertility treatments) and tries to ignore Rosemary’s desperation.

In a flashback to Rosemary’s childhood as a 10-year-old, she’s doing what she usually does in this movie: pouting and obsessing over Anthony. Her father Chris (played by Don Wycherley) notices Rosemary sulking at the kitchen table. She tells her father in a depressed voice: “I’m just a girl. The world is full of girls.”

Her father responds by saying, “You’re not just a girl … You’re a queen … You are the white swan … It means no one can top you. The world is yours. You can do anything.”

Because of this little pep talk, Rosemary becomes fascinated with the ballet “Swan Lake.” There are several references to “Swan Lake” throughout the movie. And these “Swan Lake” references are as cloying and sappy as you might think they are.

In the beginning of the movie, which jumps around in flashbacks throughout the film, Chris has died, so viewers don’t really get to see the relationship that Rosemary had with Chris when she was an adult. However, Rosemary is very close to her mother, who can often get on Rosemary’s nerves with nagging about Rosemary being a spinster. However, no one puts more pressure on Rosemary to become a wife and mother than Rosemary herself.

There’s also a hint that Tony has been attracted to Aofie for quite some time, but he didn’t act on that attraction because she was married. Not long after Chris’ funeral, Tony doesn’t waste time in flirting with Aofie and making it clear that he’d like to get to know her better if she’s interested. Thankfully, that potentially awkward storyline goes nowhere.

After Chris’ death, Rosemary has fully taken over the Muldoon farm’s operations. Of course, the movie doesn’t actually show her doing much dirty work on the farm, since the filmmakers want to confine Rosemary in the stereotypical role of woman who’s mainly concerned with getting an uninterested man to be her husband. There are some scenes with some adorable animals though, with the predictable cute “reaction” shots of an expressive pet dog who seems to know what the humans are saying and has the head tilt and emotional eyes to prove it.

In the ghostly narration, Tony describes Rosemary as being “besotted with love,” which will make viewers wonder if Rosemary’s obsession with Anthony is true love or if she’s just in love with the idea of being married and having her own family. The filmmakers try to make Rosemary look like a moody, tobacco-smoking feminist (she smokes cigarettes and pipes), but she’s really just a run-of-the-mill “damsel in distress” who’s waiting around for a sour and grumpy Anthony to rescue her from her loneliness.

In addition to the cliché of a desperate woman longing for an emotionally unavailable man, “Wild Mountain Thyme” has another over-used cliché in movies about romance: the possibility of a love triangle. It starts from Rosemary and Anthony’s childhood, when there are a few brief scenes of a character named Fiona (played by Anna Weekes), whom Rosemary sees as a threat for Anthony’s affections. It’s mentioned that in her childhood, Rosemary even got into a physical fight with Fiona, by pushing her down. The adults didn’t do much about it but give Rosemary a mild scolding.

However, just like all the female characters with supporting roles in the movie, Fiona only seems to be there for filler and not to further the story in any way. When Anthony and Rosemary are adults, there is a brief reference to Fiona when Anthony mentions to Rosemary that he saw Fiona by chance somewhere and he had brief conversation with her. (Anthony and Fiona’s conversation is never shown in the movie.) Rosemary gets visibly jealous when she hears that Anthony and Fiona were in contact with each other.

There’s a brief scene that shows Anthony is interested in dating women when he has a drunken encounter with a pretty but scruffy blonde named Eleanor (played by Lydia McGuinness), who’s got spiky and messy hair styled like the ’80s female pop trio Bananarama. Anthony and Eleanor meet in a pub, get drunk together, and hang out on a ledge, where she confesses some sordid sexual secrets to him. She’s so tipsy that she loses her balance and falls off of the ledge. Eleanor is never seen again in the movie.

The main love triangle in the story is between Anthony, Rosemary and Adam (played by Jon Hamm), who is the American son of Tony’s brother. Adam is a single, successful money manager in New York City, because apparently the “Wild Mountain Thyme” filmmakers want to shut out any possibility that there are plenty of eligible bachelors in Ireland who could catch Rosemary’s fancy. Adam, who is very brash and confident, loves to flaunt his wealth. And by his own admission, Adam relishes being the center of attention.

Because Tony has doubts about Anthony’s ability to take care of the farm, he tells Anthony that he’s contemplating having Adam inherit the farm, even though Adam has no experience in farming. However, Tony is impressed with Adam’s business skills and he thinks the farm has a better chance of thriving if Adam took over the operations.

And so, Adam is invited to Ireland to look over the farm. Adam thinks of himself as someone who can easily be a farmer, because it’s something that he’s been fantasizing about for a while. However, it’s clear as soon as Adam comes to visit, he’s really a city dweller at heart. He wants to own the farm, not be an actual farmer.

Because he’s a showoff, Adam drives up to the farm one day in a silver Rolls Royce, which greatly impresses Tony. Meanwhile, Anthony is naturally feeling overshadowed and unappreciated when Adam is around. Anthony makes a point of telling Adam that he’s not a real farmer. The business-minded Adam is appalled that Anthony and Rosemary don’t know how many acres of farm land that they have.

It isn’t long before Adam shows that he’s attracted to Rosemary. The feeling isn’t really mutual, but Rosemary likes the attention, which is something that she doesn’t get from Anthony. Whereas Anthony can’t even be bothered to go over to the Muldoon house to visit Rosemary (even though she lives next door), Adam eagerly invites Rosemary to visit New York City, within a few hours of meeting her. Rosemary tells Adam that she’d love to go to the theater in New York. And this is the point in the movie where viewers can predict that if Rosemary does ever go to visit Adam in New York, you know exactly which stage production she’ll want to see.

Meanwhile, whenever Anthony gets irritated with Rosemary (which is often), he tells her that she should think about selling the farm and that she should leave Ireland. She usually replies in a huff that maybe she will leave. But she’s not fooling anyone. Rosemary is too obsessed with Anthony to leave.

Anthony occasionally mentions that he’s thinking about leaving farm life behind too. At one point, he makes a very un-patriotic comment about Ireland: “It’s a terrible place for a decent person.” Anthony, who keeps telling people that he thinks he’s “mad” (as in mentally ill), is also somewhat of a social outcast in the community.

Anthony’s oddball reputation is further fueled after an incident when a neighbor named Cleary (played by Barry McGovern) sees Anthony practicing a marriage proposal in a field. Anthony is rehearsing this proposal because he’s starting to wonder if maybe he should marry someone someday. Anthony thinks the only witness to his “marriage proposal rehearsals” is a donkey in the field.

But the nosy neighbor sees Anthony and wrongly assumes that Anthony is proposing marriage to the donkey. He tells other local people about what he saw, and soon Anthony becomes part of a community joke that Anthony might be into bestiality. Although this notion about Anthony is far-fetched, it at least accurately demonstrates how quickly gossip can spread in a small town.

When Rosemary asks Anthony why he won’t leave the farm, he replies: “These green fields and the animals living off them. And then there’s us living off of the animals. And over that, that what tends to us, lives off us maybe. Whatever that is, it holds me here.” This is the type of eye-rolling dialogue that’s littered throughout the movie.

“Wild Mountain Thyme” has scene after scene that’s supposed to be “deep philosophy from Irish farmers who look like movie stars,” but it all just sounds like nonsensical crap. For example, Rosemary asks Anthony: “How many days do we have until the sun shines?” Anthony replies, “It’s not shining.” Rosemary then says, “I believe that it is.” Obviously, this is a not-so-subtle reference to Rosemary’s optimism about love and Anthony’s pessimism. And only in a badly written entertainment project do farmers really talk like that.

One of the worst things about “Wild Mountain Thyme” is that it pushes a narrative that a romantic person who’s desperate to be in love, just by sheer force of will and being persistent, can “change” a person who resists the romantic person’s amorous intentions and the romantic can “make” that person fall in love with them. But “Wild Mountain Thyme” can’t even push this narrative in a clever way. It’s an unhealthy approach to relationships because true love is accepting people for who they are, not trying to change them to fit someone else’s fantasies.

One of the most cringeworthy scenes in the movie is when Rosemary and Anthony have an argument after she tells him about an encounter that she had with Adam where Adam made it very clear that Adam is interested in dating Rosemary. Rosemary declares to Anthony during this argument: “I want a man! Adam smells like soap! He smells like the lilies of the field!”

Anthony replies, “Why would you want to smell the cows on me, when you can smell the lilies on him?” Rosemary shouts, “I’m the one who should smell good! A man should stink—like you!”

And then, Rosemary says to Anthony: “It’s good that you’re tall. Men are beasts. They need that height to balance the truth and goodness of women.” We shudder to think what Rosemary might think about men who are short or average-sized. What’s also strange about this dialogue is that Anthony isn’t really that tall.

Anthony replies to Rosemary by saying something that viewers are thinking at this point: “There’s no answer to blather like that.” Rosemary continues undaunted, with a pseudo-feminist rant: “Hope is a force. And women are the salvation of the world! I believe that, and mean to make you believe it!”

The actors should be commended for not doing this scene without breaking out into laughter at the ridiculousness of it all. That’s no guarantee that people watching the movie won’t laugh (or groan or cringe) at this scene, which is intended to be a serious emotional moment in the film, but comes across as something that might be in a rejected soap opera script. And again: What kind of farmers talk like they’re competing in a Bad Prose of the Year contest?

Blunt gives it her best shot to make Rosemary as feisty and “lovable” as possible. But it’s all just a façade, because Rosemary’s actions and intentions show how she’s not the strong-minded, independent woman she would like think she is. Almost everything she does in the story is to try to impress Anthony or get a reaction out of him. Her self-esteem is wrapped up in him, not in herself.

And the chemistry between Blunt and Dornan isn’t very believable, not the least of which because Anthony is supposed to be this sulking, brooding type who does everything he can to avoid having a serious romance with anyone. At one point in the story, Rosemary asks Anthony if he’s gay. He emphatically says “no,” and acts very offended by the question. And when Rosemary asks him if he’s a virgin, he scoffs at the idea.

You can’t really blame Rosemary for asking, because there’s no indication that Anthony has ever had a serious girlfriend. One of the biggest flaws of “Wild Mountain Thyme” is that even though the main characters in this movie talk a lot, they don’t really show much personality. Anthony comes across as cold and very hard to read. Rosemary’s only real passion is trying to get Anthony to fall in love with her.

However, fans of Blunt (who starred in the Disney movie musicals “Into the Woods” and “Mary Poppins Returns”) will at least be happy to know that she does sing quite well in “Wild Mountain Thyme,” since she has a solo performance when Rosemary gets up on stage at a pub to sing “Wild Mountain Thyme.” Dornan also breaks out into song in the movie. And the music in “Wild Mountain Thyme” is a family affair, since Dornan’s wife Amelia Warner is the film’s composer.

The biggest unintentional laughs in the movie are toward the end, when Anthony confesses a secret to Rosemary, after she begs him to tell her why he’s so against the idea of falling in love and getting married. It’s when the movie goes from bad to beyond redemption, and takes an abrupt turn into the depths of phony schmaltziness. “Wild Mountain Thyme” tries to throw in this sweet sentimentality to try to pander to a certain formula, but the movie really just stinks like the garbage that it is.

Bleecker Street released “Wild Mountain Thyme” in U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on December 11, 2020.

Review: ‘Wander Darkly,’ starring Sienna Miller and Diego Luna

December 11, 2020

by Carla Hay

Diego Luna and Sienna Miller in “Wander Darkly” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Wander Darkly”

Directed by Tara Miele 

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area and Mexico, the drama “Wander Darkly” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latinos, African Americans and Asians) representing the middle-class and working class.

Culture Clash: A man and a woman who have a newborn baby are involved in a car accident that alters the way that they look at their lives.

Culture Audience: “Wander Darkly” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in mind-bending “flashback” movies that put a lot of emphasis on “what if” aspects of life and the ongoing debate over personal choice versus destiny.

Sienna Miller and Diego Luna in “Wander Darkly” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Wander Darkly” puts a very clever and absorbing spin on a concept that has often been used in movies: Someone gets injured in an accident and tries to right some wrongs, or “do over” their life. Written and directed by Tara Miele, “Wander Darkly” isn’t a horror movie, but it’s a psychological drama that goes deep and keeps viewers guessing over who died and who survived a terrible car accident that is the catalyst for almost everything that happens.

The Los Angeles couple at the center of the story are Adrienne (played by Sienna Miller) and Matteo (played by Diego Luna), who have recently become parents to a baby daughter named Ellie. Adrienne and Matteo are both in their late 30s or early 40s. And they both give the impression that they feel like life is passing them by too quickly and they don’t have much to show for it except for their child.

Matteo is as an independent contractor who does construction jobs and also works as a handyman. Adrienne is a visual artist who does art installations, but now that she’s become a mother, taking care of the baby is taking up a lot of her time too. Matteo and Adrienne live in a co-op building, where most of the residents are younger than they are.

And, as Adrienne says at one point in the movie, the couple is “broke.” They’re not so financially desperate that they’re on the verge of being homeless. But money is tight, and their household income is barely enough to pay their expenses.

There are other signs that Adrienne and Matteo’s relationship is fraying, or at least hit a rough patch. While driving to a friend’s house party for a “date night” (Matteo does the driving), tensions are running high because Adrienne had to remind Matteo that this was their date night. She’s irritated that he had forgotten, and she reminds him it was his idea to have date nights because their date nights “are cheaper than therapy.” And there are a lot of issues in this relationship that looks like it could need therapy.

Adrienne is also annoyed with Matteo because she thinks he’s being too laid-back about their financial situation. A lot of the passion has gone from their relationship, which has always been plagued by jealousy, mostly coming from Adrienne. She thinks Matteo has cheated on her with a younger, attractive female friend of Matteo’s named Shea (played by Aimee Carrero), but Matteo insists that he and Shea (who is very affectionate with Matteo) have a strictly platonic relationship.

There’s also a lot of underlying tension over Adrienne and Matteo’s marital status. When people assume that Adrienne and Mateo are married, Adrienne quickly corrects them and tells that she and Matteo are not husband and wife. Meanwhile, Matteo doesn’t seem to mind if people assume that he and Adrienne are married. In the beginning of the movie, it’s somewhat unclear if Adrienne really wants to get married or not. But it’s later revealed in the story what the couple’s true feelings are about being married to each other.

When Adrienne and Matteo get to the party, more issues come out under their forced smiles and somewhat sarcastic comments. At the party, Matteo mentions to two friends who are couple—Gary (played by Lamont Thompson) and Kevin (played by Ethan Cohn)—that he and Adrienne’s domineering mother Patty (played by Beth Grant) don’t really like each other. Matteo says about his relationship with Patty: “When she comes to the house, we play this game like we can’t see or hear each other.”

And it’s also implied several times throughout the story that Patty is a religious conservative, while Adrienne and Matteo are not. There are also veiled inferences to Patty being a racist who doesn’t approve of her daughter dating a Latino man who’s originally from Mexico. No one ever really comes right out and says that there’s this racial and cultural tension in the family, but it’s clear that there is, based on the strained way that Patty and Matteo interact with each other. Adrienne’s father Steve (played by Brett Rice) meekly goes along with whatever Patty wants.

Adrienne isn’t the only one who has jealousy issues. There’s a good-looking man at the party named Liam (played by Tory Kittles), who seems thrilled to see Adrienne there. The feeling is very mutual and they greet each other with warm smiles and hugs. Matteo has noticed that Liam is at the party too, and Matteo doesn’t seem happy about it at all.

Unlike Matteo’s relationship with Shea, there’s no ambiguity over Adrienne’s relationship with Liam, based on Matteo’s reaction. Although it’s not said out loud, Liam and Adrienne were once romantically involved with each other, but are now just friends. It’s never made clear how long Liam and Adrienne were together, but Matteo feels uncomfortable with Liam and Adrienne still having contact with each other.

And that jealousy comes out during an argument that Matteo and Adrienne have in the car on the way home. Matteo brings up the subject of Liam at the party and Matteo’s perception that Adrienne was being too affectionate with Liam. Adrienne tells Matteo that they’re allowed to have friends. And she also says, in an exasperated voice, “Why are we even together anymore?”

And then, the car accident happens when an out-of-control car blindsides Matteo and Adrienne from the front of their car. Adrienne wakes up injured in a hospital. And it’s here where the movie takes many twists and turns that can’t be described in this review without giving away too much information.

However, it’s enough to say that viewers will be wondering who survived the car crash: Was it Adrienne, Matteo, both or neither? There are several scenes where Adrienne and Matteo reflect on their lives and the choices they made. And there’s a time-warp aspect to the story, since Ellie is seen as a 4-year-old (played by Olivia Popp) and as a 15-year-old (played by Inde Navarrette), with the teenage Ellie reading some of her mother’s journals.

Although Matteo is one-half of this couple, this story really belongs to Adrienne, who goes through the more harrowing emotional journey in the movie. “Wander Darkly” uses a lot of fade-out camera and editing techniques to take people back and forth into scenes that could be flashbacks or could be a chance for Adrienne and Matteo to “do over” something in their past.

Luna and Miller are both very good in their roles as this couple wondering where things went wrong in their relationship and trying to recapture some of the magic they had in the beginning of their romance. Miller is fascinating to watch in this psychological mystery, because she goes through every conceivable emotion in this movie without ever veering into campy territory or giving away too much in advance of where this story is headed.

There are times where viewers will think that Adrienne and Matteo might be dead and in purgatory. And there are times when people will think Adrienne and Matteo are alive but just might be delusional. In one memorable scene, Adrienne is depressed after the accident, and she’s moping on the couch while watching TV. George Romero’s 1968 classic zombie movie “Night of the Living Dead” is playing on the TV screen.

Matteo goes in the room and expresses surprise that Adrienne is watching this horror movie because he says that she hates zombies. But Adrienne replies, “They’re my people now. I feel connected to them, actually. They’re very misunderstood.” Later, Adrienne says, “I feel soulless, hollowed-out.”

Thanks to notable performances from the cast members and impressive writing and directing from Miele, “Wander Darkly” is anything but soulless and hollow. People who have short attention spans probably won’t enjoy this movie as much as people who like to try to solve mysteries while watching a complicated relationship. However tragic the car accident was (both Adrienne and Matteo suffered serious injuries from the car crash), “Wander Darkly” offers an impactful message of resilience in the wake of tragedy.

Lionsgate released “Wander Darkly” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on December 11, 2020. The movie’s released date on Blu-ray and DVD is February 9, 2021.

Review: ‘Nomadland,’ starring Frances McDormand

December 4, 2020

by Carla Hay

Frances McDormand in “Nomadland” (Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

“Nomadland”

Directed by Chloé Zhao

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2012 and 2013 in various parts of the United States (mainly the West Coast and Midwest), the dramatic film “Nomadland” features an almost all-white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A widow, who lives in her van by choice and makes a living doing temporary jobs, leads a nomadic existence and is unapologetic about this lifestyle choice to people who don’t approve.

Culture Audience: “Nomadland” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted realistic character studies about people who live on the fringes of society and are often overlooked by mainstream media.

Frances McDormand and David Strathairn in “Nomadland” (Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

“Nomadland” is a great American film that represents people who haven’t achieved the great American Dream in the traditional sense but are surviving on their own terms. It’s a drama about a culture that’s rarely seen in a narrative film: People who are not completely homeless but who choose to live in a motor vehicle and travel to find work, wherever and whenever they can. They don’t want anyone’s pity. They just want the respect to live their lives non-traditionally.

And the fact that this story centers on a middle-aged widow with no children makes it even more unusual but no less impactful, because she doesn’t fit the usual profile of nomadic people who get movies made about them. She’s an American refugee in her own country, because the city that she lived and worked in for several years was economically devastated and shut down, so she’s been forced to find a life elsewhere as a nomad.

Written, directed and edited by Chloé Zhao, “Nomadland” is based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 non-fiction book “Nomadland: Surviving in America in the 21st Century.” As such, most of the film’s cast members are real-life nomads (whose last names are not revealed in the cast credits), which give the movie a level of authenticity that can’t be duplicated by a cast filled with professional actors. Zhao’s masterful cinematic version of the story also makes the sweeping landscapes of the open road as of much a character as the story’s protagonist: Fern (played by Frances McDormand), a no-nonsense, self-sufficient widow who is still recovering from the grief of losing her husband after 32 years of marriage.

Fern used to live in the very small town of Empire, Nevada, which had a population of 217 people in the 2010 census. In real life, Empire suffered from an irrecoverable loss on January 23, 2011, when the United States Gypsum mining plant (the rural town’s main employer) shut down, due to reduced demand for sheetrock. By July 2011, Empire’s zip code (89405) was discontinued. This information is stated in the movie’s prologue.

Fern’s husband died around the same time that Empire became a ghost town. And so, with nothing to keep her in Empire, this widow has been on her own, living in her van, and trying to find enough work to keep herself financially afloat. The movie’s story takes place over the course of about 12 to 14 months, beginning during the year-end holiday season in 2012. Fern reports to work at an Amazon warehouse, where she has signed on for temporary work as a package processor, since the company has increased demand for workers during this holiday season.

Fern is friendly but emotionally elusive. She’s good at making small talk and bonding with passing acquaintances, but she’s closed-off when it comes to revealing her true inner feelings and making long-lasting close friendships. Throughout the film, there are glimpses of her emotional turmoil, but she never lets anything get her too depressed. She can’t afford to be depressed. She has to keep going for survival.

Fern is not old enough to retire, but she’s too old to be considered a viable candidate for a lot of jobs that require a lot of strenuous physical activity. Even if Fern were at retirement age, she can’t afford to retire. She and her husband had no children (apparently by choice, since Fern expresses no regrets about not having kids) and whatever savings they might have had is long gone.

She’s too proud to ask for financial assistance in most situations. If she does ask to borrow money from someone she knows (which happens a few times in the movie), it’s only as a last resort. And it’s clear that she finds it very difficult to ask anyone for money, because it makes her feel worthless. She always considers the money that she asks for to be a loan, not a gift or a handout. She promises to pay back the money, and you get the feeling that she means it. 

The closest thing that Fern has to a best friend is a woman about 10 years older than she is named Linda May (played by a real-life nomad named Linda May), who helped Fern get the temporary job at Amazon. After this temp job is completed, Fern decides she kind of likes the city and goes to an employment agency to try to find work so she can stay longer in the city.

The female agency employee who assists Fern warns her that there’s almost no additional work in the area this time of year. The agency employee is correct. Fern can’t find another job there, so she has to move on to a place where she can find work. And the work that she finds is usually temporary. This a pattern that repeats itself for much of the story, because people without a permanent address have a much harder time finding a permanent job.

“Nomadland” was filmed in Nevada, South Dakota, Nebraska, Arizona and California. None of the cities where Fern ends up is ever named, because the names of the cities don’t really matter. This movie is all about Fern’s experiences and the people she meets along the way in this particular time period in her life. Because the movie begins and ends during the winter months, there are multiple scenes where Fern has to deal with sleeping in her van during freezing weather.

A few times, some people who come across Fern express concern that she’s living in a van all by herself in freezing temperatures. Having a portable heater doesn’t really help and can sometimes be dangerous in an enclosed automobile, if the heater is kept on for a long period of time. Sometimes Fern stays at camping sites and RV parks (which usually cost money), while other times, she sleeps somewhere for free in a parking lot or out in a deserted area where she thinks she won’t be bothered. She refuses to stay at homeless shelters.

Linda May tells Fern about a nomad community gathering called Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (RTR), led by a charismatic man named Bob Wells (who portrays himself), who can best be described as someone who looks like a flannel-wearing Santa Claus. RTR is based in Quartzsite, Arizona, and it’s a support system geared mainly to nomads who are in desperate need of help. Fern looks at an online video of Bob speaking (she has her phone for Internet access) and politely tells Linda May that she’s not interested in going to the next RTR gathering.

But at some point, Fern changes her mind when she’s running very low on money. And she finds that RTR is a community of nomads who are a lot like she is: Over the age of 60, barely getting by financially, but loving life on the road. In the first meeting that she experiences with Bob, he talks about how people in their age group are a lot like work horses that are considered too old to be useful and are put out to pasture. Bob tells them to think of RTR as being like work horses who look out for each other. Fern likes what she hears, so she decides to stay.

Later, when Fern has a one-on-one meeting with Bob, he tells her: “I think you’ve come to the right place to find an answer. I think communing with nature and a real, true community and tribe will make all the difference for you.” Fern replies, “I hope so.”

The RTR gathering is almost like an informal seminar, because it includes instructions and advice on living in a vehicle. It also has swap meets for many of the attendees to trade or give away items. It’s at one of the swap meets that Fern meets Dave (played by David Strathairn), a tall and bearded gentleman who’s around her age or slightly older, and he seems as if he’s immediately attracted to Fern. She plays it cool though, and they talk about their can openers before going their separate ways.

Later, Fern and Dave see each other again at a social gathering and he asks her to dance. She warms up to him a little and he basically tells her that he’s available, but she still gives him the impression that she’s not interested in dating him. Although Fern doesn’t say it out loud, it’s pretty obvious that she’s still grieving over the loss of her husband, whom she speaks fondly of later in the story when she opens up to someone about him.

Although Fern considers her to be independent, there are scenes in the movie where she still shows some naïveté about basic things when it comes to looking out for her safety as a road traveler. For example, Fern’s tendency to be a loner means that she often parks in areas that are too isolated and would be disastrous if she needed help from someone nearby. When she sleeps in her car during the cold winter months, she has a thick blanket and layered clothing, but she doesn’t think of ways to better protect herself from getting sick or frost-bitten.

And she’s not as skilled in auto mechanics as she should be. One day, Fern finds that her parked car has a flat tire, but she does not have a spare tire. But even if she did, Fern doesn’t know how to change a tire. Luckily, another nomad whom she knows named Swankie (played by real-life nomad named Charlene Swankie) is parked nearby and can help her.

Fern asks Swankie to drive her to the nearest gas station to get help and a spare tire. Swankie mildly scolds Fern and tells her that it’s time for her to learn how to change a tire and that she should always have a spare tire. During a heart-to-heart conversation in Ruth’s van, Swankie tells her that she will soon turn 75, she was diagnosed with brain cancer, and she now has only seven or eight months to live. Swankie doesn’t want to go through cancer treatment. Instead, she wants to spend her last days on Earth doing things she always wanted to do, like go to Alaska.

Swankie tells Fern that she learned this lesson after she watch a close friend die from a terminal illness and how this friend had a boat parked at his home that he never got to use because he kept putting it off until he had more time. Swankie also opens up about the suicidal thoughts that she had when she found out that she had cancer. Swankie says she even read Jack Kevorkian’s controversial “Final Exit” book to get ideas, but she changed her mind about killing herself because she didn’t want to leave behind her two dogs. In turn, Fern reveals some of the feelings that she went through when her husband was dying of a terminal illness. It’s one of the best scenes in the movie.

During the course of the film, Fern takes different temporary jobs, including working as a camp host. She encounters Dave (who sometimes works as a fossil guide) at different times during the story and they become closer. She ends up meeting Dave’s musician son James (Tay Strathairn) and other members of Dave’s family. Fern also spends time with her married sister, who’s led a much more traditional and conservative life than Fern has. Viewers will get more insight into Fern’s family background during this crucial scene.

People should not expect a typical road-trip movie in “Nomadland.” Most road-trip movies want to stuff the plot with a lot of mishaps or high-octane action, but “Nomad” often focuses on the mundane but realistic everyday activities of Fern at work and in her free time. She takes pleasure in simple things, as demonstrated in a scene where Fern and Linda May pretend they’re at a spa and put tissues on their faces and cucumbers over their eyes.

And it’s a very intimate look at Fern life—maybe too intimate for some viewers, because there’s a scene of her urinating out in the desert and a scene of her defecating in a bucket in her van. (For people easily offended by bodily functions depicted on screen, you’ve been warned.) The defecation scene is not so graphic that viewers see the end results, but it’s explicit enough where people might find out more about Fern’s intestinal activities than they care to know. There’s also a full-frontal nude scene of Fern floating on water as she takes a relaxing dip in a lake.

These scenes are meant to give this drama a documentary feel, especially when Fern is alone. McDormand is so talented that she doesn’t need to speak in any solitary scenes, because her facial expressions say a lot more than what many scripted lines would say. The cinematography from Joshua James Richards gives emotional resonance to the seasons and terrain that Fern experiences during her journey. It’s during the freezing winter months that viewers get the most impactful sense of Fern’s isolation, because even she doesn’t know if she’s putting herself in a situation where she could wake up with frostbite or her van too buried in snow to drive.

But what “Nomadland” captures best is the reality that for nomads like Fern, the only thing constant is change. People come and go out of each other’s lives. Home means not having a building as a permanent place to live. There’s a pivotal scene in the movie were Fern has to make a choice to live a comfortable and more stable life in a regular house or keep living her more difficult and unstable life on the road. The choice she makes tells viewers what they need to know about what Fern’s definition of “freedom” is and what she might or might not be willing to give up to have that freedom.

Searchlight Pictures released “Nomadland” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on December 4, 2020. The movie is set for a release in select IMAX theaters in the U.S. on January 29, 2021. “Nomadland” goes into wider release in U.S. cinemas and debuts on Hulu on February 19, 2021.

Review: ‘Jungleand’ (2020), starring Charlie Hunnam and Jack O’Connell

December 2, 2020

by Carla Hay

Charlie Hunnam and Jack O’Connell in “Jungleland” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“Jungleland” (2020)

Directed by Max Winkler

Culture Representation: The dramatic film “Jungleland” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: In order to pay off a debt, two brothers who are involved in the world of underground bare-knuckle boxing are forced to go on a road trip with an unwilling young woman, so that the brothers can bring her to a crime lord. 

Culture Audience: “Jungleland” will appeal primarily to people who like well-acted stories about hard-luck individuals and the sleazy things that they do to survive, but viewers have to be willing to tolerate how this movie can sometimes be too slow-paced and unfocused for its own good.

Jessica Barden and Jack O’Connell in “Jungleland” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the dramatic film “Jungleland” (directed by Max Winkler) will be packed with a lot of action-oriented boxing scenes. Boxing is not the primary focus of this movie, which is really a road-trip film about two tight-knit American brothers coming to terms with their co-dependency on each other. Their relationship might be permanently changing as one brother tries to become more independent from the other. It just so happens that the two brothers are involved in some shady criminal activities, so there’s an added “race against time before we get killed” aspect of the story.

The two working-class brothers at the center of the story are Stanley “Stan” Kaminski (played by Charlie Hunnam) and Walter “Lion” Kaminski (played by Jack O’Connell), who spent most of their childhood as orphans growing up in various parts of America. Their deadbeat father abandoned them as children, and they spent part of their childhood raised by a single mother, who died when Stan and Lion were underage. In the movie, Lion says that he’s 25, while Stan (whose age is not mentioned) looks like he’s in his late 30s. They only have each other as family.

When this story takes place, the Kaminski brothers are living together in a run-down house in Fall River, Massachusetts. They both work at a sweatshop-styled fabric sewing factory, where their job is to do things like sew bedsheets. And they have dreams of being rich some day, which Stan constantly talks about when he fantasizes out loud to Lion about all the walk-in closets full of silk suits that he would like to have.

Stan is supposedly a dedicated follower of high fashion, but you’d never know it because he looks and acts like a scruffy rogue. That doesn’t mean he has to look “rich” (because he’s not), but Stan doesn’t even seem to care about looking like he has good hygiene. Later in the movie, it’s revealed that the brothers have been sort-of planning to open a dry-cleaning business together. Their “business plan” is literally a photo collage that looks like something a 9-year-old child would do as an art project, which is an indication of how little these brothers know about business. Keep in mind, this is a drama, not a comedy.

Because he’s the older brother, Stan takes on the “alpha male” leadership role in their relationship, while Lion is the “beta male” follower. Stan is a big talker who likes to come up with “get rich quick” schemes, while Lion just passively goes along with whatever Stan wants. However, even though Stan comes up with ideas, he’s not that smart in making any of these ideas beneficial to him and his brother. Stan’s ill-fated schemes have landed the brothers in debt to a local criminal named Pepper (played by Jonathan Majors), who is the type of thug who likes to be smooth but menacing.

Lion has raw talent as a boxer, and Stan is his coach. Lion and Stan like to growl at each other like lions as a way of getting Lion psyched up before a boxing match. It’s revealed later in the story that Stan tried to bribe a referee in the past, so he lost his license to train boxers. Stan still has dreams of Lion making it big as a boxer. Until they can make it to the big leagues, Stan has been putting Lion in underground bare-knuckles boxing matches that don’t really pay enough to get the brothers out of their dire financial situation.

After one of these matches, which ends with Lion losing by getting pummeled by a man who’s about 20 years older than Lion, the brothers find themselves accosted and essentially kidnapped by Pepper and one of Pepper’s henchman. Pepper has grown impatient with the brothers for not paying their debt. Stan and Lion both get roughed up a little until they agree to do whatever Pepper wants.

Pepper tells Stan and Lion that the only way they can erase the debt is to do two things: (1) Enter and win a boxing match called Jungleland, which has a grand prize of $100,000, and (2) Take a young woman named Sky with them on their road trip to Reno, Nevada (where Jungleland takes place), and deliver her to a pet store. Pepper gives them a business card for the store. Why a pet store? That’s explained much later in the story.

Lion is very reluctant to go along with the plan, but Pepper says, “You’ve got no choice.” Stan asks Pepper if this task of transporting Sky is some type of human trafficking. All that Pepper will tell them is that Sky is a “family friend” who “can be a handful.”

When Stan and Lion meet this mysterious Sky (played by Jessica Barden), she is very guarded and aloof. She doesn’t really want to talk about herself at first. Sky is in her early 20s (she’s able to buy alcohol at a bar later in the story), but she looks like she could be 16 or 17. Even though Sky isn’t very talkative, one thing that she does make clear to Stan and Lion is that she doesn’t want to go on this trip. As an incentive, Pepper gives them quite a bit of cash and a fairly new-looking SUV to take on the journey.

The Kaminski brothers soon find out why Pepper made Sky a part of this road trip. She’s been hiding from a crime lord named Yates, who wants Sky brought back to him in Reno, where he lives. Pepper was supposed to complete this task, but he’s now handed off that responsibility to Stan and Lion, who are both furious when they find out that they’ve been tricked into doing Pepper’s dirty work. However, there’s no turning back from the road trip. Stan is convinced that he and Lion will be killed if they don’t fulfill their end of the bargain.

Stan decides that Sky cannot be let out of their sight, so he tells Lion to keep watch over Sky when Stan can’t do it, such as while Stan is asleep or not in the same room. Also along for the ride is Stan and Lion’s whippet dog named Ash. Stan senses that Lion and Sky are immediately attracted to each other, and he orders Lion not to let Sky tempt or distract him. Easier said than done.

Throughout this road trip, which sometimes wanders off into tangents that drag the film down, Lion and Sky become more attracted to each other. She tells Lion that he doesn’t need to be bossed around by Stan, and she encourages Lion to think for himself. Sky also makes Lion see that Stan tends to do a lot of impulsive things that end up making things worse for the two brothers—not just on this road trip but as a pattern throughout the brothers’ recent lives. And during this road trip, more of Sky’s past is revealed, including a secret that explains why Yates wants her in his custody.

“Jungleland” director Winkler co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Theodore Bressman and David Branson Smith. The screenplay could’ve used some definite improvements, because some parts of the road trip don’t make sense, according to the “race against time” aspect that is supposed to be a big part of the story. For example, if it was so urgent for Sky to be brought to Yates from Massachusetts to Nevada, they could’ve taken the trip by plane, which is faster and more convenient than driving by car.

But that would mean there would be no “Jungleland” movie, since the road trip is contrived so that all sorts of things can go wrong along the way. And they do. A big foreshadowing is when, at the beginning of the trip, Stan impulsively decides to blow a lot of the cash by splurging on the highest-priced suite available at the hotel that he chooses for himself, Lion and Sky. But when they get to the suite, they find out that there’s only one bed, because it’s meant to be a honeymoon suite. It’s an example of how Stan doesn’t plan and think things through very well.

There are also parts of the movie where it doesn’t look like Stan and Lion are really in that big of a rush to get to Reno, even though a lot of time is lost because of some unfortunate things that slow down the trip by at least three days. With that sense of urgency lost, the movie tends to wander into different directions that sometimes don’t really add anything to the story. It just seems like these unnecessary scenes are filler, because the screenwriters couldn’t think of anything better to increase the length of the movie’s total running time.

For example, Stan, Lion and Sky break into her former high school when no one else is there, for reasons that are shown in the movie but won’t be revealed in this review. But even then, that part of the story is questionable, because the trio ends up spending the night at the school, without any concern that school employees will show up in the morning and discover these three intruders. Even when a school is on hiatus (such as during the summer), there are still employees who work at the school to look after it.

And as for any intense training for this big Jungleland fight, forget about it. There are so many mishaps and shenanigans that happen to this trio on the road trip that Stan and Lion barely have time to do any training, except when they use the gym at the high school during their break-in. The Jungleand fight really takes a back seat to some messy drama involving Sky. It isn’t until the last few scenes of the movie that the Jungleland fight comes back to the forefront of the storyline.

What makes “Jungleland” worth watching, despite the flaws in the screenplay, is that Hunnam, O’Connell and Barden give very good performances as these troubled souls who have been thrown together in very tension-filled circumstances. Each of these actors shows some emotional depth to the insecurities that each characters has. Lion is questioning his identity as an individual and how he might have been living under the control of his brother for too long. Sky is running away from her past in more ways than one.

Stan likes to be in control of Lion, but deep down he’s envious of Lion because Lion has one thing that Stan doesn’t have: talent in doing something well. Stan tells Sky when they’re alone together how he feels about Lion: “That kid is better at fighting than I’ve ever been at anything in my life … He’s special, and I’ll never know what it’s like.”

In real life, Hunnam, O’Connell and Barden are British. Out of the three, Barden fares the best in mastering an American accent. (People watching this movie might be surprised to find out that she’s British in real life.) O’Connell’s American accent is also believable, but Hunnam’s natural British accent can occasionally be heard when he says some of his lines in the movie.

“Jungleland” is fairly adequate for its cinematography and production design. And the filmmakers try not to make this a completely boring and stereotypical “desperate people in debt to gangsters” movie. For example, the character of Yates (played by John Cullum) is not what a lot of viewers will expect for a crime lord. Boxing fans will probably be disappointed at how few boxing scenes there are in the movie. To use a boxing analogy, “Jungleland” doesn’t deliver a knockout punch as a compelling drama, but it brings out enough emotionally impactful jabs from the main actors to make an impression on viewers.

Paramount Pictures released “Jungleland” in U.S. cinemas on November 6, 2020, and on digital and VOD on November 10, 2020. The movie’s DVD release date is January 12, 2021.

Review: ‘Cagefighter,’ starring Alex Montagnani, Jon Moxley, Jay Reso, Luke Rockhold, Chuck Liddell and Gina Gershon

December 1 , 2020

by Carla Hay

Alex Montagnani and Jonathan Good (also known as Jon Moxley) in “Cagefighter” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

“Cagefighter”

Directed by Jesse Quinones

Culture Representation: Taking place in London and Los Angeles, the mixed-martial arts (MMA) dramatic film “Cagefighter” features a predominantly white cast (with a few people of color) representing the middle-class and upper-middle-class.

Culture Clash: A world champion in MMA has conflicts with a pro wrestler who wants to break into MMA and become the world champion. 

Culture Audience: “Cagefighter” will appeal primarily to fans of the real-life MMA fighters and wrestlers who are in the movie, which has substandard acting and an extremely predictable, badly written story.

Chuck Liddell, Gina Gershon and Alex Montagnani in “Cagefighter” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

If you put the entire cast of “Cagefighter” in an arena filled to the brim with melted cheddar, that still wouldn’t be enough to equal the amount of cheesiness in this so-bad-it’s-almost-funny movie. No one is expecting junk like “Cagefighter” to be high art, but the movie (written and directed by Jesse Quinones) doesn’t even have exciting fight scenes, which is supposed to be the film’s main attraction. Almost everything in “Cagefighter” is formulaic, unimaginative and executed like someone who’s drunk-driving a bulldozer.

At the beginning of “Cagefighter” (which also has the title “Cagefighter: Worlds Collide”) viewers see the movie’s British protagonist Reiss Gibbons (played by Alex Montagnani) win his fifth world lightweight championship title for a mixed-martial arts (MMA) promotion called Legends. It’s a championship belt that he won undefeated. And because of his amazing winning streak, Reiss has become a very famous MMA fighter.

The movie is vague about the origins of Legends. Almost all of the people who work for Legends seem to be American, but for whatever reason, most of this story’s action takes place in London. “Cagefighter” was actually filmed in London, Los Angeles and the Canadian city of Regina.

Montagnani is a real-life professional MMA fighter who goes by the nicknames “The Mean Albatross” or “Mean.” Although he was no doubt cast in this movie for his real-life experience as a professional MMA fighter, it’s clear that the “Cagefighter” filmmakers didn’t care if he had any real acting talent. Montagnani is not the worst actor in the world, but his attempts at being a serious, dramatic actor are more painful to watch than the scenes where Reiss gets beaten up in the ring.

Reiss is supposed to be a “good guy” fighter who does things like give his time to charity and teach underprivileged kids some MMA techniques. He also believes in always treating his fans with respect.

Reiss overcame a troubled background on his path to athletic fame, fortune and championship titles. The oldest of three kids, Reiss and his siblings experienced a tragedy when their parents died when Reiss was 15 years old. After the death of his parents, Reiss had a rough upbringing in a not-so-nice environment.

However, Reiss was taken under the wing of a tough-but-tender MMA trainer/coach named Marcus (played by real-life MMA fighter Chuck Liddell), who helped Reiss become the champ he is today. Reiss says, “Marcus taught me to remain humble, in victory or in defeat.” Reiss has remained loyal to Marcus, who is still Reiss’ trainer/coach. Marcus (who is American) is a strong and mostly silent type, but Liddell still shows a lot of stiff and uncomfortable acting in this film.

As Reiss says in an interview: “If I didn’t have fighting to fall back on, I would’ve been over in a cell or in a box.”(Translation: He would’ve been in jail or dead.) Reiss’ manager and longtime friend Reggie (played by Elijah Baker) also comes from a working-class background. And just like Reiss, Reggie has the thick Cockney accent to prove it.

After winning his fifth Legends world lightweight championship title, Reiss gets flooded with offers from people in the entertainment industry. (The movie lazily depicts this showbiz courting of Reiss by having a montage of different people meeting with him in the same pub and at the same table.) Out of these offers, one of them is a deal to star in a movie, while other deals include endorsements.

Shortly after winning this championship, Reiss is relaxing in his home with his American wife Ellie (played by Georgia Bradner) and Reggie. They’re watching TV when they see an over-the-top blowhard American professional wrestler named Randy Stone (played by Jonathan Good, also known as real-life pro wrestler Jon Moxley), who’s trash-talking Reiss on TV and bragging that he could easily win in a championship MMA fight against Reiss.

Reiss’ immediate reaction is to laugh, since pro wrestling (which is very staged) is a very different type of competition than MMA fighting. MMA fighters are taken seriously as athletes, while pro wrestlers often are not. However, Reggie sees an opportunity to make more money with a crazy idea that wouldn’t work in the real world but is supposed to work in this movie since it’s the basis for the entire plot: Reggie thinks that Reiss should fight Randy for the championship title in Randy’s first professional MMA fight.

Reggie takes his idea to the chief promoter of Legends, a swaggering wheeler dealer named Maxine “Max” Black (played with almost-campy gusto by Gina Gershon), who wears a lot of black leather and thinks she’s always the smartest person in the room. Max cares less about who wins a match and more about how much money and publicity a match will get for Legends. Reggie’s idea is a very hard sell to Max, whose first reaction is to say no.

Max thinks that putting a wrestler in the ring with a well-respected MMA champ will cheapen the sport of MMA and possibly alienate some MMA fans. Reggie pitches the idea to Max by saying that it will be a “win win” for Legends, because Randy has a fan base large enough to fill an arena (the type of large-scale spectacle that Legends would want), while Reiss will probably win over a lot of Randy’s fans, which will help sell tickets to future Legends matches featuring Reiss.

“Think about Conor McGregor when he fought [Floyd] Mayweather,” Reggie pleads to Max. “Do you know how much money that guy is making in endorsements? Millions are coming out of that guy’s ass. And he didn’t even win.”

One thing that Max and Reggie agree on is that Reiss will most certainly win this match against Randy, who doesn’t have a lot of experience in MMA fighting. And so, Max says they can do the match. Reggie then has to convince Reiss, who thinks at first it’s a ridiculous idea, until Reggie says the magic words: “It’s easy money.”

In the lead-up to this championship fight, Randy (who talks as if he’s had too much caffeine or maybe a much stronger stimulant) continues his public insult campaign against Reiss. In media interviews, when people question whether a pro wrestler has what it takes to win a fight against a five-time MMA world champion, Randy arrogantly tells them that he can do it, because he’s in intense MMA training. The non-stop trash talking is what you would expect from a pro wrestler, so Goodman/Moxley doesn’t have to do much acting, but that doesn’t make the “Cagefighter” screenplay less cringeworthy.

During an interview, Randy boasts about himself and continues to degrade Reiss: “I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m stronger than him. I’m bigger than him. I’m tougher than him. I’m better-looking than him. I have no respect for him.” Meanwhile, “nice guy” Reiss sees Randy’s high-octane ego posturing on TV and says, “I want to stick a fork in him, because he’s done.”

There would be no “Cagefighter” movie if Reiss easily beat Randy in this big showdown. Things go wrong for Reiss throughout the movie. And the question becomes if he can make a comeback from all of the setbacks that he experiences. Along the way, Reiss becomes distant from his longtime trainer Marcus and hires a new trainer named Tony Gunn (played by Luke Rockhold), who works with Reiss during a part of the movie when Reiss goes to Los Angeles to train for a big fight.

One of the worst things about “Cagefighter” is how all these extreme, unbelievable things happen in the MMA world during a period of time that’s supposed to be less than nine months. A buffoon pro wrestler like Randy is suddenly able to catapult into the MMA world, and his first professional MMA fight is a world championship title with the reigning champ. And in another part of the movie, Reiss has only three weeks to prepare for a big fight.

How do we know that this story arc happens in less than nine months? Because it’s mentioned in the beginning of the movie, after Reiss won his fifth championship title, that Ellie is pregnant with her and Reiss’ first child together, and the child is born during the movie. However, Ellie never looks pregnant during the months where her pregnancy is supposed to be showing.

And in different parts of the story, there are some really dumb switches in re-classifying Reiss and Randy from lightweight to heavyweight, even though their bodies do not change during the entire movie. The MMA fight scenes are beyond ridiculous, with some heinous and illegal actions during a match (strangling and head-butting) that don’t get any MMA fighter disqualified in this movie. “Cagefighter” is presumably aimed at MMA fans, but the filmmakers don’t have to insult the fans by putting things in the movie that a fan would immediately know are illegal in the sport.

“Cagefighter” also has some almost laughably bad camera shots (parts of the fights in slow motion and melodramatic close-ups of Reiss in agony) and major problems with editing and continuity. After Reiss gets badly pummeled in a fight, his bruises, cuts and other wounds have vanished a few days later. Swollen eyes and deep gashes on Reiss’ body have disappeared faster than you can say, “People should get a refund if they’re unlucky enough to pay money to see this crappy movie.”

The music in “Cagefighter” is a weird mishmash of a score that’s reminiscent of 1970s/1980s TV dramas; modern-ish reggaeton tunes; and generic sports background music. And the production design and cinematography are sloppy, since wide shots of the arena audience look like stock footage, while closer shots of the MMA matches look like the matches are taking place on a movie set instead of a real arena. The shots of Reiss and Randy doing their gauntlet walk into a match are examples of how inauthentic the art direction looks. The fight scenes are actually quite predictable and veer into cartoonish territory, which is what you’re supposed to see in pro wrestling, not in MMA fighting.

As for the shoddily written characters in the movie, Max and Reggie seem to be the only ones who have any semblance of personalities that are somewhat entertaining to watch. Fast-talking Reggie and quick-thinking Max are both hustlers at heart, so their scenes together are the closest thing this movie has to unique liveliness. However, the lines that they have to deliver are so bad that there’s a scene where Baker (who plays Reggie) has trouble keeping a straight face and actually laughs a little when he’s not supposed to be laughing.

The character of Ellie is just another two-dimensional wife in this type of movie. Badly made sports movies like “Cagefighter” only seem to cast the wife/girlfriend/love partner of the male protagonist for the sole purpose of making sure that the protagonist has a pretty woman waiting for him at home or being a spectator during the athletic competitions to show her support.

And as an example of how poorly written the “Cagefighter” screenplay is, Ellie and Reiss never talk about their child. Viewers of this movie might forget that Ellie and Reiss are expectant parents until there’s a brief montage that includes Ellie and Reiss with the baby, who is seen on screen for only a few seconds and then never seen again.

During the end credits for “Cagefighter,” Gershon’s Max character is shown during a heavily edited monologue where she rambles on about different ideas that she has for Reiss and Legends to make more money. It’s obvious that the filmmakers told Gershon to just improvise in character, and she seems to be having lot of fun doing this improv. All this proves to viewers is that you know a movie is terrible when the footage in the end credits is better than almost the entire movie.

Screen Media Films released “Cagefighter” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on October 9, 2020. The movie’s release date on Blu-ray and DVD is December 1, 2020.

Review: ‘Kindred,’ starring Tamara Lawrance, Jack Lowden and Fiona Shaw

November 27, 2020

by Carla Hay

Fiona Shaw and Tamara Lawrance in “Kindred” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“Kindred”

Directed by Joe Marcantonio

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed rural part of England, the dramatic thriller “Kindred” features an almost all-white cast of characters (with one black person and one Indian person) representing the working-class, the middle-class and the wealthy.

Culture Clash: After the father of her unborn child dies, a pregnant woman is held captive by the domineering paternal grandmother who wants to raise the child as her own.

Culture Audience: “Kindred” will appeal primarily to people who are looking for an artsier, British version of a Lifetime movie, but without a predictable ending.

Chloe Pirrie, Fiona Shaw, Tamara Lawrance and Jack Lowden in “Kindred” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

Just like the pregnant protagonist in “Kindred” is essentially imprisoned by her unborn child’s domineering grandmother, viewers will often be frustrated by how this dramatic film can hold people hostage with the hope that things will get better for the protagonist. “Kindred” succeeds in conveying the stifling atmosphere of someone being held captive, under the guise of “it’s for your own good.” But this oppressive tone is almost to a fault, because parts of the movie drag with too much repetition and the sense that the captured heroine could’ve made better choices to get out of her predicament. The movie’s ending will disappoint a great deal of the audience who might be expecting something more formulaic.

However, what will keep most viewers interested in the movie are the compelling performances of the two actresses who portray the women at the center of this power struggle over an unborn child. “Kindred” (which takes place in England) shows hints of being a horror film, but it’s mostly a dramatic thriller about a family feud. It’s one of those movies where the villain doesn’t think she’s evil but sincerely believes that what’s she’s doing is morally right and in the best interest of her family.

“Kindred” is the feature-film debut of director Joe Marcantonio, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jason McClogan. There are parts of the movie where you have to wonder if the screenwriters actually consulted with enough women (especially any women who’ve been pregnant) for some level of authenticity, because some of the actions of the expectant mother in this story just don’t ring true for a pregnant woman who’s trying to save herself and her unborn child. Or maybe this is just a case of a movie that knows it’s got to fill up its feature-length time by having the protagonist make dumb decisions.

At any rate, the movie’s target audience seems to be primarily women, and yet the filmmakers aren’t too concerned with filling in some blanks about the main characters that women usually like to know about for movies like “Kindred.” The movie largely redeems itself in a scene with a heart-to-heart conversation between the heroine and the chief villain to fill in some of those blanks. (It’s the best scene in the movie.) But the romance that sets off the series of events in this movie is barely explained.

In the beginning of “Kindred,” Ben Clayton (played by Edward Holcroft) and his live-in girlfriend Charlotte (played by Tamara Lawrance), who appear to be in their late 20s or early 30s, are getting ready to go over to his widowed mother’s house for a visit that the couple is dreading. Ben tells Charlotte, “She’s going to hate me,” as an indication that they’re going to tell his mother some news that will make her angry and/or sad. Charlotte replies, “Stop worrying. It’s going to be okay.”

Unfortunately, the movie never mentions why Ben and Charlotte are together and for how long. It would certainly go a long way in explaining why viewers are supposed to believe that this couple is compatible and have made a life-changing choice that they are now going to tell Ben’s mother: Ben and Charlotte are planning to move to Australia. Viewers are supposed to assume that Ben and Charlotte are a happy couple just because they’re together, without getting any sense of what Ben and Charlotte might have in common or what their life goals are when they get to Australia.

Ben and Charlotte arrive at his mother’s house, which is a very large manor in an unnamed rural part of England. Ben is very nervous, while Charlotte is much calmer. Ben’s bossy mother Margaret (played by Fiona Shaw) isn’t the only one in the house who’s got him on edge. There’s a man named Thomas (played by Jack Lowden) who lives there and who’s about the same age as Ben.

Thomas has a very odd relationship with Margaret, who treats Thomas like a son but also treats him like a servant who’s at her beck and call, 24 hours a day. Thomas acts as the house’s butler, chef and handyman. He’s very amiable and eager-to-please, but it’s clear that he will do anything that Margaret tells him to do. Charlotte later finds out the hard way.

Ben is noticeably jealous of Thomas, especially when Margaret describes Thomas as Ben’s “brother.” Ben is quick to reply every time: “He’s not my brother.” It doesn’t come out until later in this movie (and this isn’t really a spoiler) why Thomas is living with Margaret.

Ben’s father William died of cancer when he was a child. Years later, when Ben was a teenager, Margaret got romantically involved with an abusive man, who came to live in the manor with his son. That son was Thomas.

It’s never made clear in the movie if Margaret actually married this abusive man, but she describes the relationship later in the movie as “the biggest mistake of my life.” It also explains why she treats Thomas like a son, because Thomas has lived with Margaret, ever since he and his father moved into the house. Thomas’ father died years ago when Thomas was a teenager. His cause of death is revealed in the movie.

This reason for why Thomas is considered “family” to Margaret isn’t revealed until the last third of the film, but it actually would’ve been better to have revealed this information sooner in the film. Up until then, viewers have to keep guessing how Thomas came into Margaret’s life, why she treats Thomas like a son, and why she’s closer to Thomas than she is to her own biological son.

When Ben and Charlotte tell Margaret their big news about moving to Australia, Margaret predictably takes it very hard. She can’t believe that Ben wouldn’t want to stay in England and live at the manor, which he is sure to inherit from her. Ben tells his mother that he doesn’t care about the manor. Margaret gets so upset that she abruptly leaves the room. Thomas invites them to stay for the lunch that was prepared, but Ben and Charlotte decide that the visit has already gone badly, so they both decide to leave.

It’s never really stated what Ben does for a living, but Charlotte works as an outdoor employee at a farm. All the movie shows her doing at work is shoveling hay at a horse stable, when she suddenly vomits. Her co-worker Jane (played by Chloe Pirrie) is nearby and comes to her aid. Charlotte is feeling dizzy, so they decide to go to the nearest hospital to get Charlotte some medical assistance.

Charlotte then gets some news that’s a surprise to her but not a surprise to anyone who knows that when a woman of childbearing age suddenly vomits and feels dizzy in a movie, chances are that means she’s pregnant. Charlotte doesn’t have her own doctor because the doctor who ends up treating her during this pregnancy is named Dr. Richards (played by Anton Lesser), who seems to be the chief doctor in this small-town medical facility. Charlotte meets Dr. Richards for the first time during this hospital visit. And what do you know? He happens to be Margaret’s doctor too.

Why doesn’t Charlotte have her own doctor in a nation with universal health care? It’s never explained why, but viewers can speculate that Charlotte probably mistrusts doctors because Charlotte’s mother (who is either dead or totally estranged from her) had a history of mental illness. Her mother, who used to be a piano teacher, was diagnosed with perinatal psychosis and postpartum depression. In other words, the mental illness was exacerbated by the pregnancy and birth of Charlotte.

Needless to say, Charlotte had a very unhappy childhood. It’s never explained who really raised Charlotte and at what point in her life Charlotte cut off communication with her mother. But it’s clear, based on Charlotte’s negative reaction to finding out that she’s pregnant, Charlotte doesn’t think that she’s ready to become a mother and she has some deep-seated fears that she could pass on mental-illness genes to her unborn child. One of the first things that she asks Dr. Richards when he tells her that she’s pregnant is how she can get an abortion. He advises her to discuss the pregnancy with Ben first.

But Charlotte doesn’t really get a chance to do that, because by the time she returns home to the modest cottage that she shares with Ben, he has already decorated it with pregnancy congratulations. How did Ben find out? Dr. Richards told Margaret about Charlotte’s pregnancy, and Margaret told Ben.

It’s a blatant violation of patient/doctor confidentiality and something that could get a doctor in trouble. Charlotte knows that, and she half-jokingly says that she could report Dr. Richards for this violation. Ben’s enthusiasm over the pregnancy slowly makes her change her mind about having an abortion. However, she ignores this red flag that the doctor would go behind her back and violate her patient privacy.

Although Charlotte changes her mind about the abortion and decides to keep the baby, one thing that she hasn’t changed her mind about is moving to Australia with Ben. Margaret assumes that Ben and Charlotte will get married before the baby is born and that the couple will want to stay in England and live in the manor, but Margaret is wrong about all of those assumptions. Ben and Charlotte are firm in telling her that they have no plans to get married and they are still moving to Australia.

Charlotte and Ben try to comfort Margaret by telling her that they can still keep in touch through visits and videoconferencing, but Margaret flies into a rage and tells them how ungrateful they are and that they’re making a big mistake. Margaret screams, “You are not stealing my flesh and blood to go to the other side of the planet!” Margaret also cruelly says that it would be easier for Charlotte to decide to move to Australia because Charlotte has no family, but Margaret can’t understand why Ben would want to move.

Ben and Charlotte reach a stalemate with Margaret, but the couple remains in solidarity to continue with what was planned. Their lives take a tragic turn when Ben is doing some work in a stable, he accidentally gets kicked in the head by a horse, and he dies in the hospital. Charlotte and Margaret are devastated, of course. Thomas is also saddened, but Ben’s death doesn’t affect him as deeply as it does Margaret and Charlotte.

When they get the news at the hospital that Ben has died, Margaret blurts out to Charlotte that it’s Charlotte’s fault that Ben died. Charlotte becomes enraged and lunges at Margaret and starts to strangle her. Thomas is able to break up the altercation by pulling Charlotte off of Margaret. The implication is clear: Charlotte can be a tough and violent fighter, but she doesn’t really act that way for most of the movie.

Charlotte doesn’t have any family or friends to turn to during her overwhelming grief. And she gets more bad news a few days later when Margaret tells her that Ben had stopped paying the mortgage on the cottage (which was in his name) and it’s being sold in foreclosure. Really? That quickly? This is the part of the movie where a lot of viewers might yell at the screen that Margaret is probably lying.

After all, it’s clear that Ben feared and mistrusted his mother so much that he wanted to move far, far away from her and sever any financial ties he had to her. It doesn’t make sense that Charlotte would blindly trust Margaret, even though Margaret makes a half-hearted apology for the mean-spirited remarks that she previously made. And then if you factor in that Dr. Richards can’t be trusted either, you have a recipe for disaster.

Meanwhile, Thomas has already gone to the cottage, packed up Charlotte’s possessions, and brought them to the manor. Charlotte agrees to temporarily stay at the manor until the child is born. The movie makes it looks like Charlotte is so consumed with grief that she can’t be bothered to find another place to live.

However, “Kindred” has a major plot hole because Charlotte never bothers to look into Ben’s financial affairs now that she’s going to be a single mother raising his child. Did Ben have a will? Did he have life insurance? Did Charlotte and Ben have any joint bank accounts? What are the laws in England when it comes to what a child can inherit if the parents were not married but living together in a common-law domestic partner situation?

These are the things an expectant mother in Charlotte’s situation would think about if the father of her child suddenly dies. But these issues are never mentioned in “Kindred.” It’s why the biggest flaw of this movie is how it treats Charlotte as if she’s an idiot.

Charlotte’s willful ignorance kind of contradicts this image that the filmmakers want Charlotte to have of someone who’s been on her own for a while and supposedly knows how to take care of herself. You’d never know it though, by the way they portray Charlotte as this helpless, pitiful and broken person who lets Margaret take over her life.

Faster than you can say “weak-willed doormat,” Margaret convinces Charlotte that her only option is to stay in the manor until the baby is born. Margaret tells Charlotte that she can still move to Australia after the baby is born, but viewers watching this movie can easily see that Margaret has no intention of letting that happen.

Charlotte and Ben being in an interracial relationship is never mentioned as a problem for old-fashioned and stuck-up Margaret. Margaret seems to have more of a problem with Charlotte being from a lower social class than Ben, and she doesn’t want her grandchild in a working-class environment. Margaret expresses some sexism when she openly declares to Charlotte that she hopes that the child will be a boy.

Margaret tells Charlotte that Dr. Richards has ordered Charlotte to be on strict bed rest until the baby is born. But there’s more than just bed rest that Margaret and Thomas use as a means to keep Charlotte confined to the manor. And sure enough, Charlotte soon finds out that the front gates to the manor are padlocked with heavy chains.

Charlotte gets scolded by Margaret for requests to go outside for a simple walk on the manor’s property or to visit Ben’s grave (he’s buried on the property next to his father) or to do anything outside of the manor. In the rare instances where Charlotte is allowed to leave the house, Thomas must always accompany her. Charlotte becomes more isolated to the point where she’s not even allowed to visit Dr. Richards for prenatal care. Against Charlotte’s objections, Margaret has decided that Charlotte will give birth at the manor, not in a hospital.

And things take a very sinister and creepy turn when Charlotte suspects that she is being drugged. On one occasion, she finds remnants of a crushed pill in the tea that Thomas gives her. And Thomas tells her that she wakes up screaming from nightmares, but she can’t remember ever doing it.

And one morning, she wakes up and is startled to find a fully clothed Thomas sleeping next to her in bed, on top of the bed covers. He’s apologetic but he tells her that she had nightmares the night before and begged him to stay with her. It’s another incident that Charlotte says that she doesn’t remember.

Does Charlotte try to escape? Of course, she does. But she makes some really bad, bungling decisions that get in the way of her escape efforts. Does she try to call for help? During the chaotic ride to the hospital when Ben got injured, Thomas claimed that Charlotte’s phone was broken. He promises to get it fixed, but he never does. And when she does get access to a phone, she doesn’t call the police. She turns to other people for help, and that ends up being a very big mistake.

“Kindred” tries to bring some spooky elements into the story, by constantly featuring crows showing up outside at suspenseful moments. And when Charlotte is sleeping, an image of a horse keeps appearing, but it’s implied that horse is part of her dreams. There’s no real supernatural meaning for any of these animals. Margaret isn’t a secret witch and this isn’t a horror story about the manor being haunted by evil spirits.

Instead, the movie goes back to the same repetition of Charlotte trying to think of ways to escape and her efforts somehow being thwarted. Does Charlotte escape? Does she give birth? And if so, what happens to the baby?

Those questions are answered in the movie, which is mainly worth watching for the battle of wills between the heroine and the villain, since Lawrance and Shaw give performances that add depth to their roles that would have been too shallow if portrayed by less-talented actresses. These performances elevate the quality of “Kindred,” which has a lot of characteristics of being a mediocre “woman in peril” movie that will leave some viewers cold.

IFC Films/IFC Midnight released “Kindred” in select U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on November 6, 2020.

Copyright 2017-2024 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX