The Films of 2020: Rising High (dir by Cuneyt Kaya)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ever since the Great Recession of 2009, films about white collar crime have been popular. Some of them, like The Wolf of Wall Street, have been great and others, like The Big Short, have been terrible but one thing that they all have in common is that they’ve all left my very confused.

Seriously, as hard as I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to understand any of this stock market stuff. Why do stocks go up? Why do they go down? Why do people sell them? Why people buy them? What do they get out of it? If you buy a stock and then never sell it, did you just waste a huge chunk of cash? What even is a stock? How can a company have so much stock? Can I sell stock in myself? Seriously, how does it all work?

By that same token, how do you know how much a house is worth? I know that it has to do with how much the house next to your house is worth but who decides how much that house is worth? I’ve seen so many movies about people talking about real estate and insider trading and scampacs and I still don’t understand how any of it works.

Perhaps that’s why I don’t get as outraged as some people do while watching movies like The Wolf of Wall Street. I know some people who walked out of that movie talking about how much they wanted the federal agent played by Kyle Chandler to throw Jordan Belfort (played, in the best performance of his career, by Leonardo Di Caprio) over the side of his boat. Me, I was just happy that Jordan Belfort was able to buy himself a nice boat. He got to hang out with his friends, he got live in a big house, and good for him. I mean, he had fun. We should all be so lucky. The main reason why The Wolf of Wall Street was a thousand times better than The Big Short was because The Wolf of Wall Street was willing to admit that rich people are more fun than poor people. The Wolf of Wall Street made its point with getting bogged down in all of the Marxist argle bargle that other white collar crime films tend to drown in.

Rising High is a German film that is superficially similar to The Wolf of Wall Street. It follows Viktor (David Kross) and Gerry (Frederick Lau) as they make a small fortune through shady real estate deals. Viktor is a smooth-talking salesman while Gerry is a bit rougher around the edges. Basically, Viktor and Gerry get rich selling luxury apartments. The only catch is that they don’t actually own the apartments that they’re selling. Instead, they make bids with money that they don’t have and then they sell the property that they don’t own and then they use the money from the sell to purchase the property. I guess that’s illegal. I mean, Viktor does eventually end up getting arrested and telling the story of the shady ways that he got rich.

Anyway, Viktor’s story is typical of these type of films. He grew up poor. He found a way to make money and ethics be damned, he did what he had to do. Soon, Viktor is married to Nicole (Janina Uhse) and having coke-fueled parties and listening to a lot of music. He also spends a lot of time wondering if he’s allowed his life to get out of control. He may be a white collar criminal but he’s a white collar criminal with a conscience.

Anyway, the main problem with Rising High is that it’s only 94 minutes, which means that the whole story feels somewhat rushed. Viktor goes from being poor to being rich to being incarcerated in record time. Because the film is so rushed, you never really get to explore Viktor’s life. For all the complaints that you may have heard about The Wolf of Wall Street‘s 3-hour running time, it used those three hours to show us why Jordan Belfot and friends were willing to risk going to prison. It showed us their lifestyle and, regardless of whether you liked any of them or not, you understood where their minds were at. In Rising High, Viktor and Gerry are just jerks who get in over their heads. You never really get to know them and even the decadent scenes of their wealthy lives feel as if they were all lifted from other movies. Neither Viktor nor Gerry comes across as being a particularly interesting character so you really don’t care if they end up having to go to jail. If anything, the main message I got from this film is that you should have as much fun as possible before the police show up. If you spend too much time pondering the meaning of it all, you’re going to miss out on some good memories.

Anyway, as far as white collar crime films are concerned, I’m going to stick with The Wolf of Wall Street. Seriously, that was a really nice boat….

The Films of 2020: Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City (dir by Daniel Calparsoro)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Twin Murders: The Silence Of The White City is a Spanish film about two people who spend a lot of time jogging.

Alba (Belen Rueda) and Unai (Javier Rey) both like to run through the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. Eventually, they run into each other and soon, they’re running through the city together on an almost nightly basis. Along the way, they fall in love. Of course, there are complications. Alba is married. Unai is traumatized by something that happened in the past and he’s only now starting to come out of his shell. Can these two find happiness?

Making things even more complicated, Alba also happens to be Unai’s new boss! Alba is the deputy chief of the Basque Country’s police force. Unai is a legendary detective and criminal profiler who has been on a leave of absence ever since the death of his wife. Can Unai conquer his fears and his pain? Can Alba prove that she’s capable of handling a job that typically goes only to men? And, again — can they do all this while falling in love?

And there’s a serial killer to deal with, as well!

Actually, to be honest, the film is more about the serial killer than the love story between Alba and Unai. It’s just that, when I watched the movie, I always found myself far more interested in the scenes of Alba and Unai running than in the scenes of Unai trying to discover the identity of the killer. (In fact, the identity of the killer is revealed about 40 minutes into this 110-minute film, which means that the audience spends the majority of the film with a lot more information than either Unai or Alba.) The running scenes are beautifully filmed and they’re well-played by Rueda and Rey.

Unfortunately, the serial killer stuff just isn’t that interesting. This is another killer who has a precise way of picking his victims and who goes out of his way to pose the dead bodies in the most ornate and haunting way possible. It leads to some effective visuals but it’s still not anything that we haven’t experienced in other movies. I always find it interesting that cinematic serial killers always have such complicated motives whereas real-life serial killers almost inevitably turn out to be some nerdy guy who never got over still being a virgin on his 20th birthday. Real-life serial killers are almost always sub-literate losers whereas cinematic serial killers are always very articulate and clever. Call it the Hannibal Lecter effect, I guess.

Speaking of Hannibal Lecter, Twin Murders has its very own Hannibal. His name is Tasio (Alex Brendemühl) and he’s a former TV crime show host who decided to become a real criminal. The current murders look a lot like his former murders but Tasio’s still in prison so what gives? Is Tasio involved in the new murders or is the new murderer just a copycat? Watch and find out, I guess.

Twin Murders: The Silence of The White City is all about style. The plot itself is full of red herrings and bizarre motivations and, at times, it’s nearly impossible to follow. However, the film looks great and is full of ominous atmosphere. The cast does a good enough job to make their clichéd characters somewhat engaging. It’s definitely an imperfect film and certainly not one to watch if you’re looking for a realistic portrait of cops or serial killers. But if you’re just looking for a film with style to burn, Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City can take care of you.

The Films of 2020: Murder To Mercy: The Cyntonia Brown (dir by Daniel H. Birman)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2004, a Nashville real estate agent and youth minister named Johnny Allen was found dead in his home. He had been shot in the back of his head, while lying naked in bed. The police claimed that he had been asleep when he was shot. Cyntonia Brown, the 16 year-old runaway who was arrested for the crime, claimed that Allen had been awake and that he had been reaching for a gun when she shot him. Cyntonia Brown was subsequently convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. She wouldn’t be eligible for parole until she served 51 years of her sentence.

From the start, there were questions about whether or not justice was done in the case of Cyntonia Brown. Naively, she waved her Miranda rights after she was arrested, believing the detective’s claim that it would help her case if she just talked to them. (Is a sixteen year-old mature enough to make the decision whether or not to talk to the police without an attorney present?) Brown had spent years being abused by sexual predators, like her “boyfriend” Garion “Kut-Throat” McGlothen. As well, there was evidence that she may have suffered from Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, as a result of her mother having been an alcoholic. FASD can lead to uncontrollable behavioral and perception issues. With all of that in mind, should Cyntonia Brown have been sentenced to 51 years in prison?

In 2011, a documentary called Me Facing Life: Cyntonia’s Story aired on PBS. Directed by Daniel Birman, Me Facing Life generated renewed interest in Brown’s case. When Brown, who was described as being a model prisoner, petitioned Tennessee Governor Bill Halsam for clemency, her cause became a cause célèbre for many (which is another way of saying that it trended on twitter for a few days). In 2019, Gov. Halsam commuted Brown’s sentence to 15 years plus 10 years of supervised probation. Cyntonia Brown was released and is today an activist for criminal justice reform.

Murder To Mercy is Daniel Birman’s follow-up to Me Facing Life. The first half of the film is largely made up for footage from Me Facing Life while the 2nd half deals with Brown’s clemency hearing. Unfortunately, Murder to Mercy only provides a surface-level examination of Cyntonia Brown’s case. One can fully believe that her initial sentence was too harsh (as do I) and one can also believe that she was failed by the system (and again, I do) while also acknowledging that Murder to Mercy is a bit too one-sided in its presentation of the case to really be effective.

For example, even if you do believe that Johnny Allen was reaching for a gun or that Cyntonia Brown did have a justifiable reason to consider herself to be in danger, it’s still hard not to notice that his family is only present in one scene. Since Allen’s family has been quite vocal in their opposition to Cyntonia Brown’s release, pushing them to the side doesn’t feel right. (This wouldn’t bother me as much if the documentary had said, “Johnny Allen’s family refused to be interviewed for this documentary.” That, at least, would have explained their absence. As it is, it just feels like they were left out because the film isn’t interested in anything that might complicate the narrative.)

The film makes the argument that Cyntonia Brown was treated unfairly by the criminal justice system. It does make one very good point. When she was arrested in 2004, Tennessee law classified her as being a prostitute. In other words, even before she was convicted of murder, she was classified as being a criminal instead of a victim. Later, in response to criticism over Brown’s sentencing, the law was changed so that minors could not be charged with prostitution. Instead, they are now classified as victims of sex trafficking. That’s one of the good things to come out of the Cyntonia Brown case. Oddly enough, though, the film doesn’t explore the role that race may or may not have played in the harsh sentencing of Cyntonia Brown. If Brown was a white girl from the suburbs who had been forced into prostitution at the age of 12 and who had subsequently felt that her life was in danger, would she have been sentenced to, at minimum, 51 years in prison? That’s an issue that goes largely unexplored.

Cyntonia Brown’s story is a complicated one and it’s also one that deserves to be told. Unfortunately, this heartfelt but surface level examination doesn’t really do justice to anyone or any of the issues involved.

The Films of 2020: Dangerous Lies (dir by Michael Scott)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As soon as Elliott Gould showed up, I knew he was going to die.

Now, of course, I should clarify that I didn’t think that Elliott Gould the actor was going to die. Instead, I thought that the character he was playing — Leonard Wellesley — was going to die. Leonard, after all, is a wealthy man who has no family left and who is in bad health. He keeps trying to give money to his caregiver, Katie (Camila Mendes). Katie consistently refuses the money, even though she could really use it. She and her husband, Adam (Jessie T. Usher), are drowning in debt. Even after Leonard hires Adam to work as his gardener, they’re still struggling to make ends meet. Still, Katie doesn’t want to take Leonard’s money because Katie doesn’t want to take advantage of him.

For the plot to move forwards, it’s necessary for Leonard to die, though not before changing his will to leave everything to Katie. Normally, when this happens in a movie, it turns out that the caregiver actually manipulated her employer into changing the will before murdering him but, in this case, Katie is totally innocent. It’s actually kind of a nice twist. As played by Camila Medes, Katie is someone who sincerely is trying to do the right thing, even if it means her life is occasionally difficult. As played by Elliott Gould, Leonard may be a bit eccentric but he’s still just sincerely trying to thank the person who made his final days bearable.

(Admittedly, another reason why I knew Leonard was going to die was because, whenever a veteran actor like Elliott Gould shows up in a movie like this, he’s usually going to end up playing someone who dies under mysterious circumstances. Call it the Rule of Eric Roberts.)

Moving into Leonard’s house, Katie and Adam are surprised to discover a large trunk of cash. While Katie wonders why exactly Leonard would have a huge trunk of money hidden away in his house, Adam is more concerned with what they can do with that money. While Katie tries to resist the urge to get greedy, Adam starts obsessing on the money. What else does Leonard have hidden around the house?

Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Hayden (Cam Gigandet) watches the house and plots his next move….

Dangerous Lies is a thriller that was released on Netflix back in April. This is probably one of those low-budget movies that would have been overlooked if not for the fact that everyone was pretty much locked inside their house when it was released. Watching Dangerous Lies provided a nice escape from the bad news of the pandemic. Speaking for myself, it was kind of fun to watch Katie and Adam explore their new home. After being stuck inside of mine for a month, the idea that I could suddenly inherit a mansion provided a nice bit of wish-fulfillment.

As for the film itself, it was a diverting thriller. Elliott Gould brought some unexpected depth to the role of Leonard and Camila Mendes and Jessie T. Usher were believable as the couple at the center of the story. They had a believable chemistry and Usher did a good job of portraying Adam’s losing struggle with his own greed. This is the type of simple but entertaining film that you watch if you have a few hours to kill in the afternoon and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Films of 2020: John Henry (dir by Will Forbes)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

John Henry tells the story of a man named …. well, John Henry. He’s played by Terry Crews and he lives in South Los Angeles with his father, BJ Henry (Ken Foree). BJ may have to carry an oxygen tank around with him but he still has enough strength to shout, “My dick is legendary,” so good for him.

(Actually, it may sound like I’m being snarky and, to a certain extent, I am. But having Ken Foree play Terry Crews’s father is actually a brilliant piece of casting.)

John Henry used to be into the gang lifestyle but now he’s gone straight. We see flashbacks to his former life and how he used to hang out with his cousin, Hell (Ludacris). When John accidentally shot Hell in the face, he decided to retire from crime and he also swore off carrying a gun. Hell, on the other hand, just got a fancy gold-plated jaw. Years later, Hell is a crime lord and John Henry is wandering around with sledgehammer.

When a Honduran refugee named Berta (Jamila Velazquez) show up at John Henry’s house, on the run from Hell’s crew, BJ’s reaction is to kick her out. But John Henry, being the gentle giant with a sledgehammer, allows her to stay. When Hell and his crew show up, it leads to violence, death, and …. well, that’s pretty much it.

John Henry is an odd film. The tone is literally all over the place as the film swerves from being a comic book film to a serious drama to a comedy to a Spaghetti western. It takes a lot of skill to take that many different tonal shifts and turn them into a coherent movie and unfortunately, that really doesn’t happen with John Henry. The minute you start to get used to the idea of the film being an over-the-top comic book film, it suddenly tries to be a meditation on violence and guilt. As soon as you’re getting used to the idea of it being a drama, Ludacris shows up with a huge hunk of medal on his face. It’s hard to keep track of what exactly the film is saying because the film itself doesn’t seem to know. I guess that could be forgiven if the film’s action managed to maintain a steady pace but instead, this felt like one of the longest 91-minute films that I’ve ever watched.

However, as our longtime readers should know by now, I’m not a fan of excessive negativity so let’s take a few moments to discuss what did work. I already mentioned the casting of Terry Crews and Ken Foree. They’re fun to watch together. Ludacris’s gold-plated jaw is an amusing detail and it’s unfortunate that the film didn’t have more similarly odd details like that. I also liked the opening credits, which basically told the film’s story in a comic book form. The credits were fun and they hinted at what this film could have been if it had been better-paced and had fully embraced its camp potential.

John Henry played in some theaters before the pandemic outbreak. It later found a home on Netflix and it’s in the process of developing a bit of a cult reputation. Reportedly, there will be a sequel so I guess it’s not time to take John Henry to the graveyard just yet.

The Films of 2020: Coda (dir by Claude LaLonde)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Coda tells the story of Sir Henry Cole and Helen Morrison.

Sir Henry (Patrick Stewart) is a world-famous pianist who hasn’t played in public since his wife died several years ago. He’s about to embark on a comeback tour but he finds himself struggling with stage fright. Some of it is because he still hasn’t recovered from the loss of his wife. Some of it is because he’s getting older and his memory is no longer as good as it used to be. And, a lot of it is because he doesn’t know who he can trust. He fears that the only reason people will come to his recitals is because they want to hear him screw up.

Helen Morrison (Katie Holmes) is a former music student who is now a writer for The New Yorker. She is a free spirit who desperately wants to interview Sir Henry and write a profile of him. She is also the film’s narrator, which means that the film opens with her talking about Nietzsche. That’s never a good sign as Nietzsche is the philosopher who is most likely to be quoted by people who are trying to sounds smart by pretending that they spend their spare time studying philosophy.

I’m tempted to say that Henry and Helen solve crimes but sadly, they don’t. The film probably would have been a lot more fun if they had. Instead, Henry struggles to find his confidence and Helen struggles to help Henry find his confidence and there’s a lot of scenes of Henry trying to play the notes while Helen stares off into the distance. Eventually, it leads to a very mild love story and a few scenes of a bearded Henry walking through the Swiss Alps. The Alps, as always, are quite impressive.

(I visited Switzerland the summer after I graduated high school. Beautiful country but don’t even think about trying to leave dinner early.)

This is one of those films that I wanted to like more than I actually did. I mean, it’s a serious-minded film for adults and there’s no explosions or gunfights and we’re all supposed to be in favor of that, right? Add to that, it features Patrick Stewart doing what Patrick Stewart does best, revealing the inner humanity of a somewhat imposing character. And make no mistake about it, Stewart gives a warm and likable performance in the lead role. It’s impossible not to empathize with Henry when he finds himself staring down at his piano and wondering if he’ll ever again be able to use it to create beautiful music.

But, ultimately, the film doesn’t really work. It’s a bit too slowly paced and the dialogue is full of lines that are meant to be profound but actually feel rather empty. Katie Holmes does her best but Helen never feels like a fully-realized character. For the most part, she’s just there to inspire Henry before vanishing from the movie. Fortunately, once Helen’s gone, other characters show up to continue to inspire Henry. It really does seem like a full-time job, keeping Henry inspired.

The film did improve a bit when Henry arrived in the Alps, largely because the Alps are lovely and there’s a scene where Henry has a dream about standing next to Beethoven while staring over the edge of a cliff. The imagery was breath-taking but it’s not enough to save the movie. That said, if anyone ever makes a documentary about Patrick Stewart hiking through Switzerland, I’ll be the first to watch it.

The Films of 2020: I Still Believe (dir by the Erwin Brothers)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I Still Believe is based on the true story of musician Jeremy Camp (played by KJ Apa) and his first wife, Melissa Henning (Britt Robertson). Jeremy meets Melissa in college. They become friends. They try to date but the relationship is complicated by the fact that Jeremy’s mentor, Jean-Luc LaJoie (Nathan Parsons), is also in love with Melissa. Over the Christmas break, Melissa is taken ill and discovers that she has Stage 3C liver cancer. Jeremy and Melissa marry and try to find happiness and maintain their faith in the time that Melissa has left. Though Jeremy grows angry and has his moments of doubts, Melissa remains convinced that, though it may be hard to understand, there is a deeper reason for her suffering and it’s all apart of a bigger plan.

I Still Believe is the type of film that will bring out the cynic in most professional critics. That said, it’s also the type of film that’s pretty much critic-proof. It really doesn’t matter how much time or energy one might spend criticizing the film or its script or its belief system, the target audience of I Still Believe will love the film. I Still Believe is a film that’s either going to inspire snark or it’s going to inspire tears. It all depends on how you feel about the idea of a terminal illness all being a part of God’s plan.

(As far as that’s concerned, I’ll be keeping my own opinion to myself.)

Unlike a lot of the faith-based films that I’ve reviewed for this site, I Still Believe actually feels like a real movie. As opposed to the God’s Not Dead films, there are no cardboard atheists standing around and waiting to be shown up by the clever heroes asking how they can be angry at God if God doesn’t exist. The film, for the most part, avoids the trap of getting preachy and, to its credit, it treats Jeremy’s moments of doubt with respect. It doesn’t shame him for getting upset over something that, regardless of what you may or may not believe, seems terrible unfair. KJ Apa and Britt Robertson are both appealing performers and they have a believable chemistry as Jeremy and Melissa. Finally, the film look gorgeous. The farmlands of Indiana and the California campus where Jeremy and Melissa meet both feel vibrantly alive in this film.

At the same time, there’s nothing particularly surprising about I Still Believe. It’s a predictable film and the minute that Jeremy gets that phone call telling him that Melissa has been taken to the hospital, you’ll be able to guess everything that’s going to follow. If you’re not inclined to view Christian faith sympathetically, the film will not change your mind. When I was looking over some of the other reviews of this film, the most common complaint I saw was that the film “preaches to the choir.” It’s a valid complaint but, at the same time, I think it can also be argued that almost every film ever made has preached to one choir or another. You could say the same thing about the political films of Adam McKay and Jay Roach or, for the matter, the majority of outspokenly anti-religious films. Most message films tend to appeal to an audience who already agrees with what the film has to say. Typically. when someone complains that a film preached to the choir, what they’re really saying is, “It didn’t preach to my choir.”

I Still Believe is a well-made film that will probably be best appreciated by people who already share its view of life and religion. Though production on the film obviously started before the pandemic, it does feel like a film specifically made for these quarantined times. It’s a film that argues the faith and strength can be found in even the worst of circumstances. Whether that’s true or not is up to the viewer to decide.

The Films of 2020: Bad Boys For Life (dir by Adil & Bilall)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bad Boys For Life came out in January of this year. It was the first big release of 2020 and despite some skepticism (mostly from people like me, who pointed out that it had been 18 years since the release of the previous Bad Boys film), it went on to become the most financially successful January release of all time. Not only did audiences love it but critics were surprisingly positive as well.

When I watched the film last week, I occasionally felt as if I had stepped into a time machine. Even though the movie was just released a few months ago, it really does feel like an artifact from another age. I mean, here we have a film named after the theme song of Cops, a once inescapable reality show that has largely been memory-holed as its uncritical depiction of the police has fallen out of fashion. The film even features several scenes of the heroes singing the Bad Boys song, a song that declares that there’s nothing you can do now that the police are coming for you.

Of course, the film itself is about the type of supercops who, up until a few months ago, were popular in films and television. These are the type of cops who are always quick with a quip and who have no problem trampling all over the Constitution in their pursuit of the bad guys. The film celebrates the idea of the “super cop” in a way that seems almost unthinkable in our current cultural moment. Defund the police? How could you possibly want to do that when the cops are as charming as Will Smith and …. uhmm, Martin Lawrence?

Smith and Lawrence return as Miami Detectives Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett. Played by Smith, Mike is a confident and cocky playboy whose carefree façade hides a complicated path. As played by Lawrence, Marcus is a mild-mannered family man who thinks that his partner needs to settle down and perhaps show a little bit more caution with some of his life choices. Together …. THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

No, this time I’m not joking. That is literally what they literally do. They’re famous for solving crimes and Mike is known as being the “bulletproof cop.” However, they’re both getting older. Mike’s beard is going gray. Marcus wants to spend more time at home. Even their old boss (Joe Pantoliano) is talking about his retirement. Unfortunately, a man named Armando (Jacob Scipio) is riding around Miami on a motorcycle and murdering anyone who was involved in the arrest and incarceration of an infamous Mexican drug lord. He’s doing so on the orders of his mother, Isabel (Kate del Castillo), who is also known as La Bruja. When Armando targets Mike, everyone is forced to reconsider their plans.

That may sounds simple and straight forward but the film complicates things with a third act twist involving Mike and Armando’s relationship. It’s a twist that really shouldn’t work and yet it does, largely because Will Smith is a strong enough dramatic actor that he makes Mike seem like an actual human being, as opposed to being just an infallible action hero. Smith gets not only the best dramatic moments but also some of the best comedic ones, especially when he ends up working with a bunch of younger cops who aren’t as impressed with Mike as Mike is with himself. Martin Lawrence doesn’t get to do as much as Smith but he has a few funny moments and, most importantly, the friendship between Mike and Marcus feels real. Lawrence and Smith have an undeniable chemistry that works in both comedic and dramatic scenes. When Marcus says that he can’t stand to see Mike putting his life in danger, you believe him. When Mike reacts to Marcus’s desire to retire as being some sort of personal betrayal, you understand exactly what’s going through Mike’s head to make him overreact. You believe that Mike and Marcus really do care about each other and it adds a surprising amount of emotional depth to certain scenes.

Bad Boys For Life is a good action film, one that has a surprisingly big heart. The action scenes are well-handled. The chase scenes are exciting. Will Smith again shows why he’s a movie star. Though the film may seem like a relic of a bygone era, it’s undoubtedly entertaining. (Considering the ADD-nature of popular culture nowadays, it’s easy to imagine that supercops will be back in fashion sooner than later.) Naturally, it ends with the promise of sequel and I imagine that we’ll eventually get one. The only real question is whether or not Marcus and Mike will still be singing their theme song. Let’s hope so.

The Films of 2020: Bloodshot (dir by David S. F. Wilson)

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 is the first year since 2008 not to feature any new Marvel films. Despite the fact that Wonder Woman 1984 still has a Christmas release date, it wouldn’t surprise me if it still got moved back into 2021. With the exception Tenent, 2020 has been the year of the anti-blockbuster.

I have to admit that, at first, it really bothered me that I was going to have to wait to see both Black Widow and the new Wonder Woman film but, as more time has gone by, the less I actually care about either one of them. I think one reason why comic book films have been so popular over the past few years is because they were relentless. There was always a new one coming out. If you were disappointed with Captain Marvel, you could still say that the trailer for Endgame looked really good. If you were less than thrilled with Batman v Superman, you could at least look forward to Wonder Woman. Now that we’re no longer being inundated on a daily basis with new MCU trailers and DCEU gossip. it’s a lot easier to realize that a few of those films were surprisingly good (and I stand by my declaration that Guardians of the Galaxy was the best film of 2014) and some of them were notably bad but the majority of them were entertaining without being particularly memorable.

That bring us to Bloodshot. Depending on whether or not Wonder Woman 1984 holds onto that Christmas release date and if The New Mutants are forgotten about, Bloodshot could down in history as the only major comic book film released in 2020. It stars Vin Diesel as Ray Garrison, a dead Marine who is revived and turned into an invulnerable super soldier. Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce) sends Ray after the people who previously killed him and his wife, Gina (Talulah Riley). Ray kills a lot of people over the course of Bloodshot. He also continually wakes up in that laboratory, with no memory of who he is. Could Harting just be using Ray to kills own enemies? It’s possible, if just because I don’t think there’s been a heroic character named Emil in a comic book movie.

As a film, Bloodshot is …. well, it’s okay. If you’re going to make a movie about a relentless super soldier who can’t be killed, Vin Diesel is probably the best actor that you could get to star in it. (Yes, Dwayne Johnson could play the physical aspect of the role but his natural likability would go against the whole relentless killer thing. Diesel, on the other hand, can actually convince you that he’s planning on murdering everyone that he sees.) And if you need someone to play a smarmy mad scientist named Emil Harting, Guy Pearce seems like the obvious choice. The action scenes are well-done, even if they do go a bit overboard on the slow motion. The CGI is convincing. When Ray gets a bit of his face blown off, it legitimately looks like a chunk of his face is breaking off of him. (Fear not, Ray has super healing.) Much like Ray, the film has a job to do and it doesn’t let much get in the way of doing that job.

And yet, the film itself is never exactly memorable. There’s none of the little quirks or unexpected moments that distinguish the better comic book films. Instead, Bloodshot feels like a throwback to the days before comic book films became a big deal. We know that Guy Pearce is evil from the minute he shows up, just as we know that the film is going to end with a battle the involves a lot of flashy CGI. No effort is really made to take anyone by surprise. Bloodshot goes through the paces and hits all of the expected notes but it’s never really lively enough to be engaging on anything more than a “Hey, did you just see Vin Diesel kill that guy!?” sort of way. Bloodshot is a film that’s just there. Occasionally, it’s entertaining but ultimately, it’s rather forgettable.

Fever Pitch (1985, directed by Richard Brooks)

Posted on September 27, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

It takes a great director to come up with a movie as bad as Fever Pitch and, in his day, Richard Brooks was a great director. Among Brooks’s films as a director you’ll find titles like Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, The Professionals, and In Cold Blood. These were all films that took risks and broke new ground and which were willing to defy the conventions of the time. Brooks was a director who told hard-boiled stories that dealt honestly with real-life issues.

Unfortunately, as often happens with great filmmakers, Brooks struggled to remain relevant as he got older. Hollywood’s sensibility eventually caught up with Brooks’s sensibility and then moved past it. While Brooks remained an interesting director, his final films often seemed to be the work of a grumpy old man who just wanted all those young people to stay off his lawn.

Fever Pitch, Brooks’s final film, stars Ryan O’Neal as Steve Taggart. Taggart is a sports writer for The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He’s been writing a series of stories about a compulsive gambler named Mr. Green. The stories are so popular that his editor (John Saxon) has no problem giving Taggart $10,000 so that Taggart can then give the money to Mr. Green so that Mr. Green can continue to gamble. What anyone, especially the editor of a major newspaper, should be able to figure out is that Mr. Green is actually Steve Taggart.

Taggart takes the money to Las Vegas, where he hits the casinos while also researching the root causes of gambling. On the one hand, Brooks includes a lot of scenes of Taggart listening to real people explain the history and the dangers of gambling, often in the most didactic ways possible. (Hank Greenspun, the legendary publisher of The Las Vegas Sun, appears as himself and shows why he became a publisher and not an actor.) On other other hand, MGM not only produced the film but allowed it to be filmed at the MGM Grand Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. Fever Pitch is anti-gambling film that also doubles as a commercial for a casino. It’s like an anti-smoking film that gives everyone in the audience a free pack of Camels.

Steve hooks up with an unbelievable wholesome prostitute played by Catherine Hicks. He also has to deal with several shady characters, including a veteran gambler named Charlie (Giancarlo Giannini) ad a debt collector named The Hat (played by William Smith). Taggart is obsessed with gambling but he doesn’t seem to be very good at it, as he keeps getting beat up and threatened. Eventually, he goes to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting and he seems to be ready to admit that he has a problem and that it’s keeping him from being a good father to his daughter. That might seem like the ideal place for the movie to end but instead, Taggart has to try his luck with just one last slot machine.

Fever Pitch is doomed from the minute Ryan O’Neal starts his narration. Nothing about O’Neal suggests that he could be capable of writing a hard-hitting expose about the life of a compulsive gambler. In this film, he doesn’t even come across like he would be capable of reading it. O’Neal is too passive of an actor to be a convincing gambler and his wooden performance clashes with Brooks’s attempts to create a hyperkinetic feel to the Vegas scenes. While everyone in the film is lecturing him about the dangers of gambling, O’Neal sit there with same blank look on his face.

A critical and a commercial failure, Fever Pitch was Brooks’s final film. He died seven years later, leaving behind a legacy of important movies that cannot be tarnished even by something like Fever Pitch.