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thedullwoodexperiment

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Tag Archives: New Jersey

Mini-Review: Freeheld (2015)

22 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cancer, Civil partnerships, Drama, Ellen Page, Equality, Freeholders, Julianne Moore, Laurel Hester, Michael Shannon, New Jersey, Ocean County, Pension rights, Peter Sollett, Police, Review, True story

Freeheld

D: Peter Sollett / 103m

Cast: Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, Michael Shannon, Josh Charles, Steve Carell, Dennis Boutsikaris, William Sadler, Tom McGowan, Kevin O’Rourke, Luke Grimes, Gabriel Luna, Anthony DeSando, Skipp Sudduth, Mary Birdsong, Kelly Deadmon

When Forrest Gump memorably announced that “life [is] like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get”, he probably wasn’t referring to Freeheld, a cliché-ridden recounting of the struggle endured by New Jersey police detective Laurel Hester (Moore) as she tried to get her pension benefits assigned to her same-sex partner, Stacie Andree (Page). Hester had an aggressive form of lung cancer that spread to her brain, and she wanted her pension paid to Stacie so that she would be able to remain in their home.

Freeheld - scene1

But a combination of political and gender prejudices decreed that Stacie would not be entitled to those benefits, even though the Ocean County board of freeholders assigned to make that decision had been recently empowered to do so by the state legislature. Instead they rejected Laurel’s claim and, if you believe this version of events, remained stubborn in their rejection of her claim for some time afterward, and in the face of mounting protests and media criticism.

Now, if you’ve read this far – or have already seen the movie – it won’t be much of a stretch to realise that Laurel got her wish and Stacie got her benefits. But it’s the way in which this story is told that is likely to anger viewers, more than the intransigence of the board. With its bland, TV-movie-of-the-week visual style, and numbingly rote storytelling, Freeheld has all the appeal of televised jury service (and where the case is a minor one). It ticks all the boxes as it wends its weary way to its foregone conclusion: Hester’s concealment of her lesbianism from her colleagues and police partner Dane Wells (Shannon); the way in which this concealment affects her relationship with Stacie; Wells’ disappointment when he finds out (that Laurel didn’t tell him ages ago); the discovery of a lump that “isn’t that serious”; the male police detective (played by Grimes) who’s also gay and can’t/won’t show his support; Stacie’s determination to believe that Laurel will beat her cancer; one of the board (Charles) acting as its moral conscience; and the discovery of information about the board that will help in getting them to overturn their decision.

Freeheld - scene3

Freeheld is a movie that lacks joy and passion, and thanks to uninspired direction from Sollett, it’s even hard to be outraged by the board’s spurious reasons for their decision. Even Moore isn’t as engaged in her character as you’d expect her to be (perhaps she realised early on there wasn’t a lot of depth there), and Page plays Stacie as either grouchy or permanently upset with no room in between. Shannon looks uncomfortable throughout, Charles looks like he’s trying to solve a difficult maths problem, Grimes wears a guilty-through-shame expression that should be a giveaway to his colleagues but isn’t, and there’s an irritating, over-the-top performance by Carell as a gay rights activist that both enlivens the movie and highlights how drab it is elsewhere.

Rating: 4/10 – despite the movie’s attempts to retell an important milestone in the struggle for equal rights, Freeheld is a lazy attempt to do so, and fails to convince in almost every department; for a better overview of Laurel Hester’s story, track down Freeheld (2007), an Oscar-winning documentary short that doesn’t deal in awkward sentimentality or by-the-numbers moralising.

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Mini-Review: Jersey Shore Massacre (2014)

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Angelica Boccella, Danielle Dallacco, Fat Camp Massacre, Gore, Horror, Jersey Devil, Jersey Shore, Murders, New Jersey, Paul Tarnopol, Pine Barrens, Review, Spoof

JERSEY SHORE MASSACRE, poster art, from left: Chris Lazzaro, Giovanni Roselli, Danielle Dallacco,

D: Paul Tarnopol / 88m

Cast: Danielle Dallacco, Angelica Boccella, Giovanni Roselli, Chris Lazzaro, Nicole Rutigliano, Ashley Mitchell, Christina Scaglione, Brenton Duplessie, Brett Azar, John Michael Hastie, Leonarda Bosch, Ron Jeremy

A group of friends – Teresa (Dallacco), Dina (Boccella), Joanne (Rutigliano), Valerie (Mitchell), and Gigi (Scaglione) – decide to head for the beach for the weekend but a double booking on the place where they’re meant to stay means they end up staying at Teresa’s Uncle Vito’s place on the edge of the Pine Barrens.  They head for the beach anyway, and meet a group of guys – Tony (Roselli), Freddy (Lazzaro), Vinnie (Duplessie), Gino (Azar), and Joey (Hastie) – with similar ambitions for the weekend: to party hard and get laid.  They all head back to Uncle Vito’s where they start to get to know each other better, but there’s a killer on the loose, and he’s hell bent on murdering them all.

Intended as a spoof horror – the spoof element being the characters who bear a strong resemblance to the characters in the TV show, Jersey Shore – Jersey Shore Massacre is  an unsophisticated, deliberately awful parody of that particular show, as well as a fond tribute to various horror movies of the last twenty years (it’s nice to see both Friday the 13th and The Shining being alluded to… as well as many other horror classics).  It makes fun of the show’s conventions, and boasts some unexpectedly funny one-liners as well as a further in-movie spoof entitled Fat Camp Massacre.

Jersey Shore Massacre - scene

But poking fun at a bunch of narcissists will only get you so far, and so it goes here, with a cast who look and sound the part – with the exception of Dallacco who looks like she’s wandered in from another show entirely (one with an IQ requirement that’s in double figures) – but who are as annoying as their small screen counterparts.  Having them killed off in ever more inventive ways goes some way to making the movie more palatable but it’s still riddled with casual sexism and even more casual attempts at acting.

Co-writer/director Tarnopol struggles with the set up and appears undecided as to whether his version of the Jersey Devil should be into torture porn or straight forward slaying, and there’s a shower murder that would have had Hitchcock shaking his head in dismay.  All in all it’s as amateurish as you’d expect, and further proof that just because someone can make a movie, it doesn’t mean they should.

Rating: 3/10 – as bad as it sounds, and good intentions aside, the kind of spoof that works only if the original source isn’t already an example of self-parody; when the cast whine louder than the sander used on one victim, then it’s clear – if the title Jersey Shore Massacre hadn’t convinced anyone already – that this is low budget stuff and less than impressive.

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