2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Lost Transmissions’

April 29, 2019

by Carla Hay

Juno Temple and Simon Pegg in "Lost Transmissions"
Juno Temple and Simon Pegg in “Lost Transmissions” (Photo by Elizabeth Kitchens)

“Lost Transmissions”

Directed by Katharine O’Brien

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 28, 2019.

It’s not easy to do a romantic drama about two people with mental-health issues. The story has to handle the issues in a respectful and believable manner in order not to be too offensive. But the romance in the story has to be appealing too—and that’s where “Lost Transmissions” falls short. Unfortunately, the two lead actors in the movie—Juno Temple and Simon Pegg—are frustratingly mismatched in portraying a couple who have a tumultuous relationship while they navigate their careers in the Los Angeles music industry. Temple and Pegg are very talented in other movies, but watching them trying to create chemistry together that doesn’t exist in “Lost Transmissions” is almost painful to watch.

When we first meet aspiring singer/songwriter Hannah (played by Temple) and music producer Theo Ross (played by Pegg), it’s at a house party where he’s the jolly center of attention, playing the piano, and she’s a little bit on the shy side. Theo is able to bring Hannah out of her shell a little bit by encouraging her to sing while he plays. They exchange phone numbers, and the next day, Theo calls her and invites Hannah over to his home studio, where she’s very impressed by his unique collection of musical instruments.

During their date, Hannah confides in Theo and tells him that she’s on anti-depressants, and she once tried to commit suicide by driving into a tree. Most people don’t share this kind of information on a first date, so it’s the first sign that Hannah is one of those people who’s addicted to personal chaos. Hannah says, “Sometimes I feel stuck in glue, and I feel like I might never move again.” Theo has a sympathetic ear, and he hints that he also has a troubled past, but he doesn’t go into too many details.

Theo offers to help Hannah with her music career, so he puts her in touch with a music executive named Darron (played by Robert Schwartzman), who hires Hannah to write songs for a young pop star named Dana Lee (played in a hilarious cameo by Alexandra Daddario). Dana is a social-media-conscious nymphette with multicolored hair (think Ariana Grande meets Billie Eilish at Coachella) who has more natural chemistry with Hannah than Theo does. Hannah and Dana’s budding friendship, which is so entertaining to watch, unfortunately has very little screen time in this movie. It makes you wish that a movie was made about Hannah and Dana instead of Hannah and Theo.

British actress Temple has made a career out of playing pouty, American women who find it difficult to be happy, so she’s definitely in her comfort zone here as an actress. The problem is that she’s paired with the wrong actor—and it’s not just because Pegg is known for playing mostly comedic characters. Together, Pegg  and Temple are just not convincing as a couple in love. At times, watching this movie feels like watching awkward rehearsals of a play.

Theo and Hannah continue to date, and they think that they’re in love, even though it’s obvious that they’re wrong for each other. It turns out that Theo has even darker problems than Hannah’s depression issues. On the surface, he seems to have it all together—he’s a respected musician who makes a comfortable living as a producer of indie rock acts. But in reality, Theo is actually schizophrenic—and it doesn’t help that around the time that he’s met Hannah, he’s stopped taking his medication. Theo’s mental illness is also exacerbated because he’s had a long history of taking psychedelic drugs such as LSD or mushrooms—a habit that he goes back to during his relationship with Hannah.

When he’s off his medication, there’s nothing to like about Theo. He has angry outbursts, he’s selfish, he’s unreliable, and (this is where the title of the movie comes into play) when he plays static very loud on the radio, he thinks he can hear messages in the transmissions. It’s clear that Theo is headed for a major nervous breakdown, but Hannah—like so many of the type of co-dependent women who go on TV shows like “Dr. Phil” to talk about their toxic relationships—thinks she can “fix” Theo, or at least help nurse him back to health. According to “Lost Transmissions” writer/director Katharine O’Brien, the movie is inspired by real-life experiences that she went through with a male friend who was schizophrenic. Let’s hope that she handled it better than Hannah does in this movie.

When Theo’s mental deterioration leads him to be evicted from his home, none of his longtime, close friends want to take him in, because they say that they’re too busy with other commitments. (Red flags right there.) Hannah, who hasn’t been dating Theo for very long, ignores these warning signs and agrees to let Theo move in with her instead of immediately getting him professional help. Making that kind of bad decision in the name of love might be understandable if Theo treated Hannah better, but the sweet-natured Theo that Hannah met at the party is long gone.

Hannah doesn’t deserve much sympathy here because she makes excuses for Theo’s horrific behavior. There’s a scene in the movie that is an example of this destructive enabling: Theo, Hannah and one of Theo’s pregnant friends are passengers in a car when Theo, in a fit of rage, lunges at the driver and tries to get the driver to run off the road, which could have caused a serious accident. Eventually, the driver takes control of the car, and they pull over on the side of the road. The pregnant woman is understandably furious, and tells Theo that he’s “dangerous.” Hannah protests and says that Theo is just “scared.”

When Theo’s behavior gets worse, and Hannah finally decides that he needs to be in a professional facility, Theo inevitably ends up in a psych ward. But Hannah (who’s obviously not qualified to give medical advice to Theo) continues to be part of the problem when she tells Theo that he can “outsmart” his schizophrenia. Then the movie veers into a subplot where Hannah tries to get Theo to go back to his native London and make amends with his estranged father. At this point in the story, you’ve stopped caring about this badly mismatched couple, and you can’t wait for the movie to be over so that you don’t have to ever see them again. If the person who inspired the Theo character had this kind of relationship in real life, let’s hope that they’ve broken up and stayed away from each other, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

UPDATE: Gravitas Ventures will release “Lost Transmissions” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on March 13, 2020. 

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Dreamland’

April 29, 2019

by Carla Hay

Margot Robbie and Finn Cole in "Dreamland"
Margot Robbie and Finn Cole in “Dreamland” (Photo by Ursula Coyote)

 

“Dreamland”

Directed by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 28, 2019.

The first thing that you might notice about the dramatic film “Dreamland” is that Margot Robbie plays a character that’s similar to bank robber Bonnie Parker of Bonnie & Clyde fame. The movie takes place in Texas in the 1930s, during the Dust Bowl drought era and when the Great Depression wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy. It’s also when the real-life Bonnie & Clyde became famous outlaws for their bank robberies and murders. But even though Robbie’s Allison Wells character in “Dreamland” is clearly inspired by the real-life Bonnie Parker, this movie isn’t really about Allison’s crime spree. It’s more about the effect that she has on a naïve young man in his late teens named Eugene Evans (played by Finn Cole), after she convinces him to let her hide out on his family farm.

“Dreamland,” which takes place in 1935, is narrated by Eugene’s younger sister Phoebe (played by Darby Camp), who tells the story in voiceover as an adult 20 years later. (Lola Kirke is the voice of the adult Phoebe.) The family has gone through some hard times, even before the Great Depression. Eugene’s biological father, Don Baker, mysteriously disappeared when Eugene was still a very young child, and Don is presumed dead. Eugene’s mother, Olivia (played by Kerry Condon), doesn’t really like to talk about Don. As a child, Eugene is haunted by the idea that his father isn’t really dead but is really still alive and living in Mexico. Eugene dreams of eventually finding Don and reuniting with him. But the sad look in Olivia’s eyes tells viewers that Eugene’s father has abandoned them, and if he’s still alive, he’s not coming back into their lives.

Olivia eventually remarries. Her second husband is a police officer named George “Buck” Evans (played by Travis Fimmel), who adopts Eugene. The couple’s daughter is Phoebe, who’s about 10 years younger than Eugene. She’s a curious and intelligent child who admires her older brother for his kindness but worries that people will take advantage of his gullible nature. Buck rises through the ranks of the police force, and he’s a deputy sheriff at the time that Allison commits the Guthrie Plains bank robbery that has resulted in the deaths of multiple people, including her lover/partner in crime Perry Montroy, a Clyde Barrow-like character. Perry (played by Garrett Hedlund) and the deadly bank robbery are seen in brief flashbacks.

When Eugene first encounters Allison, he’s found her hiding in a barn on the Evans family property. She’s wounded from a gunshot in her leg, and Eugene helps her remove the bullet. Her fugitive status is all over the news, and there’s a $10,000 reward to anyone who captures her. But Eugene is instantly smitten by Allison’s beauty and seductive charm.

Eugene doesn’t think Allison is as bad as the police say she is because Allison has told him that although she was involved in the bank robbery, she wasn’t involved in the death of the young girl who was an innocent bystander killed during the robbery. Allison tells Eugene that the police have inaccurately described the death as a murder, but Allison says the death happened accidentally when a stray bullet hit the girl.

Allison also offers Eugene $20,000 to hide her and to help her escape after she’s had some time to heal from her bullet wound. It’s a proposition that Eugene accepts with not much hesitation because he and his stepfather Buck don’t really get along—and more importantly to Eugene, he starts to think that he and Allison can run away together to Mexico, where he can reunite with his father, and they can all live happily ever after.

Eugene, who’s in charge of taking care of the family farm, knows it won’t be that hard to hide Allison since Buck is a workaholic who doesn’t spend much time at home anyway. And besides, no one would suspect that Allison would be hiding out at the home of one of the law-enforcement officers tasked with finding her. It isn’t long before Eugene takes another big risk for Allison—he breaks into the police station at night, steals evidence about the robbery, and burns it. When a police officer at the station sees Eugene in the office where the evidence is, Eugene hurriedly makes up a lie and says that he’s there to get police files for Buck.

There’s a close call when inquisitive Phoebe almost finds Allison in the barn, but Eugene is able to steer her away just in time. But that tactic can only work for so long. Phoebe finds out about Eugene’s secret, but he convinces her not to tell anyone. Buck’s suspicions about Eugene are also raised when Buck gets blamed for the missing evidence, and he finds out about Eugene’s late-night visit to the police station.

Amid all of this family tension, a terrible dust storm hits the area, causing destruction on what became known as Black Sunday. The cinematography of “Dreamland” (from cinematographer Lyle Vincent) is one of the best things about the movie, and the visuals during this storm are especially stunning.

“Dreamland” director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte skillfully uses techniques that show the subtle artistry of someone who can tell a story with what you don’t see on camera as much as what you do see. For example, a pivotal seduction scene with Allison and the virginal Eugene shows that Allison and Eugene are talking in an intimate moment where Eugene is doubting that he made the right decision to help Allison, and he’s almost afraid to touch her. She can be heard but not seen for much of the scene, as the camera lingers on Eugene to show the effect that she is having on him. Some directors would have made the obvious choice to focus the camera on Robbie’s beauty, but the scene demonstrates how dialogue can be more powerful in seduction than someone’s physical appearance.

Robbie, who is one of the producers of “Dreamland,” does a very good job of playing the morally ambiguous Allison, but she doesn’t have as much screen time in the movie as people might think she does. Allison and Eugene don’t spend a lot of time together on screen. It’s a testament to the power of Allison’s manipulation, because Eugene takes a lot of risks for Allison without the reward of being with her in a normal, happy romance that he wants them to have. Eugene is the heart and soul of the movie, and Cole convincingly plays him not as a fool but as someone who thinks doing anything for true love will justify whatever it takes to get it.

The pacing in “Dreamland” is a little slow in some areas, but the third act of the movie makes up for it, as the hunt for Allison takes an intense turn where hard choices are made and people’s true characters are put to the test. But just to be clear: Most of “Dreamland” isn’t about chase scenes between cops and robbers. It’s about what can happen when people steal things more valuable than money—hearts and trust.

UPDATE: Paramount Pictures will release “Dreamland” in select U.S. cinemas on November 13, 2020, and on digital and VOD on November 17, 2020. The movie’s release date on Blu-ray and DVD is January 19, 2021.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Burning Cane’

April 29, 2019

by Carla Hay

Wendell Pierce  in "Burning Cane"
Wendell Pierce  in “Burning Cane” (Photo by Phillip Youmans)

“Burning Cane”

Directed by Phillip Youmans

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 25, 2019.

Stepping into the emotionally intense world of “Burning Cane” is like being stuck in blistering heat in rural Laurel Valley, Louisiana, where the movie takes place. Things move a little slower, modern conveniences are a little harder to get, and people’s dreams have become a little more tarnished by poverty and hopelessness. In other words, be prepared feel to a lot of discomfort in the atmosphere of people trying to hold on to some dignity as they slog through life’s miseries and cruelties.

The movie opens with Helen Wayne (played by Karen Kaia Liver), a middle-aged mother, listing all the home remedies that she’s tried to get rid of the rashes that her beloved dog JoJo has, but none of the remedies has worked so far. (One of the remedies is sugar cane; hence, the title of the movie.) Helen walks with the kind of world-weary limp that shows she’s carrying a lot of emotional baggage that goes beyond her physical challenges. In a conversation between Helen and her son Daniel (played by Dominique McClellan), we find out that Daniel’s father died of AIDS, but it’s a secret that Daniel finds hard to accept.

It’s not long before we see that Daniel is causing a lot of Helen’s emotional pain. He’s a chronically unemployed alcoholic, and she worries about his well-being and how he’s going to take care of his pre-teen son Jeremiah (played by Braelyn Kelly). Helen isn’t the only one disappointed in Daniel—his wife Sherry Bland (played by E’myri Crutchfield) is becoming increasingly fed-up with him and his inability to financially provide for their family. It’s implied but not shown that when Daniel and Sherry get into arguments, it’s not uncommon for him to hit her.

For many people in the town, the local Baptist church is a symbol of hope and salvation. It’s no wonder that the town’s residents look to the church’s Rev. Pastor Joseph Tillman (played by Wendell Pierce) as their personal savior. His rousing sermons with copious quotes from the Bible serve as beacons of faith in a world that’s often clouded by the murky uncertainties of life.

Pastor Tillman says all the right words to his poverty-stricken congregation. In one sermon, he aims harsh criticism at a famous Malcom Forbes quote: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Pastor Tillman counters that belief by telling his parishioners: “We must invest in love … God is the most important relationship in your life.”

These are words that Helen takes to heart, and it’s clear that she—like many others in the church—have placed Pastor Tillman on a pedestal. Pastor Tillman, who is a lonely widower, is also considered somewhat of a catch to the single ladies in town.

“Burning Cane” writer/director Phillip Youmans (who also the movie’s cinematographer and editor) effectively uses moody cinematography to convey these two worlds: the church is brightly lit and welcoming, while the homes of Helen and Daniel are dark and depressing. (“Burning Cane” is set sometime in the late 1990s/early 2000s, before the proliferation of smartphones, and when people could still reasonably use rotary phones, as the Waynes do in this story.)

Pastor Tillman has a secret that’s become increasingly difficult to hide: He’s an alcoholic with a history of domestic violence. In one scene, he drunkenly confesses that he beat his wife during an argument. In another scene, he pushes a parishioner away when she tries to stop him from driving drunk. When he’s found passed out in his car in a drunken stupor, the only person whom he tells police to call is Helen.

After Helen finds out about Pastor Tillman’s personal demons, she’s somewhat in denial and conflicted over how to handle it. But once Helen sees the cracks of Pastor Tillman’s façade, it triggers a feeling of disillusionment that influences her actions for the rest of the story. By using hand-held cameras and not having a musical score for most of the film, director Youmans infuses a sense of realism, while keeping a fever-dream-like quality to the pacing of the film, where the dialogue sometimes wanders like a rambling poet.

The main criticism that people might have about “Burning Cane,” whose entire cast is African American, is that all the men in the movie are written as disturbed individuals and/or disappointments. Meanwhile, the women are the “responsible” ones who have to clean up the men’s messes. (Even Helen’s late husband, who’s not shown in the movie, was someone who committed domestic violence against her, according to what Helen says in one scene. The only things we hear about her dead husband are negative.) “Burning Cane” would have benefited from having a little more variety in how the men and women were written instead of relying on somewhat offensive clichés of African American men.

However, “Burning Cane” overall is a well-crafted movie when it comes to cinematography and editing—indications that Youmans has a knack for how a story should look on screen. “Burning Cane” is his first feature film, so it will be interesting to see what he does in the future.

UPDATE: Array Releasing will release “Burning Cane” in New York City on October 25, 2019, and in Los Angeles on November 8, 2019. Netflix will release the movie on November 6, 2019.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘The Short History of the Long Road’

April 28, 2019

by Carla Hay

Sabrina Carpenter in “The Short History of the Long Road” (Photo by Cailin Yatsko)

“The Short History of the Long Road

Directed by Ani Simon-Kennedy

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 27, 2019.

There comes a point in any career of a Disney Channel or Nickelodeon star who wants to transition from “teen idol” to “serious artist” that he or she takes on a gritty role so that people will change their perception of them as just another pretty face. Sabrina Carpenter, a singer/actress who has done several Disney Channel projects, has chosen her first such transitional role in the emotional drama “The Short History of the Long Road.” In the movie, she plays a homeless teen named Nola Frankel, who is searching for her long-lost mother, who abandoned Nola as a baby.

In the beginning of the story, Nola is living out of a motorhome van with her father Clint (played by Steven Ogg), an over-protective, paranoid vagrant who thinks that settling down in one place and living among society are dangerous for the soul. Although Clint and Nola don’t live completely off the grid (he makes money by doing odd jobs, such as repairs), he has some quirky habits that have affected Nola’s outlook on life. One of those habits is whenever he and Nola see a movie in a theater or on TV, he won’t let her watch the movie’s ending. We find out early on in this story that Nola’s mother leaving the family has a lot to do with why Clint is raising Nola in a nomadic existence. Nola doesn’t know any other life, since she was raised that way since she was a toddler, and Clint is very reluctant to tell her details about her mother.

Although some people might think this movie is similar to the 2018 film “Leave No Trace” (another grim story about a homeless, paranoid father raising his teenage daughter outside of the norms of society), “The Short History of the Long Road” is not the same kind of movie because it’s not as depressing as “Leave No Trace.” For starters, Clint is the kind of parent who has a sense of adventure, and he doesn’t want to hide his daughter from the world, whereas the father in “Leave No Trace” wants to live in such extreme seclusion in the woods to the point where people can’t find him and his daughter. Although Clint doesn’t trust the school system, he’s educated Nola and passed on a love of books to his daughter—they often go to libraries in their travels—and he has no problems interacting with people in a friendly manner when he needs to make money. Clint also doesn’t keep Nola isolated, since they go to restaurants, stores and movie theaters.

Still, the mystery over what happened to Nola’s mother is starting to weigh on Nola, and Clint’s vague answers (“she zigged while we zagged”) aren’t going to satisfy her any longer. The only thing that Clint will tell her is that when he and Nola’s mother were a couple, they used to own a bar together, and she left Clint and Nola shortly after Nola was born. Clint promises he’ll tell Nola more about her mother when they get to New Orleans (Nola was named after the city’s nickname), but before they get there, something happens to Clint in the first third of the movie that leaves Nola on her own.

Nola is self-sufficient enough to know how to drive a car (even though she doesn’t have a license) and she can make basic repairs, but as a teenage girl, it’s harder for her than it was for her father to get people to hire her for odd jobs. In addition to dealing with the stress of being homeless, alone, and trying to get money legally, Nola has to dodge anyone who might turn her in to child welfare authorities if they find out she’s under 18. She also still has the goal to find her mother.

Although Carpenter is fairly convincing as a distressed teen and brings a certain plucky spirit to the role, what isn’t entirely convincing is how the movie’s screenplay (which was written by director Ani Simon-Kennedy) glosses over some very serious issues of what life would really be like for a teenage girl in Nola’s situation. Nola has to be the luckiest homeless teenage girl in the U.S., because not once does she have anyone try to take advantage of her.

Yes, Nola gets into some uncomfortable situations where she has to contemplate whether or not she’s going to steal in order to eat, but somehow she gets enough money for gas to travel from state to state. Not once is she ever robbed, conned or enticed into criminal activities by people who see that she’s desperate for cash. We don’t know if Clint ever taught Nola any physical self-defense skills because she doesn’t need to defend herself from that kind of harm in this story. Even with the protection of living in a van, she gets into some dicey situations where, if this were the real world, it would be very unlikely that she would walk away unscathed.

For example, in one part of the movie, Nola ends up crashing at an empty house that appears to be unoccupied because the house is in foreclosure. When a rowdy bunch of young male skateboarders enter the house to skate in the empty swimming pool, there’s some initial tension between the skateboarders and Nola, but then the skateboarders invite Nola to party with them in the house. Here’s a young, attractive female in a group of intoxicated, rebellious guys who know she’s homeless and on her own, so it’s kind of unbelievable that none of them would try to make any moves on her.

And her luck continues throughout the story: When Nola (who looks underage and doesn’t have a fake ID) gets caught sleeping in her van late at night in a parking lot, a security guard just shoos her away, even though she’s obviously an underage child out past curfew time. When she tries to steal gas from a recreational vehicle camper owned by a senior citizen, he catches her in the act, but goes easy on her by sending her off with just a warning instead of calling the police. The entire time that she’s traveling, when it’s obvious she’s on her own, she doesn’t have creepy guys offering to “help her out,” even though in real life we all know this would happen to her.

At a convenience store, a female customer named Marcie (played by Rusty Schwimmer) figures out that Nola is homeless, and invites her to eat at a church’s soup kitchen where Marcie happens to be a volunteer. When Marcie gains Nola’s trust, she later invites Nola to live with her, her husband and the other foster kids they are raising. Nola doesn’t stay for long—Marcie is a little too strict and a little too religious for Nola—because Nola is really on a mission to find her mother.

At another point in the story, Nola’s van (which is nicknamed The Hulk) breaks down, and needs repairs that Nola can’t afford to pay. So, she convinces the owner of an auto body shop, a tough-but-tender taskmaster named Miguel (played by Danny Trejo), to let her work for him in order to pay off the cost of the repairs. It isn’t long before Miguel lets Nola live rent-free at the body shop. While she lives and works at Miguel’s body shop, Nola notices a Navajo Indian teenage girl close to her age named Blue (played by Jashaun St. John), who keeps hanging around. Nola and Blue strike up a tentative friendship, and Blue reveals that she doesn’t like to be at home because her widowed father is abusing her. Blue dreams of escaping from her father by moving in with an aunt, who has invited Blue to live with her on a reservation.

It would be too much of a spoiler to reveal if Nola ever finds her mother. Getting the answer to that mystery is one of the main reasons why “The Short History of the Long Road” is more engaging than it should be, considering the movie’s sanitized portrayal of being a homeless teenage girl. Carpenter does as good of a job as she can with the script that she’s been given. This movie didn’t need to have any big, histrionic moments or non-stop mayhem. In fact, Carpenter’s adept portrayal of Nola’s quiet desperation is one of the best things about the film. However, a little more realism about the dangers of being a homeless teenage girl traveling alone across the country would have gone a long way in improving this story.

UPDATE: FilmRise will release “The Short History of the Long Road” in select U.S. theaters on June 12, 2020, and on digital and VOD on June 16, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Two/One’

April 28, 2019

by Carla Hay

Two/One
Boyd Holbrook in “Two/One”

“Two/One”

Directed by Juan Cabral

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 28, 2019.

Two strangers share an unknown connection until they have a chance meeting that reveals how they are linked. It’s not a new concept for a movie, but the drama “Two/One” attempts to bring a unique twist to the concept: Someone’s life is another person’s dream. Unfortunately, this first feature film from writer/director Juan Cabral has a premise that is so deeply flawed that it goes beyond a logical suspension of belief that you sometimes have to have for a fictional story.

The first three-quarters of the movie alternate between two men who don’t know each other: Kaden (played by Boyd Holbrook) is a professional ski jumper who lives in Canada. Khai (played by Song Yang) is a business executive who lives in China. Both men are so consumed by their work that their love lives have taken a back seat to their careers. Kaden’s family has also become fractured, as his adulterous father Alfred (played by Beau Bridges) has announced that he’s left his longtime wife, Kaden’s mother Olina (played by Marilyn Norry), because he’s become tired of the marriage. Even though Kaden’s father is selfish and insensitive, Kaden still seeks his father’s approval, which is an issue that Khai has with his own father.

Both Khai and Kaden are emotionally closed off, but love unexpectedly enters their lives. With Kaden, he has a chance encounter with a long-lost love named Martha (played by Dominique McElligott), who is now married and has a child with another man. Khai’s love interest is Jia (played by Zhu Zhu), a young woman he first saw in nude videos posted on the Internet, and she unexpectedly becomes his co-worker at the office. Khai and Jia have a whirlwind romance, and not long after they begin dating, she moves into his apartment. But their relationship hits a major speed bump when Khai finds out that Jia is a victim of revenge porn, and he has difficulty coping with it. It’s easy to see that Khai and Kaden have control issues when it comes to their romantic partners, whom they view somewhat as damsels in distress who need rescuing.

People watching this film who don’t know that it’s supposed to reveal the connection between Kaden and Khai will be left wondering during most of the movie, “Where exactly is this going?” When the big reveal happens, people in the movie have suffered serious injuries because of the connection that Kaden and Khai have. “Two/One” is so ambitious in its concept that it overlooks the major plot holes that ensue when the two characters finally meet. If the idea had been written more skillfully, then the issue of narcolepsy and other sleep disorders would have had more of a wide-reaching effect on the characters in the movie. Because “Two/One” takes such a slow-paced, long-winded approach to get to the big reveal, it wouldn’t be surprising if some people watching this movie will fall asleep out of sheer boredom.

UPDATE: Gravitas Ventures will release “2/1” (previously spelled “Two/One”) in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on February 7, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘The Kill Team’

April 28, 2019

by Carla Hay

Nat Wolff and Alexander Skarsgård in "The Kill Team"
Nat Wolff and Alexander Skarsgård in “The Kill Team” (Photo by Manolo Pavon/A24)

“The Kill Team”

Directed by Dan Krauss

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 27, 2019.

In 2013, “The Kill Team” (directed by Dan Krauss) won the Tribeca Film Festival jury prize for Best Documentary Feature for its chilling chronicle of the Maywand District murders scandal, in which members of the U.S. Army were arrested in 2010 for murdering unarmed, innocent civilians during the war in Afghanistan. Krauss has revisited the story—this time, by writing and directing the dramatic, scripted film also titled “The Kill Team,” which is based on real-life events but using fictional names of the real people involved. Whereas the documentary (which was released by The Orchard in 2014) spends a lot of time explaining why this tragedy happened, the scripted feature film does something even more disturbing: It shows how it happened in the first place.

“The Kill Team” documentary, which includes interviews with several of the soldiers involved, takes place entirely after the arrests of the soldiers. The documentary is set not in a combat zone, but in the type of conference rooms and offices where defense attorneys or therapists meet with their clients, as the defendants prepare for their cases to be resolved. The “Kill Team” scripted feature film takes place almost entirely before the arrests, and brings the viewers directly into the environment that created the horrific “Kill Team” mentality to murder people for thrills.

The main protagonist in both films is the young specialist who enters the Army as a wide-eyed, eager-to-please rookie and leaves the Army as a disillusioned, broken man wracked with guilt over his participation in the murders. In real life, that man is Adam Winfield, whose name has been changed to Andrew Briggman in “The Kill Team” scripted film. In the beginning of the movie, Andrew (played by Nat Wolff) is excited and proud to join the Army, since his father is an Army vet who served honorably.

Andrew has a close relationship with his loving parents, William and Laura (played by Rob Morrow and Anna Francolini)—and it’s a relationship that plays a pivotal part later on in the story. However, Andrew is in for a rude awakening when he leaves the supportive cocoon of his middle-class family and goes off to war in Afghanistan. Early on, Andrew experiences the brutality of war when he and other squad members witness their squad leader being killed by an improvised explosive device (IED). In addition, several of the other soldiers in his squad initially give Andrew a hard time—they think because of his scrawny physique that he’s a nerdy wimp who’s not cut out for combat.

Andrew and his college-age peers essentially have a fraternity-like existence, with each member jockeying for position and testing boundaries when it comes to egos, power and respect. They argue, but they also party together (smoking hashish is one of their preferred leisure activities), and they have varying degrees of expectations on how much violence they’ll commit while they’re on active duty.

The stakes in the team’s power plays get higher when the squad gets a new staff sergeant named Sergeant Deeks (played by Alexander Skarsgård), who is charismatic but extremely manipulative. He does what most toxic leaders do: He pits his subordinates against each other so that they can prove who is the most loyal to him, and those who “win,” get the most rewards and benefits from him. Deeks (who is based on the real-life Calvin Gibbs) makes it known to his squad that he’s looking for a trusted right-hand man, which sets off a competition to see who’s the toughest of the bunch to get that position. Andrew is eager to prove himself worthy of being Deeks’ second-in-command, and he surpasses Deeks’ expectations by fulfilling increasingly violent tasks that Deeks orders him to do.

The other members of the squad—including Rayburn (played by Adam Long), Coombs (played by Jonathan Whitsell), Marquez (played by Brian Marc), Weppler (played by Osy Ikhile) and Cappy (played by Oliver Ritchie)—join in on the mayhem, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and reluctance. Coombs in particular has an almost joyful zest in the violence that he causes, because he thinks war should be about “kicking ass,” and he thinks it’s boring for soldiers to have duties such as patrolling areas and protecting civilians.

On the surface, Deeks appears to be an accomplished and upstanding military man—he lovingly checks in on his wife and young son back home via Skype chats—but it’s a façade that masks a sadistic criminal who likes to kill for fun, and he has a total disregard for the law and U.S. military policies. The first sign of Deeks’ corruption is when he catches his subordinates smoking hash, but instead of reporting this punishable offense, he tells them that what they’re doing is wrong because he knows where they can get better-quality hash.

It isn’t long before Deeks lets his young subordinates in on some of his secrets: He’s gotten away with an untold number of murders in Iraq and Afghanistan, simply by lying and saying that the people attacked first and were killed because of self-defense. In many of the cases, Deeks admitted to planting weapons on the victims (which is called a “drop weapon” technique) to further perpetuate the lie that the killings were justified. Deeks has also kept body parts (such as fingers) of many of his victims, and he likes to pose for pictures next to their dead bodies, much like a hunter poses for photos with dead prey.

Some of Deeks’ subordinates are all too eager to join him on his murder sprees, if it means that they can rise through the military ranks with Deeks as their mentor. They call themselves “The Kill Team,” and become a twisted fraternity of soldiers looking for unarmed victims to murder, under the guise of being good military men who are eliminating the enemy at war. When some of the squad members show signs of guilt, they’re threatened by Deeks to keep silent, or else he’ll make sure they’ll be beaten up or killed. After all, Deeks has shown that he’s capable of not only committing these crimes but also covering them up and making the victims look like the aggressors. Deeks’ subordinates are isolated, far from home, and under the command of a dangerous and powerful leader, so it’s easy to see why they went along with his heinous actions in order to protect themselves.

We’ve seen villains in many war movies before—the Oscar-winning classics “Apocalypse Now” and “Platoon,” for example, each features a corrupt leader who fits the mold of the gruff, scowling bully instilling fear in his subordinates. What makes “The Kill Team” villain Deeks even more insidious is that his dominance isn’t all by brute force—he barks commands, but he also presents himself as a smiling, older brother to be admired and whose approval is a reward that his subordinates are desperate to get, even if it means that their morality gets stifled or snuffed out in the process.

Deeks’ physical presence—tall, blue-eyed good looks, as embodied by Skarsgård—also has a lot to do with his powerful influence, because he fits many people’s image of an American military hero. Skarsgård brings complexity to the role by portraying Deeks as loathsome but also with a self-righteous magnetism that makes it convincing that he could manipulate other people into thinking what he wants them to think. The merits of this film are largely centered on authentically explaining how someone like Deeks could get away with so much horrific destruction—and Skarsgård successfully rises to the challenge. The Andrew Briggman character is less complex and more transparent than Deeks, but Wolff effectively portrays the morality crisis and emotional turmoil of a soldier whose world is turned upside down by the horrors of war and corrupted values.

Krauss and his team did a terrific job of recreating not only the Afghanistan war zones (the movie was actually filmed in Spain) but also the military weapons and automobiles (which were actually digital effects) that were shown in the movie. Although many people already know the real-life outcomes of the Maywand District scandal, Krauss builds a level of suspense and emotional tension that will leave an impact on viewers and serve as a painful reminder that serial killing in the context of war is an issue that will never be fully erased.

UPDATE: A24 Films will release “The Kill Team” in select U.S. theaters and on VOD on October 25, 2019.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Initials SG’

April 28, 2019

by Carla Hay

Initials S.G.
Diego Peretti in “Initials S.G.” (Photo by Roman Kasseroller)

“Initials SG” (“Iniciales SG”)

Directed by Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia

Spanish with subtitles

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 28, 2019.

The trials and tribulations of a struggling actor have been the subject of classic Oscar-winning movies, ranging from the 1937 drama “A Star Is Born” to the 1982 comedy “Tootsie” to the 2016 musical “La La Land.” The dark comedy “Initials SG” (“Iniciales SG”) is not going to be an Oscar-winning classic, but it’s a compelling movie about the seedy underbelly of the acting profession far outside of the United States—in this case: Buenos Aires, Argentina. In “Initials SG,” Diego Peretti plays Sergio Garces, a down-on-his-luck, middle-aged actor who still holds on to the dream of achieving major stardom. Years before, Sergio recorded a long-forgotten album of Serge Gainsbourg cover songs in a misguided bid for fame. The title of the movie is a nod to Sergio Garces and Serge Gainsbourg having the same initials.

Sergio—who is single and lives alone—is the type of actor whose career was once promising, but has in recent years been reduced to mostly bit parts as an extra or voiceover roles, and he’s not above making adult films to help pay the bills. After being sentenced to anger management and probation for a fight where he pushed someone out of a window, he gets into a bike accident that injures his nose. The injury negatively affects his health and immediate job prospects.

In the midst of this personal crisis, Sergio meets a visiting American sales agent named Jane (played by Julianne Nicholson) by chance at a bar. She’s more attracted to him than he is attracted to her, and they eventually become lovers after Sergio misses a chance to hook up with a younger woman he’s been lusting after for a while. Sergio’s ego also gets a temporary boost when he finds out that he’s going to honored at a film festival.

“Initials SG” at first gives an appearance of being an absurdist comedy with a protagonist who keeps running into bad luck. This movie is not for the faint of heart. In one of the movie’s scenes, Sergio’s nose injury causes him to have a nose bleed while filming a sex scene in a porn movie. In another scene, we find out the nose injury is more serious than it first appears to be. (Hint: If you’re disgusted by the idea of a slithery animal being stuck in a human body, you might want to skip this film.)

When Sergio goes out on the street outside his apartment, he keeps seeing a weird young man, who’s apparently in a drug-induced haze, because the young man stares up at the sky and points at something that isn’t there. That sidewalk character will play a pivotal role in the last third of the movie, which takes a very sinister turn, as secrets are revealed and covered up. But the movie’s final act is one that might leave audiences the most divided. It’s a bold twist to the story that will linger long after the credits roll.

UPDATE: “Initials SG” is available on HBO and HBO Max.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Stray Dolls’

April 27, 2019

by Carla Hay

Stray Dolls
Olivia DeJonge and Geetanjali Thapa in “Stray Dolls” (Photo by Shane Sigler)

“Stray Dolls”

Directed by Sonejuhi Sinha

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 27, 2019.

The crime thriller “Stray Dolls” is described by director/co-writer Sonejuhi Sinha as a “love story,” but all the characters in the film aren’t very lovable. Most of the film takes place at the sleazy Tides Plaza Motel, which is in an unnamed city in the U.S., but it’s the kind of dump where a lot of people are either down on their luck and/or doing something bad. A young woman named Riz (played by Geetanjali Thapa) has recently arrived from India to work as a live-in maid at the motel. We find out that Riz has escaped from her street life in India, and wants a better life for herself in America, where she plans to send some money home to her family.

Riz tries to re-invent herself as a hard worker with a clean lifestyle, but it’s slowly revealed that when Riz was in India, she has done illegal things, such as con games and robbery, in order to survive. Having a past life as a street hustler makes it all the more unbelievable that Riz would give her passport for safekeeping to her new boss Una (played by Cynthia Nixon), a no-nonsense Russian who is the motel’s manager. In the beginning of the film, Una is seen shredding the passport, which will have dire consequences for Riz later on in the movie.

Soon after arriving at the motel, Riz finds out that she has to share living quarters with a fellow maid named Dallas (played by Olivia DeJonge), who’s strung out on meth, obsessed with Dolly Parton, and trying to make enough money to open her own nail salon. Dallas’ dimwitted boyfriend Jimmy (played by Robert Aramayo) is also her drug dealer, and he also happens to be Una’s son.

Riz and Dallas get off on the wrong foot when Riz catches Dallas trying to steal from her, and the two get into a fight that leaves Riz feeling threatened. Riz continues to put on a façade of being a “good girl”—she refuses to drink alcohol or do drugs when hanging out with Dallas. But one night, when they’re at a restaurant, Dallas slips a painkiller drug into Riz’s milkshake while Riz is in the ladies’ restroom. Under the influence of the drug, Riz’s inhibitions are lowered, and she spends the rest of the night partying with Dallas and her druggie friends. When Riz and Dallas go back to their room at the motel, Riz asks Dallas to kiss her, which foreshadows the sexual attraction that is underneath later motivations in the film.

While cleaning a motel room when the room’s guest is away, Riz finds a hidden package of cocaine, impulsively steals it, and then gives the package to Dallas, in an effort to impress Dallas and with the hope that Dallas doesn’t pick a fight with her again. It’s one of many dumb and unnecessary decisions that the supposedly streetwise Riz makes in this film. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that things don’t turn out well for anyone who steals from a drug dealer.

But the movie’s plot really goes off the rails when Riz commits a serious crime twice, and what she does to cover up her misdeeds would make her a candidate for “World’s Dumbest Criminals.” The first time she commits the crime, it’s somewhat of an accident. The second time she commits the crime, it’s completely unwarranted and planned in such a cold-blooded manner that any sympathy that anyone might have for Riz will probably evaporate. The last 15 minutes of the movie have so many absurd things happening (including a ludicrous attempt to frame Riz and Dallas as “Thelma and Louise” type of outlaws) that “Stray Dolls” should have been named “Stray Plot Holes.”

UPDATE: Samuel Goldwyn Films will release “Stray Dolls” on digital and VOD on April 10, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Blow the Man Down’

April 27, 2019

by Carla Hay

Morgan Saylor and Sophie Lowe in “Blow the Man Down” (Photo by Jeong “JP” Park)

“Blow the Man Down”

Directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 26, 2019.

How many times have we seen this in a movie or a TV show? A person accidentally kills someone in self-defense, but instead of doing the logical thing (calling the police or an attorney), the person gets rid of the body, which makes things worse because now the cover-up makes the death looks like a murder. That plot device of throwing logic out the window in order to create suspense is done repeatedly in “Blow the Man Down,” a film that has good intentions and solid performances, but so many illogical actions that you won’t feel much sympathy for the people who keep digging themselves further into criminal (plot) holes.

The movie begins with a scene showing a family gathering taking place right after a funeral. The deceased person is Mary Margaret Connolly, the mother of sisters Priscilla Connolly (played by Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth Connolly (played by Morgan Saylor). The two sisters are very different from each other: Priscilla is the older, more sensible sister, while Mary Beth is the younger, wilder sister. With their mother’s death, the Connolly sisters now bear the responsibility of running the family business, Connolly Fishing, in their small village of Easter Cove, Maine. Mary Beth has a restless spirit. She wants to sell the business and use the money to get out of town and start a new life. Priscilla vehemently disagrees and thinks the best thing to do is to keep the business going.

Meanwhile, the town has a bed-and-breakfast inn called Ocean View, which is run by Enid Nora Devlin, who also goes by the name Mrs. Devlin (played by Margo Martindale), who’s known the Connolly family for years. The other matriarchs in town—Doreen Burke (played by Marceline Hugot), Gail Maguire (played by Annette O’Toole) and Susie Gallagher (played by June Squibb)—are busybodies who make a point of knowing what’s going on with everyone in the community. It all sounds so quaint and small-town folksy—except it’s not.

Ocean View is really a brothel, and Mrs. Devlin is a madam who has a steely attitude underneath her friendly façade. Without giving away any spoilers, more than one person ends up dead, plus there’s a missing bag of $50,000 cash, blackmail and cover-ups of crimes. Mary Beth and Priscilla are involved in covering up the death of one of the people—a thug named Gorski (played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach). They dismember his body and hide it in an ice box. Another dead person’s body washes up at sea, and the cause of death might be an accident or a murder.

A young police officer named Justin Brennan (played by Will Brittain) is the main person investigating the death of the person found at sea. Justin takes a liking to Priscilla, whose guilty conscience makes her even more nervous when he makes excuses to come over and visit her. At first, Officer Brennan appears to be a somewhat dimwitted neophyte who can be easily fooled, but he slowly begins to suspect that the sisters know more than they are telling him.

Because Easter Cove is such a small town, it’s easy to believe that only one cop would be doing most of the investigating. However, with all the small-town gossips who are in everybody else’s business, it’s hard to believe that word wouldn’t get out quicker about some of the suspicious activities that were done in plain view. As for that bag of $50,000 in cash that changes possession throughout the film, spending that kind of money wouldn’t go unnoticed in this small town, so it defies logic that certain characters go to a lot of trouble to get the cash in order to spend it in a way that the town would take notice.

“Blow the Man Down” has the benefit of a talented cast that adds layers of depth to a script that isn’t particularly original. Saylor and Martindale stand out as the most compelling to watch because their morally dubious characters in the movie have impulsive tendencies, so their actions aren’t always predictable. “Blow the Man Down”—written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy—also cleverly shows local fisherman characters singing well-known sailor songs (including the film’s namesake), as this movie’s version of a Greek chorus. The movie’s last 15 minutes are a flurry of activities that look like desperately written scenes aimed at trying to tie up some loose strings in the plot. If you’re willing to overlook the screenplay’s flaws, you might enjoy “Blow the Man Down” for the movie’s best assets: the cast’s performances and the way the film convincingly captures the mood of a small town with some very big, dirty secrets.

UPDATE: Amazon Prime Video will premiere “Blow the Man Down” on March 20, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Only’

April 27, 2019

by Carla Hay

Only
Freida Pinto and Leslie Odom Jr. in “Only” (Photo by Sean Stiegemeier)

“Only”

Directed by Takashi Doscher

World premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 27, 2019.

Does the world need another bleak post-apocalyptic movie? Not if it’s as disappointing as this one. The above-average performances of Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) and Freida Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) are the main reasons to see “Only,” a depressing drama with unrelenting emotional claustrophobia that can’t quite mask some of the film’s most glaring and annoying plot holes. Odom and Pinto play Will and Eva, two lovers who have quarantined themselves in an apartment in an unnamed U.S. city during a mysterious plague. From the opening scene, there’s a sense that Eva is somehow in danger: She frantically hides in a secret crawlspace in the apartment when men wearing hazmat suits suddenly enter the home to search it and interrogate Will, who lies to them by telling them that he lives alone.

In the film’s numerous flashbacks that might confuse some viewers, it’s revealed that the plague started when ash began to fall all over the world like a steady snowstorm, and females who are exposed to the ash develop a strange illness that makes them bleed near their ears, go into convulsions, then die within a matter of hours. Eva has managed to avoid this contagious disease by being in the apartment when the ash started to fall.

But in a major plot disconnect, a flashback scene shows her to be completely exposed in a hospital’s emergency ward, where Will and Eva have taken Eva’s roommate Carolyn (played by Tia Hendricks), who was caught outside when the ash started to fall. While at the hospital, which is filled with patients and their loved ones covered in the mysterious ash, Will figures out that only females are getting sick from the ash. In a “too good to be true” coincidence, he sees an “Authorized Personnel Only” door, which happens to contain two hazmat suits that he and Eva can wear when they flee the hospital to go back home and quarantine themselves. Never mind that Will and Eva have already been exposed to the deadly ash when they went outside to travel to the hospital while the ash is in the air, and they were in a hospital filled with people and things covered with the ash.

It’s not a spoiler to reveal this ludicrous part of the storyline because the entire movie relies on the premise that Eva has avoided exposure to the ash for at least 400 days, which contradicts the fact that she was exposed early on during the plague at the hospital. The entire hospital scene and the Carolyn character are completely unnecessary, since Will and Eva could have found out the cause of the plague and who was at risk by staying home and watching the news. It’s one of the movie’s several plot holes that will leave viewers shaking their heads in dismay at how “Only” writer/director Takashi Doscher sabotaged his own script.

Later in the movie, it’s revealed that because the plague has almost wiped out the world’s population of women and girls, and many of the surviving women who can get pregnant end up having miscarriages, the U.S. government has put up a $2 million bounty for anyone who can find a woman who can give birth to a child. However, since the government is doing scientific experiments on surviving women who are found, there’s little incentive for any of the remaining women like Eva to give themselves up.

The movie’s flashback scenes show that Will and Eva had a happy relationship before the plague. But after the plague, their relationship has become strained because Will has become so paranoid about Eva being discovered and getting infected, that he’s kept her a virtual prisoner in their home, and she has developed a simmering resentment over it. It’s a plot concept that could have been mined for some deep and emotional insight into male/female relationships and power struggles in society (something that “The Handmaid’s Tale” does so well), but “Only” jumps back and forth too much in the story’s timeline, which takes away from what could have been a more cohesive movie.

After Will and Eva have decided to quarantine themselves, the movie goes to great lengths to show us how Will dictates much of what Eva can and can’t do because he’s so afraid of Eva being discovered and getting infected. For example, he gets upset when she uses a cell phone or computer because he doesn’t want her technology activities to be traced. But then another part of the story reveals that Will allows Eva to communicate with the outside world in an Internet chat room with other female survivors, who also send email to the couple. Even though Eva is using an alias, we’re supposed to believe that paranoid Will doesn’t know that this type of Internet activity can still be traced. It’s a contradiction that’s almost laughable if this weren’t such a downbeat movie.

By the time viewers see that Eva (who’s disguised as a man) and Will have made a trip outside to get food, the story veers into a random fugitive thriller with Will and Eva trying to hide from a father and son (played by Jayson Warner Smith and Chandler Riggs), who are would-be bounty hunters. The problem is that the movie tries hard to convince viewers how Eva has been hidden for over a year, but Eva and Will make some decisions both in and outside their home that make it hard to believe that their secret hadn’t been discovered sooner. Their home is meticulously protected in a way that shows their long-term quarantine gave them plenty of time to think about ways to safeguard their home, yet Eva’s “disguise” as a man is so poorly thought-out that it’s a glaring contradiction. (It’s revealed in the last 15 minutes of the film why Eva is outside wearing unprotected clothes when she and Will leave their home to get food.)

Pinto and Odom have a few scenes where they adeptly show the emotional toll that the quarantine has taken on their relationship, but not even the best actors in the world can save this problematic and ultimately unsatisfying script.

UPDATE: Vertical Entertainment will release “Only” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on March 6, 2020.

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