Tag: reviews

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.

Review: ‘Flux Gourmet,’ starring Asa Butterfield, Gwendoline Christine, Ariane Labed, Fatma Mohamed, Makis Papadimitriou, Richard Bremmer and Leo Bill

July 21, 2022

by Carla Hay

Asa Butterfield, Fatma Mohamed and Ariane Labed in “Flux Gourmet” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“Flux Gourmet”

Directed by Peter Strickland

Some language in Greek and German with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in an unnamed city in England, the comedy/drama film “Flux Gourmet” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Three artists, who are in a group that combines food and sonic experiences, have ego battles and power struggles during a month-long residency at a culinary institute, while the person hired to document this residency has severe intestinal problems. 

Culture Audience: “Flux Gourmet” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Gwendoline Christie and filmmaker Peter Strickland, as well as to viewers who want to see a very offbeat satire of culinary institutions.

Gwendoline Christie and Asa Butterfield in “Flux Gourmet” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“Flux Gourmet” has some elements of body horror, but viewers are better off knowing that the movie is a dark comedy rather than anything that’s sinister. The tone is amusing and annoying, but presented in an original way. And although parts of “Flux Gourmet” tend to drag, the movie will keep open-minded viewers curious enough to see what will happen next. However, just like certain foods, “Flux Gourmet” has a “gross-out” factor that definitely isn’t for everyone.

Written and directed by Peter Strickland, “Flux Gourmet” takes place over three weeks at a culinary institute in an unnamed city in England. (The movie was actually filmed in Yorkshire, England.) “Flux Gourmet” revolves around the fictional Sonic Catering Institute, an avant-garde, live-in culinary program where residents perform art that combines sounds and food. The institute’s director is the imposing Jan Stevens (played by Gwendoline Christie), who gets people to do what she wants by convincing them that her ideas are the best ideas.

At the moment, Jan’s attentions are preoccupied by three Sonic Catering Institute residents, who have formed a band but don’t yet have a name for the band. A running joke in the movie is that people spend a lot of time arguing about what this band will be doing for its art performances, but the band members can’t even decide on what the band’s name will be. Two of the possible band names are Elle and the Fatty Acids and Elle and the Gastric Ulcers.

The band’s leader is the hot-tempered Elle di Elle (played by Fatma Mohamed), who clashes with Jan the most. Elle wants to run the band like she’s a visionary dictator. She openly admits that even if someone comes up with a better idea than Elle does, Elle thinks Elle’s ideas should always be the ones that the band should implement. Not surprisingly, Elle has a huge ego, and she believes that she’s the only one in the group who has any real talent.

Another band member is Lamina Propria (played by Ariane Labed), who is sarcastic and sometimes insecure. Lamina and Elle, who knew each other before they joined Sonic Catering Institute, often trade mean-spirited and angry barbs at each other. However, their arguments aren’t as explosive as the ones that Elle has with Jan. It’s later revealed in the movie that before Lamina and Elle joined this culinary institute, Lamina and Elle started off as friends, became bandmates, and then lovers. Lamina broke off the romantic relationship with Elle, who is still very bitter about it.

Billy Rubin (played by Asa Butterfield) is the youngest and quietest member of the group. Billy tries to stay out of the women’s arguments. He occasionally contributes ideas, even when he knows that control freak Elle will insult or reject other people’s ideas. It isn’t really made clear why Billy decided to be in this band, but he feels stuck and doesn’t want to quit.

Jan has hired a journalist named Stones (played by Makis Papadimitriou) to document this group and its performances, which all take place at the institute’s headquarters. Jan calls Stones a “dossierge,” with duties that include taking photos, making video recordings, and taking notes on the group’s activities. After a while, Stones doesn’t do much but follow the group around without a camera.

Stones is the movie’s occasional narrator and says his narration in Greek. The movie never mentions if Stones was born in England, or if his national origin is from another country. Among this group of very strong personalities, Stones is fairly docile, and he doesn’t take sides in any of the arguments.

“Flux Gourmet” is told in three chapters, each representing a week at this institute. The first chapter is titled “Week One: The Mouth Is Light Thereof,” The second chapter is titled “The Stomach Is the Plight Thereof.” The third chapter is titled “The Bowel Is the Night Thereof.” Yes, this movie literally goes deep in exploring gastrointestinal activities. You have been warned.

At the institute, all three band members sleep in separate beds, side by side, in the same room. Stones sleeps in an adjacent room. And he has a secret: He has a severe intestinal problem, which his eccentric internist Dr. Glock (played by Richard Bremmer) has been trying to diagnose. The intestinal problem has caused Stones to have an acute case of acid reflux and constant flatulence.

Therefore, Stones’ current job is the worst kind of hell for him: He has to live and work at a culinary institute while constantly fighting the urge to gag after eating and farting at inappropriate times. In his voiceover narration, Stones gives his occasional thoughts on what’s going on with his bowels. It’s “gross-out” comedy that gets tiresome very quickly.

What’s more interesting is to see how the power dynamics play out with Jan and the three members of the band. Sometimes, Stones gets caught in the crossfire. For example, when he’s taking photos during a photo shoot of the band trio, Jan and Elle clash over Jan wanting to control the photo shoot when Jan tells Stones how something should be done.

Elle sneers at Stones: “And you obey the director’s every command?” Jan says her comment to Stones was “a suggestion more than a command, but feel free to try something different if you wish.” Elle adds, “I’d just like to be in control for one portrait.”

Jan responds, “Don’t we all? But may I suggest a more conciliatory tone with the dossierge here. He’s just doing his job.” Viewers will notice that Jan often tries to cover up her hostility in calm, measured tones, as if she want to be the more civil person in the conversation. Elle has no such restraint, since Elle will shout and sometimes bang on tables, like a bratty child, to intimidate people and get what she wants.

There are hints that Elle’s bark is worse than her bite. Every time Jan appears in a room and Elle is there, Elle whispers in a slightly terrified tone of voice: “Jan Stevens.” Elle is also acutely aware that Jan has the financial power to end this band project, but Elle tries not to let it show that Jan’s power bothers Elle.

The band members take part in two types of rituals as part of their artist residency. At group dinners with Jan, the band and other members of the culinary institute, there’s a tradition of someone standing up at the table to give an after-dinner speech about any topic of the speaker’s choosing. The other ritual is that after each performance, the band has orgies with audience members. These sex scenes are shown as blurry images that aren’t explicit.

There’s a level of intrigue in “Flux Gourmet” when it’s shown that Jan has been getting threatening phone calls, where the caller blurts out something menacing, and then Jan quickly hangs up. One of these comments is “I don’t take too kindly to being ignored.” Who is making these calls and why? The movie might not offer any answers, but these phone calls foreshadow something that happens in the last third of the movie.

“Flux Gourmet” has discussions and visuals that will definitely be too much of a turnoff for some viewers. Some of the characters talk about playing a sexual game they call The Finger Game, which is exactly what you think it might be. In another scene, Elle eats pages from a book. And at one point, the band convinces Stones to do a live gastroscopy as part of the band’s performance, with the gastroscopy shown on big video screens.

Meanwhile, Jan abuses her power by trying to seduce Billy. “Flux Gourmet” shows whether or not Jan gets her way with Billy and how he ultimately reacts. The movie leaves it open to interpretation for viewers to decide if Jan should be pitied or despised for how she tries to manipulate Billy into a relationship that Jan admits is inappropriate.

The crass and crude elements of “Flux Gourmet” work better in the dialogue rather than in the visuals. For example, there’s a funny segment where Elle and Lamina have a late-night conversation where they discuss Stones’ intestinal problem. This leads to Lamina rattling off some statistical trivia about farting before she suddenly stops when she sees that Stones could overhear what she’s saying. This dialogue has a “Monty Python”-eseque quality that should have been in more of “Flux Gourmet,” which at times gets dull with some of the repetitive arguments and scolding that Elle usually instigates.

And the arguments sometimes get very petty and tedious, such as a scene where Elle spills virgin olive oil on some stairs, she suddenly feels faint, and Stones graciously helps her up the stairs. Witnessing the whole thing is Lamina, who gets annoyed because she thinks Elle was just trying to get attention. Later, Lamina gets angry at Elle because Lamina was the one who had to clean up the spilled oil from the stairs and no one thanked her. How old are these people? Twelve?

Some of the movie’s visual gags try to be disgusting but end up being manipulative and not as shocking as they first appear to be. There’s a scene where Elle smears a brown substance all over her face as part of a performance, and she gets audience backlash for it. But then, a technical assistant named Wim (played by Leo Bill) finds out the truth about this particular performance, and this truth undermines the band’s credibility. In another scene, an angry, skirt-wearing Elle pulls down her underwear and looks like she’s about to urinate or defecate on something for revenge, but then she stops.

These are examples of how “Flux Gourmet” writer/director Strickland seems to wants to be like an extreme provocateur filmmaker such as Lars von Trier, but Strickland holds back just enough so as not to alienate too many audience members. It seems a little wishy-washy and indecisive. If you’re going to do gross-out body horror, go all in and commit to it, and don’t play games with the audience with some of the tricks used in “Flux Gourmet.”

As for the cast members’ performances, Christie and Mohamed have the flashiest roles (and costume designs to match) as the feuding Jan and Elle. Jan is the more complicated character who shows more vulnerability. Labed has some standout scenes as Lamina, who delivers a blunt honesty that’s a refreshing antidote to Elle’s overblown and pretentious antics. The male characters in “Flux Gourmet” are the passive characters, which is a twist on a typical culinary institute environment that’s usually male-dominated in real life.

“Flux Gourmet” is by no means a thoroughly entertaining film. The movie has an uneven tone and will test the patience of viewers with some scenes that try too hard to be weird for weirdness’ sake. However, there’s enough oddball comedy for people who want to see a unique satire of culinary institutions and performance art. Just make sure that you don’t watch this movie thinking that it will make you hungry for delicious-looking food. “Flux Gourmet” is more likely to make you nauseous.

IFC Films/IFC Midnight released “Flux Gourmet” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on June 24, 2022.

Review: ‘Nope,’ starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun

July 20, 2022

by Carla Hay

Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Brandon Perea in “Nope” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“Nope”

Directed by Jordan Peele 

Culture Representation: Taking place in Santa Clarita Valley, California, the sci-fi horror film “Nope” has a racially diverse cast of characters (African American, white, Asian and Latino) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A brother and a sister, who work together on a horse ranch, join forces with a Fry’s Electronics salesman to visually document an unidentified flying object (UFO) in their area.

Culture Audience: “Nope” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Jordan Peele and stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, but this frequently monotonous and unimaginative movie is an unfortunate case of hype over substance.

Steven Yeun in “Nope” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

Does the sci-fi horror flick “Nope” live up to the hype? The title of this disappointing bore says it all. It’s a rambling, disjointed, self-indulgent mess that does nothing innovative for movies about UFOs. It’s obvious that writer/director/producer Jordan Peele got this movie made without anyone stepping in to question the very weak and lazy plot of “Nope,” and to ask for a screenplay rewrite to make drastic improvements that were desperately needed.

After the memorable originality of the previous two movies that Peele wrote and directed (2017’s “Get Out” and 2019’s “Us”), “Nope” looks like a movie that was made from a half-baked, unfinished screenplay draft that got greenlighted simply because Peele had enormous commercial and critical success with “Get Out” (which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) and “Us.” “Nope” was filmed for IMAX screens, but having a bigger screen doesn’t always make a movie better. Considering all the outstanding and classic movies about UFOs, “Nope” has the substandard story quality of a UFO movie that was thrown together for a fourth-tier cable TV network or a direct-to-video release. Yes, “Nope” is that bad.

One of the reasons why “Nope” fails to live up to the hype is because before the movie’s release, the plot was shrouded in secrecy, as if “Nope” were some kind of masterpiece whose details dare not be leaked out, in order not to reveal a brilliant plot. There is no brilliant plot or even a clever plot twist in “Nope.” It’s just a tedious, badly structured movie about some people who see a UFO in the sky and decide to visually document it because they think it will make them rich and famous.

Too bad it takes so long (not until the last third of the movie) for any real action to take place in “Nope,” which should have been an exciting sci-fi horror film, but it just drags on and on with no real substance. Just because “Nope” has some Oscar winners and the big-budget backing of a major studio, that doesn’t automatically mean that the movie is going to be good. Peele is capable of doing much better movies (as evidenced by “Get Out” and “Us”), but “Nope” just looks like a cynical cash grab from filmmakers coasting on Peele’s previous successes.

Making matters worse, the talented cast members of “Nope” are stuck portraying hollow characters with vague backstories and a lot of cringeworthy or monotonous dialogue. Keke Palmer’s Emerald Haywood character is the only one in “Nope” who comes close to having a fully formed personality, but her character is quickly reduced to being a bunch of one-note soundbites and wisecracks. Everyone else in “Nope” is written as an incomplete sketch.

Characters in “Nope” end up working together in implausible ways. “Nope” also telegraphs way too early which character will have the big “heroic” scene during the inevitable showdown in the movie’s climax. The movie’s visual effects are adequate, but definitely not spectacular for a movie concept of this scope. Intriguing subplots are dangled in front of the audience, only to be left hanging. And many of the action scenes have some horrifically subpar editing.

And why is this movie called “Nope”? It’s because during certain scenes that are supposed to be scary, one of the characters says, “Nope,” as in, “No, I’m not having this right now.” It’s supposed to be an engaging catch phrase, but it’s really very tired and unoriginal. Most of the so-called “comedy” in “Nope” is fleeting and often falls flat.

An early scene in “Nope” (which takes place in California’s Santa Clarita Valley) shows Emerald Haywood and her older brother OJ Haywood (played by Daniel Kaluuya) on the set of a TV commercial, where they have been hired as animal wranglers. OJ and Emerald have inherited a horse ranch called Haywood Ranch (in the desert-like Agua Dulce, California) from their deceased father Otis Haywood Sr. (played by Keith David, who has a flashback cameo), a groundbreaking horse wrangler who worked on a lot of Hollywood productions. The Haywoods rent out their horses in a family business called Haywood Hollywood Horses.

The siblings’ mother is not mentioned. Don’t expect to find out how long Otis has been dead. Don’t expect to find out why OJ and Emerald have a ranch with about 10 horses, but they’re the only workers on the ranch. (It’s very unrealistic.) Don’t expect to find out if OJ and Emerald really love their ranch jobs or if they’re just doing it out of family obligation. These are some of the many reasons why “Nope” is so frustratingly shallow and poorly written.

On this particular TV commercial (what the commercial is for is never stated in “Nope”), OJ and Emerald have a black horse named Lucky that has been hired to be in the commercial. The horse is being filmed indoors, in front of a green screen. It’s OJ and Emerald’s job to handle the horse and tell people on the set how to interact with the horse.

OJ and Emerald have opposite personalities. OJ is quiet and introverted. Emerald is talkative and extroverted. Kaluuya, who gave a compelling Oscar-nominated performance in “Get Out,” plays a dreadfully dull character in “Nope.” It’s not Kaluuya’s fault. The character was written that way. And it’s a waste of Kaluuya’s talent.

Emerald is so talkative that she gives a mini-lecture to all the assembled cast and crew members about how the very earliest moving picture is considered to be Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 loop of cards titled “Animal Locomotion, Plate 626,” the very first scientific study to use photography. “Animal Locomotion,” an early example of chronophotography, featured an unidentified black man riding on a horse.

Emerald then asks the assembled group if they happen to know the name of the man who rode the horse. No one knows, of course. Emerald than proudly states that the man was actually an ancestor of Emerald and OJ, and his last name was also Haywood. There’s no way to verify if what Emerald is saying is true. And the people on this set don’t really seem to care. They just want to get the job done for this commercial.

There are some racial undertones to the cast and crew’s bored reaction to Emerald’s story, since OJ and Emerald are the only African American people on this set. It might be Peele’s way of showing that people who aren’t African American are less inclined to care about African American history. OJ seems slightly embarrassed and annoyed that Emerald is telling this story to people who obviously aren’t interested. Emerald also uses this moment to announce to everyone that she’s available for work as an actor, filmmaker, stunt person and singer.

The cinematographer for this commercial is a jaded elderly man named Antlers Horst (played by Michael Wincott), who will end up encountering OJ and Emerald again much later in the movie. Also on the set is actress Bonnie Clayton (played by Donna Mills), whose job is to interact with the horse. Although it’s nice that the “Nope” filmmakers hired former “Knot’s Landing” star Mills for this movie, because she doesn’t get enough work that she deserves, her role really is a cameo, with screen time of less than five minutes.

Emerald and OJ advise everyone on the set to remain calm around Lucky. And it’s at that moment you know things are going to go wrong. Lucky gets nervous about something and starts bucking and lunging in a way that’s dangerous. Because the horse is deemed unfit to be on this set, Emerald and OJ are fired. OJ says that they need this job, but the decision has been made to let them go.

OJ and Emerald then go to Jupiter’s Claim, a California Gold Rush theme park owned and operated by Ricky “Jupe” Park (played by Steven Yeun), a former child star who often acts as a show emcee at this theme park. Jupe is married and has three sons, ranging in ages from about 7 to 12 years old. Jupe’s wife Amber Park (played by Wrenn Schmidt) works with him at Jupiter’s Claim. Their sons Colton Park (played by Lincoln Lambert), Phoenix Park (played by Pierce Kang) and Max Park (played by Roman Gross) have brief appearances in the movie.

OJ decides that he’s going to sell Lucky to Jupe. Emerald is upset by this decision, but OJ reassures her that he plans to buy Lucky back when he has the money to do so. It’s a transaction that OJ and Jupe have done before, so Jupe is aware that his ownership of Lucky will probably be temporary.

Jupe knows about OJ’s financial problems and has been offering to buy OJ and Emerald’s ranch, but so far the offer has been declined. Later in the movie, OJ explains he’s not willing to give up Haywood Ranch because he wants to continue his father’s legacy: “He changed the industry. I can’t just let that go.”

It’s during this horse-selling transaction scene that viewers find out a little bit more about OJ and Emerald. OJ is the main caretaker and operator of the ranch. Emerald considers the ranch to be her “side job,” but she doesn’t really have a permanent career, because she jumps around from job to job as her main source of income. Emerald is also the “partier” of these two siblings: She likes to vape and is open about her fondness of smoking marijuana.

The siblings have some unspoken resentment about responsibilities for the ranch, as well as unresolved feelings about the death of their father. Later in the movie, Emerald confesses to OJ that when they were children, she was jealous when their father asked OJ to help train a Haywood family-owned horse named Jean Jacket, a horse that Emerald says she hoped would be the very first horse she would train and own. Get ready to roll your eyes: Later in the movie, the outer space entity in “Nope” is given the name Jean Jacket.

Emerald is openly queer or a lesbian, because she often dates women she works with or meets through her jobs. OJ mildly scolds Emerald about it because he thinks it’s unprofessional for her to mix her love life with her work life. Emerald brushes off his concerns. Meanwhile, as an example of how “Nope” doesn’t have a lot of character development, nothing is ever mentioned about OJ’s love life or anything about his life that isn’t about the ranch.

As for Jupe, he has an interesting background that is sloppily explored in “Nope.” Jupe’s main claim to fame as a child actor in the 1990s was playing a supporting character named Jupiter in a big hit movie called “Kid Sheriff” and then starring in a TV comedy series called “Gordy’s Home,” which was on the air from 1996 to 1998. In the meeting that Jupe has with OJ and Emerald, Jupe shows them a secret room where he keeps “Kid Sheriff” memorabilia. Jupe proudly mentions that a Dutch couple paid him $50,000 just so the couple could spend a night in this room.

Jupe’s experience with “Gordy’s Home” is what led him to quit being an actor. In “Gordy’s Home,” Jupe played an adopted child in a white family of two parents and an older sister. The family had a pet chimp named Gordy, and a lot of the show’s comedy revolved around this monkey’s antics.

Something shocking and traumatic happened one day while filming an episode of “Gordy’s Home.” And as an adult, Jupe still doesn’t want to talk about it, based on how he reacts when it’s quickly mentioned in a conversation between Jupe and OJ. What happened on that fateful day on the set of “Gordy’s Home” was big news. And this incident is shown as a flashback in “Nope.”

However, the way this flashback is dropped into “Nope” is so random and out-of-place, it’s very mishandled. This flashback is then never referred to or explained again in the movie. It’s a suspenseful scene, but it almost has no bearing on the overall story of “Nope” and seems to be in the movie only for some shock value.

It doesn’t take long for “Nope” to show the UFO (a generic-looking saucer-shaped object), which is first seen by OJ when he’s at the ranch. After he tells Emerald about it (his description is vague, because OJ is written as someone who’s barely articulate), Emerald immediately thinks they should try to film the UFO so they can get rich and famous from the footage.

And so, Emerald and OJ go to Fry’s Electronics to stock up on video surveillance equipment. Fry’s Electronics and the company logo get so much screen time in “Nope,” it’s brand placement overload. (All of this promotion of Fry’s Electronics in “Nope” is not going to do Fry’s Electronics much good anyway. In real life, Fry’s Electronics went out of business in 2021, the same year that “Nope” was filmed.)

At the store, OJ and Emerald meet sales clerk Angel Torres (played by Brandon Perea), who is overly talkative and curious about why OJ and Emerald are getting so much video surveillance equipment. Angel correctly guesses that it’s because OJ and Emerald want to film a UFO, but OJ and Emerald deny it. Angel also happens to be the Fry’s employee who delivers the equipment and helps install it. And you know what that means: Angel eventually finds out the truth, and he teams up with OJ and Emerald in their quest.

Angel is prominently featured in “Nope,” but he’s another example of an underwritten character in the movie. Viewers will learn nothing about Angel except that he was recently dumped by an actress ex-girlfriend named Rebecca Diaz, who was in a relationship with him for four years. Angel overshares this information the first time that he meets OJ and Emerald while lamenting that Rebecca broke up with him to star in a TV series on The CW network. OJ and Emerald don’t care, and neither will viewers of “Nope.”

Angel also goes on a mini-rant about how he doesn’t like how UFOs are now expected to be called UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), because he likes the term UFO more. And once again: OJ and Emerald don’t care, and neither will viewers of “Nope.” Angel isn’t too annoying, but he will get on some viewers’ nerves because of his condescending, know-it-all attitude.

Without going into too many details, “Nope” makes some weird decisions on what technology is used to visually document the UFO. Even with a lot of modern digital technology at their disposal, the people in this UFO-sighting group use some very outdated and clunky cameras that require film. The explanation provided is very phony and overly contrived.

Apparently, the “Nope” filmmakers thought it would like cool to have the characters using retro cameras that require film, even though film could be ruined a lot easier than digital footage. It makes no sense, except to add unnecessary hassles for the people trying to visually document this UFO. And yes, there’s a scene where a camera’s film needs to be inconveniently changed at a pivotal moment.

It should come as no surprise that the alien life form that’s hovering in the sky abducts living beings. The way this alien life form looks is not very original at all. However, even these abduction scenes are handled in an idiotic way in “Nope.” And none of it is truly terrifying.

There’s a scene where 40 people are abducted at the same time, but the abduction is mostly suggested and shown in brief flashes. This mass abduction makes the news. However, “Nope” has no realistic depictions of the huge investigations and military reactions that would ensue, or how much of a circus the abduction scene would be for the media and curiosity seekers.

When Emerald goes back to the abduction scene later in the movie, the place is deserted, and she has free access to the place, with no law enforcement, military, security personnel or media in sight of this notorious crime scene. It’s all just so stupid. And it’s very easy to predict which characters will survive during this mess, based on how often and how close the alien life form “chases” certain characters out in open fields (making them easy targets), but the alien life form never abducts them.

But the worst plot hole of all is that viewers are supposed to believe that for a certain period of time, only OJ and Emerald have witnessed this giant UFO that appears numerous times in the sky and would actually be seen for miles. It’s as if the “Nope” filmmakers want viewers to think that the only people who can see the UFO in the sky during these times are either at the ranch or looking at the ranch’s closed-circuit live surveillance footage, which Angel does because he’s nosy. It’s pathetic storytelling.

“Nope” also has pretentiously titled chapters, such as “Ghost” (named after the ranch’s white horse that doesn’t do anything but run away and come back a few times), “Clover,” “Gordy” and “Jean Jacket.” There’s not a consistent through line for these chapters, which are as haphazard as a mismatched jigsaw puzzle. The chapter titled “Gordy” is the one that shows the tragic incident that happened on the set of “Gordy’s Home.”

“Nope” has a few moments that effectively build tension for viewers to wonder what’s going to happen next. (There’s also a fake jump scare scene that would have been more interesting if it were real jump scare in the story.) But as a horror movie, “Nope” fails miserably to be frightening. There are parts of this movie that are so boring, some viewers will fall asleep. Don’t expect “Nope” to give a reason or a purpose for any life forms that come from outer space. In fact, don’t expect “Nope” to have a reason to exist other than to make blockbuster money and fool people into thinking that it’s a high-quality, entertaining movie.

Universal Pictures will release “Nope” in U.S. cinemas on July 22, 2022.

Review: ‘Jugjugg Jeeyo,’ starring Varun Dhawan, Kiara Advani, Anil Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor

July 18, 2022

by Carla Hay

Pictured in center: Kiara Advani, Varun Dhawan, Anil Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor in “Jugjugg Jeeyo” (Photo courtesy of Viacom18 Studios)

“Jugjugg Jeeyo”

Directed by Raj Mehta 

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place mainly in Patiala, India (and briefly in Toronto and New York City), the comedy/drama film “Jugjugg Jeeyo” has a predominantly Indian cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A married man and his parents experience marital problems around the same time, while people in the family juggle secrets and lies about their relationships.

Culture Audience: “Jugjugg Jeeyo” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Anil Kapoor and anyone who doesn’t mind watching jumbled movies that treat love and marriage as silly plot devices.

Tisca Chopra, Varun Dhawan and Anil Kapoor in “Jugjugg Jeeyo” (Photo courtesy of Viacom18 Studios)

“Jugjugg Jeeyo” plays so fast and loose with marital breakups and makeups, it loses all credibility. This comedy/drama has some eye-catching musical sequences, but the rest of the movie is just a jumbled mess of people who are flaky about marriage. The comedy wears thin very quickly, while the drama isn’t very engaging.

Directed by Raj Mehta, “Jugjugg Jeeyo” (which means “juggle live” in Hindi) has four people credited with writing the movie: Rishhabh Sharrma, Sumit Batheja, Anurag Singh and Neeraj Udhwani. Usually, when four or more people are credited with writing a movie screenplay, the movie suffers from “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome. That appears to be the case wtih “Jugjugg Jeeyo,” which throws in too many plot twists—and almost all these plot twists are not believable.

The movie is told from the perspective of Kuldeep “Kukoo” Saini (played by Varun Dhawan), a man who is floundering in his career and in his love life. In the beginning of the movie, life seems to be pretty good for Kukoo. In his hometown of Patiala, India, he has a dream wedding to Nainaa Sharma (played by Kiara Advani), in a marriage that was not arranged but is a love match. Kukoo and Nainaa’s courtship is never shown in the movie.

Five years later, Kukoo and Nainaa are living in Toronto, because Nainaa got a job as a business executive in an unnamed industry. Their marriage has hit a rut, mainly because they aren’t communicating well with each other, and Kukoo feels insecure about having a stalled career. Kukoo has a university degree in hotel management, but the only work he’s been able to find in Toronto is as a security bouncer/doorman at a nightclub. Needless to say, Kukoo hates his job.

To make matters worse, Nainaa has secretly accepted a job offer in New York City, but she hasn’t told Kukoo yet. For their five-year wedding anniversary, Kukoo and Nainaa have a tension-filled dinner at a restaurant. They begin arguing, and Kukoo announces that he wants a divorce.

Nainaa doesn’t seem surprised and seems to also want to get divorced. Things get worse on the car ride home. Nainaa is driving, another argument ensues, and she’s so distracted by this argument, she accidentally rear-ends a car in front of her. As for Nainaa’s decision to move to New York City, “Jugjugg Jeeyo” handles it in a clumsy way.

The couple’s decision to divorce comes at an inconvenient time because Kukoo and Nainaa are soon expected to go to Patiala to attend the wedding of Kukoo’s younger sister Ginny Saini (played by Prajakta Koli), who is having an arranged marriage. In order to not upset their families, and in order not to disrupt the wedding, Kukoo and Nainaa agree not to tell anyone about their impending divorce until after Ginny’s wedding. But in a movie like “Jugjugg Jeeyo,” you just know someone is going to break that agreement.

Ginny likes her soon-to-be-husband Balwinder (played by Savant Singh Premi), but she’s not in love with him. Ginny has unresolved feelings for an ex-boyfriend named Gourav (played by Varun Sood), who is still in love with Ginny. Gourav has been invited to the engagement party and wedding. You can easily predict what will happen in this awkward arrangement.

At the engagement party for Ginny and Balwinder, things get even more uncomfortable, as Kukoo and Nainaa try to pretend to everyone else that they’re happily married. However, Kukoo’s mother Geeta Saini (played by Neetu Kapoor) senses that something isn’t quite right about the relationship, and asks Kukoo if he and Nainaa are having marital problems. Kukoo denies any problems and tells his mother that he is happy.

As the engagement party is winding down, Kukoo and his father Bheem Saini (played by Anil Kapoor, no relation to Neetu Kapoor) have a drunken conversation where they confess to each other that they are both having marital problems. Kukoo tells Bheem that he and Nainaa are separated and are headed for divorce. Bheem says that he’s planning to divorce Geeta. Ginny is so oblivious to her parents’ marital woes that she later tells Kukoo that she has planned a surprise ceremony for their parents to renew their wedding vows.

Meanwhile, the preparations for Ginny and Balwinder’s wedding are often disrupted by Nainaa’s hard-partying brother Gurpreet Sharma (played by Manish Paul), who is a stereotypical loudmouth who will do anything to get attention and cause mischief. Gurpreet comes up with the idea to invite Bheem to Balwinder’s bachelor party. Gurpreet knows it’s unusual and inappropriate for a future father-in-law to be at his future son-in-law’s bachelor party, but Gurpreet doesn’t care.

It’s also an example of how Balwinder is kind of a pushover for letting someone else control the invitations to his own bachelor party. It’s all just a flimsy excuse for “Jugjugg Jeeyo” to have contrived situations where family members are put in embarrassing scenarios. And there will be more embarrassing scenarios to come, with the expected arguments and meltdowns.

It isn’t long before Kukoo finds out Bheem’s unhappiness in his marriage is more than just feeling alienated and bored. Bheem has had a secret life that will be exposed and will have the effect of an emotional bomb going off in the family. And his secret is the most obvious secret you can imagine.

One day, Kukoo and Bheem are watching a movie together in a theater when a woman sits next to Kukoo. Kukoo recognizes the woman as someone who was a teacher of his when he was in high school. Her name is Meera (played Tisca Chopra), and she re-introduces herself to Kukoo. They exchange pleasant talk before Bheem’s secret is revealed.

And then, Bheem tells Kukoo that Meera is Bheem’s mistress. Their affair has been going on long enough where it’s obvious that Bheem plans to go public about his relationship with Meera after Bheem gets a divorce. Kukoo is in shock, of course. He’s also angry at his father for this betrayal. (This isn’t spoiler information because it’s in the movie’s trailer.)

Bheem eventually tells the family that he’s going to divorce Geeta, who is devastated and feels even more humiliation when she finds out about Bheem’s affair with Meera. “Jugjugg Jeeyo” then takes a melodramatic detour when Bheem gets a heart attack, presumably from all the stress. This heart attack causes certain family members to feel sympathy for Bheem, as loyalties in the divorce start to shift. Eventually, more secrets come out, resulting in over-the-top reactions from certain family members.

“Jugjugg Jeeyo” starts off with some slightly amusing relationship scenarios, but the movie gets worse as it goes along. The biggest problem with the film is that it expects audiences to root for these characters to find love and happiness when many of these characters don’t really respect themselves or other people when it comes to finding true love and happiness. They treat marriage as something that they can discard and pick up like a set of clothes they want to wear when it’s convenient for them.

In other words, the breakups and makeups in this movie look very phony and unearned. The movie’s cast members do adequate jobs in their roles. The problem is that their characters are written and directed like they’re fools in a badly conceived movie that wants to be a soap opera and a sitcom at the same time, with some elaborate musical numbers thrown in as filler. Some viewers might enjoy the silliness of it all, but there’s nothing entertaining about watching adults acting this deceitful and stupid.

Viacom18 Studios released “Jugjugg Jeeyo” in select U.S. cinemas, in India and in several other countries on June 24, 2022.

Review: ‘The Integrity of Joseph Chambers,’ starring Clayne Crawford, Jordana Brewster, Michael Raymond-James and Jeffrey Dean Morgan

July 18, 2022

by Carla Hay

Clayne Crawford in “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” (Photo by Oscar Ignacio Jiménez)

“The Integrity of Joseph Chambers”

Directed by Robert Machoian 

Culture Representation: Taking place in Pell City, Alabama, the dramatic film “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with two African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Against his wife’s wishes, a father of two young sons goes hunting in a wooded area by himself and experiences a tragedy and a moral dilemma.

Culture Audience: “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching a well-acted character study of what someone can choose to do in an unexpected crisis.

Clayne Crawford in “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

“The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” is a sparsely cast drama that presents a fascinating emotional journey of a man dealing with a tragedy and a moral dilemma during a hunting trip. It’s not a particularly outstanding movie, but the acting is commendable. Clayne Crawford gives an entirely believable performance as someone who begins mentally unraveling the more that he delays making a decision that he dreads having to make. “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

Written and directed by Robert Machoian, “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” has a very simple plot. Joseph “Joe” Chambers (played by Crawford), who is in his 40s, is a former city dweller who now lives in the rural town of Pell City, Alabama, and he wants to prove that he’s a capable hunter in this rural area. Joe lives with his wife Tess (played by Jordana Brewster) and their two sons, who don’t have names in the movie. The older son (played by Colt Crawford) is about 16 or 17, while the younger son (played by Hix Crawford) is about 8 or 9. (The sons are portrayed by Clayne Crawford’s real-life sons.)

One day, in the early-morning hours near dawn, Joe and Tess have an argument at their home because Joe has suddenly announced that he’s going hunting in the woods alone that day. And nothing is going to change his mind. It’s something that he’s apparently been thinking about doing for a while, but he’s abruptly told Tess about it just minutes before he plans to leave for this hunting trip. Not surprisingly, she’s not happy about it.

Joe and Tess bicker in hushed tones because they don’t want to wake up their children, who are sleeping in a nearby bedroom. Tess’ main concern is that Joe doesn’t have enough experience to be hunting alone. He asks her, “Why are you blowing this out of proportion? Tons of guys around here hunt for their livelihood. Your dad does it. Your dog does it.”

Tess adds: “You’re not from here, Joe. You sell insurance for a living—and you’re really good at it.” Joe says defensively, “Well, I live here now.” Tess replies, “You haven’t hunted with Doug enough to go out on your own. I have a funny feeling about this, but you just keep ignoring that.” Viewers soon find out that Doug is a neighbor/friend who has been training Joe to hunt.

Joe accuses Tess of being mean-spirited, and she says she sorry. But she still objects to his decision. She comments, “We moved out here to provide our boys with a safe, familiar place to grow up in, not become some ‘end of the world’ Fox News people.”

Joe responds, “That’s not what’s happening.” Tess then says, “My dad, prepping for ‘end of days.’ That’s why I left.” She adds, “Go [hunting] with Doug next week. That’s all I ask.” Joe decides to decline that request. Tess calls Joe’s decision “irresponsible” and “stupid.”

Before Joe leaves, he goes into his sons’ bedroom and sees that one of them is awake. He says goodbye. As Joe is heading out the door, Tess tries one last tactic to get Joe to change his mind. She pulls down her trousers and wiggles her rear end suggestively, to let him know that she’s willing to have sex with him instead of Joe choosing to go hunting alone. However, Joe is undeterred and he leaves the house.

Joe’s next stop is to go to Doug’s place to borrow Doug’s truck and Doug’s hunting rifle. Doug (played by Carl Kennedy) is also skeptical about Joe’s ability to hunt alone, but he accommodates Joe’s requests. Doug also makes this decision after Joe mentions that Joe and Tess got into an argument about Joe hunting alone. Doug says he doesn’t want to get involved in this marital spat, but Doug obviously has gotten involved, because he’s taken Joe’s side by agreeing to help Joe.

Joe has chosen an area that is private property owned by a friend. Joe mentions to Doug that Joe got the friend’s permission to hunt on this land. Joe also found out that there would be no other people in the area at the same time that Joe would be hunting. It’s why Joe is certain that he will be safe during this hunting trip.

Most of “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” takes place in the wooded area where Joe has decided to hunt. The first third of the movie somewhat drags with not much happening except Joe trying to find something to shoot. During a stakeout in a tree, he also briefly falls asleep. But when a movie has someone with an intuitive feeling that something bad is going to happen, you can expect something bad is going to happen.

Joe sees a deer in the woods and shoots at it. When he goes to inspect the body on the ground, he’s horrified to see that it’s an unidentified middle-aged man (played by Michael Raymond-James), who was out of Joe’s eye range when Joe shot at the deer. Is this shooting victim dead or unconscious? Who is he and why was he trespassing on private property? The movie reveals the answers to those questions.

Joe now has a moral dilemma. Should he report this shooting accident, or should he cover it up and pretend that nothing ever happened? The man has no identification and there were no other eyewitnesses to the shooting in this very remote area. However, the bullet could be traced back to the gun that Joe used. The rest of the movie shows Joe grappling with what decision to make. The movie has one big surprise twist, but it’s not very shocking.

“The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” is best enjoyed by people who don’t mind watching a movie where a large part of the film has no dialogue. The tension in this psychological drama isn’t based on fast-paced actions but rather on Joe dealing with the slow and sinking feeling that whatever decision he makes, it will have a major impact on him for the rest of his life.

In his performance that anchors the movie, Clayne Crawford authentically expresses all the tumultuous emotions that someone would go through in this crisis: fear, sadness, anger and guilt. “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” is very much a showcase for Clayne Crawford (who is also one of the movie’s producers) because he’s in every scene in the movie. Jeffrey Dean Morgan has a small supporting role as an unnamed police chief. Just like Brewster’s role as Joe’s wife Tess, Morgan’s role in the movie has less than 10 minutes of screen time.

“The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” effectively shows how people’s lives can instantly change in a matter of seconds. And, of course, “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” will also make viewers think about what they would do in the same situation that Joe is in after this accidental shooting. Because of a certain surprise that happens in the movie, Joe’s problem becomes even more complicated.

The movie isn’t concerned with being sanctimonious about Joe’s fateful decision to go hunting alone in the woods on this particular day. Joe is also not supposed to represent all inexperienced hunters. What “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” is more concerned about is taking an unflinching look at what happens when a horrific mistake is made and what someone can choose to do about this mistake. This choice doesn’t just affect the future of the person making the decision. This choice is a reflection of exactly who that person is.

UPDATE: Gravitas Ventures will release “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on February 17, 2023.

Review: ‘Good Girl Jane,’ starring Rain Spencer, Andie MacDowell and Patrick Gibson

July 17, 2022

by Carla Hay

Rain Spencer in “Good Girl Jane” (Photo by Jake Saner)

“Good Girl Jane”

Directed by Sarah Elizabeth Mintz 

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area, from 2005 to 2006, the dramatic film “Good Girl Jane” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A quiet teenage misfit falls in with a druggie crowd at her high school, begins dating her drug dealer, and descends deeper into drug addiction, while she tries to hide her addiction from her family.

Culture Audience: “Good Girl Jane” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching well-acted cautionary tales about how easily drug addiction can take over someone’s life.

Rain Spencer and Andie MacDowell in “Good Girl Jane” (Photo by Jake Saner)

The dramatic film “Good Girl Jane” could have been yet another “good girl gone bad” story about a teenage drug addict. Rain Spencer’s emotionally stirring performance is the main reason to watch when the plot becomes predictable. This is not a movie that is groundbreaking, but some of it is heartbreaking, even if it’s told from the privileged perspective of a protagonist who is more likely to go to rehab than go to prison for drug crimes. “Good Girl Jane” had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, where it won two grand jury prizes: Best U.S. Narrative Feature and Best Performance in a U.S. Narrative Feature, a prize awarded to Spencer.

Written and directed by Sarah Elizabeth Mintz, “Good Girl Jane” hits a lot of familiar beats and tones of movies that have covered the same subject matter of middle-class American teenagers who become drug addicts. If it’s a teenage girl, she usually has a “good girl” reputation with no previous history of drug use. And then, she meets someone or a group of people who are heavy drug users. And in order to be “accepted” into this social circle, she starts doing drugs and becomes addicted. It’s a cliché because it happens all too often in real life.

If you know this is the plot of “Good Girl Jane,” then you know what’s coming even before the movie starts. Fortunately, “Good Girl Jane” is not preachy, nor does it try to put most of the blame on the druggie clique that influences the protagonist to start doing drugs. The mistakes and self-destructiveness are the full responsibility of the person who made these lifestyle choices.

In “Good Girl Jane” (which takes place in the Los Angeles area, from 2005 to 2006), the title character is Jane Rosen (played by Spencer, in her feature-film debut), who goes from being a shy loner to a “wild child” drug addict in a matter of months. The movie begins in the autumn of 2005, when 17-year-old Jane has transferred from an elite private school to a public school, where she hasn’t yet made any friends. The reason for the transfer is revealed in bits and pieces throughout the story.

Jane lives with her sister Izzie Rosen (played by Eloisa Huggins), who’s about 15 or 16 years old, and their divorced mother Ruth Rosen (played by Andie MacDowell), who is a therapist. It’s never specified how long Ruth and her ex-husband Elliott Rosen (played by Gale Harold) have been divorced. However, Elliott doesn’t live too far away, and he has visitation rights.

Elliott is a busy executive who works at an unnamed music company. Part of his job is to go to concerts and nightclubs. Elliott is only in a few scenes in the movie, but it’s easy to see why he and Ruth got divorced: He’s a very inattentive and flaky parent.

For example, Jane and Izzie are scheduled to spend a weekend of visitation time with Elliott. It was already pre-arranged that Jane and Izzie would be staying at Elliott’s place for the weekend. Instead, he takes them to dinner at a restaurant, and then rushes them through the meal because he says that after this dinner, he has to go to a nightclub for work-related reasons. Jane and Izzie are too young to go to the nightclub with him.

At the restaurant, Elliott also tells Jane and Izzie that they can’t stay for the weekend at his place after all because he’s too busy with work. Elliott then drops off Jane and Izzie back at their mother’s house with half-hearted apologies for backing out of this father-daughter visitation. Ruth is furious, but she tries not to have a loud argument with Elliott in front of their children.

Ruth wants to emotionally connect with Jane, but Ruth’s attempts to uplift moody and withdrawn Jane just come across as criticism that Jane doesn’t want to hear. For example, when Jane is at home, she’s usually on her laptop computer (where she frequents Internet chat rooms) while listening to hardcore heavy metal music. Ruth doesn’t like Jane’s choice of music and tells Jane that the music can have a negative effect on Jane’s attitude. Ruth might have noticed that Jane is unhappy. But instead of Ruth asking Jane what’s wrong and asking how she can help as a parent, Ruth chooses to complain about Jane’s taste in music.

Jane secretly smokes cigarettes at school. When Ruth picks up some of Jane’s clothes to do laundry, Ruth smells cigarette smoke on the clothes and says in a condescending voice, “Please don’t smoke,” and starts to lecture Jane about how smoking is unattractive and bad for her health. Jane denies that she smokes cigarettes and says the cigarette odor is from being around people who smoke cigarettes at school.

Ruth is not a deliberately alienating parent. However, Ruth gives the impression that she knows more about what’s going on in her clients’ lives than she knows what’s going on in Jane’s life because Ruth spends more time asking the right questions of her clients. On the other hand, Jane doesn’t give Ruth much leeway to have a close emotional bond with her, because Jane is the type of sulky and secretive teen who would most likely say everything is fine if a parent asked her what’s bothering her.

Jane likes to wear baggy clothes and hooded sweatshirts. She often walks with a slight slouch, as if she wants to be invisible yet noticed as being “aloofly cool” at the same time. At school, when she tries to sit at a table with some other students, they tell her that the seat she wants is saved for someone else. It’s a predictable “social outcast” scene in movies about teenage misfits.

Even though Izzie and Jane go to the same school, they rarely speak to each other when they’re at school. Viewers find out later that Izzie, who has an upbeat and outgoing personality, is having an easier time adjusting to this transfer and is making more of an effort than Jane to befriend other students. There are also hints that Jane feels like their mother loves Izzie more than she loves Jane.

There’s a reason why Jane seems to be anti-social: She was cruelly bullied at her previous school, which is the main reason why Jane and Izzie have transferred to their current school. The details of the bullying are eventually revealed in the movie. But there are indications that some of the bullies are still harassing Jane online, based on the messages she gets when she’s on her computer.

One day, after classes have ended for the day, some of the school’s stoners are taking a SUV ride near Jane while she’s walking somewhere, and they invite her to party with them. A rebellious brat named Bailey Avett (played by Odessa A’zion) is the driver. The other pals in the SUV are tall and blue-haired Benji (played by Diego Chiat), easygoing Kaya (played by Jules Lorenzo) and androgynous Abel (played by Olan Prenatt). Jane already knows about this clique’s druggie reputation.

At first, Jane is hesitant to go with them, because she says she has to be at home by a certain time. But she changes her mind when they say that where they’re going won’t take long. Inside the car, the partiers are smoking weed, and Benji snorts some cocaine. They all go to the rooftop of a house, where more marijuana is smoked, cocaine is snorted, and apparent tabs of LSD are consumed, but Jane declines to partake in any of these drugs.

Instead, Jane takes a drink of alcohol offered by Kaya. During this rooftop party, these new acquaintances somewhat taunt Jane for being a “good girl” for not doing drugs with them. And you know what that means: In order to fit in with them and prove them wrong, Jane is going to start doing the same drugs.

That moment comes one night when Jane goes to a house party that she was invited to by this group of stoners. It’s where Jane does cocaine for the first time. And it’s also the first time that Jane feels like she has found a group of people at her school who could be her friends.

Also at the party is the group’s main drug dealer. He’s a 21-year-old Irish immigrant named James “Jamie” McKenna (played by Patrick Gibson), who projects an image of laid-back confidence. Although Jane and Benji had a mild flirtation with each other when they first met, Jane ends up being more interested in Jamie. After eyeing each other with some interest, Jamie and Jane sense their mutual attraction, they start talking, and then have a dip together in the house’s swimming pool.

It’s the beginning of a very co-dependent and toxic relationship. The more experienced Jamie pursues Jane, who plays hard to get, but eventually she gives in to Jamie’s persistent and amorous attention. He showers her with compliments and says many other things that Jane wants to hear. Not much is known about Jane’s dating history, but there are plenty of hints that Jamie is the first adult whom Jane has ever dated.

It isn’t long before Jane has lost her virginity to Jamie in the back seat of his car. It’s not as romantic as Jane expected because it’s on the same night that Jane finds out that Jamie is a meth addict who has occasional seizures because of his addiction. Jane quickly gets addicted to cocaine, which she usually snorts. But she also joins Jamie in his meth-smoking binges because she wants to know what it feels like. Jamie also injects meth if he wants a quicker and more intense high.

You know where all of this is going, of course. The only questions are how low will Jane go in her drug addiction and if anything will happen to set her on a path to possible recovery. Jane gets so caught up in her relationship with Jamie that she starts skipping school to hang out with him. And that includes accompanying Jamie to some of his drug deals. Jane witnesses some things that are shocking to her but won’t be that shocking to people who’ve seen enough of these kinds of “drug addict downward spiral” movies.

Spencer’s performance as Jane is particularly effective in showing how quickly someone’s boundaries and tolerance for being in demeaning and dangerous situations can change when drug addiction is involved. It would be easy to blame Jamie for being a “bad influence” on Jane. But the truth is that Jane already had low self-esteem going into this relationship, and she made the wrong choices in where to get emotional validation. Her drug use was a direct result of her own free will.

“Good Girl Jane” is also authentic in showing how denial is a huge part of the disease of drug addiction. People try to tell Jane some unsavory things about Jamie, but Jane brushes off those concerns as just unsubstantiated gossip. Some of the things she hears about Jamie are that he sleeps around with a lot of the teenage girls who are his drug-buying customers and that he’s legally married to someone whom Jane has never met.

A cliché that “Good Girl Jane” thankfully avoids is showing a scenario where divorced parents put aside their differences to come to the rescue of a drug-addicted child. That doesn’t happen in “Good Girl Jane,” which takes a more realistic approach that emotionally distant parents don’t automatically change their ways when a child is crying out for help. The movie also shows that even when someeone is a therapist, that person still might have a hard time accepting and dealing with painful truths about having a drug addict in the family.

One of the best things about “Good Girl Jane” is showing how Izzie reacts to finding out that Jane is a drug addict. Spencer and Huggins have some emotionally powerful scenes together that are among the movie’s standout moments. And there’s a particularly impactful scene that Spencer and MacDowell have toward the end of the movie. This mother-daughter scene is a like a tidal wave of the pent-up despair that Jane has been feeling before and after Jane’s drug addiction.

There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about this tale of a teenager who becomes a drug addict. Sadly, what happens to Jane happens to people from all walks of life. However, one of the movie’s faults is that it seems to willfully take for granted that Jane is a lot better off than many drug addicts because she has the privilege and resources to get professional rehabilitation for her drug addiction.

And it goes without saying that if Jane were a person of color or if she were poor, she would most liklely be treated very differently by law enforcement if her illegal drug activity resulted in her getting entangled in the criminal justice system. It’s a reality that’s implied, based on things that are shown in the movie. “Good Girl Jane” doesn’t really explore these social inequality issues in-depth, because even with Jane’s privilege, what she goes through is enough to show that drug addiction can be a nightmare for anyone.

Review: ‘Monstrous’ (2022), starring Christina Ricci

July 17, 2022

by Carla Hay

Christina Ricci in “Monstrous” (Photo by Mercy Hasselblad/Screen Media Films)

“Monstrous” (2022)

Directed by Chris Sivertson 

Culture Representation: Taking place in California, the horror film “Monstrous” has an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A divorced mother moves from Mesa, Arizona, to California, where she and her 7-year-old son start being attacked a ghostly monster that appears to live in a backyard lake.

Culture Audience: “Monstrous” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Christina Ricci and anyone who doesn’t mind watching dull haunted house movies that recycle the same old clichés.

A scene from “Monstrous” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

The only thing that’s monstrous about the limp and boring horror film “Monstrous” is how it’s a waste of time for viewers and a waste of Christina Ricci’s talent. It’s yet another unimaginative horror flick about a family living in an isolated wooded area while being attacked by an evil spirit. There’s a surprise “reveal” toward the end of the movie which is not shocking at all because viewers can see the very obvious clues long before this plot twist is divulged.

Directed by Chris Sivertson and written by Carol Chrest, “Monstrous” is a poorly conceived misfire from start to finish. The movie appears to take place in the mid-1950s, based on the cars in the movie and the way that Ricci’s lead character Laura Butler dresses and styles her hair. Laura, who is divorced, has secretly moved from Mesa, Arizona, to an unnamed city in California with her 7-year-old son Cody (played by Santino Barnard), a generic horror movie kid whose only purpose is to act wide-eyed and scared. You can almost do a countdown to when Cody starts having nightmares.

Laura and Cody are living in a rental farmhouse in an isolated wooded area near a lake. The house owners are an elderly couple named Mr. Langtree (played by Don Durrell, also known as Don Baldaramos) and his wife Leonora (played by Colleen Camp), who both live not too far from the farmhouse. Mr. Langtree (whose first name is never mentioned in the movie) is a lot friendlier than Leonora, who is cranky and suspicious of Laura. Observant viewers who notice how Leonora talks and how she’s dressed won’t be surprised by the “twist” that comes later in the movie.

Laura starts a new job as a typist/secretary in a 1950s-styled office. There’s really no point to these office scenes except to show that Laura’s co-worker Jane (played by Carol Anne Watts) appeared in a prior nonsensical hallucinatory type scene where Laura imagined herself as a terror victim in a 1950s-styled horror movie. Jane appears in this imaginary horror flick and tells Laura, “Don’t be afraid.”

Why did Laura and Cody abruptly and secretly move to California? It’s because Laura is living in fear of her abusive ex-husband Scott (voiced by Matt Lovell), who is never seen in the movie but is heard on the phone when he makes menacing calls to Laura. Scott’s physical and emotional abuse of Laura, which Cody has witnessed, is the main reason why Laura divorced Scott.

Laura has sole custody of Cody, but Scott has visitation rights. Laura has decided she wants to go into hiding because she doesn’t want Scott to see her and Cody anymore. Somehow, Scott finds out Laura’s new phone number. And when Scott calls her, she’s horrified and hangs up immediately before any conversation can happen.

Soon afterward, Laura’s mother (voiced by Nancy O’Fallon) calls. Laura tells her mother (who doesn’t have a first name in the movie) that Scott called Laura just a few minutes earlier. And then, Laura’s mother admits that she went against Laura’s wishes to keep Laura’s new phone number a secret, and she gave Laura’s new phone number to a few people. Scott could’ve have gotten the phone number from one of those people.

Laura scolds her mother for this breach of trust. And now, Laura fears that Scott might be coming to California for a confrontation. Laura’s mother says to her: “He just wants to talk to you. He feels so bad.”

Laura replies, “I don’t care how he feels. I don’t know how you can speak to him after what he did. You’re supposed to be on our side. Grandma would be!”

The “grandma” Laura is speaking about is the mother of Laura’s mother. “Monstrous” has some tedious flashbacks of Laura remembering her childhood that she spent with her grandmother. (Lola Grace, also known as Lola Grace Holmes, portrays Laura as a child.) These flashbacks are filmed in a hokey way.

For example, the adult Laura is seen sitting in a chair underneath a blanket, which segues to a flashback of Laura as a child sitting underneath a blanket in the attic of her childhood home. Her grandmother (played Rachael Edlow) then approaches Laura, removes the blanket, and then says to Laura, “I thought it was Mrs. Seton’s ghost.”

The purpose of the flashback scenes is to show that Laura’s grandmother had psychic abilities to see ghosts. And maybe Laura does too. When Cody starts having nightmares, he tells her that a female ghost comes out of the backyard lake and attacks him. At first, Laura doesn’t believe Cody until it starts happening to Laura.

Cody wants to go back to Mesa, and he says he’s forgiven his father. However, Laura feels the opposite way. Expect to see some arguing back-and-forth between Laura and Cody over these issues. Oscar-winning “Green Book” co-writer Nick Vallelonga has a small and useless role as a legionnaire who dances with Laura when she goes to a bar to meet new people.

The monster continues to appear at the farmhouse and takes many forms, with none being truly terrifying. Sometimes it looks like a creature with tentacles. Sometimes it looks like a swamp woman. During one laughably bad part of the movie, the monster ends up on the house’s roof, looking like someone in a cheap Halloween costume.

Laura tells the Langtrees about the monster attacks, but these two landlords are skeptical. Leonora insists that Laura probably just saw a raccoon. And then another horror cliché kicks into gear: The woman who’s attacked by an evil spirit is not believed, and people start to think she’s mentally ill and that she’s the one who’s the problem.

Laura has a psychiatrist in Arizona named Dr. Weaver (voiced by Chris Mullinax), whom she calls and asks if she can go back on the medication she was on before she moved to California. He tells her it’s not a good idea. Laura also calls a local Catholic church to report that there’s a demon in her house. A nun named Sister Agnes (voiced by Anjoum Agrama), takes the call, but then hangs up on Laura.

All of it is just so mind-numbingly predictable, as the movie drags on and on with more uninspired scenarios of the monster emerging from the lake and continuing to go after Cody and Laura. “Monstrous” is such a relentlessly dull horror move, the intended jump scares could put people to sleep. Ricci seems to be trying hard to make everything convincing, but she’s stuck in a horror movie that is thoroughly unconvincing at being scary or even the bare minimum of interesting.

The “reveal” in “Monstrous” is quite anti-climactic, but you can tell the “Monstrous” filmmakers thought it would be a clever twist, even though there are many other horror movies that have already done versions of this plot twist. In other words, it’s not clever at all. It just exposes more plot holes in “Monstrous.” Viewers will forget this dreadful movie quicker than you can say “M. Night Shyamalan ripoff.”

Screen Media Films released “Monstrous” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 13, 2022. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 5, 2022.

Review: ‘Clara Sola,’ starring Wendy Chinchilla Araya, Daniel Castañeda Rincón, Ana Julia Porras Espinoza and Flor María Vargas Chavez

July 16, 2022

by Carla Hay

Laura Román Arguedas and Wendy Chinchilla Araya in “Clara Sola” (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

“Clara Sola”

Directed by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén 

Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed small town in Costa Rica, the dramatic film “Clara Sola” has an all-Latin cast representing the working-class.

Culture Clash: A repressed 40-year-old woman, who is seen as a faith healer in her small town, has an awakening when her teenage niece begins a romance with a man who’s a visiting farm worker.

Culture Audience: “Clara Sola” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in movies about how religion and sex influence people’s lives and identities.

Wendy Chinchilla Araya in “Clara Sola” (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

The dramatic film “Clara Sola” is often as gloomy and slow-paced as the life of the movie’s title character: a quiet 40-year-old woman who experiences a sexual awakening around the same time as a religious reckoning. The movie’s riveting final third, which is the best part, makes up for a lot of the sluggishness. Viewers must have a lot of patience and no distractions while watching “Clara Sola,” in order for the film to have its most significant impact.

Directed by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén (who co-wrote the “Clara Sola” screenplay with Maria Camila Arias), “Clara Sola” had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. “Clara Sola” is Álvarez Mesén’s feature-film directorial debut. She previously directed short films, two of which were segments in the 2021 anthology movie “Upon Her Lips: Heartbeat” and the 2020 anthology movie “The Swedish Boys.”

“Clara Sola” is the epitome of a “slow burn” film that immerses viewers into the interior life of the movie’s title character. Her birth name is Clara (played by Wendy Chinchilla Araya, in her movie acting debut), but she later tells someone that her secret name is Sola, which means “alone” in Spanish. Even though Clara lives with family members, she is very much a loner who is treated as “different” by everyone around her.

Clara lives with her domineering, widowed mother Fresia (played by Flor María Vargas Chavez) and Clara’s two underage nieces: María (played by Ana Julia Porras Espinoza) and Lucía (played by Laura Román Arguedas). They all live in a shabby house in a small, unnamed town in Costa Rica. María is 14 years old but turns 15 during the course of the story. Lucía is about 10 or 11 years old.

It isn’t revealed until much later in the movie that Clara’s deceased sister Angela was the mother of María and Lucía. How and when Angela died are details that are never discussed or revealed in the movie. Viewers can only speculate how this death affected the family. The father of María and Lucía is not seen or mentioned. Fresia is such a dominant force in Clara’s life, she even decides the outfits that Clara will wear in public.

Clara doesn’t talk a lot, but it’s obvious that she is an unhappy and lonely person. The closest thing she has to a friend or companion is her beloved white mare Yuca. The importance that Yuca has to Clara becomes more evident as time goes on in this story. This horse represents more to Clara than just being a domesticated pet. Yuca represents freedom and the only living being whom Clara thinks knows the real Clara.

Fresia makes a living by operating a small business that gives horse-riding tours in the area, mostly to tourists. The family owns about five or six horses, and Yuca is one of the horses used for these tours. Fresia has male employees who conduct the tours. She also hires men to do work around the family’s farm-like property, which is in a somewhat remote wooded area.

After the first 10 minutes of the movie, it’s obvious that Clara is treated like a “special” member of the family. Even though Clara is 40 years old, she has the mannerisms of a shy and awkward teenage child. For reasons left unexplained, Clara’s mother has convinced people in this rural community that Clara has religious superpowers that give Clara the ability to heal all illnesses, including cancer.

Fresia also says that the Virgin Mary channels her powers through Clara. Don’t bother getting an explanation for how long Fresia has been telling people that Clara is a medium for the Virgin Mary and can cure deadly diseases. There is no explanation. But the town is ruled by its religion, which is never stated out loud, but is presumably Roman Catholicism. The townspeople treat Clara like a miracle worker/faith healer when she goes to church ceremonies.

“Clara Sola” stumbles the most by not giving any plausible explanations for why Clara is considered a miraculous faith healer. Who exactly has she “cured”? Are any of these people still around to give testimony about these healing “miracles”? Don’t expect the movie to answer these questions.

Because the Virgin Mary is such an integral part of Clara’s identity as a faith healer, there’s a shrine to the Virgin Mary inside the family’s modest house. Fresia has also convinced people, including Clara, that the Virgin Mary can talk to Clara. And so, when Clara goes to church, she is often expected to pass on messages to the parishioners that she claims to have gotten from the Virgin Mary.

Clara has a spinal deformation, so she wears a back brace that Clara says is very painful. María and Fresia accompany Clara to a doctor’s appointment, where the doctor (played by Ana Patricia Apú Bolaños) recommends that Clara have back surgery to correct the deformation. The surgery would be at no cost to the family, because it’s covered under Costa Rica’s universal health care that’s provided to all citizens and permanent residents of Costa Rica.

The doctor says with firm compassion that the surgery would improve Clara’s quality of life, because “Clara would be able to walk upright” without the use of a back brace. María begs Fresia to let Clara have the surgery, but Fresia refuses. Fresia says about Clara: “God gave her to me like this. She stays like this.” María reminds Fresia that María was allowed to get surgery to correct María’s teeth. Fresia says that’s because María is not like Clara.

There are obvious signs that Clara has been convinced to be as much like the Virgin Mary as possible, ever since Clara was a child. For example, it soon becomes apparent that Clara has no experience in dating and is still a virgin. Now that María is growing into a young woman, Clara is starting to see firsthand some of the things that Clara has been missing in her life.

One day, a man in his late teens or early 20s named Santiago (played by Daniel Castañeda Rincón) shows up at the family home because he’s been hired at a nearby farm to “help out during the high season,” he says. Santiago doesn’t plan to stay in the area for very long. He is introduced to Fresia, in case she needs to hire him for any extra help. And she eventually does.

Santiago and María begin flirting with each other almost immediately. Their mutual attraction leads to them meeting each other for dates. Clara quietly observes this blossoming relationship from afar and sometimes up close when she spies on Santiago and María going on dates and showing public displays of affection. Eventually, the relationship between Santiago and María becomes sexual.

The movie makes no mention of the age difference between María and Santiago. In Costa Rica, 15 is the minimum legal age of consent for someone to have sex with an adult. María will soon turn 15, so it’s probably one of the reasons why no one in the family objects to María dating an older man. María’s quinceañera (Hispanic culture’s celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday) becomes a big part of the story.

After a while, it’s apparent that Clara is starting to feel some kind of attraction to Santiago too, but Clara doesn’t quite know how to express this attraction to him. She’s also having sexual feelings that result in her exploring masturbation, even though she’s been taught that masturbation is “sinful” for someone like her. There are several other indications that Clara has “arrested development” and has not had sex education that teaches healthy boundaries of what’s appropriate and inappropriate.

For example, the movie has an awkward scene where Clara asks a teenage family member named Francisco (played by Fabrizzio Josue Vallecillo Vargas), also known as Fran, if they can practice kissing. Francisco is clearly uncomfortable with this incestuous request, but he seems aware that Clara doesn’t know how wrong her request is, and he doesn’t want to scold, embarrass or lecture her. Instead, Francisco gives Clara a quick platonic smack on the lips, and the subject is never brought up again.

Santiago begins to spend more time at the family home because of María. During one of these visits, Clara sees a beetle crawling on Santiago’s back, but he doesn’t see it. Without Clara saying anything to Santiago, she removes the beetle from Santiago’s back and keeps the beetle as a pet. She names the beetle Ofir. And she affectionately takes cares for Ofir, as if he’s an extension of Santiago. The movie makes a point of showing that Clara is more relaxed and in tune with nature and non-human animals than she is with people.

On some occasions, Santiago and Clara have friendly conversations with each other. Over time, Santiago can sense that Clara might have a crush on him, but he is always polite and respectful to her, and he doesn’t take advantage of Clara’s vulnerability. In one of the conversations between Clara and Santiago, they talk about each other’s work. Santiago mainly has experience as a physical laborer. Clara makes this statement about what her job is: “I work for God.”

During another one of these conversations, Santiago opens up to Clara and says that his brother was killed in an unsolved murder. That’s the closest the movie comes to having a backstory for Santiago, who is a somewhat generic character. His main purpose in the movie is to create a possible love triangle between Clara and María. It’s possible that Clara could have had a sexual awakening some other way, but Santiago is the catalyst.

“Clara Sola” goes to great lengths to only show things from Clara’s perspective. And because Clara isn’t very skilled at communicating with people, viewers get only a limited outlook of the other people who are in Clara’s life. This narrow view is often to the detriment of the movie’s storytelling, because it makes a large portion “Clara Sola” very monotonous.

The movie gets better as Clara begins to understand that her niece Maria, who is less than half of Clara’s age, has more freedom and more life options than Clara has ever experienced. Having never been taught any skills to take care of herself, Clara also feels trapped and helpless. When Clara gets some upsetting news, it’s a turning point for Clara, who has to decide who she is and what kind of person she wants to become if she grows and matures on an emotional level.

The probability of a viewer wanting to watch “Clara Sola” until the very end will largely depend on how curious or invested a viewer is in finding out what happens to Clara. And that has a lot to do with how Chinchilla Araya plays the role. It’s an admirable but not exceptional performance. All of the other movie’s cast members do the best that they can with supporting characters that are usually two-dimensional.

“Clara Sola” has some impressive cinematography (from Sophie Winqvist) that adeptly conveys the isolating rural atmosphere that Clara has known her entire life. The movie’s ending could be open to interpretation, but viewers paying attention throughout the film will immediately know what choice was made. “Clara Sola” might feel too claustrophobic and tedious for some viewers, while others who watch the movie with an open mind will see an interesting story about the evolution of a repressed and sheltered woman.

Oscilloscope Laboratories released “Clara Sola” in New York City on July 1, 2022, and in Los Angeles on July 8, 2022. The movie was released in Sweden in 2021.

Review: ‘The Forgiven’ (2022), starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain

July 15, 2022

by Carla Hay

Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain in “The Forgiven” (Photo by Nick Wall/Vertical Entertainment and Roadside Attractions)

“The Forgiven” (2022)

Directed by John Michael McDonagh

Some language in Arabic and Tamazight with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains area and the city of Tangier, the dramatic film “The Forgiven” features a cast of white and Middle Eastern characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: While on vacation in Morocco, two unhappily married, upper-middle-class spouses (he’s British, she’s American) are involved in a drunk-driving car accident that kills a teenage boy, and they use their privilege to avoid being arrested for the crime but must face judgment from the boy’s father. 

Culture Audience: “The Forgiven” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain, as well as to viewers who are interested in tension-filled movies about people who have conflicts with laws and customs in foreign countries.

Pictured clockwise, from left: Ismael Kanater, Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones and Mourad Zaoui in “The Forgiven” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment and Roadside Attractions)

The dramatic film “The Forgiven” doesn’t flow as well as it should for a piercing look at spoiled and entitled people who use their privilege as a weapon and as a shield. However, the performances are worth watching to see how terrible people can be their own worst enemies. In other words, “The Forgiven” is not a “feel good” movie. Be prepared to witness a lot of self-absorbed and insufferable conduct from snobs and bigots who think a lot of “real world” rules and manners don’t apply to them unless they can get something out of it.

Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, “The Forgiven” is based on Lawrence Osborne’s 2012 novel of the same name. The movie has the tremendous benefit of a talented cast that can turn some of the soap opera-ish dialogue and make it into something resembling a satire of the pompous characters who cause the most damage. Although the story is fictional, there are plenty of real-life examples of people who act this way. “The Forgiven” had its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

The movie’s opening scene sets the tone for the unpleasantness to come. British oncologist David Henninger (played by Ralph Fiennes) and his American wife Jo Henninger (played by Jessica Chastain), who live in London, have arrived in Tangier, Morocco, to attend an Atlas Mountains party thrown by a wealthy gay couple whom David and Jo have known for an unnamed period of time. David and Jo have no children and have been married for 12 years. But it only takes a few minutes into the movie before their bickering starts.

David thinks Jo is a shrewish nag. Jo calls David a “high-functioning alcoholic.” He responds by saying that “high-functioning” cancels out “alcoholic.” David knows that Jo is correct because he really is an alcoholic. If David is awake, chances are he’s drinking alcohol. And his alcoholism is a direct cause of the car accident that results in a tragedy.

Later, it’s revealed in the movie that Jo is a children’s book author whose books have never been bestsellers. She also hasn’t written any books for the past eight years. It’s unknown if frustrations over her career and marriage have made Jo such a bitter person, or if Jo already had this type of personality before she married David. However, what’s obvious is that Jo and David are both deeply unhappy people—together and apart.

Before David and Jo arrive at their party destination, the movie shows a scene of two Moroccan teenage boys (who are about 15 or 16 years old) in a cliff area of Atlas Mountains. One of the boys is sniffing glue from a plastic bag. Viewers later find out that his name is Driss Taheri (played by Omar Ghazaoui) and that he and his friend Ismael (played by Aissam Taamart) sell fossil rocks as a way to make some money.

As Ismael hammers at some rocks to find fossils, Driss scolds Ismael for never leaving their village or never having ambitions to leave for bigger and better things. Ismael replies by saying that he doesn’t have the money to leave. Driss says there’s always a way to get money. Poverty in this community becomes a big issue later on in the story.

“The Forgiven” then shows David and Jo in their rental car going from Tangier on the way to the party in the High Atlas Mountains. It’s nighttime on a deserted road, and David is driving, although he probably shouldn’t be driving, because he’s more than likely well past the alcohol legal limit to drive. Jo and David get lost and are arguing some more when tragedy strikes: The car hits a teenage boy who suddenly appears in front of the car on the road. He is killed instantly.

Meanwhile, viewers see several people who are gathered for this house party. The party hosts are wealthy British real estate developer Richard Galloway (played by Matt Smith) and his American boyfriend Dally Margolis (played by Caleb Landry Jones), a very pretentious couple who threw this party mainly to show off some of their wealth. The home where Richard and Dally are having this multi-day party is big enough that most of the guests (including Jo and David) will be staying overnight on the property.

With the guests gathered in an outdoor patio area, Richard gives a speech bragging about all the fine delicacies and luxuries that the guests can see and enjoy during this soiree. He adds, “We hope you’ll find this place a vision of paradise, a place in which to receive the people we love.” It’s a very shallow speech because it’s questionable if anyone in this group of partiers really loves each other.

Richard then says, “And don’t forget the figs—typically representative of a woman’s vagina.” Dally, who is standing near Richard, giggles in response: “Or so we’ve been told.” This is the type of dialogue that’s in a lot of “The Forgiven.” It’s indicative of how some people who are rich when it comes to money and property can still lack class.

Other guests at the party also conduct themselves with an air of jaded superiority at being in this luxurious environment. Financial analyst Tom Day (played by Christopher Abbott) is a smirking and lecherous American, who tells Richard: “I’ve got three girlfriends. They all hate me.”

Cody (played by Abbey Lee), who is also American, is the requisite modelesque-looking “party girl” who’s often too intoxicated to comprehend where she is and what she’s doing. When Cody dances drunkenly near Tom, he tells her that his wife left him because she ran off with a hedge fund manager. Later in the movie, there’s a random and very out-of-place scene of Cody wandering around lost in the desert on the day after the party started.

French photographer Isabelle Péret (played by Marie-Josée Croze) takes photos at the party and has a mild flirtation with Tom when they have a conversation. Leila Tarki (played by Imane El Mechrafi) is an independent filmmaker whom Isabelle greatly admires. At the party, Isabelle points out Leila to Tom and describes Leila as “the Moroccan auteur. She’s the coolest.” Isabelle also mentions that Leila is in Morocco to raise funds for Leila’s new movie, which will be about nomads.

Maisy Joyce (played by Fiona O’Shaughnessy), whose occupation or social purpose is never stated, is a gossipy guest who makes low-key snarky comments about everyone she observes. When she meets Tom, she bluntly asks him: “Are you gay?” Tom replies, “No, but I fucked a man who is.” Tom is the type of person who doesn’t make it clear if he’s telling the truth or if he’s joking when he makes this type of statement.

Later, two other party guests show up: middle-aged playboy William Joyce (played by David McSavage) and Maribel (played by Briana Belle), one of William’s much-younger trophy girlfriends. All of these party guests, except for David and Jo, end up being backdrops to the drama that unfolds because of the car accident. It should come as no surprise that the party continues as planned, even though the dead boy’s body is temporarily brought to the house.

Richard gets a call from David during the party and hears the horrible news about the car accident and death. David and Jo are in a panic because they’re afraid of being arrested for the death of this child, whom they say has no identification. Richard reluctantly allows Jo and David to come over to the house, so they can talk about what to do next. The body of the boy has been put in their car.

Richard sends his most trusted employee Hamid (played by Mourad Zaoui) and some other servants to escort David and Jo back to the house. Hamid can speak Arabic and English, so he acts as the main translator in this story. He also advises the Westerners about Moroccan and Muslim customs and traditions.

Dally is very nervous and thinks that he and Richard shouldn’t get involved in this car accident case, but Richard thinks that the local police can be bribed if necessary. Richard and David are also alumni of the same elite university (which is unnamed in the movie), so Richard feels obligated to help David. Richard mentions this alumni connection on more than one occasion, such as when Richard repeats stories he heard about David being a notorious troublemaker at the school.

Richard tells some people that one of the stories he heard was that David went on top of a building to drop mice wearing miniature Nazi flags on some school officials. The mice died, of course. Whoever committed this disturbing act was never caught, but David was widely believed to be the culprit. It was apparently someone’s warped way telling these school officials that they act like Nazis. And if David was the culprit, it’s an example of how he’s been an awful person for a very long time.

Before the police are called about the car accident and death that David caused, Richard advises David and Jo to act as remorseful as possible to increase the chances that they won’t be charged with any crime. Jo is willing to take that advice, but David balks at the suggestion because he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. David blames the boy for being out in the road at night.

And it isn’t long before David’s story begins to morph into saying that the boy was probably trying to commit a carjacking. David and Jo, on separate occasions, also express fear that this car accident victim could have been an ISIS terrorist. It’s blatant racism, but racists like David and Jo don’t care.

The police arrive and take statements from David and Jo. The chief investigator is Captain Benihadd (played by Ben Affan), who quickly determines (within 15 minutes) that the death was an accident and that David and Jo won’t be arrested. David doesn’t get asked to take a sobriety test or any test that would detect the level of alcohol or drugs in his system. Viewers with enough common sense can easily see why David doesn’t get much scrutiny by police who want to be deferential to people who appear to be rich.

After it’s declared that David and Jo won’t be arrested, Richard’s relief turns to dismay when he finds out that because the morgue won’t be open until the next day, the body has to stay on Richard’s property until it can be transported to the morgue. As far as Richard is concerned, it puts a damper on the party. Richard, Dally and David aren’t as concerned about how this child victim belongs to a family who will eventually hear the devastating news about his death. Jo shows a little more compassion and guilt, but not enough to erase her racism, since she automatically makes the racist assumption that the boy who was killed could be a member of ISIS.

Even though the police didn’t find any identification for the boy, and none of the people who saw his body say they know him, he does have a name: Driss Taheri. David, Jo and the other people at Richard’s house who know about this death will eventually find out Driss’ name. But even after they find out his name, they often won’t say it, as if it’s easier to think of him as nameless and unwanted. Privately, David makes this callous remark to Jo, “I hate to say it, but the kid is a nobody.”

The next day, David is riding horses with Isabelle and Macy, as if they don’t have a care in the world. A few Moroccan boys suddenly appear and throw rocks at David before the boys run away. One of the rocks hits David on the head hard enough that he gets a bloody injury on his head, and he falls off of the horse. The injury is not serious enough for him to go to a hospital though.

David nastily complains to Jo that people in the community must have found out that he was the one who caused the death of a local child. David shows more of his racism and xenophobia when he says, “They’re insatiable gossips. It’s a function of being illiterate.” Jo sarcastically replies, “What a nice little facist you’ve become since being hit by a stone.”

The way that these self-centered partiers find out Driss’ identity is when his grieving and distraught father Adbdellah Taheri (played by Ismael Kanater) shows up the next day at Richard’s house to claim the body and to talk to the people responsible for Driss’ death. Driss was his only child. (Driss’ mother is not seen or mentioned in the movie.)

With Hamid acting as a translator, David finds out that Adbdellah wants some kind of payment from David to compensate for Driss’ tragic death. Adbdellah initially didn’t want any payment, but he changes his mind when he sees that David seems very cold and uncaring about killing Driss. David flatly refuses this demand for payment.

Adbdellah also insists that David accompany Adbdellah back to Adbdellah’s home in the Moroccan region of Tafilalt, to atone for the killing, out of respect for Muslim tradition. David reluctantly agrees to this request, even though he and Jo are paranoid that it could be a trap set by “ISIS terrorists.” David goes on this trip because he also thinks it will get Adbdellah to stop expecting money from David.

The rest of “The Forgiven” shows what happens during David’s “atonement” visit, what Jo does when David is away, and the aftermath of decisions and actions that are made. The movie has flashbacks to the moments immediately before and after Driss was struck by the car and killed. These flashbacks give a clearer picture of who David and Jo really are and how they responded to this crisis.

Fiennes and Chastain give skillful but not outstanding performances as snooty pessimists who are trapped in misery of their own making. It’s never really made clear how long David has been an alcoholic, but he doesn’t have any intention of getting rehab treatment for his addiction, even after causing someone’s death because David was driving drunk. As for Jo, she’s got her own issues, because she feels like a failure who has no purpose in life.

“The Forgiven” is not going to appeal to viewers who are expecting a movie where most of the people are “likable.” The movie holds up a mirror to people who want to project an image of being “glamorous” but they actually have very ugly personalities. There’s a certain point where the movie’s ending is easy to predict. Considering all the clues pointing to this ending, it doesn’t feel like a shock but like something that was bound to happen.

Vertical Entertainment and Roadside Attractions released “The Forgiven” in select U.S. cinemas on July 1, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on July 15, 2022.

Review: ‘Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank,’ starring the voices of Michael Cera, Ricky Gervais, George Takei, Aasif Mandvi, Michelle Yeoh and Samuel L. Jackson

July 13, 2022

by Carla Hay

Hank (voiced by Michael Cera) and and Jimbo (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) in “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, Align and Aniventure)

“Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank”

Directed by Rob Minkoff, Mark Koetsier and Chris Bailey

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in the fictional town of Kakamucho, the animated film “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” features a racially diverse cast (white, black, Asian and Latino) portraying talking animals.

Culture Clash: Inspired by the 1974 comedy film “Blazing Saddles,” a dog named Hank is chosen to be a samurai to save a town of cats, but Hank doesn’t know not he’s been set up by villain who wants to rid the town of the cats and wants Hank to be killed.

Culture Audience: “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” will appeal primarily to fans of “Blazing Saddles” and people who enjoy family-oriented films with positive messages of self-confidence and not judging people by physical appearances.

Ika Chu (voiced by Ricky Gervais) and Ohga (voiced by George Takei) in “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” (Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, Align and Aniventure)

No one should expect “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” to be award-worthy. But as family entertainment with positive messages, memorable characters and an action-filled story (that sometimes gets jumbled), the movie delivers on a satisfactory level. Although “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” was inspired by the classic 1974 film “Blazing Saddles,” anyone expecting the dark comedy of “Blazing Saddles” will be sorely disappointed.

“Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” is an animated film geared to people of various ages (mostly underage kids), so the tone of the movie is lighthearted and lightweight. Because it’s an animated movie with talking animals and a theme of an underestimated animal training to be a protective fighter, “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” might also get some comparisons to the 2008 animated film “Kung Fu Panda.” “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” isn’t as good as “Kung Fu Panda” and is unlikely to have as large of a fan base that the “Kung Fu Panda” franchise has, but not all movies aspire to be classics.

Directed by Rob Minkoff, Mark Koetsier and Chris Bailey, “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” has the benefit of very talented voice cast members who give the movie’s characters unique personalities. This is not the type of animated film where it’s hard to tell the characters apart from each other. Ed Stone and Nate Hopper wrote the adapted screenplay for “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank,” which also gives screenwriting credit to “Blazing Saddles” screenwriters Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor and Alan Uger.

“Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” begins with showing a town called Kakamucho, which is populated entirely by cats. Although the town could exist anywhere, the Kakamucho residents follow ancient Japanese military traditions of shoguns and samurai. The town has recently been plagued by bandits. The shogun of Kakamucho will be arriving soon and will be asked by find samurai who can protect the town. “Blazing Saddles” director/co-writer Brooks is the voice of Shogun, a British shorthair cat.

However, the story’s villain wants to get rid of the residents of Kakamucho, so that he can use the land for greedy redevelopment purposes. The villain is a scheming Somali cat named Ika Chu (voiced by Ricky Gervais), a character that people might or might not enjoy watching, depending on how they feel about Gervais and his cutting British comedy that he brings to this cat’s personality. In movies like this, every villain has a sidekick. Ika Chu’s sidekick is Ohga (voiced by George Takei), a burly Manx cat who leads Ika Chu’s army.

Ika Chu has concocted a plan where he decides to fool a dog into thinking that the dog has been selected as a samurai to protect Kakamucho. Because cats and dogs have been enemies, Ika Chu is counting on the dog to be killed by the Kakamucho residents. Because it’s against the law to kill a samurai, Ika Chu will then have the entire town arrested, and then have the land to himself.

The dog who becomes the unwitting target of Ika Chu’s dastardly plan is Hank (voiced by Michael Cera), a socially awkward beagle who has recently been released from prison. It’s implied that Hank might have been unjustly imprisoned simply because he’s a dog in a cat’s town. Iku Chu summons Hank and lies to him by saying that Hank has been chosen as the samurai to protect Kakamucho. When Hank expresses skepticism, Ika Chu spontaneously scratches the word “samurai” on a coffee mug and gives it to Hank as an “official” memento that Hank is now an appointed samurai.

Hank has no idea how to be a samurai, so he enlists the help of tuxedo cat Jimbo (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson), a washed-up and cranky samurai, who spends a lot of time getting drunk on catnip. Jimbo is very reluctant to become a sensei mentor to Hank, but he eventually agrees. Jimbo isn’t entirely convinced that a dog will be accepted by the cats of Kakamucho.

Hank and Jimbo do a lot of arguing during this training, but they have somewhat of a emotional breakthrough when Hank finds out that he’s met Jimbo before. Hank tells Jimbo about a time several years earlier when an unidentified samurai cat rescued Hank from being bullied by some bad dogs. Jimbo reveals that he was that cat.

Jimbo eventually opens up to Hank about something painful from his past too. Years ago, Jimbo was head of security at the birthday party for his employer, an elite feline named Toshi. However, Jimbo accidentally caused a major disaster at the party. The accident resulted in Toshi’s in-laws to become sterile. This mishap embarrassed Jimbo so much, he quit being a samurai and became a bitter recluse.

Although this is a fictional animated film, “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” has a lot to say about prejudices that can negatively divide individuals. It’s a message that’s explicitly stated in the film, but one that’s still meaningful. The bigotry between the cats and dogs in “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” is obvious symbolism for bigotry in hate groups that teach people to hate others based on their identities or physical appearances.

Observant viewers will also notice how “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” shows something that often happens in real life: opinions and thoughts from young females are often dismissed just because they’re young females. In the movie, a young female Persian cat named Emiko (voiced by Kylie Kuioka), who wants to be a samurai, is intelligent and observant. However, her smart ideas are often ignored, or an older male in the community takes credit for her ideas. The way that Emiko handles this disrespect and what happens to her in the end are good lessons for people of any age.

“Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” gets a little messy with a tad too many subplots. One of these subplots involves a giant ginger cat named Sumo (voiced by Djimon Hounsou), who is at various times feared and adored. Sumo arrives in Kakamucho as a fighting enemy to Hank, but will Sumo ends up as a friend?

In “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank,” the female cats are often the calm voices of reason amid the chaos. Yuki (voiced by Michelle Yeoh) is a cheerful Persian cat who is Emiko’s mother. Little Mama (voiced by Cathy Shim) is a wise matriarch of Kakamucho. There’s also a clownish duo of friends: klutzy calico cat Chuck (voiced by Gabriel Iglesias) and tuxedo cat Ichiro (voiced by Aasif Mandvi), who are like the Laurel & Hardy of Kakamucho.

The movie has no shortage of action, with some scenes working better than others. The last third of the movie consists of a flurry of battles and chase sequences that should hold viewers’ interest, despite predictable outcomes. The visuals in “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” are good but not outstanding. The most striking visuals are the outdoor scenic shots and many of the action scenes.

“Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” makes some sarcastic self-referential comments on movie clichés that can be found in “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank.” When Hank begins training under Jimbo’s tutelage, Hank says, “This is the training montage.” Jimbo replies, “This is my favorite part—the part where you suffer.” A movie that can laugh at itself in this way can’t be taken too seriously.

Paramount Pictures will release “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” in U.S. cinemas on July 15, 2022.

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