Category Archives: Film Review

The Films of 2024: The Courier (dir by Daniel Calparsoro)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year is 2002 and countries across Europe are giving up their old currencies and making the transition to the Euro.  The future looks bright, especially for Ivan (Aron Piper), a young man from Spain who has gotten a job as a courier.  He drives around Europe, often at lighting-fast speeds.  He takes money across the continent so that it can safely be hidden away in Switzerland.  Along with his lover and boss, Leticia (Maria Pedraza), Ivan quickly rises through the ranks of an international cartel.  Helping others stay wealthy leads to Ivan becoming wealthy as well.  Soon, he has fast cars, fast friends, a cocaine habit, and a mustache that makes him look like a 1990s NASCAR driver.

With its constantly moving camera and its voice-over narration, this Spanish film owes more than a little to the films of Martin Scorsese,  Ivan’s descent into drugs will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Wolf of Wall Street or Goodfellas.  Unfortunately, Ivan is never quite as interesting a character as either Jordan Belfort or Henry Hill, largely because Aron Piper is not as charismatic an actor as either Leonardo DiCaprio or Ray Liotta.  Ivan comes across as just being a punk who wandered into something that temporarily made him rich and his narration often descends into shallow psychobabble.  As a character, Ivan would never have the confidence to throw hundred dollar bills off of his boat.  He also wouldn’t have the creativity to pull off the Lufthansa heist.  He’s boring and all the cocaine in the world isn’t going to change that.

Interestingly enough, the film also borrows from Adam McKay, with an ending that highlights a lengthy list of consequences of Ivan’s money laundering operation.  Much as with the films of McKay, The Courier makes the mistake of assuming that everyone watching shares its dreary Marxist outlook and is going to be outraged.  The truth of the matter is that most people would probably love to hide their money from the government because only weirdos enjoy paying taxes.  The film assumes that the audience will be demanding revolution whereas the majority will probably be saying, “Hey, money laundering seems like a good idea and you get a nice car out of it!  How do I get in on that?”

(Scorsese, at the very least, understands and admits that most people would rather be Jordan Belfort on a yacht than the FBI agent on a subway.  Most people would rather be Henry Hill living in New York as opposed to being Henry Hill living in the suburbs of Indianapolis and being an ordinary schnook.)

The Courier does have its moments.  Maria Pedraza gives a good performance as Leticia, though you do have to wonder why she should would ever waste her time with someone as boring as Aron Piper’s Ivan.  Carlos Jean’s score is wonderfully propulsive and provides them film with a needed rush of adrenaline.  In the end, though, The Courier never really escapes the shadow of the films that came before it.

Trail to Laredo (1948, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On the frontier, everyone has gold fever.  People are trying to find gold and steal gold and it falls to brave Treasury agents like Steve Ellison (Charles Starrett) and Smiley Burnette (played by Smiley Burnette) to keep things safe.  When Steve needs to find out who is trying steal gold, he puts on his mask and assumes the identity of The Durango Kid.

Near Laredo, a shipment of government gold has been stolen.  Dan Parks (Jim Bannon) is arrested after the gold is found in his wagon but Steve knows that the Durango Kid earlier warned Dan about traveling with gold.  Durango and Smiley set out to prove that Dan was set up by his business partner, Fenton (Hugh Prosser).

This yet another Durango Kid movie where Steve gets a job working for the bad guy while Durango works to thwart his plans.  (Remarkably, no one ever puts two and two together and notices that Steve, Smiley, and Durango always seem to show up in town at the same time.)  Fenton is just one of a long line of corrupt businessmen and land barons that Durango has had to deal with.  Fenton is not above threatening Dan’s young son (Tommy Ivo) to get Dan to do what he wants.  Given that Dan is just trying to make a good life for his family in a rough world, it’s satisfying when Fenton gets his comeuppance.

Almost every Durango Kid film featured at least one good fight scene.  In Trail to Laredo, the big fight takes place in a saloon and it’s pretty exciting.  Not only does the saloon get trashed but there’s a moment where one of the bad guys actually seem to fly through the air.  Even Virginia Maxey, playing Classy the saloon singer, gets in on it.

Both Virginia Maxey and Smiley Burnette get to sing a few songs.  As always, there enough gunfights and horse chases to keep fans of the genre happy.  Charles Starrett was a great cowboy.

Retro Television Review: Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night (dir by Allen Reisner)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1977’s Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night!  It  can be viewed on YouTube.

Damn.

I mean, seriously!  I have seen some depressing films before but nothing could have quite prepared me for Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night.

Susan Dey stars as Rowena, a young single mother whose 3 year-old daughter, Mary Jane Harper (Natasha Ryan), is taken to the hospital with a broken arm.  Dr. Angela Buccieri (Tricia O’Neil) doesn’t believe Rowena’s claim that Mary Jane is just accident prone and when she discovers what appears to be cigarette burns on the little girl, Dr. Buccieri goes to the head of pediatrics (played by veteran screen villain John Vernon) and requests a full set of X-rays to see if there are any previously healed injuries.  Buccieri’s request is denied.  It turns out that Rowena comes from a wealthy family and her father (Kevin McCarthy) is a trustee of the hospital.  Even after Dr. Buccieri opens up about her own experiences as an abused child, she is told to drop the matter.

She doesn’t drop it.  Instead, she goes to a social worker named Dave Williams (Bernie Casey).  Dave does his own investigation but none of Rowena’s neighbors want to talk about all of the crying and the screaming that they hear coming from Rowena’s apartment.  Rowena presents herself as being a stressed but loving mother.  Dave suggests a support group that she can attend.  When Rowena goes to the group, she opens up a little about how overwhelmed she feels.  Unfortunately, she leaves Mary Jane in the apartment alone and, when a fire breaks out, Mary Jane is lucky to survive.

As intense as all of that is, it’s also only the first half of the movie.  The second half is even more intense and emotionally draining and it all leads up to one of the most devastating final lines ever uttered in a movie.  Throughout the film, the system fails both Rowena and Mary Jane.  Mary Jane is failed when all of the evidence of the abuse that she has suffered is either ignored or shrugged away by the same people who are supposed to be looking out for her.  Rowena is failed when no one pays attention to her obvious emotional instability.  When she finally does have a breakthrough during a therapy session, her psychiatrist (played by James Karen) curtly tells her that they’ll have to talk about it next week because their hour is up.

Rowena is a character who I both hated and pitied.  Like many abusers, she herself was a victim of abuse.  Even when Rowena tries to get support, no one wants to admit that a mother is capable of abusing their own child.  That said, Mary Jane Harper is at the center of the film. She’s a little girl who is desperate to be loved by a woman who often terrifies her.  She is continually failed by the people who should be looking after her and it’s just devastating to watch.  I’m sure I’m not the only person who was moved to tears by this film.

What a sad film.  At the same time, it’s also an important one.  If the film takes place at a time when no one wanted to admit to the abuse happening before their eyes, we now live in a time when people toss around allegations of abuse so casually that it’s led to a certain cynicism about the whole thing.  Even when seen today, Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night works as a powerful plea to watch out and care for one another.

May Positivity: Divine Will (dir by Ken Jones)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 2017, Divine Will is a short film but it’s also a rather odd film.

Dave Blessing (Brent Reed) used to be the lead singer of Isolation, a band that was apparently the hottest in the world in the 90s.  His son, Will (Lee Roessler), is the result of a marriage that only lasted for two weeks.  When Will’s mother dies, he moves to Chicago and lives with Dave and Dave’s quirky sister, Jenny (Kat Moser).

We are told (but we do not see) that Will had trouble in Chicago and that he spent a few nights in jail.  Wanting to raise his son in a better environment, Dave accepts an offer to become the music minister for a church in small town Kentucky.

So, Dave, Will, Jenny, and the always silent ghost of Will’s mother move to Kentucky.  At first, everyone is skeptical about a rock star becoming a choir leader but then all of the women in town see how handsome Dave is and they all suddenly remember that they were once huge fans of Isolation.  While Dave tries to avoid all of the women that now want to marry him, Aunt Jenny gets a job as an art teacher.  Jenny’s quirky methods go against the staid traditions of the school.

As for Will, he falls for Casey Buckner (Kathryn Boswell), who lives next door and who is still coming to terms with the death of her brother.  Will should be able to help both her and several other people in town because he has the power to bring people a feeling of peace just by touching them.  It’s a power that he’s had ever since the passing of his mother.  Did I mention that the silent ghost of his mother keeps popping up at random moments?

Oh!  And did I also mention that the movie is a musical?  Will breaks into song while walking around the countryside.  Later, he and Casey share a duet.

As I said, it’s an odd film.  I’m a little bit hesitant about reviewing it because the imdb lists the film as having a 114 minute run-time while the version on Tubi was only 74 minutes long.  Either the imdb is incorrect or the version of Tubi was heavily edited.  Either way, the version I saw did feel as if it was missing a few scenes.  It crammed a lot of plot into just 74 minutes and the film was not always easy to follow.  The version I saw leaned very heavily on Will’s narration, especially during the first few scenes.

But you know what?  It’s a likably goofy film and it’s earnest enough that it feels somewhat churlish to be too critical of it.  If nothing else, it definitely captures the feel of living in the country.  There’s a scene set in a barn that has so many bales of hay that I immediately felt like I was back on my grandmother’s farm and suffering from allergies.  Much like the country that it portrays, the film was odd but the scenery was lovely.

The Films of 2024: Sixty Minutes (dir by Oliver Kienle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Octavio Bergmann (Emilio Sakraya) has a problem.

A German MMA fighter is just minutes away from fighting a leading contender when he gets a call from his ex-wife.  It is his daughter’s birthday and Octavio is told that if he doesn’t make it to her birthday party within an hour, Octavio’s ex-wife is going to demand full custody of her.  Octavio runs from the match, hoping that he can somehow make it from one end of Berlin to the next in just 60 minutes.

What Octavio doesn’t know is that the fight was fixed.  Octavio’s opponent agreed to take a dive so a bunch of gamblers put down a lot of money on Octavio winning the fight.  If Octavio forfeits, they’ll lose all of their money.  Soon, Octavio finds himself being pursued by motely collection of Serbian mobsters, bikers, and cops.  Meanwhile, Octavio just wants to pick up a cake and his daughter’s birthday gift (an adorable kitten named Onion) and make it to the party in time.

That’s not a bad premise for an action film and Sixty Minutes features a lot of exciting fight scenes as Octavio battles his way to his ex-wife’s house.  Unfortunately, it soon becomes obvious that the film is cheating a bit with the time frame.  When Octavio takes off running, a stopwatch lets us know that he has 59 minutes and 59 seconds left.  About ten minutes later, the stopwatch reappears and tries to convince us that only four minutes have passed.  Octavio has to face a lot of obstacles on his way to that birthday party but it’s hard to create any suspense when the audience knows that the movie isn’t going to be honest about how much time has passed.  If any film cries out for a “real time” approach, it’s this movie.

(Personally, I would have changed the title to 80 Minutes.  It would still be a stretch to claim that the majority of the movie’s action could have taken place over such a compressed time frame but it would still be more believable than 60.)

On the plus side, the action scenes are exciting.  Emilio Sakraya is not the most expressive of actors but, as a former Full-Contact Karate champion, he’s totally convincing in the fight scenes.  Wisely, the film does not try to convince us that Octavio is some sort of genius.  He is often his own worst enemy.  (If you had to get across Berlin in a narrowly-allotted amount of time, would you be stupid enough to stop to argue with the cops?)  And there definitely is something rather sweet about Octavio’s determination to make sure that his daughter gets her birthday present.  (And fear not, animal lovers — the cat survives the film.)  Finally, the soundtrack was heavy on EDM, which I definitely appreciated.

With all of the scenes of Octavio running through Berlin and checking his watch to see how much time he had left, the film feels a bit like a direct descendant of Run, Lola, Run.  Unfortunately, Sixty Minutes is nowhere near as exciting, witty, or thoughtful as Tom Tykwer’s classic film.  Still, Sixty Minutes is entertaining when taken on its own terms.  Just don’t make the mistake of trying to count the minutes.

Prairie Roundup (1951, directed by Fred F. Sears)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Steve Carson (Charles Starrett) is wanted for murdering the Durango Kid!

I know that sounds confusing because Steve Carson is the Durango Kid.  The bandit that Carson shot was just disguised as the Durango Kid but actually, he was just a dim-witted outlaw who was set up by Buck Prescott (Frank Fenton), a rustler who was run out of Texas by Steve and who was trying to find a way to stop Steve from investigating his new scheme to cheat a bunch of ranchers in Santa Fe.

Steve is taken to jail but luckily, Smiley Burnette is around to help him break out.  Smiley and Steve head to Santa Fe, where they get jobs working as cowhands at the Eaton Ranch and work to expose Prescott and his gang as being responsible for a series of stampedes.  Smiley sings some songs and Steve resurrects the Durango Kid from the dead.

This was one of the later Durango Kid films.  The range war plot is one that showed up in many Durango Kid films but Prairie Roundup adds something new to the formula but having Steve framed for murdering himself.  Steve could prove his innocence by revealing that he’s actually the Durango Kid but Steve is determined to maintain his secret identity.  I’ve seen several Durango Kid films and I still don’t really understand why Steve felt he needed a secret identity in the first place.  But Prairie Roundup shows the extent to which he’ll go to keep it.

There’s plenty of fight and horse chases, more than enough to keep western fans happy.  Smiley Burnette gets to throw some punches along with singing all of his usual songs.  It’s also nice to see the lovely Mary Castle in the role of Toni Eaton, the daughter of one of the ranchers who has been targeted by Prescott.  Featuring less stock footage than usual, Prairie Roundup is a worthy entry in the Durango Kid series.

The Films of 2024: Bob Marley: One Love (dir by Reinaldo Marcus Green)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bob Marley: One Love opens in 1976.  With Jamaica torn by political violence, Reggae superstar and devout Rastafari Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) announces that he will be holding a concert for peace.  When Marley, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch), and several members of the band are shot in a home invasion, a disillusioned Marley sends his wife and children to stay with his mother in Delaware and then heads to London with his band.

The majority of Bob Marley: One Love centers around the years that Marley spent outside of Jamaica.  In London, Marley struggles to come up with a concept his new album, finally finding inspiration in the soundtrack for Otto Preminger’s Exodus.  Marley explains his philosophy and Rastafari beliefs to journalists and listeners, many of whom are shocked by Marley’s claim to not care about money.  With more and more countries declaring their independence and freeing themselves from colonialism, Marley makes plans to perform in Africa and to spread his message of love and freedom.  Rita, who eventually rejoins Bob when he tells her that he cannot create his music without her presence, tells Bob that he needs to return to Jamaica and perform his peace concert.  Bob remains stubborn but when he’s diagnosed with a rare-form of cancer, he realizes that it’s time for him to return to his home and not just preach about peace and forgiveness but to extend it as well.

Musical biopics have been all the rage since the release of Bohemian Rhapsody and Bob Marley: One Love features enough of Marley’s music that it’s not surprising that the film was a crowd-pleaser when it was released in February.  The film was clearly made by people who loved Marley’s music.  Kingsley Ben-Adir has a strong screen presence and gives a charismatic performance as Bob but, for whatever reason, Bob Marley remains something of a distant figure throughout the film.  We learn a bit about what motivated Bob Marley as a musician and as an activist but we still don’t really feel that we get to know him as a person.  (Nor does the film delve too deeply into the details of Marley’s Rastafari beliefs, presenting it as being more about good vibes than a belief in the divinity of Ethiopia’s emperor, Haile Selassie I.)  The film hits all of the expected biopic plot points like clockwork.  It’s almost too efficient for its own good, lacking any of the spontaneity that makes real life so memorable.  It leaves the viewer very much aware that they’re watching a well-made film.

But, one might be justified in dismissing that as just being nit-picking.  The film is full of Marley’s music and it ends with a good deal of archival footage that allows the viewer to see both Bob Marley’s real-life charisma and the joy that he took in performing.  As I said, the film is a crowd pleaser.  While it doesn’t quite provide the insight into Marley’s life that Rocketman did for Elton John, it’s still a better-made and less cynical production than Bohemian Rhapsody.  Even if the film is a bit too conventional for its own good, the love of the music still comes through.

The Rough Tough West (1952, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Steve Holden (Charles Starrett) is hired by an old friend, Jack Mahoney (played by Jock Mahoney), to serve as the sheriff of a frontier town.  Steve soon discovers that his old friend has been corrupted by power and is plotting to cheat the locals out of their land and the gold that the land holds.  Despite their friendship, Steve knows that Jack has to be stopped and made to see the errors of his way.  It’s a good thing that Steve is secretly the Durango Kid and that his old sidekick, Smiley Burnette, is the town’s police chief.  But even if Jack Mahoney does eventually see the error of his ways, will it be soon enough to stop his out-of-control henchmen?

This was one of the last of the Durango Kid films and it’s heavy on stock footage and Smiley Burnette musical numbers.  It has all of the usual horse chases and gunfights but making the villain an old friend of the Durango Kid adds a little more emotional weight to this entry than some of the other Durango Kid films.  As always, Charles Starrett is a strong western hero and Smiley Burnette’s antics are nowhere nearly as annoying as the antics of some of the other western sidekicks who were populating matinee movie screens in 1952.  Western fans should enjoy this fast-paced and undemanding film.

This is not the first time that Jock Mahoney played a friend of the Durango Kid who is named Jack Mahoney, though I think the Jack Mahoney who appeared in Pecos River, Junction City, Smokey Canyon, The Hawk of Wild River, and The Kid From Broken Gun was meant to be a different character than the one who appeared in The Rough, Tough West.  If Smiley Burnette could have a rotating cast of musicians who followed him from town-to-town, then the Durango Kid could very well have known multiple Jack Mahoneys.

 

The Films of 2024: The Beautiful Game (dir by Thea Sharrock)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When we first see Vinny (Michael Ward), he is watching a group of children play soccer.  (Yes, I know that both this movie and the rest of the world calls it football.  I grew up calling it soccer.)  He looks at the jerseys of the players and provides a running commentary as they play.  “We’ve got David Beckham, we’ve got a big Messi, we’ve got a little Messi, we’ve got a classic Brazilian Messi….”  Finally, Vinny runs out onto the field and kicks the ball himself until the parents of the children tell him to go away.

Watching Vinny is a legendary scout named Mal Bradley (Bill Nighy).  Mal approaches Vinny and convinces to come meet his “dream team,” a collection of homeless men who all play soccer.  Mal explains that the men are going to be representing England at the annual Homeless World Cup tournament in Rome.  Teams made up of homeless from all over the world will be competing.  Mal explains that it’s not all about winning.  It’s about giving the players a chance to prove something to themselves.  Mal reveals that he wants Vinny to join the team.  Vinny announces that he’s not homeless.  He has a job.  He has a family.  Vinny then goes to the car in which he is currently living.

Eventually, Vinny changes his mind and agrees to accompany the team to Rome.  The team is welcoming but Vinny still struggles to open up to them.  Some of it is due to his pride.  Unlike his teammates, Vinny actually did once play professional soccer, though not for long.  Some of it is due to Vinny being in denial about his status as a homeless person.  When a teammate opens up about being a recovering heroin addict, Vinny leaves the room.  When one player reveals that he’s a compulsive gambler and another talks about his own failures as a father, Vinny tries to change the subject.  What Vinny doesn’t know is that he and Mal have a past connection, one that has left Mal wracked with guilt.

There’s a lot going on in The Beautiful Game.  The film focuses on Vinny, Mal, and England’s team but it also finds room for subplots involving the Italian team, the South African team, the American team, and the Japanese team.  Adlar (Robin Nazari), a Kurdish refugee who plays for England, has to decide whether to play against a team led by a player who was on the opposite side of the Syrian Civil War.  Sister Protasia (Susan Wokoma), coach of the South African team, struggles to get a visa for one of her players.  Rosita (Christina Rodlo) of the American team hopes to play well enough to receive a college scholarship.  Mika (Aoi Okuyama), the young coach of the Japanese team, struggles to inspire her older players.  It can sometimes be difficult to keep track of it all but, at the same time, it does capture the idea of the Homeless World Cup being a truly international event, one that gives hope and opportunity to people across the world.  For Rosita and Vinny, the competition is a way to change the direction of their lives.  For the Japanese team, the competition is way to see the world and enjoy themselves.  And for Mal, the competition is a chance to give something back to the game that he loves.

The Beautiful Game is overlong and a bit overstuffed but it still occasionally brought tears to my mismatched eyes.  It’s a film with a big heart but enough of an edge that it avoids the trap of being overly sentimental.  It’s a well-acted film, especially by Michael Ward and Bill Nighy.  In the end, I think my favorite performances came from Aoi Okuyama and the members of the Japanese team.  Early on, they say that all they want to do is score one goal against another team.  When they do, their joy is infectious.  One might even say it’s beautiful.

Enemy (1990, directed by George Rowe)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

At the height of the Vietnam War, CIA agent Ken Andrews (Peter Fonda) disguises himself as a French journalist, slips into North Vietnam, assassinates a VC general, and then makes his escape into the jungle.  Unfortunately, the helicopter that was meant to take Ken to safety is blown up, leaving Ken stranded in the jungle with a beautiful Chinese spy named Mai Chang (Tia Carrere).

With the VC after both of them, Ken and Mai will have to set aside their initial enmity and work together to make it out of North Vietnam.  In between endless scenes of the two of them making their way through the jungle, there are battle scenes where the VC manage to shoot everything except for the two people that they’re after.

This cheap film was shot in 1988 but it sat on the shelf for two years.  The script, which attempts to be a rumination on the nature of war, feels as if it was written even earlier.  It will always be strange to me how Peter Fonda went from starring as bikers and aging hippies in films like Easy Rider and The Wild Angels to playing CIA agents and military officers in films like this one.  Peter Fonda was a stiff actor but, in this case, it works for his character, who, after all, is meant to be a man who has to keep his emotions under control.  Tia Carrere is beautiful and seems to be trying really hard to give a convincing performance despite being miscast as a grim spy.  Fonda and Carrere do have a surprising amount of chemistry together.  The romance that develops between them actually feels believable.

Enemy suffers from too much padding.  It’s a two-person show and those two people spend a lot of time walking through the jungle.  Some of the action scenes are exciting and the idea of an American spy falling in love with a Chinese spy is interesting but the ending, while action-packed, still feels like a cop out that’s designed to give Ken an easy out.  You can almost hear Ken thinking to himself, “I really dodged a bullet there.”