New Mexico Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (2024), starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco and Ed Harris

March 16, 2024

by Carla Hay

Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart in “Love Lies Bleeding” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Love Lies Bleeding” (2024)

Directed by Rose Glass

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in New Mexico (and briefly in Las Vegas), the dramatic film “Love Lies Bleeding” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A gym employee and an aspiring professional bodybuilder meet, fall in love, and get involve in deadly criminal activities.

Culture Audience: “Love Lies Bleeding” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Kristen Stewart and intense movies about outlaw lovers.

Ed Harris in “Love Lies Bleeding” (Photo courtesy of A24)

Gritty and suspenseful, “Love Lies Bleeding” is a rollercoaster ride of a crime drama that has unexpected moments of fantasy and horror, along with a co-dependent love story between two women. The outcome of this love story is intended to be as impactful as the results of all the murder and mayhem that take place in this intense thriller. It’s a well-acted and artfully made film about desperation, revenge and the lengths that people will go to in order to fulfill ambitions or protect loved ones.

Directed by Rose Glass, “Love Lies Bleeding” was co-written by Glass and Weronika Tofilska. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. “Love Lies Bleeding” is the second feature film from Glass, who made her feature-film directorial debut with the 2020 horror movie “Saint Maud,” a story about a fanatically religious and mentally ill woman.

There are some elements in “Love Lies Bleeding” that are similar to “Saint Maud,” particularly when twisted horror-like hallucinations of a main character seem to come to life. However, both movies are very different from each other overall. “Love Lies Bleeding” is not for people who are easily offended by bloody gore or explicit sexual content. “Love Lies Bleeding” is an above-average noir thriller that brings some unique twists to what’s usually seen in movies about outlaw lovers.

“Love Lies Bleeding” takes place in 1988, mostly in an unnamed small city in New Mexico, where the movie was filmed. The movie’s opening scene is at a grungy local fitness studio called Crater Gym, where gym employee Louise “Lou” Langston (played by Kristen Stewart) does menial tasks, such as attending to customers and doing janitorial duties. A co-worker named Daisy (played by Anna Baryshnikov) has an obvious crush on Lou and tries to get Lou to go on a date with her, but Lou politely rejects Daisy’s advances.

Lou, who is in her early 30s, is an introverted loner who is a chronic smoker and lives with a cat. She’s the type of person who will listen to anti-smoking audio recordings, perhaps as a way to try to quit smoking or as an ironic way of rebelling against what the recordings are saying. During the course of the movie, more of Lou’s background and her family are revealed.

Lou’s father Lou Langston (played by Ed Harris), also known as Lou Sr., is a scummy and ruthless crime lord who lives in a mansion and owns a gun club as a way to launder money. Lou’s mother has been missing for the past 12 years. Lou won’t come right out and admit it, but she’s pretty sure that her mother is dead, and she suspects her father had something to do with this disappearance. Lou is estranged from her father for this reason and many other reasons.

Lou is closest to her older sister Beth (played by Jena Malone), a married mother of three sons. Lou despises Beth’s husband JJ (played by Dave Franco), because JJ is very abusive (physically and emotionally) to Beth, who won’t get help for this problem out of fear and loyalty to JJ. JJ works at Lou Sr.’s gun club and is involved in Lou Sr.’s criminal activities.

One day, a stranger comes to town who will capture Lou’s attention and Lou’s heart. Her name is Jackie (played by Katy O’Brian), an aspiring professional bodybuilder, who has arrived from Oklahoma. Jackie, who is also in her 30s, is passing through New Mexico on the way to a bodybuilder competition in Las Vegas. She visits Crater Gym to work out. And it’s at Crater Gym where Lou first sees Jackie and has an instant attraction to her.

Before Lou and Jackie meet, Jackie has a sexual hookup with JJ in his car because she heard that JJ works at a gun club and hopes that he can help her get a job there. Sure enough, after their sexual encounter, when Jackie asks JJ if there are any job openings where he works, he gives her a business card and says yes and tells her that he’ll put in a good word for her. At the gun club, JJ introduces Jackie to Lou Sr., who hires her as a waitress, because she says she doesn’t like being around guns.

Shortly after Lou and Jackie meet and flirt with each other at the gym, they become lovers. Jackie soon shows herself to be a skilled hustler, because she charms Lou into letting Jackie temporarily live with Lou until Jackie goes to Las Vegas. Lou is not happy at all when she finds out that Jackie is working at the gun club. She comes right out and tells Lou that Lou’s father is a “psycho,” but she says that Jackie is free to work wherever she wants.

Jackie tells Lou a little bit about her background. Jackie says she was adopted at age 13, and she used to be a “fat kid,” who was bullied. Jackie also hints that she is estranged from her family when she says she doesn’t really have anyone who supports her bodybuilder dreams—a fact confirmed in a later scene when Jackie calls her adoptive mother. More details eventually emerge about Jackie’s troubled past.

Lou finds out that Jackie and JJ hooked up after JJ tells Lou about it during an argument that he has with Lou. When Lou angrily confronts Jackie about it, Jackie (who says she is bisexual) admits to hooking up with JJ. Jackie is able to smooth things over with Lou, because Jackie says that the sex with JJ was meaningless and only happened because she used JJ to get a job. Jackie also reminds Lou that she hooked up with JJ before Jackie met Lou.

Even though Lou is a quiet introvert and Jackie is a talkative extrovert, they both know without saying it out loud that they are both emotionally damaged from family problems. It’s a big reason why they are attracted to each other but also why they develop a dangerous co-dependent relationship. Soon after they become lovers, Lou offers Jackie free steroids, which Jackie is reluctant to take, but she gives in to Lou’s pressure to let Lou inject Jackie with the steroids. Jackie then becomes hooked on using steroids.

It’s hinted that Jackie’s steroid abuse could be the cause of Jackie’s hallucinations where her muscles become abnormally enlarged and she sees herself as turning into the size of the Incredible Hulk. There are other hallucinations she has that are pure grotesque horror. But observant viewers will notice that Jackie’s steroid abuse might not be the only reason for her delusions, as she appears to have some type of undiagnosed mental illness.

It’s enough to say that Jackie and Lou get caught up in murder and desperate cover-ups. Even before this happened, Lou was already on edge because two FBI agents working together—one named William O’Riley (played by Orion Carrington) and one named Dave (played by Matthew Blood-Smyth)—have her under surveillance. FBI agent O’Riley approaches Lou at the gym to question her about her father and her mother. Lou says she no longer speaks to her father and has no information about where her mother is.

“Love Lies Bleeding” has a lot of familiar storytelling about crime, betrayals and revenge. However, it’s not very often that these stories are told in movies from the perspectives of queer women characters, one of whom happens to be a bodybuilder. Lou and Jackie go to many extremes out of an underlying desperation and unhappiness that they have about their lives. There are clues about this discontent throughout the movie, such as when Lou seems to enviously admire Jackie for traveling to Las Vegas by herself, because Lou has never been anywhere outside of her small city. Jackie has convinced herself that becoming a rich and famous bodybuilder will make her own life happy and fulfilled.

Stewart has made a career out of playing fidgety and insecure characters. She gives one of her better performances as this type of character in “Love Lies Bleeding.” O’Brian has the harder and more complex role as Jackie, who will keep viewers guessing about how “good” or “bad” Jackie really is. Harris, Franco and Malone handle their roles capably, although their respective characters in “Love Lies Bleeding” are not very well-developed. Baryshnikov doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but she skillfully portrays Daisy, who is not as ditsy as she first appears to be.

“Love Lies Bleeding” has a few things that require suspension of disbelief. For example, if Lou Sr. is such a powerful crime lord, then there would be more than just two FBI agents snooping around. But this factual flaw can be overlooked because “Love Lies Bleeding” is a low-budget movie and the story is focused more on the relationship between Lou and Jackie than on any law enforcement investigating any crimes. “Love Lies Bleeding” doesn’t pass judgment on all the awful and cruel things that happen in the movie, but instead invites viewers to ponder if all of this destruction is worth it in the name of love.

A24 released “Love Lies Bleeding” in select U.S. cinemas on March 8, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on March 15, 2024.

Review: ‘God Is a Bullet,’ starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Maika Monroe and Jamie Foxx

June 27, 2023

by Carla Hay

“God Is a Bullet”

Directed by Nick Cassavetes

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020, in New Mexico, the action film “God Is a Bullet” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A police officer becomes a rogue vigilante while investigating the deadly cult that kidnapped his 14-year-old daughter and murdered his ex-wife and her lover.

Culture Audience: “God Is a Bullet” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching ultra-violent and mindless action flicks.

Karl Glusman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in “God Is a Bullet” (Photo courtesy of Wayward Entertainment)

Trashy and moronic, “God Is a Bullet” is a pathetic excuse to show brutal and violent misogyny. The dialogue is as cringeworthy as the scummy characters. Jamie Foxx is a co-headliner, but he’s in this bloated 155-minute movie for less than 15 minutes.

Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, “God Is a Bullet” is based on Boston Teran’s 1999 novel of the same name. Even though the movie is adapted from a work of fiction, there’s a caption shown in the introduction of the movie that says, “Based on a true story.” At the end of the film, another caption states that although the movie is based on a true story, parts of the story were fictionalized for the movie. Whatever the filmmakers want to call the movie version of “God Is A Bullet,” it’s still time-wasting garbage.

The beginning of “God Is Bullet” (which was filmed on location in New Mexico) is an indication of some of the nauseating scenes that pollute the movie: A woman is seen vomiting multiple times. That woman is Case Hardin (played by Maika Monroe), a 23-year-old, tattooed vagabond, who has escaped from a small but ruthless cult that has about seven to nine members. The cult kidnapped Case when she was 11 years old. Case lived with the cult for the next 12 years, until recently, when she decided to leave the cult for good.

The mostly male cult is led by a disgusting sadist named Cyrus (played by Karl Glusman), who is shown committing almost every type of heinous violent crime you can imagine throughout the movie. The opening scene of “God Is a Bullet” shows Case, who is a needle-using drug addict, vomiting in a toilet in a jail cell. Some viewers will feel like retching when they see some of the gruesome torture and murder scenes in this vile movie. Case is in jail for heroin possession and assault with a knife.

It’s late December 2020, and people are in the midst of the end-of-year holiday season. An early scene in the movie shows the heavily tattooed members of Case’s former cult hanging out at a parking lot near a strip of retail stores. Now that Case is no longer in the cult, the only woman who’s left in the cult is Lena (played by Gina Cassavetes), who looks like a reject from a Marilyn Manson video.

A little girl, who’s about 9 or 10 years old, is playing with a balloon in the parking lot while her mother is shopping inside a nearby store. And you know what happens next: The cult members kidnap her. It’s later shown in the movie that this cult is involved in child prostitution and other sex trafficking of children. When Case was kidnapped as a child by this cult, she was forced to endure the same sexual abuse. Flashbacks of a pre-teen Case (played by Elise Guzowski) show some of this forced prostitution.

After this kidnapping in the parking lot, the cult isn’t done with its crime rampage. On December 24, 2020, the cult members do a nighttime home invasion of mansion, where they savagely murder two of the mansion’s residents: divorcée Sarah Hightower (played by Lindsay Hanzl) and her boyfriend Sam (played by Kola Olasiji). A third resident of the home is Sarah’s 14-year-old daughter Gabi Hightower (played by Chloe Guy), who is kidnapped by the cult.

The next morning, on Christmas Day, two people arrive at the house for a planned visit: Sarah’s ex-husband Bob Hightower (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Sarah’s businessman father Arthur Naci (played by David Thornton), who are shocked and devastated when they go inside the house and see the bloody crime scene. They also quickly determine that Gabi has been kidnapped.

Bob is a police detective, but he’s not very well-respected in his police department, because he’s assigned to mainly doing paperwork. Predictably, Bob wants to be the lead investigator of this kidnapping/murder case, but he’s blocked by colleagues, who think he won’t be objective, and because Bob doesn’t have enough experience doing police work outside of the office. One co-worker comes right out and calls Bob a “desk jockey” and a “seat warmer.”

Undeterred, Bob thinks that the cult is responsible and goes on a mission to find this nomadic and elusive cult. And it just so happens that Bob finds out that a woman who’s currently in a nearby jail cell is a former member of this cult. Bob visits Case and asks her for information in tracking down the cult members. Bob, who is very religious, is immediately judgmental of Case. When they first meet, Bob treats Case like she’s a degenerate.

Bob is somewhat remorseful when he finds out that Case was kidnapped as a child and forced to be in the cult. She says to Bob about the cult members: “We all came from family-oriented communities—even me.” Case later explains why, as an adult, she has not been in contact with her single mother, who still thinks that Case is missing: Because of all the crimes she committed while in the cult, Case has a lot of shame and is afraid that her mother will reject her.

Case gives Bob this advice on finding his kidnapped daughter Gabi: “If you want her back, you have to get her yourself.” She adds, “You think you can do this alone. No offense, but you don’t send sheep to hunt wolves.” It should come as no surprise that Bob arranges for Case to be let out on bail so that she can help him track down her former cult colleagues.

One of the first things that Bob and Case do is go to a remote desert-like area where the cult members have been known to congregate at a compound. A cult member named the Ferryman (played by Foxx) is still hanging out at one of the houses in this compound. The Ferryman’s skin looks like he has vitiligo. He also has a prosthetic left arm.

Bob thinks the best way to find the cult is to “infiltrate” the cult, even though he looks like he would never fit in with this scuzzy-looking group. It leads to a ridculous scene of the Ferryman giving Bob tattoos on parts of Bob’s body, while Case gives Bob a face tattoo. After getting these tattoos, Bob doesn’t look like a menacing cult member. He looks like a man going through a sad mid-life crisis.

Meanwhile, viewers are taken into the home of a couple with a very dysfunctional and miserable marriage: Maureen Bacon (played by January Jones), who acts like she’s some kind of femme fatale, is shown taunting the masculinity of her police sergeant husband John Lee Bacon (played by Paul Johansson), because apparently she’s fed up with their lack of a sex life. When she starts to ridicule him for liking gay male porn, he brutally assaults her. Maureen’s reaction is to laugh and tell John Lee: “You’re such a wimp!”

John Lee just happens to be a colleague of Bob, who has now gone rogue and decided to become a vigilante, with Case as his sidekick. The hunt for the cult members gets dragged out in mind-numbing ways that include showing more tortures and murders committed by the cult members, with Cyrus the one giving the orders and participating. The other cult members have names like Gutter (played by Ethan Suplee), Snatch (played by Rooter Wareing) and Shitstain (played by Zac Laroc), and they have no distinguishable personalities beyond the mayhem that they commit.

There’s also a sniveling drug dealer named Errol Grey (played by Jonathan Tucker), who gets caught in this maelstrom of destruction. Case knows Errol because he used to be her drug dealer. Case tells Bob that she’s “clean and sober,” but she still pretends to be a needle-using drug addict during their “undercover” investigation when she encounters Errol again.

Several flashbacks show that when Case would try to leave the cult, Cyrus would viciously beat her up. If Lena tried to come to Case’s defense, then Cyrus would attack Lena too. It’s later shown that Case and Lena had some kind of sexual relationship when they were in the cult together. Lena apparently had stronger feelings for Case than Case did for Lena, who gets very jealous when she sees Case with Bob. The purpose of the Lena character is to literally be a token female in a group of men who all seem to hate her.

As if this cesspool movie weren’t icky enough, a subplot develops where Bob and Case start to become romantically attracted to each other. It’s not their age gap that’s the problem. It’s the fact that this rotten movie wants to push a narrative that even while he’s searching for his kidnapped daughter and seeking justice, this broken man is still “hot enough” to possibly get some sexual action from someone who’s in no emotional shape to be in a relationship either. Case sometimes calls Bob her “boy toy,” which is a weird thing to say about someone who’s old enough to be her father.

Needless to say, with a terrible screenplay and soulless direction, the acting performances in “God Is a Bullet” range from empty to bottom-of-the-barrel awful. Coster-Waldau looks like he’s sleepwalking through a lot of his scenes. Monroe overacts in many scenes, where she’s trying to come across as part damaged waif, part redneck seductress. Glusman is basically doing a not-very-good caricature of a twisted villain. (On a side note, Monroe and Glusman previously co-starred as spouses in the 2022 horror movie “Watcher,” which is a superior film to “God Is a Bullet” in every way.)

The Ferryman character didn’t even need to be in the movie because he’s barely in the film and has no real bearing on the plot, unless you waited your whole life to see Foxx in a movie where he plays a tattoo-making character who has a prosthetic arm. Foxx’s presence in “God Is a Bullet” is just a manipulative “bait and switch” way for the filmmakers to attract viewers by using Foxx’s celebrity name as a headliner, even though his role in the movie is really an extended cameo.

The movie’s scenes where women and girls get assaulted, exploited or murdered are filmed with a particular glee that is simply atrocious. The film has a “plot twist” that is not surprising at all. There are violent movies that can have meaning if the story is compelling and has something interesting to say. “God Is a Bullet” is just an onslaught of asinine trash that is as putrid as the movie’s nasty characters.

Wayward Entertainment released “God Is a Bullet” in select U.S. cinemas on June 23, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 11, 2023.

Review: ‘Robots’ (2023), starring Shailene Woodley and Jack Whitehall

May 18, 2023

by Carla Hay

Pictured clockwise, from left to right: Shailene Woodley, Jack Whitehall, Shailene Woodley and Jack Whitehall in “Robots” (Photo courtesy of Decal/Neon)

“Robots” (2023)

Directed by Casper Christensen and Art Hines

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2032, in New Mexico and in Mexico, the sci-fi comedy film “Robots” (based on the short-story collection “The Robot Who Looked Like Me”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A Lothario and a female gold digger, who each have illegal look-alike robots that do dirty deeds for them, go on a misadventure together to look for the robots after the robots “go rogue” by falling in love and running away together.

Culture Audience: “Robots” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and fans of the book on which the movie is based, but it’s a silly, boring and predictable movie that is a failure of imagination.

Jack Whitehall, Paul Rust and Shailene Woodley in “Robots” (Photo courtesy of Decal/Neon)

Robots with artificial intelligence could have come up with a better movie than the filmmakers responsible for the drab and unfunny comedy “Robots,” an embarrassing dud that fails to blend sci-fi and romance into an interesting story. It’s hard to believe that anyone who read the dreadful “Robots” screenplay actually thought that this junk was worth getting made. All of the movie’s cast members have the depth and personality of decommissioned robots in their hollow performances.

Written and directed by Casper Christensen and Art Hines, “Robots” is based on Robert Sheckley’s 1978 collection of short stories titled “The Robot Who Looked Like Me.” Viewers of “Robots” might find it hard to believe that Hines is one of the Oscar-nominated writers behind Sacha Baron Cohen’s hit movies, including 2006’s “Borat” and 2020’s “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” for which Hines received adapted screenplay Oscar nominations. Granted, the prankster movies of Baron Cohen are largely improvised, whereas a movie like “Robots” has a very formulaic script. The difference in the entertainment quality of a movie like “Borat” and a movie like “Robots” is like comparing a satisfying meal to stale garbage.

The opening scene of “Robots,” which takes place mostly in New Mexico in 2032, shows the governor of New Mexico (played by Hank Rogerson) giving a speech in front of a chain-link fence that’s supposed to separate the border of the United States and Mexico. (“Robots” was filmed on location in New Mexico.) The governor has a very small but enthusiastic audience of about 25 people, mostly middled-aged and elderly, who are sitting on folding chairs. It’s a group of right-wingers who hate undocumented immigrants from Latin American countries.

In his speech, the governor (who is obviously supposed to be a Donald Trump-like politician) proudly announces that under his leadership, the wall to keep the “illegals” out has been successfully built, and all the “illegals” have been deported. He also declares that industries that heavily depend on undocumented immigrants no longer need to employ these immigrants, because 10 years ago, the U.S. government created robots to “do the work that illegals once did.” After this speech event, the chairs are folded up and packed away by some of these robots.

Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the two main characters in “Robots”—a man and a woman in their 30s—are rude and selfish humans who own illegally purchased, highly advanced robots that are clones of themselves. In this sci-fi society, legal robots have a human body structure, but their heads look like robots, they sound like robots, and they wear human-looking masks. The advanced illegal robots (which are very high-priced) look, move, and talk exactly like humans in every way, except that the illegal robots do not have real human eyes.

Charles Cameron (played by Jack Whitehall) is a narcissistic ladies’ man who only wants to date women to have sex with them. After Charles gets what he wants, he abruptly dumps the women and cuts off all contact with them. Charles (who is spoiled, lazy and over-privileged) works with his real-estate mogul father Ted Cameron (played by David Grant Wright) at Ted’s company, which is called the Cameron Group.

Charles uses his robot clone, which is called C2, to impersonate Charles at the office, do domestic work for Charles, and go on romantic dates. As shown in “Robots” trailer, Charles also makes C2 shave Charles’ pubic hair in his genital area. The only time that Charles wants to be on a date as himself (and not sending the C2 robot in his place) is when he knows he’ll be having sex on that date.

Meanwhile, Elaine (played by Shailene Woodley) is a high-maintenance gold digger who only dates men who can give her money or buy her high-priced gifts. Elaine makes enough money this way so that she doesn’t need to have a real job. Whereas Charles uses his clone robot to get women to have sex with the real Charles, what Elaine uses her robot for is for the opposite reason: She doesn’t want to be the one to have sex with the men she dates for money, so she has her robot clone (called E2) impersonate her on these dates. Woodley and Whitehall also portray the robot counterparts of Elaine and Charles.

Because these robots are illegal, and owners could get heavy fines and prison time, there are certain precautions that Charles and Elaine have taken for their respective clone robots. The biggest precaution is that Charles and Elaine have told C2 and E2 that they are not allowed to be out in public at the same time as their human counterparts. C2 and E2, who are always accommodating and friendly, know that they are robots who have to be kept secret.

For reasons that are never explained in the movie, Charles has a British accent, while his father Ted and Charles’ half-brother Ted Cameron Jr. (played by Nick Rutherford) have American accents. (Whitehall is British in real life.) It can be presumed that Ted Jr. and Charles have different mothers (these mothers are not seen or mentioned in the movie), and Charles grew up with his mother in England. The movie has a very useless subplot about Ted Jr. and Charles in a sibling rivalry, which is made more competitive because they both work for the family company.

The character of Elaine is a lot less developed than the character of Charles. The movie doesn’t reveal anything about Elaine’s family or what she wants to do with her life, other than spending money that’s given to her by men she dates. “Robots” spends the first 10 to 15 minutes showing how Charles gets women to date him: He goes to a local ice-skating rink and deliberately falls down near an attractive woman whom he thinks will help him get up.

This tactic works for a woman named Emily Denholm (played by Chelsea Edmondson), who begins dating what she thinks is Charles but is actually C2. The only time Emily interacted with the real Charles was when they first met and when Emily and Charles had sex. The movie’s way of making a joke is that the real Charles has very robotic sex that ends too quickly. Predictably, after Charles gets what he wants, he breaks up with Emily.

It’s mentioned in the movie that Charles is secretly heartbroken over a breakup he had with an ex-girlfriend named Francesca (played by Emanuela Postacchini), whom he still keeps track of on her social media. This is a very weak reason for Charles’ awful personality and misogyny, but it’s all just to lay the flimsy groundwork for the rom-com formula of an obnoxious playboy who meets his match and falls for her.

You know where this is going, of course: One day, Charles and Elaine both happen to be skating separately at the ice-skating rink that predatory Charles uses as his hunting ground. Charles deliberately falls down, and Elaine crashes into him. After this “meet cute” moment, Charles and Elaine begin dating, but C2 is the one who is sent on the romantic dates with her. C2 (as Charles) buys Elaine anything she wants.

On the day that Charles is sure that he and Elaine will have sex for the first time, he makes a 6:30 p.m. date with Elaine at her home. It will be the first time that Charles will be going to Elaine’s home. However, not long after this date is set, there’s a scheduling conflict that’s supposed to happen on the same date and time as Charles’ date with Elaine.

Charles’ father Ted tells Charles that Charles is required to attend a company board meeting at the home of an important board member named David Schulman (played by Richard Lippert), who will be meeting Charles for the first time at this meeting. Instead of rescheduling the date with Elaine for another evening, Charles breaks his biggest rule about C2. He decides to send C2 to the board meeting instead, while Charles keeps his date with Elaine.

However, dimwitted Charles accidentally gives C2 the address of Elaine. Unbeknownst to Charles, she has ordered E2 to be on this date that Elaine knows will include sex. Charles finds out he’s at the wrong place when he shows up at the Schulman home with flowers and his genitals out as soon as he goes into a room that he thinks is Elaine’s bedroom. The room is actually a dining room, and the people inside are the people attending the board meeting, including the host and Charles’ father and brother.

Meanwhile, C2 and E2 have sex and instantly fall in love with each other. And even though this conversation is never shown in the movie, C2 and E2 find out how horribly they’ve been treated by their owners, so C2 and E2 decided to run away together to Mexico. Charles and Elaine find out because C2 and E2 left video messages for their owners. Yes, this movie really is that stupid. The rest of “Robots” is about Charles and Elaine on a frantic search to track down C2 and E2, in order to prevent the secret getting out that these two robots exist.

During this wretched and very tedious misadventure, Charles and Elaine turn to the person who sold them C2 and E2 in the first place: a nerdy inventor named Zach (played by Paul Rust), who hastily says to Charles and Elaine that C2 and E2 are starting to take on more human qualities, such as falling in love and having complete freedom of choice. There’s no logical explanation given for why these robots have suddenly taken on more human qualities. Zach says that C2 and E2 have to be destroyed because C2 and E2 could expose Zach, Charles and Elaine for being involved in these illegal robot transactions.

However, Charles and Elaine don’t like the idea of destroying C2 and E2 because Charles and Elaine have grown accustomed to using C2 and E2 to do the work that these robots were doing. Elaine wails that if E2 is destroyed, then Elaine would have to (gasp!) get a real job. Charles tells Elaine, “As much as it pains me to say it, we have to work together to track these fuckers down.”

Charles is annoyed with Elaine because she had sent E2 to have sex with Charles. Elaine is annoyed with Charles because she thinks this mishap wouldn’t have occurred if Charles had given C2 the correct address. It all just leads to a heinously idiotic slog of bickering and bad decisions. Woodley and Whitehall have no authentic-looking chemistry together. They just go through the motions and utter their lines, much like the robots that they also portray in this terrible movie.

The movie’s supporting characters are even emptier. Charles has a moronic and schlubby best friend named Ashley (played by Paul Jurewicz), a former U.S. Army chef who is currently unemployed. Ashley is a politically conservative bigot who blames immigrants and robots for his inability to get a job. Ashley serves no purpose in the movie except to show up and act like an idiot. The friendship between Charles and Ashley looks completely phony.

Worst of all, “Robots” has nothing clever or amusing to say about how robot clones would have an impact on society if these robots really had the ability to become more “human.” This sloppily made and poorly conceived film just becomes another rom-com chase movie where the would-be couple spends most of the story denying what most viewers already know is going to happen between them. Charles and Elaine want to pull the plug on their robot clones, but it’s too bad no one pulled the plug on this mindless and time-wasting movie.

Decal/Neon will release “Robots” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 19, 2023.

Review: ‘The Locksmith’ (2023), starring Ryan Phillippe, Kate Bosworth, Jeffrey Nordling, Gabriela Quezada, Madeleine Guilbot, Charlie Weber and Ving Rhames

April 24, 2023

by Carla Hay

Gabriela Quezada and Ryan Phillippe in “The Locksmith” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

“The Locksmith” (2023)

Directed by Nicolas Harvard

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Mexico, the dramatic film “The Locksmith” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: After spending 10 years in prison on burglary charges, a former locksmith is released from prison and gets lured back into a life of crime while he tries to make amends with his family and with the daughter of his former partner in crime.

Culture Audience: “The Locksmith” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching stupid crime dramas.

Ving Rhames in “The Locksmith” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

“The Locksmith” is an idiotic flop whose screenplay should’ve stayed locked up in places where bad screenplays never get made into movies. The plot twists are really plot holes. The performances and direction are low-quality and uninspired. Everything about this movie looks misguided and fake.

Directed by Nicolas Harvard, “The Locksmith” (which is Harvard’s feature-film directorial debut) was written by Joe Russo and Chris LaMont. It might be surprising for some people to know that Russo co-directed several Marvel Studios blockbusters, including 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” and 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” It just goes to show that directing mega-hits doesn’t automatically turn someone into a great screenwriter. “The Locksmith” is an example of one bad decision after another, not just from the movie’s main characters but also the filmmakers.

“The Locksmith” (which takes place and was filmed in New Mexico) begins by showing a nighttime break-in at a warehouse by two burglars who are there to steal a large amount of cash from a locked safe. No one else is in the warehouse. Miller Graham (played by Ryan Phillippe) and his partner Kevin Reyes (played by George Akram) both have different feelings about this theft.

Before they broke into the warehouse, Kevin said to Miller: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, man. Didn’t Frank pass on this job?” Miller replies, “I need the money, Kevin.” Unfortunately for these two thieves, the cash in the safe has a motion sensor, which triggers a silent alarm. Before these two burglars can make a getaway, police arrive to apprehend them.

The first cop on the scene is Ian Zwick (played by Jeffrey Nordling), who does something that unarmed Miller and Kevin don’t expect: Ian shoots out the tires of the getaway car and then coldly murders Kevin by shooting him, even though Kevin had no weapon and was not resisting arrest. Miller surrenders without a fight. When other cops arrive as backup, Ian lies to them and says that he shot Kevin in self-defense. Miller knows the truth, but he doesn’t say anything, because he knows that the other cops won’t believe him.

The movie then fast-forwards to 10 years later. Miller has gotten out of prison. He actually had a prison sentence that was longer than 10 years, but he was released early due to good behavior. At various times in the movie, Miller meets with his parole officer Sharon (played by Livia Treviño), who is firm but empathetic about Miller trying to turn his life around. It’s a lot easier said than done for Miller.

The person who gives Miller a car ride after Miller gets out of prison is his former boss Frank (played by Ving Rhames), who owns a small business as a locksmith. Frank feels a little guilty because he was the one who influenced Miller to do the burglary that got Miller arrested and Kevin killed. Therefore, Frank offers to give Miller a job, but he says it can only be as a handyman, since Miller’s felony theft conviction means that Miller lost his locksmith license.

Kevin was a single father raising a teenage daughter named April, who was put in the foster care system after Kevin died. After Miller gets out of prison, Frank mentions that Frank tried to become a father figure to April, but she rejected his attempts. Frank has not kept in touch with April for years.

Miller has a lot of things he wants to make amends for that he couldn’t do while he was in prison. For starters, Miller was married with a baby daughter named Lindsay Graham when he was sent to prison. His wife Beth Fisher (played by Kate Bosworth) divorced him while he was in prison. Miller has not seen or talked to Lindsay since being sent to prison.

Shortly after his prison release, Miller has an uncomfortable reunion with Beth and Lindsay. They have met at Miller’s request. The meeting place that Miller chose is a diner where he and Beth used to go on dates when they were a happy couple. Lindsay (played by Madeleine Guilbot), who is now 10 years old, is polite but shy around Miller, whom she thinks of as a stranger.

Miller is apologetic to Beth about how much he hurt their family, but he promises her that he’s turning his life around and he wants to be a good father to Lindsay. He asks Beth to let him prove how much he’s changed. Beth is very skeptical and standoffish, but she reluctantly agrees to Miller having visits with Lindsay.

One day, Frank sends Miller out on a locksmith job, even though Miller doesn’t have a license. The customer is a wealthy businessman named Garrett Field (played by Charlie Weber), who is smug and arrogant with almost everyone. Miller has been assigned to do a lock job at one of the apartment buildings owned by Garrett. Miller is shocked to find out that the person who recommended him for the job is Garrett’s employee April Reyes (played by Gabriela Quezada), the daughter of Miller’s deceased thief partner Kevin.

April is now in her 20s, and she has turned into a very jaded person because of all the bad experiences she’s had in her life. She shows up unexpectedly at the apartment building to talk to Miller, who has an awkward reunion with her. April tells Miller that she’s in a lot of trouble (she doesn’t go into details at first), and she asks Miller to do one last burglary, so she can have the cash to “start a new life.” April makes Miller feel guilty about the way Kevin died, but Miller refuses her request, because he doesn’t want to risk going back to prison.

Shortly after finishing the job at Garrett’s apartment building, Miller is pulled over by three cops: his old enemy Ian (who is now a police sergeant) and two of Ian’s subordinates in the police department’s vice division: Detective Perez (played by Noel Gugliemi, also known as Noel G) and Detective Jones (played by Bourke Floyd), who enable Ian’s bullying. Ian, Perez and Jones rough up Miller a little bit. Ian warns Miller that he better not tell anyone what happened the night that Kevin was shot to death.

Miller assures these corrupt cops that he won’t tell anyone. But in order to further intimidate Miller, Ian does a search of the company van that Miller is driving. The cops find locksmith tools in the van, so they assume that Miller is working as an unlicensed locksmith, which is in violation of Miller’s parole. Miller says he’s just a handyman, but the cops don’t believe him. And so, Miller is arrested on the spot.

Miller is eventually released with no charges being filed, because Police Chief Stern (played by Tom Wright) has decided there was no proof that Miller actually used these locksmith tools. And guess who also happens to be a cop working at the same police station? Miller’s ex-wife Beth, who is angry and embarrassed that Miller got arrested again. Ian is retiring soon, and he tells Beth that he’s recommended that she get a promotion to work in the vice division.

“The Locksmith” becomes a tangled and silly mess when Miller changes his mind about committing a burglary for April, after she tells him that her boss Garrett has been physically abusing her. April shows Miller some bruises on her body that she says are from Garrett’s abuse. This information is already revealed in “The Locksmith” trailer, which gives away about 75% of the movie’s ludicrous plot.

Of course, things go very wrong with this burglary too. There are double-crosses, shootouts, at least one kidnapping and many scenes that don’t look believable at all. Certain scenarios in the movie make no sense and just insult viewers’ intelligence. “The Locksmith” is ultimately as unappealing as a rusty lock.

Screen Media Films released “The Locksmith” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on February 3, 2023.

Review: ‘Hot Seat’ (2022), starring Kevin Dillon and Mel Gibson

July 22, 2022

by Carla Hay

Mel Gibson and Kevin Dillon in “Hot Seat” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Hot Seat” (2022)

Directed by James Cullen Bressack

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Mexico, the dramatic film “Hot Seat” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An information technology customer service worker is forced by an anonymous caller to do robberies by computer, or else a bomb strapped underneath his office chair will be detonated.

Culture Audience: “Hot Seat” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Kevin Dillon and Mel Gibson, as well as to anyone who likes watching idiotic and tacky thrillers.

Mel Gibson, Eddie Steeples and Shannen Doherty in “Hot Seat” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

The disastrously awful “Hot Seat” is about a computer hacker trapped in a chair that’s rigged with a bomb. Viewers of “Hot Seat” will feel like they’re trapped watching another kind of bomb: this atrocious movie. “Hot Seat” is so egregiously terrible, it seems almost like a parody of bad movies, until you see that everyone involved in making this putrid pile of filmmaking is taking it way too seriously.

Directed by James Cullen Bressack, “Hot Seat” is just scene after scene of idiotic dialogue, cringeworthy acting and sloppy filmmaking. A movie with this type of plot should be suspenseful, but “Hot Seat” just drags with no suspense and a lot of time-wasting nonsense to fill up the scenes. Collin Watts and Leon Langford co-wrote the abysmal “Hot Seat” screenplay, which obliterates credibility just like the bomb that threatens to obliterate the movie’s protagonist.

“Hot Seat” takes place in an unnamed city in New Mexico, but the movie was actually filmed in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The beginning of the movie shows an unidentified person using a remote-controlled device to set off a bomb that blows up a car in a place called Neil Park during the daytime. The terrible CGI visual effects in “Hot Seat” look very fake and almost laughable.

A few miles away, an information technology (IT) customer service employee named Orlando Friar (played by Kevin Dillon) is outside his house when he hears the bomb going off. Orlando doesn’t look around to find out the bomb noise’s origin and to see if he might be in imminent danger. If Orlando had looked around, he would’ve seen the cloud of smoke from the bomb. It’s one of many indications in “Hot Seat” that Orlando might be tech-smart, but he’s stupid when it comes to having common sense.

When Orlando goes in his house, he asks his wife Kim Friar (played by Lydia Hull): “Did you hear that? It sounded like a bomb went off.” Kim replies sarcastically, “No, but I heard police sirens, and I thought maybe they were coming for you.” In this bomb-themed story, Orlando will soon find out that Kim is about to blow up their marriage.

On this particular day, Orlando and Kim’s teenage daughter Zoey Friar (played by Anna Harr) will be celebrating her birthday with a party at the family home. Kim has been excitedly preparing for this party. Zoey’s age isn’t stated in the movie, but she looks like she’s about 16 years old. Orlando tells Kim that he’ll have to miss the party because he unexpectedly has to work that day at his office job, to fill in for an employee who called in sick.

Apparently, Orlando has made work a bigger priority than his family too many times for Kim to take. An angry Kim hands Orlando divorce papers and tells him that she was going to wait until after the party to give him the divorce papers, but she says that Orlando has now given her no choice. As far as Kim is concerned, their marriage is over.

Orlando whines, “How long are you going to keep punishing me?” Kim replies, “We have tried everything. I just can’t.” Orlando and Kim agree not to tell Zoey about the divorce until after Zoey’s birthday party. Feeling rejected and somewhat in shock, Orlando goes to his office job. It’s at a company called We Save You I.T., which gives customer service support for people with computer-related technical problems.

The movie implies that Orlando is going into the office on a weekend, because he and another co-worker are the only ones in the office, which is furnished like a typical non-descript call center. The co-worker’s name is Enzo (played by Michael Welch), and he’s a talkative employee who’s about 20 to 25 years younger than Orlando. At the office, Enzo and Orlando watch a TV news report about the bomb going off in Neil Park. Enzo gives the impression that his work shift has ended, so he eventually leaves.

The first customer call that viewers see Orlando getting is from an elderly woman who wants help because she says her “computer died.” Based on what this customer says, Orlando quickly determines that she is completely computer illiterate and wouldn’t be able to handle a troubleshooting walk-through with him. Instead, Orlando takes a shortcut and hacks into the customer’s computer to fix the problem.

Orlando and Zoey then do a video chat, where she’s disappointed but not surprised that he decided to go to work instead of her birthday party. During this video chat, Orlando sees an illustration of a red skull mysteriously appear and flicker on his computer screen. And then, Orlando gets some cryptic text messages on his phone: “Did you kiss your daughter goodbye?” and “Bad news, red knight.”

Meanwhile, two police officers are playing chess at police headquarters while they exchange mild insults with each other. Wallace Reed (played by Mel Gibson) is a stereotypical middle-aged grizzled cop who thinks he’s better and smarter than his younger colleague Jackson (played by Eddie Steeples), who thinks that Wallace is old and out-of-touch. It’s an older cop/younger cop cliché that has been overused in too many movies. In other words, “Hot Seat” will have a very predictable subplot of two clashing cop partners who have to find a way to work together to solve a case.

Wallace and Jackson are called to the scene of the bombing in Neil Park. They find out that a man who was near the bomb when it went off has died. Wallace states the obvious out loud: “I don’t think this was a chance victim.” Get used to more of this mind-numbing dialogue. “Hot Seat” is full of it.

Back at Orlando’s office, the person who has been contacting him has now begun calling him and has hacked into a computer screen that’s directly across from Orlando’s desk. The voice is disguised, but it’s obviously a man’s voice. And it’s how Orlando finds out that there’s a bomb strapped underneath his chair and that the caller can see Orlando’s every move.

What does this caller want? He knows that Orlando has extensive computer hacking experience and wants Orlando to hack into a bank and transfer $2 million into Orlando’s bank account. But that’s not all. The caller also wants Orlando to hack the computer system of a company called Templer Bonds, whose specialty is security boxes for wealthy people to store valuables worth millions. Orlando is ordered to get the access codes for Templer Bonds accounts.

The caller threatens Orlando by saying that if Orlando tries to escape or call for help, the caller will set off the chair bomb and then kill Zoey. The caller knows so much about Orlando, he shows on the nearby computer screen that he has a copy of the divorce papers that Kim gave Orlando earlier that day. The caller then makes a snide comment that it’s too bad that Orlando’s personal life is already a mess while Orlando is being held hostage.

As Orlando is trapped at his desk, he gets an unexpected visitor: A woman named Ava Adamson (played by Kate Katzman) suddenly shows up in the office and says she’s looking for Enzo. According to Kate, Enzo invited her to visit him at the office. Orlando says that Enzo isn’t there. And it should come as no surprise that Ava becomes a hostage victim too.

Where is this movie going? Who is the mystery caller? And will anyone care when Orlando reacts like a dimwit? For example, after he’s been told to commit these crimes under duress, Orlando tells the caller he’ll do it under one condition: “Okay, one thing: I need my music.” The caller replies, “As long it’s not country.” It’s just a pathetic attempt for “Hot Seat” to have some comedy.

Orlando soon finds out that the $2 million transfer to his bank account was to frame Orlando and make it look he’s the bomber and acting on his own. And so, when the police department gets involved, they think Orlando is the chief culprit. The caller says that if Orlando doesn’t publicly take the blame for the Neil Park bombing, the bomb under Orlando’s chair will go off, and the caller will follow through on his threat to kill Zoey.

The mystery caller forces Orlando to give a false confession on a live video that is seen by law enforcement, the media and the general public. Orlando is told to act like he’s an angry extremist who hates corporations and rich people. Eventually, more of Orlando’s background is revealed to show why the caller knows so much about Orlando.

Meanwhile, the caller gives some clues to Orlando about the caller’s background. The caller says he grew up on a farm, where he made his first bombs out of fertilizer, and his father was a violent alcoholic. Even with these clues, Orlando can’t do much with this information because every move he makes is being watched.

Police chief Pam Connelly (played by Shannen Doherty) immediately thinks that Orlando is the guilty party and needs to be taken down. Wallace isn’t so sure and wants to explore the theory that Orlando is being forced to commit these crimes. Kim insists that Orlando isn’t capable of being a murderer and a thief. You can almost do a countdown to the scene where Kim and Zoey aren’t just helpless bystanders but want to get involved in helping Orlando.

Wallace, Jackson and another cop named Sergeant Tobias (played by Sam Asghari) are ordered to solve the case. It just leads to useless scenes of cops yelling and guns being pulled when the cops surround the office building where Orlando is trapped. No one in the movie’s cast does a very good job in portraying these hollow characters. Ava is depicted as a ditzy blonde, with “Hot Seat” director Bressack making sure that there are leering camera angles that showcase her breasts.

Meanwhile, the “Hot Seat” filmmakers didn’t think about how illogical it is for the criminal caller to get the police to target Orlando before Orlando could complete the task of getting the access codes. How dumb does this villain have to be to get the hostage possibly arrested before the hostage does what the villain wants the hostage to do? “Hot Seat” is nothing but illogical garbage piled on top of more illogical garbage. You know a movie like “Hot Seat” is unwatchable when even the action scenes look badly staged and will induce boredom.

Lionsgate released “Hot Seat” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on July 1, 2022. The movie is set for release on Blu-ray and DVD on August 9, 2022.