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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

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Tag Archives: Tijuana

Miss Bala (2019)

14 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Catherine Hardwicke, Drama, Drug cartel, Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Las Estrellas, Mexico, Remake, Review, Thriller, Tijuana

D: Catherine Hardwicke / 104m

Cast: Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Matt Lauria, Cristina Rodlo, Ricardo Abarca, Damián Alcázar, Aislinn Derbez, Anthony Mackie

Gloria Fuentes (Rodriguez) is a make up artist living and working in Los Angeles. She takes a trip to Tijuana in Mexico to see her best friend, Suzu (Rodlo). Suzu is planning to enter the Miss Baja California beauty contest, and that night she and Gloria go to a club where Suzu aims to impress one of the contest’s supporters, Chief of Police Saucedo (Alcázar). However, armed gunmen attempt to kill Saucedo and in the ensuing confusion, Gloria and Suzu are separated. The next morning, and still unable to find Suzu, Gloria seeks help from a policeman. But instead of taking her to the nearest police station, he hands her over to Lino (Cordova), the leader of Las Estrellas, the drug cartel responsible for the attack on Chief Saucedo. Lino tells Gloria he will help her find Suzu, but what this means in reality is that she will have to work for Las Estrellas first. Seizing an opportunity to escape them, Gloria winds up in the hands of the DEA and agent Brian Reich (Lauria), who blackmails her into going back and being a mole in Lino’s organisation…

Comparisons between remakes and their original predecessors is often invidious: the remake rarely makes the same impact, or has the same energy, or succeeds in the same fashion as the original did, and this is doubly so when the remake is an English language version of a foreign language movie. Such is the case with Miss Bala, a re-working of the 2011 movie of the same name that was Mexico’s submission for that year’s Oscars. There’s undoubted talent involved here – director Hardwicke has Lords of Dogtown (2005) and Twilight (2008) on her resumé, Rodriguez is best known for TV’s Jane the Virgin, and DoP Patrick Murguia lensed the under-rated The Frozen Ground (2013) – but there’s not much they can do to offset Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s smoothed over screenplay and its Hollywoodised approach to the basic storyline. Where the original Miss Bala had an ending that was deliberately ambiguous and suited what had gone before, here the ending is contrived and seems designed to pave the way for a TV series. It’s one of many disappointments that will frustrate viewers who have seen Gerardo Naranjo’s version and been impressed by its gritty, psychologically raw attitude. But even if you haven’t, it’s still unlikely that you’ll be singing the movie’s praises.

Part of the problem here is that Gloria is never treated badly enough for the audience to believe that she’s in any real danger. This robs the movie of any tension it may have been able to generate, and it makes Rodriguez’ job that much harder as she tries to sell the idea that Gloria is in real danger. Rodriguez does well to turn an ingenue into a bad ass by the movie’s end, but it’s a triumph that’s against the odds because everything comes so easily to the character, whether it’s learning how to shoot an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, lying convincingly to Lino (who is nowhere near as suspicious of her as he should be), or switching tracking devices in and out of mobile phones at the drop of a hat. There’s an awkward, one-sided romance between Gloria and Lino that seeks to explain the leniency with which he treats her, but it’s at odds with what else we know about the character, and just feels like a misguided attempt to provide the “bad guy” with “layers”. A handful of action scenes are dealt with in a way that could be described as “standard operating procedure” – all low angles, rapid-fire cutting, and the volume cranked up – and they offer some respite from the dreary nature of the overall plot, but they’re not enough to rescue yet another unnecessary English language remake of a much better foreign language original.

Rating: 5/10 – Rodriguez is pretty much the whole deal here, holding Miss Bala together through the sheer strength of her performance, and doing her best to make the viewer forget how homogenised and culturally indifferent it all is; with its sanitised version of a drug cartel not helping to fuel the drama, nor the idea that the DEA are more immoral and/or corrupt than said drug cartel, this isn’t a movie that has a foot in the real world, or anything to say that would make sense, or even be memorable.

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Cake (2014)

07 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Adriana Barraza, Anna Kendrick, Chronic pain, Daniel Barnz, Drama, Freeway, Jennifer Aniston, Review, Sam Worthington, Suicide, Tijuana

Cake

D: Daniel Barnz / 102m

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Barraza, Sam Worthington, Anna Kendrick, Mamie Gummer, Felicity Huffman, Chris Messina, William H. Macy, Lucy Punch, Britt Robertson

Claire Bennett (Aniston) attends a chronic pain support group following a car accident that has left her severely injured and in constant pain. At one meeting she learns that another member of the group, Nina Collins (Kendrick), has committed suicide. When it’s Claire’s turn to express how she feels about this, she is cruel and acerbic. When she gets home, she finds a message on her phone from Annette (Huffman) who suggests Claire find another support group. There’s another message, from her estranged husband, Jason (Messina), but she ignores it.

Claire has a housemaid, Silvana (Barraza), who also drives her from place to place when needed. They have a combative relationship, especially when it comes to the amount of medication Claire consumes (she even hides extra pills around the house). However, Claire relies on her too much to fire her. One night, Claire has a vision of Nina in which Nina challenges Claire as to why she hasn’t committed suicide herself. The next day, at her aquatic therapy appointment Claire tries to drown herself but her instinct for survival stops her. Following this, Claire contacts Annette and blackmails her into giving her Nina’s address. She goes there and meets Nina’s husband, Roy (Worthington).

A mutually supportive relationship develops between them. This leads to Claire beginning to feel a little better about herself (though she still persuades Silvana to take her to Tijuana where she can get some stronger, non-prescribed medication). She starts to make things up to people, including Annette, and allows Roy to bring his son over to her house for lunch. The visit prompts several unhappy reminiscences but while she’s able to deal with them it proves impossible when Claire receives another, unwanted, visitor: the man (Macy) who caused the car accident. Claire attacks him and later takes an overdose. In hospital, and following another disturbing vision of Nina, she makes the decision to try and get by without any further medication.

Cake - scene

An often stark, unshowy drama with spells of unexpected indifference to its own characters, Cake nearly overcomes its dour presentation thanks to an inspired performance by Aniston. In many ways, the movie wouldn’t be as good without her – she provides some much needed depth throughout, and a strong focal point. Claire is a great role for any actress, but Aniston is convincing from beginning to end, every painful twitch and grimace played so naturally the viewer could be forgiven for wondering if Aniston had deliberately injured herself ahead of filming.

With her puffy face, lank hair and baggy clothing, Claire is a woman whose only focus in life is her physical pain; beyond that, everything else is of minimal importance. She’s wounded, physically and emotionally, and is struggling to move forward. Without her medication, or her caustic view on life, she would have nothing. Struggling to keep mind and body together, she bullies Silvana, manipulates Roy, and keeps her distance from Jason, but even with these interactions and off-kilter relationships – especially her visions of Nina – she begins to find a way back to the person she was before the accident. It’s a gradual, carefully shaded portrayal, with Aniston keeping a lot below the surface but using her eyes to convey the warring emotions inside Claire. It’s an honest, deeply affecting performance and Aniston’s presence in the movie, as mentioned above, makes it all the more compelling.

If Aniston hadn’t committed to the project, or a similar performance hadn’t been provided by another actress, then Cake would not be as good a movie as it is. The problem lies with Patrick Tobin’s emotionally redolent screenplay, which focuses so completely on its main character that, Silvana aside, everyone else is underwritten and orbit around Claire to little effect. Roy and Claire’s relationship always looks to be a platonic one, so the usual will-they-won’t-they dramatics are ignored from the moment they first meet (there’s also a distinct lack of chemistry between Aniston and Worthington that undercuts things even further). The only other character of merit is Nina, but Kendrick is stuck with playing her as interfering and annoying rather than as the representation of Claire’s conscience that she should be. Thankfully, Barraza gives a wonderful performance that often matches Aniston’s for emotional honesty, Silvana’s increasing affection for Claire given full expression through every exasperated sigh and shrug of her shoulders.

The rest of the movie contains a lot of elements that don’t appear fully formed or thought through. Nina’s suicide, the McGuffin that propels the movie, is never explored from the angle of why she was at the pain support group in the first place, and the note she leaves, while meant to be poignant, instead comes across as poorly chosen and clichéd. Macy’s character turns up for no discernible reason other than as a chance to inject some much needed (actual) drama into proceedings; by this time we know the circumstances of Claire’s accident and its consequences, so it’s baffling as to why he’s there. And a later sequence that sees Claire chatting regretfully with Nina while lying across a train track, and which should be one of the movie’s standout moments, is let down by some trite dialogue and Barnz’ clumsy framing.

Further problems are caused by Barnz’ inability to maintain a consistent tone, and to move the camera in ways that might prove visually interesting, or at least stave off the criticism that most scenes are made up of dull shots of Claire being upset. It’s a bland, desaturated movie to watch, with disjointed rhythms and a lack of grace when dealing with shifts in emphasis and mood. There are moments of black humour – Claire asking Roy where he got the granite for Nina’s headstone as it’s the same material she’d like for a kitchen revamp – but Barnz doesn’t treat them any differently from occasions when Claire is feeling maudlin, or angry, or reflective. Yes, Claire is in some ways emotionally numb (if not physically so), but not to the extent that she’s operating on the same level at all times. But Barnz hits a plateau early on and rarely makes any attempt to aim any higher.

Rating: 5/10 – saved from being completely off-putting by Aniston’s intense, award-worthy performance, Cake is a movie that struggles with its own premise and never gets off the ground; occasionally heartfelt but mostly sterile in nature, it’s a movie that holds too much back in terms of its narrative to be successful.

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Mini-Review: V/H/S Viral (2014)

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Aaron Moorhead, Alternate universe, Cloak, Found footage, Gregg Bishop, Horror, Ice cream van, Justin Benson, Magician, Marcel Sarmiento, Nacho Vigalondo, Review, Sequel, Skateboarders, Tijuana

V:H:S Viral

D: Marcel Sarmiento (Vicious Circles)/Gregg Bishop (Dante the Great)/Nacho Vigalondo (Parallel Monsters)/Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead (Bonestorm)/ 82m

Cast: Justin Welborn, Emmy Argo, Gustavo Salmerón, Marian Álvarez, Nick Blanco, Chase Newton, Shane Bradey

The latest in the found footage horror series, V/H/S Viral strays further and further from the original concept, partly it seems to avoid accusations of “more of the same”, and partly in recognition that the VHS format is now too outdated to work effectively (either way, just how many empty houses full of old tapes can there be?).

Beginning with the wraparound story, Vicious Circles, where a guy ends up chasing the ice cream van that he believes holds his kidnapped girlfriend (and which is already being chased by police), the movie then tells the bizarre story of Dante the Great, a magician who comes into possession of a cloak (once owned by Houdini) that allows him to really do magic – but at a price. It’s a bit of dumb fun, more interested in showing off it’s gravity-defying stunt work than exploring the idea of possession by an object. In terms of found footage it’s also the most contrived, with camera placements in places where they’re really unlikely to be, and with too many used sources for the footage to have been put together in the way in which the segment is presented.

The middle tale, Parallel Monsters, concerns a scientist, Alfonso, who creates a doorway to an alternate universe – in his basement. He meets a replica of himself and the two explore each other’s houses, but while they seem identical, Alfonso soon discovers that not everything is the same in this other universe. It’s a mix of Cronenbergian body horror and sci-fi conventions that has an unintentionally hilarious bedside moment before reaching its predictable climax.

V:H:S Viral - scene

The last tale, Bonestorm, features a couple of skateboarders who travel down to Tijuana to skate at a remote storm drain only to find they’ve upset the local devil worshippers who try and kill them before the devil in the drain tries as well. Of the three stories this is the worst, mixing POV shots of the skaters offing dozens of extras dressed as devil worshippers with the kind of crass dialogue that makes you wish they’d die before they even get to Tijuana.

With the wraparound story proving too confusing to make sense, as well as having no connection to the three tales – a fourth tale, Gorgeous Vortex, was cut to provide a “smoother” running time (whatever that means) – V/H/S Viral is too far removed from the first two movies to be effective, and the material is weak throughout (it’s like watching Halloween (1978) and Halloween II (1981) and then wondering if Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) was really the best they could come up with).

Rating: 3/10 – a very poor sequel that can’t even be bothered to put its tales into any kind of context, V/H/S Viral is lacking in almost every department; tired, and horrible (as opposed to horrifying), this sequel is one that even fans will want to disown.

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