June Squibb Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead’ (2024), starring Simone Joy Jones, Patricia ‘Ms. Pat’ Williams, Jermaine Fowler, June Squibb and Nicole Richie

April 19, 2024

by Carla Hay

Carter Young, Donielle T. Hansley Jr., Simone Joy Jones and Ayaamii Sledge in “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (Photo courtesy of Iconic Events)

“Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (2024)

Directed by Wade Allain-Marcus

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the comedy film “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (a remake of the 1991 film of the same name) features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Four siblings under the age of 18 go unsupervised after their widowed mother goes away on a two-month trip, the kids’ babysitter dies, and the eldest sibling lies about her age and qualifications to get jobs when the kids run out of money.

Culture Audience: “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the original movie and are interested in watching an unimaginative remake with no surprises.

Simone Joy Jones and Nicole Richie in “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (Photo courtesy of Iconic Events)

“Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is comatose with a lack of imagination. This unnecessary remake of the 1991 film is in many ways worse than the original film because the remake adds terrible racial jokes and more moronic scenarios. The acting performances from the cast is very uneven, ranging from mediocre to painfully bad.

Directed by Wade Allain-Marcus and written by Chuck Hayward, the 2024 “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” remake is based on the 1991 movie of the same name. Christina Applegate starred in the original 1991 movie, which was directed by Stephen Herek and was written by Neil Landau and Tara Ison. This unimpressive reboot is geared to adults (even though the central characters are children) and is more vulgar than the original 1991 version, due to more cursing and more explicit depictions of drug use, mostly marijuana. However, the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” doesn’t do a very good job of using this adult-oriented tone by making anything edgy or clever. Instead, it rehashes the original movie in tired and lazy ways that are definitely not improvements from the original.

In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” there are four siblings at the center of the story, instead of five siblings that were in the original 1991 movie. The eldest child, who is the chief protagonist, is a 17-year-old girl who has recently graduated from high school. With few exceptions, the names of the main characters and prominent supporting characters are the same in the original and in the remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”

In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (which is a production from BET Studios), most of the updates are references to social media that didn’t exist in 1991. However, the overall concept is the same in both movies: The kid siblings are left alone for two months because their single mother is away on a retreat vacation during the summer season. The eldest sibling is resentful because she wanted to take a summer vacation with her friends, but she now has to spend the summer with her younger siblings.

A cranky and strict elderly babysitter has been hired to look after the children and live in the house with them, but she unexpectedly dies of natural causes just a few days after she arrives. The kids get rid of the babysitter’s body and keep the death a secret because they don’t want their mother to cut her vacation short and because the kids want to be unsupervised for the two months that their mother will be away. The comedic situations in the movie have mostly to do with what happens because the kids are keeping this secret.

Through a series of circumstances, the siblings run out of the money that their mother left for the babysitter to spend on the children. They decide the eldest child is the most likely to earn the most money by getting a job. The eldest child pretends to be about 10 years older than she really is and creates false qualifications in order to get a job at a fashion apparel company, where she has a demanding boss who is dating a sleazy marketing executive at the company.

The eldest sibling also has a situation where her love life overlaps with her work life: She starts dating a guy who’s close to her age, and she finds out later that he is the younger brother of the woman who is her enemy at her job. The teen imposter employee doesn’t want her new boyfriend and his sister to find out that she knows both of them. Many hijinks ensue as the amateur teen con artist struggles to keep up several charades while trying to maintain a stable household.

In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (which takes place and was filmed in the Los Angeles area, just like the 1991 original movie), the protagonist siblings are 17-year-old Tanya Crandell (played by Simone Joy Jones), who is outgoing and resourceful; stoner skateboarder Kenny Crandell (played by Donielle T. Hansley Jr.), who’s about 15 or 16; angsty technology whiz Melissa Crandall (played by Ayaamii Sledge), who’s about 13 or 14; and nerdy intellectual Zack Crandell (played by Carter Young), who’s about 11 or 12. Their widowed mother (played by Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams) doesn’t have a first name in the movie. Tanya, who is set to go to Howard University in the fall, had planned a summer vacation in Spain with friends, but she’s now had to cancel her vacation to stay home with her younger siblings.

In the 1991 original movie, the mother was going on a vacation retreat for relaxing self-care and so she could have this free time to herself. The 2024 remake plays into “angry black woman” negative stereotyping by showing the mother having an irate and violent meltdown at her office job. (She pushes down a heavy piece of furniture while losing her temper in a conference room meeting before she quits the job.) As a result, this volatile mother decides she’s going on a two-month retreat (to Thailand) to work on her anger management issues. The awful racial stereotyping doesn’t stop there, as there are unnecessary and not-funny-at-all racist and sexist jokes polluting the movie, including people saying the “n” word and black females being called “bitch.”

The black people aren’t the only ones who look bad in the 2024 remake. The white babysitter who’s been hired to babysit the Crandell siblings is a blatant racist, who is depicted as a conservative, Bible-carrying Christian. Her name is Mrs. Sturak (played by June Squibb), who shows herself to be mean-spirited and oppressive after the children’s mother leaves for the retreat. Mrs. Sturak is the type of racist who says things such as, “Hip-hop ruined the blacks.” Mrs. Sturak also shoots a gun outside and tells the Crandell kids: “I know how to discipline you. I watch Madea [Tyler Perry] movies.”

Tanya and Kenny decide to rebel and have a house party. They lie to Mrs. Sturak and say that it’s really a gathering of a Bible study group where Christian hip-hop will be played. Kenny (who is cliché of a pothead) invites a lot of his druggie friends, so the party predictably becomes a loud and raucous bash. Mrs. Sturak sees the chaos and looks like she’s about to have a heart attack, but she doesn’t do anything about the party, which doesn’t make sense since she’s the type of person who would call the police to break up the party.

The next morning, the Crandell kids find out that Mrs. Sturak died in her sleep. It’s a slightly different lead-up than the original 1991 movie, where there was no house party to upset Mrs. Sturak. In the 1991 movie, the kids just found out one morning that she was dead in her bed. The way that the kids handle disposing the body is also different in both films.

In the original 1991 movie, the kids drove Mrs. Sturak’s body to a mortuary and anonymously dropped off the corpse in a trunk at the front door, with a note saying that she died of natural causes. In the 2024 movie, the body disposal problem is handled in a way that’s even worse. Melissa says, “It’s not 1991. There are cameras everywhere,” which is the movie’s flimsy way of explaining why they don’t drop the body off at a mortuary.

First, the Crandell kids decide to put Mrs. Sturak’s body in a spare refrigerator in the garage. The movie is so stupid, it leads to an awkward scene where a cop just happens to be passing by the house’s open garage door and asks the kids what they are doing and why they are unsupervised. Kenny is able to talk the cop out of investigating further by saying their mother is out for a few hours at a spa appointment.

The plan for the body disposal then switches to putting Mrs. Sturak’s body in Mrs. Sturak’s car, driving the car to a remote lake at night, and then pushing the car into the lake. Not only is this a more complicated solution, but it also now makes this illegal body disposal an even worse crime than it was in the first movie. And the filmmakers would like viewers to forget that security cameras on the street still work at night.

Mrs. Sturak apparently had no one in her life who cared about her because, in both movies, no one comes looking for or reports her missing during the entire story. Every time the Crandell kids’ mother calls to check up on the kids (which isn’t very often), they tell their mother that Mrs. Sturak is not available to talk on the phone because she out doing an errand. In real life, most parents would then start to wonder why the babysitter is leaving the kids alone every time they call, or the parents would ask the babysitter to return the call and would get suspicious if the babysitter doesn’t call back. But movies like this aren’t concerned with those realistic details.

When the Crandell kids run out of cash, Tanya gets a job as a rideshare driver. While doing this job, she meets a customer in his late teens named Bryan (played by Miles Fowler), who books Tanya to drop him off and pick him up at what appears to be a wedding or engagement party. Bryan is an aspiring architect who has recently graduated from high school and has plans to attend Syracuse University in the fall.

During their time together, Bryan and Tanya have romantic chemistry and they end up dating each other, even though there’s nothing in the movie to show that they have a relationship built on honesty from Tanya. Tanya leads Bryan to believe that she’s older than 17. The minimum age to be a rideshare driver is 18 years old, which is why Bryan assumes Tanya is at least 18. Tanya also tells Bryan many lies, some through omission.

When Bryan asks Tanya why she’s so evasive about certain personal details throughout their relationship, Tayna is very abrupt and defensive to Bryan. Their conversations are also fairly shallow and uninteresting. When Bryan asks Tanya what her favorite building is, she answers, “The Grove,” which is a shopping center in Los Angeles. Bryan is an attentive and romantic boyfriend. Tanya is very self-absorbed and not as intelligent and charismatic as Sue Ellen Crandell (the eldest sibling, played by Applegate) in the original 1991 movie.

The rideshare job is Tanya’s first job. She’s shocked at how much of her payment is reduced by commissions, taxes and expenses. With help from Zack, Tanya does some math and figures out that she won’t be able to make enough money as a rideshare driver to feed a household of four people, so she quits the rideshare job.

In the original 1991 movie, Sue Ellen initially had a job at a fast-food restaurant, but she quit not just because of the low wages but also because she disliked the creepy boss and she hated doing the messy food work involved in the back rooms. She meets her love interest Bryan (played by Josh Charles) because he works at the same fast-food joint. Bryan also drives the restaurant’s delivery truck, which becomes a running gag in the movie when the Crandell car gets stolen by drag queens, and Sue Ellen often has to get rides from Bryan in this gaudy fast-food truck.

A turning point comes in both movies when the eldest Crandell sibling sees an ad for a job opening as a receptionist for a fashion company that sells low-priced apparel. In both movies, she fabricates a résumé to apply for the job. In the 1991 movie, she does it on her own. In the 2024 version, Tanya gets help from her more tech-savvy sister Melissa, who also creates fake social media profiles for Tanya.

Both movies show how the teen imposter gets hired immediately at the company—not as a receptionist but as the administrative assistant to a high-ranking company executive named Rose Lindsey. That’s because this executive is impressed by the qualifications listed on the résumé, and the executive doesn’t like the receptionist who expected to get promoted to this administrative assistant job. In both movies, the receptionist is very rude to the teen imposter when they first meet. The receptionist (who is Bryan’s older sister) becomes the teen imposter’s bitter rival when she finds out that this newcomer got the job that the receptionist wanted.

In the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” the receptionist Caroline (played by Lantha Richardson) is a two-dimensional “villain,” although Richardson has fairly good comedic timing in some of the scenes. Caroline’s office sidekick is openly gay Bruce (played by Gus Kenworthy), who doesn’t want to get involved in Caroline’s scheming, unlike the 1991 movie’s Bruce character(played by David Duchovny), who was Caroline’s cohort with a dislike for Sue Ellen because Sue Ellen doesn’t let Bruce talk down to her. Kenworthy has a small role in the 2024 movie, but he and Richardson are two of the few cast members in the movie who give consistently capable performances.

The same can’t be said for Nicole Richie, who has the role of Rose Lindsey, the hard-driving CEO of Libra, a fast-fashion company whose target audience consists of teenage girls. Richie delivers her lines stiffly in too many scenes. You never forget that Richie is acting, unlike Joanna Cassidy, who had a more natural and convincing performance as Rose Lindsey in the original 1991 movie.

The 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” has several references to the original 1991 movie. At one point, it’s revealed that Tanya’s middle names are Sue Ellen. There’s a scene in the remake where Kenny, Melissa and Zack are watching TV in their living room, and the movie they are watching is the original “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”

And there is the not-too-surprising cameos from some of the original “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” cast members. Cassidy makes a very brief appearance toward the end of the movie, in a scene where she introduces herself as Joan to Richie’s Rose character. This cameo appearance from Cassidy is so quick (less than one minute) and has no bearing or effect on the overall story, so it’s not spoiler information to say that she’s in the movie. Other cast members from the 1991 movie who make very brief cameos as different characters in the 2024 remake are Keith Coogan (who was stoner Kenny in the original movie) and Danielle Harris (who was tomboy Melissa in the original movie), whose appearances in the 2024 remake are also unimportant to the plot.

One of the reasons why the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” doesn’t work very well is because the movie’s plot is too outdated. In 1991, it would be much easier for an underage teenager to fake an identity to get this type of job. Nowadays, this type of fakery would be much easier to expose—especially since Tanya used her real name and went to a high school in the same area where she got the job. The 2024 movie tries to address these issues by showing Caroline finding out fairly early on that Tanya lied about her qualifications. However, Rose doesn’t seem to care when Caroline tells Rose because Rose genuinely likes Tanya and wants Tanya to succeed.

As for the underage issue, which is more of a legal issue for the company, the original 1991 movie handled it better. In the 1991 movie, someone on the job finds out Sue Ellen’s real age by temporarily taking her driver’s license from Sue Ellen’s unattended purse and making a photo copy of the driver’s license. In the 2024 movie, it’s discovered that Tanya lied about her age when someone finds her high school yearbook, which actually doesn’t prove she’s underage because someone could be 18 or 19 (or even older, in some cases) when they graduate from high school.

Another issue that is handled in a sloppier way in the 2024 movie is a subplot about the younger Crandell siblings gong on a spending spree to buy things they don’t need (such as high-end home entertainment equipment) by using the company’s expense account that the eldest Crandall sibling has access to through her job. In the 1991 movie, the money was from a petty cash account, with the cash kept in a drawer where Sue Ellen had the keys and could write fake receipts to cover up the taken cash. Sue Ellen took the cash home to buy groceries and had the intention to replace the stolen cash (before anyone noticed the missing cash) with money that she was expecting from her next paychecks.

In the 2024 movie, Tanya is given a company credit card that is used by her younger siblings for the spending sprees. Using a credit card instead of cash would actually make it harder to cover up the purchases that the Crandell kids bought using the stolen money. But the filmmakers of the 2024 remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” don’t care about those details because this movie treats viewers like idiots.

In both movies, Rose is openly dating a co-worker marketing executive named Gus, who is a and playboy. John Getz had the role of Gus in the 1991 movie. Jermaine Fowler (no relation to Miles Fowler) is Gus in the 2024 movie, which makes Gus one of Rose’s subordinates. Rose considers herself to be an independent, liberated woman who doesn’t feel the need to get married. However, Rose and Gus have decided to have a monogamous relationship. Rose hopes that Gus will eventually ask her to live together.

This is what the 2024 movie is trying to pass off as “comedic lines of dialogue”: Gus tells Tanya that he’s “VP [vice president] of pleasing Rose.” Rose tells Tanya in a separate private conversation why she’s dating Gus, who’s about 10 years younger than Rose: “Always date younger men—[they have] more stamina, less opinions.” She also compares Gus to being like a foster puppy if they live together. Rose seems to be fond of Gus, but only because of the sex that they’re having and the control she thinks she has in the relationship.

Because Gus is a serial cheater, he predictably tries to make moves on Tanya, who rebuffs his advances. Tanya also sees Gus kissing another woman, and Tanya handles it in a way that’s kind of cringeworthy. In the 1991 movie, Gus is much more aggressive and blatant with his sexual harassment, which Sue Ellen handles with a certain amount of grit and maturity that people mght not expect from a 17-year-old. The 2024 version “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” in this #MeToo era, plays it very safe when it comes to sexual harassment issues.

Instead, the movie is much more “in your face” with obnoxious racist comments that the movie is trying to pass off as jokes but often miss the mark. There’s a scene early in the 2024 movie, where Kenny says a ridiculous comment that he and his siblings get to have the whole house to themselves like “white kids”—as if black kids are never home alone. The movie briefly acknowledges that the Crandells have middle-class privileges, but then it’s back to the unfunny racist jokes.

In the original 1991 movie, the clothing company was called General Apparel West, selling drab worker uniforms. The 2024 movie mentions environmental and social issues that the general public is much more conscious of for fashion companies in the 21st century, compared to 1991—such as sustainable manufacturing, vegan clothing and using underpaid sweatshop workers. However, these buzzwords in the movie are just empty window dressing to a recycled movie plot that doesn’t do anything creative.

Jones does a serviceable job as Tanya, but she is never convincing as a teenager when Tanya is at home and can let her guard down. As for the younger kids, the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” makes the same mistake that a lot of bad comedies do, by making pre-teen kids or kids in their early teens talk like smart aleck adults, which just makes their dialogue sound even phonier. That’s what the movie does with Melissa and (to a certain extent) Zack. (Kenny is still an underachieving stoner in both movies.) At least the kids in the 1991 “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” talked like genuine children appropriate to their respective ages.

One of the worst things about the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is how the issue is resolved regarding Tanya covering up her secret double life from Bryan The 1991 version had much more realistic portrayals of how Bryan was affected by his girlfriend’s secrets and lies. The 2024 version literally resolves the issue in less than a minute in a such a superficial way, it’s really insulting to Bryan and to audiences watching this dreck.

Even worse is the last scene of the 2024 version of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” which is changed from the 1991 movie. Without giving away too many details, the 2024 version shows the Crandell mother’s reaction to certain information. Her reaction is heinous and plays once again into negative stereotyping of black people. The original 1991 “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” wasn’t a very good movie, but at least the movie had better acting and more authenticity in showing some very absurd situations involving children.

Iconic Events released “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” in select U.S. cinemas on April 12, 2024. BET+ will premiere the movie on May 16, 2024.

Review: ‘Family Squares,’ starring Ann Dowd, Judy Greer, Billy Magnussen, Margo Martindale, June Squibb, Casey Wilson and Henry Winkler

April 7, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Family Squares”

Directed by Stephanie Laing

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020, in North Carolina, New York City, Connecticut and other parts of the world, the comedy/drama film “Family Squares” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with one Asian and one African American) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Before and after an American family’s matriarch dies, various members of the family meet on videoconference calls to talk about the clan’s frequently difficult relationships and some family secrets that cause conflicts.

Culture Audience: “Family Squares” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s cast members and stories about bickering family members who still love each other despite their differences.

June Squibb in “Family Squares” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

Neither terrible nor great, “Family Squares” is a flawed comedy/drama that’s elevated by the talent of the movie’s cast members. It’s an uneven but well-acted movie about a family gathering on videoconference calls. Directed by Stephanie Laing, “Family Squares” has a title that refers to how the family members appear on screen in squares because of the videoconference format. It’s another movie about people being unable to interact in person because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Family Squares” (which Laing co-wrote with Brad Morris) won’t be considered a classic COVID-19 pandemic movie, but it might interest people who are curious to see a scripted story about how large families stayed in touch during the pre-vaccine lockdowns of the pandemic.

The movie, which takes place and was filmed in 2020, has the expected squabbles between these relatives, but there are enough tender moments and comedy to make the emotions well-rounded. Where the movie falters is in some of the dialogue, which can sometimes be too corny or too contrived. However, the cast members’ performances make the movie’s characters believable. You might see parts of yourself or people you know in some of these family members, even if what some these characters say occasionally sounds like an overly calculated movie script.

“Family Squares,” which centers on the fictional Worth family, could have done a better job of explaining in the beginning how each family member is related to each other. Unless you have an excellent memory or are taking notes, it might be very easy to get confused by the first 10 to 15 minutes of the movie, which is kind of a jumbled mess, where the characters show up on screen and then babble on about various things.

Here are the characters of the Worth family who participate in these videoconference calls:

Mabel (played by June Squibb) is the family’s feisty matriarch, who is in her 90s and dying in a hospice/nursing home somewhere in New York state. Mabel passes away during the first videoconference call that’s seen in the movie. Mabel divorced her husband (who is now deceased) many years ago and has been married to a much-younger woman for the past four years. Mabel’s two children from her marriage to her ex-husband are son Bobby and daughter Diane.
Judith Joyner (played by Ann Dowd), Mabel’s soft-spoken wife, lives in New York City, and has been unable to visit Mabel in person during Mabel’s final days because of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
Bobby (played by Henry Winkler), Mabel’s bachelor son, has a rebellious past and a tense relationship with his younger sister Diane, who were both raised on a farm in Spring Hope, North Carolina.
Diane (played by Margo Martindale), Mabel’s strong-willed younger child, doesn’t think highly of Bobby because she thinks he’s irresponsible and flaky. Diane, who lives in Connecticut, is a widow and a mother of five adult children: son Bret, daughter Dorsey, son Chad, son Robert and daughter Katie.
Bret (played by Timothy Simons) is a widower and a failed business entrepreneur who is raising his daughter Cassie (who’s about 15 or 16 years old) on his own.
Dorsey (played by Judy Greer) is a neurotic single mother who is currently on a road trip (in a recreational vehicle camper) with her reluctant 17-year-old son Max. Dorsey has a longtime love/hate relationship with her younger sister Katie. Max’s father, who is described as a deadbeat dad who abandoned Dorsey and Max, is not a part of Max’s life.
Chad (played by Scott MacArthur), a bachelor with no children, is a fairly successful self-help guru and author, who thinks that he’s the one who has a life that is the most enviable out of all of his siblings.
Robert (played by Billy Magnussen) is a ne’er-do-well bachelor with no children. Robert jumps from job to job and has a younger brother inferiority complex with Chad, who bullied Robert when they were children. Robert claims to be calling from Russia, where he says he is hiding out for top-secret reasons that have to do with Robert’s computer hacking.
Katie (played by Casey Wilson) is the youngest of Diane’s children and the only one of her siblings to still live in their North Carolina hometown of Spring Hope. Katie is very image-conscious and has a bad habit of being tardy. Katie and her husband Kevin have three underage kids together, but Katie is the only one in their household who participates in the videoconference calls.
Max (played by Maclaren Laing), Dorsey’s marijuana-smoking son, loves his mother, but he doesn’t want to spend a lot of time with her. Max was never close to his great-grandmother Mabel, so he is emotionally unaffected when Mabel dies.
Cassie (played by Elsie Fisher), Bret’s quiet and introverted teenage daughter, was emotionally attached to her great-grandmother Mabel, so she is devastated when Mabel dies.

The movie’s unseen narrator is someone named Bill (voiced by Rob Reiner), whose identity is revealed toward the end of the movie. It might be easy to figure out who Bill is, based on his comments and observations. Some viewers might think the narration is unnecessary and annoying, while other viewers might think the narration is necessary and charming.

Someone who pops in occasionally during these videoconference calls is Kelly (played by Zoë Chao), the hospice nurse who was taking care of Mabel before Mabel passed away. Kelly is the one who sets up the videoconference call for Mabel, who is computer-illiterate and too sick to do it herself. After Mabel dies, Kelly plays video messages that Mabel left for her surviving family members.

Kelly has an awkward moment with Judith when, after Mabel dies, Judith wants to arrange to get Mabel’s personal items that were at the hospice, but Judith is not allowed to claim Mabel’s items. Kelly has to tell Judith that it’s because the hospice doesn’t have Judith listed as a family member, even though Judith and Mabel were legally married. This scene is a depiction of what LGBTQ people often have to go through when their spouses or partners die, and the spouses or partners who are left behind are impeded by homophobic policies and laws that deprive them of their rights. All of the members of the Worth family love and accept Judith, but the movie never bothers to explain why Mabel—who knew she was dying and was living openly as a queer married woman—never made the proper spousal arrangements for Judith at this hospice.

Another person who is part of these videoconference calls is a funeral director/attorney named Alex (played by Sam Richardson), who is put in an uncomfortable position when the Worth family members disagree over whether or not to have a virtual/online funeral for Mabel. Judith is a part of these funeral arrangements. And the decision about the funeral isn’t the only conflict in this family.

Mabel drops two bombshells in her farewell videos that are shown after her death: First, she announces that somewhere on the family farm property is something valuable. “We are really, filthy, stinking, fucking rich,” Mabel says in the video. Some of the family members immediately want to go to the property to hunt for what they think might be hidden treasure and possibly find it before the other family members. Bill can be heard in a voiceover saying, “Nothing like an inheritance to get the family greed boiling.”

Mabel’s other shocking revelation is that she says one of the family members who is a sibling is actually not a biological sibling. Mabel refuses to go into any further details and tells her family members that they have to figure out this secret on their own. This family secret actually makes “Family Squares” more interesting than it could have been, so it’s one of the main reasons why the movie can hold people’s attention.

There are other family secrets that are revealed during these calls, but they are somewhat mild in comparison to the one about who are the real biological parents of the person who’s “not a sibling.” There’s also the matter of who else in the family knew about this secret, which could threaten to destroy relationships in this family. Judith admits she knows the secret, but she tells everyone: “It’s not for me to say.”

In a movie with very talented cast members, it’s hard to go wrong with their performances. Greer and Martindale stand out the most because not only do their characters of Dorsey and Diane have outspoken personalities, but they also have the most emotional depth. All of the other cast members perform well in their character roles, which at times can get a little two-dimensional and can reduce them to stereotypes.

Laing gives mostly solid direction to “Family Squares,” which could have done without some of the slapstick shenanigans between Chad and Robert that cheapen the quality of the film. A few of the characters, such as Cassie and Bret, are a bit underdeveloped. Because there are so many family members and so many conflicts, at times “Family Squares” seems a little overstuffed. The first third of the movie tends to drag, the middle of the movie is a little scattered and unfocused, but the last third of the movie makes up for the story’s shortcomings.

Screen Media Films released “Family Squares” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on February 25, 2022. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on April 5, 2022.

Review: ‘The Humans’ (2021), starring Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun, Beanie Feldstein, June Squibb and Jayne Houdyshell

November 23, 2021

by Carla Hay

Pictured clockwise, from bottom left: Steven Yeun, Beanie Feldstein, June Squibb, Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell and Amy Schumer in “The Humans” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Humans” (2021)

Directed by Stephen Karam

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the dramatic film “The Humans” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Asian person) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A Thanksgiving family gathering in a creaky New York City apartment brings out various levels of tension and secrets.

Culture Audience: “The Humans” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching movies adapted from stage plays and movies about family gatherings that show realistic conversations.

Amy Schumer in “The Humans” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Humans” will keep viewers guessing on what terrible things might happen at an often-uncomfortable family reunion during Thanksgiving. It’s not a horror movie, but it’s a well-acted study of psychological turmoil. “The Humans” movie is the feature-film directorial debut of Stephen Karam, who adapted the movie from his Tony-winning play of the same name. Don’t expect any major plot twists to happen. This dialogue-heavy movie puts more emphasis on the characters’ interactions and creating an uneasy mood.

If watching “The Humans” makes some viewers feel slightly claustrophobic, that’s clearly the intention. The entire film takes place in one location: a drab New York City duplex apartment in a shabby building. It’s the type of apartment that’s probably overpriced just because it’s in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which has undergone various degrees of gentrification. The apartment has several rooms but still seems cramped and unsettling when the Blake family (the clan at the center of the story) gathers for this Thanksgiving dinner.

The two residents of the apartment are Brigid Blake (played by Beanie Feldstein) and her boyfriend Richard (played by Steven Yeun), who have recently moved into this duplex. Their move is so recent, their new home is still mostly unfurnished. Brigid, who is in her late 20s, is an unemployed classical musician/composer who is looking for work in her chosen profession. Richard, who is 35, is studying to be a social worker.

The other family members who are at this Thanksgiving gathering have all traveled from Pennsylvania. Brigid’s older sister Aimee (played by Amy Schumer) lives in Philadelphia. Brigid and Aimee’s parents are Erik Blake (played by Richard Jenkins) and Deirdre Blake (played by Jayne Houdyshell), who both still live in Scranton, where they raised Brigid and Aimee. Erik’s mother, who’s nicknamed Momo (played by June Squibb), uses a wheelchair and has dementia.

Momo lives with Erik and Deirdre, who is Momo’s primary caretaker while also holding down a job as an office manager. Later on in the movie, Deirdre mentions that she’s been at the same company for 40 years and started working there not long after she graduated from high school. Deirdre expresses some resentment that she’s been passed over for promotions. She complains that she now reports to two guys in their 20s who make a lot more money than she does, just because they have fancy college degrees.

Erik has also been a longtime staffer at his place of employment. For the past 28 years, he’s been working as a maintenance custodian at a Catholic school. As one of the perks of the job, when Aimee and Brigid were children, he was able to enroll them in the school without having to pay tuition. Erik and Deirdre are planning to build a lake house for their retirement. Construction on the house has been stalled due to various issues, but Erik tells the family that things are back on track to finish building the house.

Aimee, who is openly a lesbian or a queer woman, is experiencing some setbacks in her career and personal life. She’s heartbroken over a recent breakup with a girlfriend named Carol, who is not seen in the movie, but who talks to Aimee on the phone during one of the movie’s heart-wrenching scenes. Aimee also tells the family that she’s being ousted from her corporate job because she took too much personal time off from work.

Aimee needed the time off to deal with her medical issues: Aimee has kidney dysplasia and colitis. She hasn’t told her parents yet that she has to make a decision on whether or not to get surgery. Aimee confides in Brigid that she’s afraid that no one will want to date her after the surgery. Brigid gives Aimee a pep talk and tells her that Aimee is attractive and a great catch.

“The Humans” moves along at a slow pace where not much happens except people talking. However, throughout the movie, there are things that literally go bump in the night—specifically, loud thumps that can be heard from the apartment upstairs. The noise unnerves Erik the most. Several times during the movie, Brigid has to assure him that the noise is coming from a harmless elderly woman who lives upstairs.

Out of all the family members gathered for this Thanksgiving, Erik is the one who seems to be the most restless and on edge. He sometimes goes to the windows (which do not have drapes or blinds) to look out, as if he’s certain that people might be looking in on them. This old, creaky building also has problems with its electricity and plumbing. You can easily predict what will happen at one point with the electricity.

“The Humans” might give the impression that it’s going to turn into a haunted house movie. “The Humans” has some “jump scares,” but it’s best if people know in advance not to expect “The Humans” to be a horror film. There’s a feeling of foreboding and dread throughout the film, but it’s mainly from these family members dealing with and confronting their insecurities and secrets.

For example, there are various resentments that certain family members have toward each other. Brigid feels that her mother Deirdre is overly critical of her, while Deirdre resents that bossy Brigid always acts like talkative Deirdre is an embarrassment to the family. Erik and Deirdre are very religious, so they’d prefer that Richard and Brigid live together as a married couple. Brigid seems to want to eventually get married, but it’s a sensitive topic for her because she thinks that she and Richard should be more financially stable before thinking about marriage.

Erik and Deirdre accept Aimee’s sexuality, but they don’t discuss Aimee’s love life at length in the way that they talk about Brigid’s love life. These parents don’t really come right out and say it, but they show through their words and actions that they’re more invested in who Brigid’s life partner will be because they think that because Brigid is heterosexual, she’s more likely to get married and have children.

Erik is more judgmental than Deirdre, when it comes to what other people experience in life. For example, Erik believes that therapy is self-indulgent, and he thinks that he personally never needs therapy in his life. At one point during the dinner, when someone reveals getting treatment in the past for depression, Erik insensitively says that religion has been his own “anti-depressant.”

How religious is Erik? He has a figurine of the Virgin Mary that he has carried with him for this Thanksgiving dinner. And it should come as no surprise that he’s the one who leads the prayer before they begin their Thanksgiving meal. Erik believes in having a traditional patriarchal role for his family. And usually, when someone is this self-righteous in a movie, that person is probably the one who has the biggest secrets to hide.

This is Richard’s first Thanksgiving with the family, so he has the “outsider” role in the movie. He tries to keep the peace when certain family members start to bicker with each other. Richard has some secrets too that eventually come out in the dinner conversation.

As an example of how cheerful Richard wants this family gathering to be, he has a device that can project visual images onto any wall. He chooses to project the image of a cozy, burning fireplace. When it’s projected on the wall, it looks like a real fireplace, and it gives the drab and nearly empty room a warmer ambience.

Brigid, who is somewhat of a control freak, turns off the device because she thinks that having a fake fireplace looks tacky. Richard disagrees and wants to keep some kind of ambience projection image going in the room, to make the room look lived-in and not so barren. Observant viewers will notice that this back-and-forth between Brigid and Richard about whether or not to use this device in the room is not just about any power struggles in their relationship. It’s also about Brigid showing defiance about Erik’s expressed disapproval of the shabby condition of the apartment building.

Erik isn’t shy about telling Brigid that he thinks her choice to live in New York City is somewhat foolish, when she can have bigger and better living space in Scranton for a fraction of the cost of living expenses in New York City. It’s implied that Erik and Brigid have had ongoing disagreements about where she lives. She lives in New York City because she loves it and knows that she will have better career opportunities in New York, but Erik sees it as Brigid turning her back on her Scranton roots. Erik also doesn’t understand why Aimee wants to live in a big city like Philadelphia, although Erik is much more disapproving of Brigid living in New York City.

At first, Richard and Erik have some unspoken awkwardness between them, because Erik doesn’t know Richard very well and isn’t quite sure how much Richard might be a threat to Erik’s influence over the family. However, Richard is very mild-mannered and a people pleaser. Erik starts to warm up to Richard when he sees that Richard has no intention of being the most dominant person in this family.

But some things are really bothering Erik. And little, by little, he begins to reveal what those things are. Erik starts off by telling everyone that he’s been having nightmares of being chased in a tunnel. Richard then confesses that he’s also had a recurring nightmare: falling through an ice cream cone made of grass. Richard is also a sci-fi enthusiast, so he shares a theory of what outer-space aliens must think about human beings on Earth. This theory ties into the main theme of this movie.

Every movie about a family Thanksgiving dinner seems to have it share of family squabbles. “The Humans” is no exception. Much of this discord has to do with family members not feeling respected or heard. For example, an emotional blow-up happens after Brigid shares her disappointment over getting constant rejections for a grant and because her job search hasn’t been going well. Erik replies flippantly, “Well, you can always work in retail.” That comment sets off an argument between certain members of the family.

And what is Momo doing during all of this family drama? She doesn’t say much, but there’s a moment during the dinner when her memory seems very sharp. It gives the other family members some hope that maybe her dementia hasn’t gotten worse. How long that hope lasts is shown in the movie.

Because “The Humans” is more of a “slice of life” film instead of an event-filled movie, some viewers might feel disappointed that the movie isn’t a mystery thriller. The film’s music, cinematography and editing certainly give the impression that something terrifying and possibly supernatural could happen at any moment. However, viewers should know in advance that this movie has several scenes that show mundane activities, such as family members trying to navigate Momo’s wheelchair in narrow doorways, or people making small talk about repairs that need to be done in the apartment.

The main reason to see “The Humans” is for noteworthy performances by the cast members, who bring a lot of authenticity to their roles. The conversations between these family members are at their best when they’re about showing their vulnerabilities and not trying to put up a façade that life is perfect. And that seems to be the point of this movie: It’s easy to blame others for causing misery. It’s a lot harder to admit that people are sometimes their own worst enemies.

A24 will release “The Humans” in select U.S. cinemas and on Showtime on November 24, 2021.

Review: ‘Palm Springs,’ starring Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti and J.K. Simmons

July 10, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Palm Springs”

Directed by Max Barbakow

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Palm Springs, California, and briefly in other parts of the U.S., the comedy film “Palm Springs” has a predominantly white cast (with a few black people, Asians and Latinos) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A single man and a single woman find themselves in a repetitive time loop where they keep waking up to the wedding day of the woman’s younger sister in Palm Springs, California.

Culture Audience: “Palm Springs” will appeal to primarily people who like offbeat “time warp” comedies, but much of the vulgar humor lacks wit or originality.

Meredith Hagner and Andy Samberg in “Palm Springs” (Photo courtesy of Hulu)

A blatant and vastly inferior ripoff of the 1993 Bill Murray classic comedy “Groundhog Day,” the time-loop comedy film “Palm Springs” might be interesting to fans of star Andy Samberg, but everyone else will feel like they’re stuck watching a repetitive time-loop skit get less funny as time goes on. A sardonic supporting performance by the always-great J.K. Simmons isn’t enough to save this smug film, which isn’t as clever as the filmmakers like to think it is.

People who follow news in the entertainment industry might be aware that the Hulu comedy film “Palm Springs” broke a Sundance Film Festival record for the highest amount paid ($17.5 million and 69 cents) to acquire a film that premiered at Sundance. The previous record holder was Fox Searchlight’s $17.5 million purchase of the 2016 drama “Birth of a Nation,” actor Nate Parker’s feature-film directorial debut.

The record-breaking sum that Hulu paid for “Palm Springs” would lead people to believe that this movie, which clearly won’t be an Oscar contender, is at least on par with a crowd-pleasing classic, such as director Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day,” a movie about a weatherman who’s stuck in a Groundhog Day time loop. Unfortunately, “Palm Springs” (directed by Max Barbakow and written by Andy Siara) doesn’t come close to the charm and memorable humor of “Groundhog Day.”

It’s pretty obvious that the overrated “Palm Springs” was sold for an overpriced amount because movie executives got caught up in a bidding war for a mediocre film. When has Samberg ever starred in a quality movie that was a big hit with audiences? Never. “Palm Springs” certainly won’t be his first “blockbuster” hit.

In “Palm Springs,” Sandberg plays an obnoxious ne’er do well named Nyles, who is stuck in a time loop where he keeps waking up to November 9, the day of a wedding that he is supposed to attend with his girlfriend Misty (played by Meredith Hagner), a stereotypical ditsy blonde who is one of the bridesmaids. Viewers won’t find out about this time loop until after the first time that the movie shows Nyles at the wedding.

The wedding is taking place in the upscale desert vacation city of Palm Springs, California. The bride is Tala (played by Camila Mendes), the groom is Abe (played by Tyler Hoechlin) and the maid of honor is Tala’s divorced older sister Sarah (played by Cristin Milioti), who looks and acts like she’d rather be anywhere else but the wedding. The proud parents of the bride are Howard (played by Peter Gallagher) and Pia (played by Jacqueline Obradors), who don’t do much except look horrified at some of the silly antics that later ensue in the story. And then there’s Nana Schlieffen (played by June Squibb), the token matronly grandmother at the wedding.

Nyles, Misty and Sarah are all staying at the same hotel. When Nyles wakes up in the hotel on the day of the wedding, Misty has just come out of the shower and is putting lotion on her legs. Nyles wants to have sex, and Misty agrees, but only if they make it quick because she says she doesn’t want to get too sweaty. A predictable erection joke is part of this scene, which sets the tone for the rest of this movie. “Palm Springs” makes a lot of crude jokes about sex, but most of the jokes aren’t very funny.

At the wedding, Nyles stands out (and not in a good way) because he’s wearing clothes that are too casual: a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. At the reception, Misty makes an awkward wedding speech, and then it’s Sarah turn to give her speech. Even though she’s the maid of honor, a miserable-looking Sarah seems shocked that she’s expected to make a toast to the bride and groom.

But before she gets a chance to make the speech, Nyles butts in and makes a speech that’s even more cringeworthy than Misty’s speech. What Nyles has to say is both overly sappy and nonsensical. He ends it by stating to the newly married couple: “We may be born lost, but now you are found.”

After that, Nyles (who is constantly chugging beer from beer cans) and Sarah strike up a conversation. Nyles flirts heavily with Sarah and asks her if she wants to go somewhere private with him for a quickie tryst. Sarah tells him that he’s being very forward, but she’s intrigued by his boldness.

While Nyles and Sarah are outside, they pass by a bathroom where the reception is being held. The bathroom is on the ground level, and they can clearly see into the bathroom’s window (this place clearly doesn’t care about guests’ privacy), where they witness Misty cheating with a wedding guest named Trevor (played by Chris Pang). Trevor, who’s dressed in a glittery cowboy suit at the wedding, is one of those quirky characters that was written in this movie in its failed attempt to be like a Wes Anderson comedy.

Now that Sarah knows that Nyles’ girlfriend/wedding date doesn’t really care about him, Sarah takes Nyles up on his offer to hook up with him out in the desert. Before that happens, Sarah tells Nyles that she’s the “black sheep” of her family, because her family thinks she’s a “liability” who thinks “I fuck around and drink too much.”

While Sarah and Nyles are having a steamy makeout session, Nyles suddenly gets wounded on his shoulder by an arrow. Out of the shadows, a man wearing dark camouflage paint on his face starts to chase Nyles with a bow and arrow, while Sarah freaks out and is confused by what’s going on. It turns out that the angry bow-and-arrow hunter is named Roy (played by J.K. Simmons), and Roy wants revenge on Nyles for a reason that’s revealed later in the story.

Meanwhile, during this chase scene, Nyles runs into a cave where there’s a strange glowing red light. Sarah follows Nyles into the cave. And it turns out this mysterious cave is the portal that causes a time-loop that keeps going back to November 9. Now that Sarah has gone into the cave, she’s stuck in the time loop with Nyles too. Just like Nyles, every time Sarah now wakes up, it’s in the Palm Springs hotel on the November 9 wedding day.

“Palm Springs” has a lot of slapstick humor to distract from the uninspired dialogue in the movie. After Sarah finds out that she’s stuck in the same time loop as Nyles, much of the film is about Sarah being angry with Nyles because she feels that she didn’t deserve to be unknowingly trapped in the loop.

Nyles has been in the loop long enough to warn Sarah that attempts to get out of the loop have failed. Committing suicide doesn’t work. (Although an idea presented later in the story contradicts that theory.) It also doesn’t work to take stimulant drugs that keep people up for days. Traveling to another city (which Sarah does when she drives all the way back to her messy house in Austin, Texas) also doesn’t get them out of loop either.

The movie never explains what Nyles did for a living before he got caught in the time loop, but he’s reached a point of feeling resigned about his fate in the loop. Therefore, he acts as recklessly and obnoxiously as possible (including breaking several laws), because he knows that when he wakes up, he’ll be back in that Palm Springs hotel room on the November 9 wedding day.

Nyles also tells Sarah that being stuck in the time loop has caused him to feel free to have sexual hookups with as many people as possible, including three people who keep showing up in this story: a bartender named Daisy (played by Jena Friedman), who works at the wedding reception; Darla (played by Dale Dickey) a crusty regular at a local bar; and fashionable Jerry (played by Tongayi Chirisa), one of the wedding guests.

At first, Sarah gets caught up in being as “bad” as possible, so a great deal of the movie shows Sarah and Nyles acting like drunken, irresponsible teenagers. But Sarah soon grows tired of these shenanigans and wants to get out of the loop and back to her normal life. It goes without saying that Sarah and Nyles start to have romantic feelings for each other, so Nyles is conflicted about Sarah wanting to leave the loop while he might remain stuck there.

Unfortunately for “Palm Springs,” the chemistry between Samberg and Milioti isn’t very believable when Nyles and Sarah start to become a romantic couple. Milioti seems to be doing her best to bring some laughs to the story, but Sarah is such a deeply unhappy, self-loathing person that it’s hard to believe that Sarah can fall in love when she doesn’t even love herself.

Parts of “Palm Springs” seem like a more adult-language version of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that’s worn out its welcome. Samberg, who’s a “Saturday Night Live” alum, has the same type of one-note “man child” persona that he had on the show. It’s the same persona that Pete Davidson has also taken as part of his comedic image.

A comedy with this “time loop” concept should be fun to watch, but “Palm Springs” is a chore to watch because the two main characters don’t have charismatic personalities. Huge stretches of “Palm Springs” drag on for too long. And even the movie’s visual effects look cheap and clunky.

The best thing about “Palm Springs” is how the “travelogue” type of cinematography (from Quyen Tran) makes a vacation in Palm Springs look very enticing. But people can watch attractive travel videos for free on the Internet, and this movie isn’t supposed to be a travel video.

People aren’t going to sign up for Hulu en masse to watch this movie, so “Palm Springs” certainly wasn’t worth the $17.5 million price tag. “Palm Springs” is not only a waste of Hulu’s money but it’s also a waste of viewers’ time, unless people have a high tolerance for Samberg’s recycled “man child” persona.

Hulu premiered “Palm Springs” on July 10, 2020

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

April 27, 2019

by Carla Hay

“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.