Tag Archives: High School

A Girl Like Her (2015)

17 Sunday Sep 2017

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D: Amy S. Weber / 91m

Cast: Hunter King, Lexi Ainsworth, Jimmy Bennett, Amy S. Weber, Stephanie Cotton, Mark Boyd, Christy Engle, Jon W. Martin, Madison Deadman, Anna Spaseski, Mariah Harrison, Emma Dwyer, Michael Maurice, Gino Borri, Sarah Kyrie Soraghan

If there’s a message to be found at the heart of A Girl Like Her, a tale of bullying and its consequences, it’s not that bullying is wrong per se (though of course it is), it’s that we all make mistakes, and especially when we’re young. In this particular movie, mistakes are made by children and adults alike, and some of them are compounded and inexcusable. And yet the movie seems to be saying, if, after the fact, you’re sorry, then that’s alright. That may be a very nice, and very politic way of looking at things, but unfortunately, by the time A Girl Like Her arrives at that conclusion, its argument has been undermined completely by its approach up until that point.

The movie quickly introduces us to Jessica Burns (Ainsworth), a student at South Brookdale High School who is anxious, depressed, and contemplating suicide. She has one friend, Brian (Bennett), who she spends a lot of time with, and she’s confided in him that she’s being bullied at school by her one-time best friend, Avery (King). Their friendship changed over a minor incident that could have been dealt with very easily, but Avery has used it as a launchpad for a series of incidents that have made Jessica’s life an absolute misery. Brian gives her a brooch that doubles as a spy camera, and he persuades her to wear it at school, to document the bullying and provide proof that it’s happening. Jessica wears it, but is too fearful of what Avery might do if she finds out about it that she refuses to do anything with the footage, and she makes Brian promise he won’t tell anyone about it either. Then, one day, while wearing the brooch, she takes an overdose and lapses into a coma.

At this stage of the movie, what we’ve seen so far has been a compilation of footage shot by Brian, and footage from the spy camera. Now, with Jessica in a coma, and with no certainty that she’ll fully recover, the task of providing the viewer with footage falls to a documentary movie crew who are at South Brookdale thanks to its recent, highly impressive ranking in the national school league tables. Sensing a bigger story than the school’s educational achievements, the documentary’s director, Amy Gallagher (Weber), decides to focus on Jessica and how the rest of the students and the faculty feel about what she’s done, and the possibility that it’s linked to bullying. But “the fun” really begins when Amy finds out about Avery and decides to incorporate her into the documentary. Given a camera to record a daily video diary, Avery soon uses it as a means to make the viewer feel sorry for her instead of Jessica, but when Brian breaks his promise and shows Amy the footage of Jessica being bullied by Avery, “the most popular girl in school” soon learns that her past behaviour hasn’t always been her best behaviour, and her popularity begins to wane.

By mixing found footage with documentary footage in order to tell both Jessica’s story and Avery’s story, Weber has created a movie that looks and feels like a basic documentary but which veers off into straight up drama territory too often to make the conceit a successful one. It’s an earnest movie that looks to explore the fallout from Jessica’s suicide attempt in a way that’s sincere and non-judgmental – and therein lies its biggest problem. An initial talking heads approach with Amy eliciting the thoughts and reactions from students and faculty offer the expected clichés (“She was in my class but I didn’t really know her”), but once the idea of Jessica’s suicide attempt being the result of bullying arises, there are thinly veiled criticisms of the school’s anti-bullying policy (mostly from the teachers), and the students react in an offhand, blasé kind of way. For them, bullying, though deplorable, is just another fact of high school life.

So far, so predictable. But then, with Jessica consigned to a coma, Weber turns her attention to Avery, and makes her the focus instead. At first, this seems like a good idea, but the movie becomes irrevocably heavy-handed from this point on, and all the nominally good work Weber has put in so far begins to fall away. An extended scene at Avery’s home during dinner time shows her mother (Engle) behaving inappropriately and showing a complete lack of understanding in regard to Avery’s feelings. From this, we are meant to accept that Avery’s home life and domineering mother are to blame for her bullying Jessica, and that she is just as much a victim of bullying as Jessica. This would be fine if it wasn’t all too pat, and if Avery didn’t show any remorse until she sees the footage from the spy camera showing her being unrelentingly abusive. Sympathy for Avery, the movie seems to be saying, is essential if the cycle of bullying is to be broken, but Avery’s behaviour is presented as self-aware and opportunistic; she’s enjoying being a bully. And in another scene that’s meant to be telling, she does all she can to ensure that her parents don’t see the spy camera footage.

The movie strives to be an emotional rollercoaster as well, with tears at every turn, melodramatic scenes at the hospital, and awkward moments where Avery’s friends attempt to distance themselves from their involvement in her attacks on Jessica. It also stumbles badly in a scene where the school principal (Maurice) holds a meeting with Avery and her parents to get her side of “the story” (Avery’s friends have written a letter blaming her for Jessica’s situation). Avery is allowed to get angry, swear at the principal and storm off without any repercussions whatsoever. It’s a scene that lacks credibility throughout, and later, when Amy attempts to offer Avery help in dealing with the fallout from a self-serving, self-pitying video she posted online, the perilously thin line between documenary movie maker and secondary character is crossed irrevocably, and the movie reveals it’s true raison d’être: to persuade the viewer that being a bully is a matter of emotional circumstance and any blame is ephemeral. All of which is likely to provoke a less than satisfied response in the average viewer, and particularly if said viewer has been the victim of bullying themselves.

Nevertheless, there are good performances from King and Ainsworth, with strong support from Cotton and Boyd as Jessica’s distraught parents, but they’re all in service to a script that too often preaches when it should be observing (as all good documentaries do). Weber doesn’t always move from one scene to the next as fluidly as might be expected, and Samuel Brownfield’s cinematography noticeably varies between handheld and static and often in the same scene, a decision that undermines any attempt at cinéma vérité that Weber might be aiming for. There’s the germ of a good idea here, but with too much going on that feels forced or laboured, the same can also be said of the movie’s message… and that it can be applied to the movie itself can be considered unfortunate and ironic at the same time.

Rating: 5/10 – overheated at times and often lacking in subtlety, A Girl Like Her strives to provide a meaningful discourse on bullying and its aftermath, but falls short in its aim thanks to poor plotting and some wayward characterisations; with its uncertain approach and mix of shooting styles, it’s a movie that’s searching for a fixed identity, one that it brushes up against from time to time, but which it has very little chance of connecting with.

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Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

07 Monday Aug 2017

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D: Jon Watts / 133m

Cast: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, Tony Revolori, Bokeem Woodbine, Michael Chernus, Logan Marshall-Green, Tyne Daly, Hannibal Buress, Jennifer Connelly

What must it have been like back at the tail end of 2014 and the start of 2015 if you were “in the know” at Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, and were aware of what was about to happen to everyone’s favourite neighbourhood web-slinger? How exciting must that have been? If you were a fan of Spider-Man, just the anticipation that he might be coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was enough to send you into a giddy spell of mega proportions. And then to find out that not only was there going to be a new Spider-Man movie designed to bring him into the MCU, but that he was also going to make his first appearance in another movie within that Universe – well, it was like having Xmas every day (if you were a fan). And then to have that early appearance, in Captain America: Civil War (2016) no less, and for him to steal the movie – well, that was like having the best ice cream in the whole wide world, and with sprinkles on (but again, if you were a fan).

But what if you’re not a fan? What if the very idea of another Spider-Man reboot (the third in fifteen years) has all the attraction of a Liam Hemsworth movie? What if the idea of all that ice cream, with sprinkles on, holds no attraction at all? Well, if that’s the case then be assured: this is a Spider-Man movie that even non-fans can enjoy. And why? That’s the clever part. This is the first Spider-Man movie where the whole notion of “with great power comes great responsibility” is sidelined in favour of seeing Peter Parker struggle with the basics, and not some overwhelming sense of guilt over the death of his uncle, or his parents, or Mary Jane Watson (or even Norman Osborn). This is the first Spider-Man movie where the makers have done away with the more traditional origin story, and instead have got things started by accepting that we all know the story by now; so why bother? Why not just get on with it?

Which is exactly what happens, but cannily, not before a trip back to 2012 and the aftermath of the Battle of New York. There’s Chitauri technology all over the place, and salvage contractor Adrian Toombes (Keaton) has spotted a way of exploiting it in order to make a lot of money. But no sooner has he thought of it than he’s shut down by the US Department of Damage Control and forced to continue his plan to make weapons in secret. And before long, that plan is coming to fruition. Fast forward five years and high school student Peter Parker (Holland) still can’t believe he was involved in the airport scrap that took place in Berlin between Team Captain America and Team Iron Man. Still buzzing, Peter believes his involvement in that fight means he’s a member of the Avengers team, but Tony Stark (Downey Jr) has other ideas, and does his best to mentor Peter from a distance. But Peter is irrepressible (and naïve), and his determination to show Stark what he’s capable of inevitably backfires. When he inadvertently takes on some of the men that work for Toombes, it brings him to the attention of Toombes’ alter ego, The Vulture.

Peter decides it’s his mission to stop The Vulture from building and selling any more Chitauri-based weaponry, and one (future) classic scene where Peter and Toombes realise each other’s secret identities aside, the movie follows a predictable pattern before the inevitable superhero v supervillain showdown. But what makes the movie so charming and so enjoyable is both its backdrop and its setting: Peter’s first year in high school and all the trials and tribulations that follow in the wake of that teenage milestone. Already described as a superhero movie by way of John Hughes, Spider-Man’s first solo outing in the MCU paints a much more believable portrait of Peter Parker than we’ve seen in the previous five movies. By keeping Peter at the age he was when he developed his powers in the comics, Marvel have actually managed to breathe new life into the character and make him seem fresh and relevant, rather than  an angst-ridden science nerd with literally no friends. Here, Tom Holland’s incarnation is bright, overly enthusiastic, and immensely likeable (just like the movie). Holland perfectly captures the giddy sense of euphoria that comes from doing something so cool you want to shout from the rooftops about it – but know that you can’t. This is a Spider-Man who knows how to have fun (at last).

By focusing more on Peter’s attempts at fitting in, both in high school and in the wider world of superheroes, the script allows the audience to have a lot of fun at Peter’s expense. But then he is only fifteen, and he’s bound to make mistakes, whether from plain old exuberance or because he hasn’t built up his street smarts yet. Seeing him fail is more refreshing than expected, and a pivotal scene involving Stark and the loss of his Stark-created outfit highlights the true dilemma of being able to shoot webs and swing between tall buildings but not be able to talk to a girl. But again, it’s a happy dilemma because this is what the movie is all about: providing audiences with a surfeit of fun. Marvel know how to incorporate humour into their movies, but this may well be the first MCU movie that knows how to sustain that humour throughout, and round things off with the best end credits sting since Nick Fury first tried to recruit Tony Stark to some team he was trying to put together. This is a movie that is enjoyable and joyous at the same time, and proof that Marvel really do understand their characters better than anyone else (sorry Sony).

And for the first time since Loki we have a villain who has a credible motive for being the bad guy, and thanks to Keaton’s performance, he’s one we can have a degree of sympathy for. Toombes is about providing for and protecting his family, but though that’s an honourable sentiment, Keaton shows how that has become inexorably warped over the years, until his motives aren’t quite as clear-cut as when he began putting on the flying suit. Together, Holland and Keaton are terrific adversaries, and easily outshine the rest of the cast, who, to be fair, don’t stand out quite as well (though Batalon as Peter’s best friend, Ned, comes close). There’s the possibility of a romance for Peter with debate team captain, Liz (Harrier), that takes an unexpected turn, a series of action scenes that vary between broadly exciting and acceptable, competent direction from Watts that fares better away from said action scenes, a little too much moralising from Tony Stark, and a “get-to-know-your-suit” sequence which is possibly the movie’s true highlight. Smartly written – and by a team of six writers at that – this is the Spider-Man movie fans have been waiting for. Now, how about all you non-fans?

Rating: 8/10 – a giddy fun ride of a movie that can’t contain its own excitement about existing, Spider-Man: Homecoming adds another superhero to the MCU roster and does so with exuberance and no small amount of wit; you know Marvel have got a firm grip on things when the opening music cues reference the original Sixties animated series theme tune, and web-swinging in the suburbs brings its own measures of difficulty and danger.

Speak (2004)

30 Sunday Jul 2017

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D: Jessica Sharzer / 89m

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Perkins, Steve Zahn, Michael Angarano, Allison Siko, Hallee Hirsh, D.B. Sweeney, Eric Lively, Robert John Burke, Leslie Lyles, Megan Pillar

It seems to be a truism that all actors and actresses only ever look forwards: to the next role, the next script, the next director in need of their talents. Ask them about past roles and a reluctance seems to set in. Oh, they’ll talk about the movies they made when they first started out, and they may even have fond memories of making some of them, but more often than not, it’s the next project that they’re really interested in. But audiences aren’t necessarily that focused, and fans even less so. They want the reassurance that said actor or actress will be making the same kind of movies that have made them famous. Familiarity breeds contentment, if you will. But what’s often interesting in an actor or actress’s career is the movies they made before they became truly famous, before they became a household name or achieved international recognition. Looking back can be just as advantageous as looking forward. After all, we know what they can do now, but what could they do back in the day?

Speak is a movie that Kristen Stewart made when she was just fourteen. It’s important to remember that, as the role of Melinda Sordino, a high school freshman who suffers a traumatic experience at a friend’s summer house party, requires her to portray a teenager you can actually identify with – and the reason she’s so good isn’t entirely because the character is well written. It’s as much a reflection on Stewart’s burgeoning talent as an actress as it is on the script by director Sharzer and co-writer Annie Young Frisbie (and itself an adaptation of the award-winning novel of the same name by Laurie Halse Anderson). Returning to school after the summer hiatus, Melinda finds herself ostracised by her friends, and treated like a pariah. The reason? At the party, Melinda called 911 but failed to tell the police why she was calling. However, the police traced her call and attended, prompting everyone to run for the hills (though why is never explained). Now, Melinda is regarded as a “squealer”.

With her best friend, Rachel (pronounced Rachelle) (Hirsh), ignoring her, and most of the other pupils whispering about her and giving her pointed looks, Melinda finds herself developing unexpected friendships with two fellow students, newbie Heather (Siko), and Melinda’s biology lab partner, Dave (Angarano). She also receives the help and support of her art teacher, Mr Freeman (Zahn), who encourages her to explore her feelings through an assignment he sets her. But still she struggles to deal with what happened to her at the party, something she’s told no one about, and something that stops her from trying to regain the friendships she used to have. As the school year progresses she begins to grow more confident in herself, and by its end has reached the conclusion that she needs to tell someone, anyone, about what happened to her. At first she wants to tell a stranger, but realises that there is only one person she should talk to. However, that person is Rachel, and what Melinda has to tell her may end their friendship for good.

Whatever your feelings about Kristen Stewart as an actress, it’s safe to say that the role of Bella in the Twilight saga was a game changer, and since that franchise ended in 2012, Stewart has made some eclectic choices and chosen a variety of roles and appeared in a variety of genres in order to escape being typecast as the somewhat dour heroine who rarely gets to smile. It was a straitjacket role, and there were times when Stewart seemed unable to give the role more than what was in the script. There are no such problems in Speak, a movie that looks at peer pressure in a compassionate, intelligent way, and how the devastating effects of a terrible experience can express themselves in ways that are positive and of benefit to the person concerned. Melinda’s ordeal is shown fairly early on, allowing the audience to sympathise with her and feel angry on her behalf. Of course, Melinda is still trying to deal with it all in her own way, and she seeks to withdraw from everyone while at the same time wishing everything could return to normal. Stewart highlights this dochotomy with an assurance that belies her age, and as Melinda’s emotions tug her this way and that, Stewart never loses sight of the different kinds of pain that she’s feeling, even as time goes on.

With Stewart giving such an impressive portrayal, it’s a shame that too much else stands out in poor relief. Melinda’s parents (Perkins, Sweeney) are too self-involved to even realise that their daughter is going through a bad time (even Melinda’s drawing lines on her lips in lieu of stitches is dismissed out of hand), and Burke’s racist history teacher bullies her in worse fashion than her friends (and gets away with it). And despite a good performance from Zahn, his freewheeling, rebellious art teacher feels contrived and/or stereotypical depending on the scene. But the main issue that may disappoint viewers is the idea that Melinda will spend much of the movie not speaking as a way of protesting what has, and is, happening to her. She even wonders how long it would take people to notice if she did. But in the end, she stays mute for two scenes and that is it for that idea. What could have made the movie more engrossing and challenging, instead is referenced on occasion and treated as a temporary affectation rather than a defined way of rebelling. At one point, Melinda is asked why a revolutionary is only as good as his or her analysis; she replies that you should know what you stand for, and not just what you’re against. This arrives too late to push the movie in a more dramatic direction, because even then Melinda’s avowal of this doesn’t mean that she’s any better equipped to deal with things or make a personal stand, just more determined to face up to them.

Having the action take place over a school year (with continual references to the holidays/special dates in order for the viewer to keep track of the time elapsing) means the movie is very episodic in nature, and as a result, it’s unable to maintain dramatic traction. Sharzer, whose sole feature credit this is so far, makes no effort to overcome this, leaving the viewer to wonder just what needs to happen to make Melinda start dealing with what happened to her. And too much of what does happen feels like it’s been lifted wholesale from other teen dramas, from the internal logic to the secondary characters to the way in which various subplots are left hanging as if waiting to be included in an extended director’s cut. It wouldn’t be fair to say that Speak is mostly shallow, but it doesn’t always reach the heights that Anderson’s novel attains, and its TV Movie of the Week veneer doesn’t help either. A bold choice, then, but one that lets down its source material, and in the process, its audience.

Rating: 6/10 – there’s a really great movie to be made from Anderson’s novel but sadly, Speak is only a middling effort that’s as good as it is thanks to Stewart’s perceptive, intuitive performance; engaging enough, and with a dry sense of humour that’s allowed to flourish from time to time, it’s a movie that has no trouble drawing in the viewer, but which then has to work extra hard to keep them interested, something that’s not quite so easily done. (28/31)

Before I Fall (2017)

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

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D: Ry Russo-Young / 99m

Cast: Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Kian Lawley, Elena Kampouris, Cynthy Wu, Medalion Rahimi, Erica Tremblay, Liv Hewson, Diego Boneta, Jennifer Beals

It’s Cupid’s Day (12 February), a day for romantic gestures, red roses, and if you’re high schooler Samantha Kingston (Deutch), the perfect time to lose your virginity with your boyfriend, Rob (Lawley). As her day begins, Samantha is teased about this by her three best friends, Lindsay (Sage), Ally (Wu), and Elody (Rahimi), but she’s comfortable with their comments and single entendres. One of her classes is interrupted by the arrival of flower girls, students going from classroom to classroom and distributing roses for the lucky students who have an admirer (known or unknown), and while Rob has sent her some, she receives another that she believes has come from Kent (Miller), someone she’s known since they were children. Later, Kent invites her to a party he’s having that night. At the party, Rob drinks too much to be of use sexually, while the arrival of Juliet (Kampouris), an outsider that Samantha and her friends have bullied for some time, leads to an altercation and Juliet running off into the surrounding woods. The four friends leave soon after, but as they travel home in Lindsay’s car, it hits something in the road and crashes, killing them all.

But Samantha wakes up and it’s Cupid’s Day again. She can remember what happened, but when she meets up with her friends again, they’re all doing and saying the same things they did the day before. Samantha relives the day knowing that something isn’t right, but while some incidents and events happen differently, the end result is the same and Samantha finds herself waking up on Cupid’s Day. This continues over and over, with Samantha finding different ways of dealing with each same day. As she does so, she discovers things about Lindsay that she didn’t know, and about Juliet, and begins to understand much of what was going on in her life, but which she’d either ignored or wasn’t aware of. But with each change she makes there are consequences, some emotional, some moral, some unexpected. In time she begins to realise that the true benefit of having so many days in which she can experience her life over and over again, is the ability it brings to live a perfect day, and to use it to put right so many of the things that would otherwise remain unalterably wrong.

Before I Fall is based on the young adult novel of the same name by Lauren Oliver, and while it certainly paints an interesting portrait of the group dynamic surrounding Samantha and her friends, on its wider, broader themes of bullying, peer pressure, socially approved acceptance, and emotional confusion, Maria Maggenti’s screenplay lacks the focus needed to make the movie as compelling as it could have been. The opportunity to provide viewers with a powerfully realised exploration of teenage redemption as seen through the eyes of Samantha and the cruel circumstances of her death, is undermined by the determinedly soap opera elements of the plot, and the stereotypical natures of the characters.

Samantha is revealed to be the conscience of her little clique, while Lindsay is the overbearing queen bitch that the other three defer to, and Ally and Elody are the “other two”, the less rounded but nevertheless essential characters needed to make Samantha and Lindsay more important in comparison. With these stock incarnations established, and the movie’s opening twenty minutes devoted to the kind of socially exclusive banter and posturing that quickly grows tiresome if you’re not a member of the group itself, the movie heads for Kent’s party and an awkwardly staged – and edited – hazing of Juliet that you can’t help but feel wouldn’t have happened because Juliet would never have gone there in the first place. It disarms the movie in moments, and brings the viewer out of what up until then, had been an acceptable small town milieu with recognisable small town behaviours. But without it, a major part of Samantha’s coming to terms with her own attitudes and prejudices would go amiss, and her Road to Damascus would take a lot longer to travel along. It’s a compromise, but it’s also dramatically unsound.

The tone of the movie varies too, with domestic scenes at Samantha’s home taking centre stage just as further explorations of her friends and their interactions seem likely to reap better dividends, and then again when the plot decrees that of course Samantha’s relationship with Rob is inappropriate and it shifts her attention to Kent. There isn’t always a through line to connect all these disparate elements though, and while there is a piecemeal, episodic approach to the material that’s no doubt derived from its Groundhog Day-style structure, what connections there are, are often left hanging in order for the action to move from one scene to the next. By the time of Samantha’s last day, the day when she makes everything right, the movie has corrected this imbalance, but it’s too late. However it all turns out, whatever sympathy or support the viewer may have had for Samantha and her efforts will have evaporated long before then (like so many of the movie’s subplots).

What also evaporates very early on is any attempt at providing the plot and the characters with any depth. Maggenti’s script references Sisyphus (a clumsy metaphor for Samantha’s plight) and the Butterfly Effect (an inane metaphor for… what exactly?), but otherwise keeps things simple and simplistic in equal measure. Even the blatant promotion of the mantra Be Yourself (here reworked as Become Who You Are) has all the resonance of a greetings card homily. Meaning and purpose are bandied about with abandon, but neither land with conviction on either the script or the characters, and when pressed into action, feel contrived and pedantic.

The performances are serviceable, with Deutch given the kind of voice over dialogue that even the likes of Meryl Streep or Julianne Moore would struggle with, and only Kampouris makes any real impression, and that’s thanks to possibly the most unflattering blonde wig seen in many a year, and the strident nature of her portrayal. Otherwise it’s business as usual in a teen drama, with the problems of a bunch of well off kids put into sharp relief by the banality of their issues, and their persistent bullying of one of their classmates proof that they’re as shallow as their own gene pools.

Russo-Young’s direction is as wayward as the script, and they seem to be a perfect match for each other, but though the director lacks the wherewithal to make a better movie out of Maggenti’s ill-focused screenplay, she is at least able to relay a sense of the painful ennui that must come eventually from reliving the same day over and over. Thematically, she doesn’t have as tight a control on things as the viewer would like, and this shows in the pacing too, as scenes that should have a directness and a sharpness of intent are allowed to go on for too long, and jeopardise the viewer’s patience and/or interest. It’s all topped off by a slightly trippy score courtesy of Adam Taylor that, much like the movie overall, is intermittently successful at adding to the mood, and sometimes, is overly intrusive.

Rating: 5/10 – to borrow a phrase from sellers everywhere, “Buyer beware!”, because Before I Fall never lives up to its promise, and never focuses long enough on what it needs to in order to be more effective; a drama attempting to be something much more than it is, it’s a project that – like so many others – needed a much better script before it was allowed into production, and which works best if you go into it with absolutely no expectations at all.

Life of a King (2013)

14 Monday Dec 2015

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Life of a King

D: Jake Goldenberger / 98m

Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr, Malcolm M. Mays, Kevin Hendricks, Carlton Byrd, Rachae Thomas, LisaGay Hamilton, Richard T. Jones, Dennis Haysbert, Paula Jai Parker, Jordan Calloway, Blake Cooper Griffin

A true story involving troubled teens, inner city trials and tribulations, an ex-con with family issues, and the redemptive power of chess, Life of a King has good intentions, a lot of heart, and the slow, steady pace of an illness-of-the-week TV movie. It also has a relaxed, committed performance from Gooding Jr, and enough hokey moments to choke an elephant. But what it also has is that curious approach to a true story that often leads audiences to believe that a real person’s life is stuffed full of clichés and dramatic coincidence.

The movie tells the story of Eugene Brown (Gooding Jr), who served seventeen years in prison for armed robbery, and who, once he was released, took the opportunity with a group of inner city youths to set up a community chess club. Along the way he finds it difficult to find honest work by admitting he’s an ex-con; subsequently lies on an application form for janitor at his local high school; tries to reunite with his disaffected children, Katrina (Thomas) and Marcus (Calloway); avoids being dragged back into a life of crime by his old partner Perry (Jones); faces down the school hard nut, Clifton (Byrd); sees potential in another student, Tahime (Mays); is fired once his principal (Hamilton) finds out he’s lied on his application; rents a derelict house so the chess club can carry on; stands helplessly by as one of the other students, Peanut (Hendricks), is dragged into a dangerous situation with unfortunate results; begins to connect with his children through his efforts with the chess club; overcomes a setback involving the house; and looks ahead to his chess protegés entering and triumphing in a local tournament. And then…?

Life of a King - scene2

If any of this sounds incredibly or entirely predictable, then by and large it is. From Brown’s surrogate father relationship with The Chessman (Haysbert) while in gaol, to Tahime’s showdown against a chess prodigy (Griffin), Life of a King ticks every possible true story box in its retelling of Brown’s story. It’s an homogenised approach to an uplifting tale that deserves better, but thanks to Goldberger’s mostly leaden direction, there are precious few moments of real power and emotion. What moments there are, are also mostly down to Gooding Jr’s earnest, well-modulated performance. He’s suitably determined as Brown, and shows the man’s resourcefulness and drive with a good sense of the difficulties he must have faced and overcome.

But again, he’s fighting against the poor performance of Goldberger in the director’s chair (making only his second feature). Goldberger – working from the script he wrote with David Scott and Dan Wetzel – seems unable to rise above the clichéd nature of his own narrative, and on several occasions seems to be embracing each cliché wholeheartedly. Some scenes feel like they’ve been constructed from the DNA of several true story TV movies, and viewers familiar with those kind of movies will notice that some of the scenes have been shot in that very style (and some individual shots as well).

Life of a King - scene1

This all makes the movie watchable enough thanks to the familiarity with which it’s being presented, but a bit of a chore as well thanks to the very same familiarity. Some fun can be had from anticipating each cliché before it appears, and if you felt so inclined, you could devise a predictability curve that could be drawn as the movie progresses (though it might end up being just a straight line). It’s all a shame as Brown’s story is engaging in its own right, and his efforts are well worth celebrating, but a different format is definitely needed. There’s also the problem of the script’s occasional moralising, as it uses the metaphor of chess to represent Life as often as it can, as if the audience wouldn’t get it the first time.

Aside from Gooding Jr’s portrayal of Brown, the rest of the cast do their best to make some headway against the material, with Mays’ reticent Tahime and Hendricks’ eager beaver Peanut making more of an impression than expected. Byrd’s sneering Clifton is straight out of Stock Characters 101, and he’s matched by Jones’ preening drug lord and Calloway’s petulant son. It’s the female characters that come off best (though that’s not saying much), and Hamilton is strongest as the high school principal who’s sympathetic to Brown’s cause (and even helps out with the dishes at the chess house).

Life of a King - scene3

As mentioned above, the movie ends with Tahime taking on a chess genius in an open tournament, and in the final naturally. But what should be a gripping sequence is let down by Goldberger’s inability to shoot it all with any sense of urgency or tension. And he’s further let down by editor Julie Garces, whose decision to represent the game through a flurry of indistinguishable moves and clock-punching makes it all impossible to follow (though that was probably the idea). It’s a clunky end to a movie that’s been the definition of clunky from the very beginning.

Rating: 4/10 – slackly and lazily constructed, Life of a King doesn’t do its subject matter justice, and lets the audience down in the process; tired and ineffective, it’s a true life tale that’s been soaked in complacency and shows off its shortcomings as if they were unavoidable.

Ashby (2015)

27 Sunday Sep 2015

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Ashby

D: Tony McNamara / 103m

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Nat Wolff, Emma Roberts, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Dunn, Zachary Knighton, Michael Lerner, John Enos III

Seventeen year old Ed Wallis (Wolff) and his mother, June (Silverman), have moved into a new neighbourhood following June’s divorce from Ed’s father. Ed is a self-contained, quietly determined, well-read teenager who is struggling to make sense of his life and where it’s going. When his English teacher instructs Ed’s class to write a report about an “old person” – one they actually have to talk to – Ed decides to write his report about his neighbour, Ashby Holt (Rourke).

Unknown to Ed, Ashby has a brain tumour that has left him with only three months left to live. When Ed knocks on his door, Ashby tales advantage of the situation, and in return for talking to Ed about his life, gets him to drive Ashby around. On their first trip, Ashby tells Ed he was a napkin salesman, but later, when Ed helps Ashby through a potential seizure, he discovers that this particular “napkin salesman” has a small arsenal of weapons in his basement and a clutch of passports in different names. Despite Ed’s attempts to cover his tracks, Ashby knows what’s happened, and the next day he and Ed go for a drive where he reveals that he was actually a CIA assassin, and has killed over ninety people. When Ed asks him if he has any regrets or doubts about what he did, Ashby’s response isn’t as unequivocal as Ashby himself would have liked.

Back in high school, Ed attracts the attention of Eloise (Roberts), a student whose class project involves her studying the effect of violent collisions on the brains of the football team. Ed wants to be a part of the team, but his slight frame and nerd-like appearance doesn’t inspire much confidence, but when he reveals his talent as a wide receiver, he wins his place. Meanwhile, Ashby becomes concerned that one of the people he killed wasn’t as deserving as he believed at the time. When he looks into the man’s life and career, Ashby discovers that his bosses lied to him, and he determines to make amends before he dies, even if it means their deaths. While Ashby searches for redemption, Ed tries his best to deal with his mother’s habitual dating (and inferred one night stands), his father continually failing to visit him, his fear of being hit during a football match, and navigating the tricky waters of his relationship with Eloise. And then he learns about Ashby’s latest “mission”…

Ashby - scene

A coming-of-age tale that features a handful of winning performances, and an uneven but engaging storyline, Ashby is an independent feature that just about works thanks to the spirited commitment of its cast and the relative originality and quirkiness of the script by director McNamara, who also made the wonderful The Rage of Placid Lake (2003).

As a coming-of-age tale the movie relies heavily on making Ed a bit of a coward, and he’s whiny too, justifying his reluctant behaviour at every turn and always making excuses for the people around him, such as his father, whom he always speaks well of, even when they don’t deserve it. Ed is continually defending these people, even the jock who assaults him; he spends so much time understanding why people treat him so badly, this very “understanding” marks him out as one of Life’s perennial victims. He also complains too much when things don’t work out as he’d like them to, which leads to Ashby telling him he’s got to stop “bitchin’ like a sheep on crystal meth”. With all this, it’s a tribute to Wolff’s performance that the viewer doesn’t dislike Ed on principle, and it’s a further tribute that when things do start to go right for him, the viewer is completely on his side and urging him on.

But while Ed’s journey is paved with good intentions rarely achieved, Ashby’s is more soulful and melancholic. As he helps Ed manoeuvre the minefield that is becoming an adult, Ashby looks to put his affairs in order before he’s reunited with his wife and daughter in the afterlife (even though he knows there’s no guarantee he will be). There’s a sombre, religious and philosophical consideration here that doesn’t quite fit in with Ashby’s character as a whole, and there’s a scene where he visits the local priest (Knighton) for absolution that holds up the movie and feels out of place, mostly because this takes place during the period he’s looking to “take care” of his old bosses. That said, Rourke is on terrific form as Ashby, his usual mannered approach to a role here left off and replaced with a restrained, careful take on a character that could so easily have been a caricature if it weren’t for the combination of Rourke’s portrayal and McNamara’s writing (and for once, it looks like Rourke is really enjoying himself).

Where McNamara does stumble though is in his treatment of the secondary characters, with Roberts’ Eloise possessing the kind of confidence and self-awareness that only teenage females in the movies have, while Silverman’s love-hungry June openly admits to Ed that she likes sex in a scene that again, is only likely to happen in the movies. The writer/director also has trouble judging the length of a scene, leaving some to run on (the locker room scenes), while others feel truncated (the early scenes between Ed and his mother). But even though these problems intrude from time to time and break the movie’s rhythm, they’re not enough to ruin the mood of the piece as a whole, which finds clever ways to celebrate both the beginning of one adult life and the end of another.

First and foremost a drama, Ashby finds room for some much-needed and relishable humour, from some terrific one-liners to occasional visual gags that are as unexpected as they are hilarious, and McNamara is often on surer ground in these instances. But it’s Rourke and Wolff who make this work so well, their scenes together displaying a keen sense of timing with both actors sparking off each other to great effect. Aided by some very crisp, stylish photography from Christopher Baffa, and a succinct, gently supportive score by Alec Puro, the movie overcomes many of its failings to become a heartfelt, meditative examination of an unlikely but mutually rewarding friendship.

Rating: 7/10 – some viewers may feel that Ashby is too good-natured or lightweight to be entirely successful, but it has a likeable, winning nature that’s hard to ignore, and what it has to say it says without too much prevarication or pontificating; with Rourke giving one of his best performances for quite some time, and Wolff reminding audiences just why he’s one of the best young actors working today, the movie is a small-scale treat that would have benefitted from some judicious script editing and a more streamlined storyline, but still retains a charm all its own.

The D Train (2015)

22 Saturday Aug 2015

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D Train, The

D: Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel / 101m

Cast: Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor, Russell Posner, Mike White, Henry Zebrowski, Kyle Bornheimer

Dan Landsman (Black) is the self-styled chairman of his high school reunion committee. He enjoys what limited prestige comes with the position (which isn’t much), but can’t get the respect from his fellow committee members that he thinks he deserves. This is due to his overbearing, self-important approach to organising the reunion, and the fact that he was never popular in high school. As he and the rest of the committee call up their peers and are continually let down, Dan finds a solution in the unlikeliest of places: a Banana Boat commercial. The “star” of the commercial is none other than Oliver Lawless (Marsden), the most popular guy in high school. Dan reasons that if he can get Oliver to attend the reunion, everyone will.

Dan determines that a face-to-face approach is needed, but Oliver lives in L.A., while he lives in Pittsburgh. Under the pretence of going there for an important business meeting, Dan books a flight and gets ready to go. But his boss, Mr Schurmer (Tambor), insists on coming with him to help facilitate the deal that Dan has supposedly set up. Unable to persuade his boss to stay in Pittsburgh, he has no choice but to make it seem as if the deal has fallen through. Dan tracks down Oliver and they spend the night on the town, going from club to club and bar to bar and getting drunk and high. Dan goes back to his hotel room but in the early hours, Oliver, feeling down, pays him a visit. Dan reveals the true reason for his visit, and even tells Oliver about the so-called business deal; Oliver agrees to attend the reunion.

The next morning, Oliver poses as the businessman Dan has been dealing with, but instead of killing the deal as Dan needs him to, he tells Schurmer that it’s a go. Oliver apologises, but tells Dan he can easily put a stop to things when he’s back in Pittsburgh. That night they go out on the town again, but this time they end up back at Oliver’s apartment. To Dan’s surprise, Oliver makes a pass at him. What happens next leaves Dan bewildered and confused. Back home he finds his boss spending lots of money on the business in expectation of the deal going through, his fourteen year old son Zach (Posner) experiencing problems of the heart, and his wife Stacey (Hahn) pleased for him for landing the deal and Oliver’s attendance at the reunion.

But when Oliver arrives for the reunion and stays at Dan’s home, Dan begins behaving erratically, and he starts to alienate his wife and son, and the members of the committee (who don’t like him that much anyway). As the reunion draws nearer, he tries his best to behave normally but the events in L.A. have had a greater impact on him than even he’s aware of. And it’s at the reunion itself that Dan’s behaviour causes the greatest upset as he and Oliver confront each other over what happened, and Dan is left feeling isolated and alone, and wondering what he can do to make things right with the people he cares about.

THE D TRAIN - 2015 FILM STILL - Jack Black (Dan Landsman) and James Marsden (Oliver Lawless) - Photo Credit: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle. An IFC Films release.

Having previously worked on the script for Yes Man (2008), writers/directors Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel have upped their game somewhat for The D Train, and the result is a clever, sometimes very funny comedy drama that gives Black his best role since Bernie (2011) (though to be fair he has only made two other movies in that time). It’s also smart, knowing and occasionally tragic in its look at its main character’s constant need for respect and approbation, and the lengths he’ll go to in order to be acknowledged.

The social misfit is perhaps Black’s niche role (it can only be a matter of time before he plays a serial killer), and as in Bernie he’s uncomfortably comfortable in the role of a man whose social standing is based on his lack of popularity in high school (when we see him calling his fellow alumni not one of them appears to remember him without the benefit of some heavy prompting). Away from the reunion committee he’s in a respected position at work, with his boss happy to defer to Dan’s judgement on matters, while his home life appears secure as well. But it’s his lack of social presence that bothers him, and why he’s never fit in. Meeting Oliver in L.A. reminds him he can be a fun guy, that he can be good company, and more importantly, that those traits have always been inside him; it’s just needed someone of Oliver’s carefree nature to bring them out of him.

But with freedom comes (no, not great responsibility) a complete misunderstanding of the nature of friendship and many of the unspoken rules that go with it. Back in Pittsburgh, Dan displays all the signs of someone who’s been abandoned or had their favourite toy taken away from them; he just doesn’t know how to deal with all the raw feelings he’s experiencing. He overcompensates in the bedroom (not that Stacey minds), but then rudely ignores Zach when he needs some fatherly advice. The situation at work becomes unmanageable, and when Oliver shows himself to be a better father figure, Dan over-reacts and tells him to leave. It’s in these moments when Dan’s insecurities and jealousy of Oliver’s “cool” attitude shows him for the desperately needy person that he is.

Black is superb in the role, and he’s matched by Marsden who portrays Oliver’s shallow lifestyle with a thread of sadness lurking beneath the rampant hedonism. Hahn, who goes from strength to strength with each movie she makes, delivers a polished if largely restrained performance that makes for an effective counterpoint to Black’s anguished social walrus. And Tambor is terrific as Dan’s boss, a confirmed Luddite whose puppy-dog adoption of computers and the Internet contributes to Dan’s downfall.

But while the performances are all above average, and while the basic premise is a sound one given enough room for considered examination, the movie does have its faults, and in the same way that Paul and Mogel’s script is on solid ground when dissecting Dan’s motives and behaviour, it’s less so when it introduces moments and scenes of crass humour. One scene in particular stands out, when Oliver gives Zach advice on how to manage in a threesome. Despite the obvious humour to be had from such a scene, it’s still at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie, and there’s nothing the directors can do to offset the awkwardness of having a man in his late Thirties giving sex advice to a fourteen year old (it’s also strange that the script thinks it’s entirely likely that Zach would ask his dad about such a subject while at the dinner table). And at the reunion, Dan snorts cocaine in the bathroom before being discovered by Jerry (White), one of the committee members. Dan rambles on and Jerry’s surprise at Dan’s behaviour evaporates as quickly as it occurs. And Mr Schurmer’s subdued reaction to the potential loss of his company is meant to be quietly tragic but seems instead to be a case of the script not wanting to follow that particular plot thread any further (the same goes for Stacey’s reaction to the revelation of what happened in L.A.).

D Train, The - scene 2

With the characters routinely involved in scenes that don’t always have a logical follow-on, or betray the emotion of a scene (e.g. when Oliver leaves for L.A. and says goodbye to two of the committee members), the movie tries for hard-edged adult humour too often at the expense of the more important dramatic aspects. While the humour is mostly very funny indeed, a lot of it feels shoe-horned in, as if they were added to the script somewhere in the pre-production phase. As a result the movie feels disjointed at times, and lacks the overall focus afforded the drama, leaving audiences to wonder if the humour is there to provide some relief from the themes of social inequality, self respect, alienation, and personal inadequacy. If it is, then unfortunately the way in which it’s been done lacks authority.

Rating: 7/10 – deficiencies in the script leave The D Train feeling like it’s falling short of its original intentions; Black is on terrific form however, keeping the movie afloat through some of its more unlikely moments, and perfectly judging the pathos needed to avoid Dan being completely unlikeable.

Barely Lethal (2015)

31 Sunday May 2015

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Barely Lethal

D: Kyle Newman / 96m

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Samuel L. Jackson, Sophie Turner, Jessica Alba, Dove Cameron, Toby Sebastian, Thomas Mann, Rachael Harris, Jaime King, Dan Fogler, Steve-O, Gabriel Basso, Rob Huebel, Jason Ian Drucker

Sixteen year old Agent 83 (Steinfeld) works for a top secret organisation called Prescott that adopts orphaned girls and trains them to be assassins. But she yearns for a more ordinary, regular life, glimpses of which she gets when on her missions. When a plan to capture wanted terrorist Victoria Knox (Alba) leaves Agent 83 missing presumed dead, she takes the opportunity to live a normal life. She changes her name to Megan Walsh, invents a back story for herself and enrols herself in a foreign student exchange programme that sees her living with the Larsons – mum (Harris), daughter Liz (Cameron), and son Parker (Drucker) – and attending high school.

Fitting in, though, proves harder than she’d imagined. Despite doing her research, Megan finds average life more demanding, and confusing, than anything she’s encountered before. With Liz wanting nothing to do with her, and her faux-Canadian background doing her no favours, it’s not until the intervention of high school heart-throb and teen singing sensation Cash Fenton (Sebastian) that Megan begins to be accepted. Megan develops an immediate crush on Cash, but she already has an admirer in tech-geek Roger Marcus (Mann). Having been tricked into applying for the role of football team mascot – and getting it – Megan gains true acceptance when she takes out three would-be kidnappers of the team mascot, a traditional prank foiled by Megan’s “special set of skills”.

The resulting video goes viral and leads to her being found by her instructor at Prescott, Hardman (Jackson). Along with fellow Prescott agent Pedro (Steve-O), Hardman interrogates Megan, believing she’s working for someone else. But when it becomes clear she just wants to lead a normal life, Hardman tells her she only has time to wrap things up before coming back to Prescott. Later, at a party where she’s looking forward to hooking up with Cash, she finds Agent 84 (Turner), aka Heather, in attendance. Annoyed that Hardman would use Heather to keep an eye on her, Megan is further annoyed when Heather makes a play for Cash.

Another meeting with Hardman reveals that Knox has escaped and will no doubt be looking to catch up with Megan and kill her. Despite his offer of protection if she comes back to Prescott, Megan refuses to leave her new home, and begins to take steps to ensure that the Larsons remain safe. And at the upcoming Homecoming dance, she hopes to finally land Cash as her boyfriend, though she has begun to have conflicting feelings for Roger. With all this going on, Megan has to fall back on her training in order to get through it all, and maintain her new lifestyle.

Barely Lethal - scene

The idea of a teen assassin dealing with the pitfalls of high school is one that could have given new meaning to the phrase “mean girls”, but here it’s the starting point for an extremely lightweight, by-the-numbers movie that is pleasantly assembled, but astoundingly hollow at the same time. By bringing in such a talented cast, Barely Lethal (not the best pun for a movie, either), may give the interested viewer the impression that the movie is going to be better than it actually is. But in the hands of director Newman (whose previous feature, Fanboys (2009), was a surprise pleasure) and writer John D’Arco, the movie is one that struggles to maintain an even tone, and squanders many of its chances to layer its basic premise with appropriate levels of irony.

The movie makes no effort to avoid or subvert the standard tropes of high school movies, and instead embraces them wholeheartedly without doing anything new with them. This leaves the movie looking and feeling like any other generic high school movie and even the introduction of Megan and her special skill set doesn’t hamper or redefine it. This level of familiarity works against the movie and though Steinfeld et al. waltz through it all with confidence, for them it must have been like the acting equivalent of treading water. Even Jackson and Alba can’t do much with characters that scream “simple movie stereotype”. With every character and situation proving lacklustre as a result, the movie never really manages to take off and become as enjoyable as it should be.

The humour in the movie is also quite forced, from the youngest Prescott recruits being called “grandma” when their driving skills don’t come up to scratch, to Megan’s first day outfit, to creepy teacher Mr Drumm (Fogler) and his stalking of Cash, to Roger’s even creepier father (Huebel) whose conversation is almost entirely inappropriate – none of it is as funny as it probably seemed at the time of filming, and even with the best efforts of the cast. Newman’s direction doesn’t help either, as each development in the script is allowed to play out with little emphasis on the drama involved, or what reaction it provokes in the characters, and the humour doesn’t leaven things either.

As the girl who’s more comfortable deciphering weapons schematics than the pitfalls of high school life, Steinfeld is an engaging presence but settles for doing just enough to satisfy the demands of the script. The same is true of Turner, who pouts her way through the movie as Megan’s chief rival, and Alba, playing an impression of a caricature of a stereotype as the villainous Knox. Mann emerges relatively unscathed by the experience, and Jackson is predictably hard-nosed (but with a heart of gold), but by and large the performances are as blandly likeable as the material. And the whole thing is rounded off by the kind of soundtrack selections that attempt to mirror the on screen action for emotion but lack any real nuance.

Rating: 4/10 – a missed opportunity, Barely Lethal is so humdrum it should be called Barely Lethargic; with a lack of flair behind the camera allied to a below-par script, the movie sinks under the weight of its own low expectations and despite an opening sequence that passes muster, never amounts to much more than being acceptable.

The Sisterhood of Night (2014)

02 Saturday May 2015

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Sisterhood of Night, The

D: Caryn Waechter / 103m

Cast: Georgie Henley, Kara Hayward, Kal Penn, Laura Fraser, Olivia DeJonge, Willa Cuthrell, Jessica Hecht, Gary Wilmes, Louis Changchien, Morgan Turner, Evan Kuzma

Following a feud between teenage classmates Mary Warren (Henley) and Emily Parris (Hayward) that lands both of them in the office of guidance counsellor Gordy Gambhir (Penn), Mary – whose private texts have been published online via Emily’s blog – decides to go offline and take a vow of virtual silence. She also decides to create a sisterhood, a group that girls can join that doesn’t rely on sharing things online but with each other. Her first recruits are Catherine (Cuthrell) and Lavinia (DeJonge). At night, they sneak out to the woods and have their meetings. Above all, they swear to maintain the secrecy of what they’re doing.

As time passes, awareness of the sisterhood grows and membership becomes an ambition for many of Mary’s peers, but only she chooses who to invite into the group. One person left out is Emily, who becomes jealous of Mary’s influence on her friends, and who struggles to fit in at school. One night she follows a new member into the woods and witnesses one of the meetings. Later that night, Emily posts an update on her blog telling everyone that the girls in the sisterhood chanted dirty words, undressed and touched each other, and cut Emily’s hand before doing the same to her. With the sisterhood refusing to reveal the nature of their meetings, Emily’s claims are allowed to go unchallenged, and soon her blog becomes very popular on the Internet, attracting hundreds of followers. It also attracts other schoolmates who claim they have been abused by the sisterhood as well.

As more and more claims are made about the sisterhood, the girls’ parents become more and more aware of what’s going on, and so too does the media. The press has a field day speculating on whether or not the sisterhood is a cult, or if it brainwashes its members, or if it worships the devil, but Mary and the rest hold fast and keep to their vow of silence. Emily’s blog continues to grow in stature, and becomes a place where people who have been abused can talk about what’s happened to them. At the same time, Emily and two of her friends decide to target Lavinia, believing that put under enough pressure she will reveal the secrets of the sisterhood. Meanwhile, Mary’s budding relationship with Jeff (Kuzma) founders over her silence, and upset by this she ends up one night at Gambhir’s; matters are made worse by their being seen by Emily’s mother (Hecht). As tensions mount in the community, Mary comes under pressure from Catherine and Lavinia to come clean, while Emily has second thoughts about the plan to make Lavinia reveal the sisterhood’s secrets.

Sisterhood of Night, The - scene

There’s a moment in The Sisterhood of Night where approachable guidance counsellor Gordy, tasked with trying to find out what the sisterhood is all about, attempts to talk to Mary in his office. She’s unresponsive, so he gets up and goes to talk to the school principal (Gilmes), who just happens to be outside. Also outside – conveniently – is Emily. Mary remarks that Emily’s hand must hurt where she slipped on some rocks; Emily responds by recounting what she saw up until the point where a) the script doesn’t want to go because it wants to retain the mystery of what did happen, or b) the point at which Emily will have to make things up to appear credible. It’s a fine line that the script – by Marilyn Fu, and adapted from a short story by Steven Millhauser – comes close to crossing time and again, but the audience knows that Emily is lying about what she saw, despite all this prevarication. In the same way that we know (without being told explicitly) that the sisterhood aren’t devil worshippers or cult members, we know that there is a solid reason for Mary’s starting the group (though what that is remains a secret until the end).

In making a movie about secrets that prompt lies and deception, Fu and first-time feature director Waechter have fashioned a modern-day version of the Salem witch trials, with accusations flying thick and fast and hysteria gripping hold of the Kingston community. But there’s a fly in the ointment, and it’s a big one: the paucity of adult involvement. While Mary and Emily and their mutual supporters are given much of the screen time, the adults fare so badly it’s almost as if they and their motivations were an after thought. Lavinia’s mother, Rose (Fraser), acts distraught and unable to cope from the moment she learns of her daughter’s involvement in the sisterhood. Gordy allows himself to be put in an inappropriate situation when Mary stays the night, but makes only one phone call to let anyone know (and thus cover himself). Emily’s mother is the small-town Christian busybody who accuses first and doesn’t even bother to ask questions later, and who behaves like a less shrill version of Veronica Cartwright’s character in The Witches of Eastwick (1987). And the police barely get a look in, despite the nature of the accusations being made by the press and everyone else. This approach makes the movie appear lopsided in its focus, and it never manages it right itself.

This is also a movie where the kids run rings round everyone else, and while this might make for an intriguing reflection on modern society and the nuclear family, and the teenagers who believe they can reject any notion of personal responsibility, it makes for an awkward, uncomfortable movie that is rescued by a clutch of intuitive, resonant performances. Leaving behind – way behind – her best-known role as Lucy Pevensie in the Narnia movies, Henley is authoritative and deceptively alluring. She makes Mary the provocative, intimidating centre of the movie, beguiling and caustic, and never lets the character become too affected or pretentious. It’s a strong, effortless portrayal, and she holds the audience’s attention throughout. As her primary adversary, Hayward makes Emily a more three-dimensional character than expected, fleshing out the awkward adolescent feelings Emily is trying to deal with, and making her more sympathetic than she appears at the movie’s start. With equally strong support from Cuthrell and DeJonge, the movie benefits from all four young actresses’ approach to the material, and they help guide the movie through some of its more overly melodramatic moments.

While the movie is largely uneven, and strains credibility at times, it does have a sense of small-town paranoia that is effectively rendered, and the casually cruel behaviour of teenage girls is adequately presented (if not delved into too deeply). Waechter displays a knack for making the meetings in the woods as creepy as rumour and gossip would have them, and she’s equally adept at teasing odd nuances out of the characters’ behaviour, especially when Emily attends a radio station and comes face to face with some of the victims of real abuse who’ve responded to her blog. Zak Mulligan’s photography unfortunately paints a drab portrait of Kingston and its surroundings, while some scenes feel truncated thanks to Aaron Yanes’ assembly of the material. There’s also a voice over provided by a minor character that comes and goes without any consistency.

Rating: 6/10 – without sufficient depth or clarity applied to the story and characters, The Sisterhood of Night comes across as being a mystery about something the audience won’t ultimately care about; when the reason comes though, it’s beautifully told, and more than makes up for some of the vicissitudes that have gone before.

Endless Love (2014)

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

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Endless Love (2014)

D: Shana Feste / 104m

Cast: Alex Pettyfer, Gabriella Wilde, Bruce Greenwood, Joely Richardson, Robert Patrick, Rhys Wakefield, Dayo Okeniyi, Emma Rigby, Anna Enger

Jade Butterfield (Wilde) is a quiet, studious teenager just graduated from high school.  She hasn’t made many friends, but she has caught the attention of David Elliot (Pettyfer).  He catches her eye at their graduation ceremony, and so begins a tentative romance made awkward by the difference in their social standing.  Jade’s father, Hugh (Greenwood) is an eminent surgeon; David’s father, Harry (Patrick) has an auto shop in town.  Jade is due to take up a medical internship in two weeks and follow in her father’s footsteps; David wants to follow in his father’s footsteps too – each has a sense of familial duty that’s important to them.  When Jade decides to hold a party for everyone in her year, it’s only David who turns up.  With help from his friend, Mace (Okeniyi), David manipulates their high school friends into attending.  Jade and David realise their attraction for each other, and Hugh becomes aware of this as well.  He’s not happy about it, though, and does his best to stop any relationship before it begins.

Despite his best efforts, Jade and David spend more and more time together.  They’re so passionate about each other that Jade decides not to leave to begin her internship, and instead opts to spend the rest of the summer with David.  When she tells her father this he reacts by forcing her to join him and the rest of the family – mum Anne (Richardson), brother Keith (Wakefield) and his girlfriend, Sabine (Enger) – on a trip to their lakeside summer home.  Jade retaliates by inviting David along.  Her father continues his enmity toward David and learns he has a history of violence.  When Jade and David run into Mace and David’s ex-girlfriend Jenny (Rigby), they’re persuaded to go with them to a zoo after it’s closed.  When Jenny (who still harbours hopes of winning David back) sees how Jade means to him, she calls the police and rats them all out.  When the police arrive, David draws them away from everyone else, but is arrested.

Jade expects her dad to help get David out of jail but he refuses and he tells her about David’s violent past.  Seeing how important David is to her, Hugh relents and gets David sprung from jail but they argue and David knocks Hugh to the ground.  When she confronts David about it, it leads to her being in a car accident.  Later, at the hospital, Hugh tells Harry he’s taken out a restraining order to keep David from coming within fifty feet of Jade.  With their relationship apparently over, Jade leaves for college and begins seeing a fellow student.  David meanwhile, stays at home, until a chance encounter with Anne leads to the realisation that, restraining order or not, he has to see Jade and win her back.

Endless Love - scene

The second adaptation of Scott Spencer’s novel, Endless Love is endlessly sappy, and endlessly derivative of just about every other teen romance you’ve ever seen (viewers unaware of the movie’s literary origin could be forgiven for thinking they’re watching another Nicholas Sparks adaptation).  David only has to glance in Jade’s direction and she’s instantly smitten, her years of social and personal reserve dumped by the wayside in a matter of seconds.  She also turns out to be quite the hussy, acting provocatively and kittenish around David until the night she decides it’s time they should take things to the “next level”.  Throughout this period of getting to know each other, it becomes clear that Jade is the subtly demanding modern princess, and David the noble savage she has ensnared.  It’s an interesting take on the standard roles you might expect from the scenario quoted above, but it’s abandoned as soon as the script requires Hugh to take centre stage and amp up the villainy needed to give the story some actual bite.

Of course, Hugh is meant to be a misunderstood, over-protective father (more so in the wake of the recent death of Jade’s other brother, Chris), but as Jade and David are staple characters in this kind of thing, so too is Hugh that other staple of the romantic drama, the man that David has to wrest Jade away from.  Sadly, the script tries to give Hugh some depth, and has him vacillate over whether to welcome David with open arms or closed fists.  With Greenwood required to leap both ways – often in the same scene – and on more than one occasion, Hugh becomes a bit of a distraction, but unfortunately a necessary one, as leading thesps Pettyfer and Wilde have their work cut out for them making their characters worth spending time with in the first place.  It’s not their fault, it’s just that Jade and David are about as exciting to watch as those airplane safety videos.  Once they’ve had sex, their story heads for their inevitable falling out with all the haste of a marathon runner intent on reaching the next water station.

If there’s anything about Endless Love that isn’t dispiriting it’s the performance of Richardson; she at least recognises the paucity of the drama on offer and adapts her depiction of Anne’s unhappiness accordingly.  Whenever she’s on screen the movie seems to improve just by having her there.  The same can’t be said of Pettyfer, who looks uncomfortable throughout, while Wilde seems intent on doing the bare minimum required to  make her dialogue sound just this side of reasonable.  Both actors are more than capable but here they seem unable to raise their game and defeat the shopworn elements that make up writer/director Feste’s lukewarm script.  Her direction is unfortunately quite pedestrian and the movie lacks a definitive visual style that might have lifted it up a little.  With a soundtrack that offers songs as indicators of the emotional content on screen (like Cliff notes, but with added harmonies), Endless Love has the feel of a movie that had better intentions than those that were actually delivered.

Rating: 4/10 – bland, and with plot developments that are signposted in bright neon lights, Endless Love is a remake that probably sounded like a good idea at the time; however, the finished product is a salient reminder that not every “good” idea should be acted upon.

Geography Club (2013)

17 Thursday Apr 2014

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Geography Club

D: Gary Entin / 80m

Cast: Cameron Deane Stewart, Justin Deeley, Andrew Caldwell, Meaghan Martin, Allie Gonino, Ally Maki, Nikki Blonsky, Alex Newell, Teo Olivares, Ana Gasteyer, Marin Hinkle, Scott Bakula

It’s a sad fact that even today, with society supposedly more tolerant, and understanding, of different sexual orientations that a movie such as Geography Club can still be relevant in addressing the issue of homophobia.  Set in Goodkind High School – a misnomer if ever there was one – the movie begins with Russell arranging to meet a guy he’s met online.  He’s nervous, and unsure of his sexuality, but the meet is mainly a test of his feelings.  At the park he bumps into fellow high schooler Kevin (Deeley), and when Kevin walks away after an awkward conversation, Russell realises it was Kevin he was due to meet.

Later, on a school field trip, Russell and Kevin get to know each other better and one night they kiss.  The kiss is witnessed by Min (Maki), a fellow student.  Back at Goodkind, Min leaves Russell a message to meet her in one of the classrooms after school the next day.  Worried that she plans to blackmail him and Kevin, Russell goes to the classroom, and finds not only Min, but also Terese (Blonsky), Min’s partner, and Ike (Newell).  All three are gay and have formed the Geography Club in order to provide support for each other.  Min wants Russell to join them, but at first he refuses.  However, he goes back the next day, and in time becomes a member of the club.

Running parallel to all this are the efforts of his best friend Gunnar (Caldwell) to go out with Kimberly (Gonino), the object of Gunnar’s not inconsiderable lust.  While Russell tries to maintain a clandestine relationship with Kevin (who’s the star player on the school football team), his friendship with Gunnar threatens to fragment altogether, culminating in a disastrous weekend trip to Kimberly’s folks’ summer place.  With Gunnar counting on Russell’s support, his unwillingness to pair off with Kimberly’s friend Trish (Martin) leads to Russell being outed at school.  Determined not to let himself be categorised so unfairly, he feels it’s time for the Geography Club to go public.

Geography Club - scene

As an expose of what it’s like to be a teenager and either gay or lesbian, Geography Club falls a little short in its intentions, taking a serious subject – from the bestselling book by Brent Hartinger – and often undercutting that seriousness by placing the emphasis on humour, or by adopting a superficial approach to the material.  While the movie looks at ostracism, peer pressure, sexism, bullying, parental expectations, personal freedoms, teenage sexuality and its potential pitfalls, the perils of someone trying to find their place in the world, and the difficulty in being true to yourself (if you’re even sure what that means), this is all perhaps too much for Geography Club to address properly and with the right amount of attention for each issue.

Russell’s struggle is initially with his uncertainty about being gay, even after he and Kevin kiss.  But Min’s “intervention” has the effect of deciding the issue for him, and the rest of the movie settles for the inevitable how-long-will-it-be-before-the-main-character-is-honest-with-everyone? approach so prevalent in this type of movie.  As a result, Russell is forced to hide his true feelings for fear of being found out; he also takes part in bullying another student, Brian (Olivares), and with barely a moment’s hesitation (it’s a scene that involves Brian being humiliated in front of everyone in the school cafeteria, and yet Russell and his “friends” from the football team get away with it completely; there’s no punishment for their behaviour at all, one of the weirder instances that pop up throughout the movie).  And Russell would rather upset his best friend instead of trusting Gunnar with the knowledge that he’s gay.  With the movie changing focus so often, it’s hard to work out if there’s a main point trying to be made – be nice to gay people? bullying is an awful thing to do? friendships should be more important than emotional self-doubt?

The relationships in the movie range from the non-existent (Russell’s father is referred to but never seen, as if the family dynamic that would need to be addressed by his being gay was one issue too many for the filmmakers) to the predictable (Gunnar accepts Russell’s being gay without batting an eyelid).  Kevin is the jock who won’t commit to being homosexual because it would ruin his need to be “normal” (but he still wants to see Russell at the same time); Min and Terese appear more like lipstick lesbians than a real couple; Trish’s predatory attempts at making out with Russell are badly handled – and misconceived – considering her apparent experience with other guys; and Brian readily forgives Russell for his involvement in the cafeteria incident (but only after Russell is outed).

With the characters behaving either too predictably, or in ways that serve to advance the script rather than giving them some much-needed depth, the cast are constantly in danger of having their performances derailed by Edmund Entin’s lightweight script and Gary Entin’s overstretched direction.  Blonsky is wasted in a role that either has her playing the guitar or looking cynically at everyone else, while Martin is saddled with a one-note character and no chance of making Trish any or more interesting.  Deeley has less to do than most but what he does have to do is repetitive, and Kevin is so selfish and callow you hope he and Russell don’t end up together.  With a humorous turn from Gasteyer as an oddball teacher, and Caldwell stealing the movie as a desperate virgin (he’s like a young Jack Black at times), it’s left to Stewart to keep the audience’s attention and provide the sympathetic character the audience needs to make it through.  Fortunately he does just enough to engage our sympathies, but it’s a close run thing, and as expected, once Russell is outed, he becomes less annoying as well.

Rating: 6/10 – not quite as involving as was hoped for, perhaps, but still a pleasant enough way to spend eighty minutes, provided you have a tolerance for less than convincing character motivation; a decent enough effort, and a worthy subject matter, but too lacking in real drama to make much of an impact.