Film Review: Those Who Wish Me Dead (dir by Taylor Sheridan)

Posted on June 13, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Those Who Wish Me Dead, Angelina Jolie plays Hannah, a smokejumper who is haunted by a mistake that led to a family dying in a forest fire. All of her recent psych evals seem to indicate that Hannah is self-destructive and a danger to herself and potentially others. Of course, it doesn’t help that Hannah keeps doing things that are self-destructive and that put her and potentially others in danger. She’s watched over by her fellow smokejumpers and her ex-boyfriend, Ethan (Jon Bernthal). Even Ethan’s pregnant wife, Allison (Medina Senghorse) is looking out for Hannah.

Hannah, meanwhile, finds herself looking out for Connor (Finn Carter), a young boy whose father has been murdered by two ruthless assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult). Because the boy has evidence that could lead to the downfall of an evil mob boss (played by Tyler Perry because, hey, why not?), the assassins search for Connor and they even set a forest fire to cover their tracks.

Trapped in the wilderness, Hannah, Connor, Ethan, and Allison have to somehow survive until the fire burns itself out and the smokejumpers can reach them. Meanwhile, the two assassins are closing in….

I was initially pretty enthusiastic about the prospect of watching Those Who Wish Me Dead on HBOMax but, ten minutes into the movie, I found myself wondering if maybe I was watching something that was made in 1998 and somehow not released until 2021. Everything about the film — from Hannah’s tortured backstory to the verbosely evil assassin played by Gillen — felt like it belonged in a direct-to-video thriller or maybe in a pilot for an old USA Network show starring Cynthia Rothrock and Lorenzo Lamas. It was very easy to watch this movie and to imagine Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze showing up as brothers fighting “the wildfire of the century!”

Oddly enough, Angelina Jolie probably could have starred in the 1998 version of this film. That’s how long we’ve been taking it for granted that Angelina Jolie can confront any crisis or any villain and basically kick its ass. That’s a huge reason why I was so looking forward to seeing Those Who Wish Me Dead. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to watch Angelina Jolie play an action hero and the fact that she was doing it in a film directed by Taylor Sheridan just made it all the more exciting. Unfortunately, though, Jolie doesn’t seem to be particularly invested in Those Who Wish Me Dead. There’s not much of the unpredictable spontaneity or the sense of danger that, in the past, made Angelina Jolie one of the most exciting actresses around. It’s easy to imagine that, just a few years ago, Jolie could have worked wonders playing someone as openly self-destructive as Hannah but, in Those Who Wish Me Dead, she instead often seems to just be going through the motions. If anything, Aidan Gillen makes a bigger impression, despite the fact that he’s just playing a standard bad guy.

(Speaking of bad guys, why is Tyler Perry playing a crime lord? There’s nothing menacing about Tyler Perry. The fact that Perry only appears in one scene makes his miscasting all the more obvious. As soon as you’ve said, “Wait — why is Tyler Perry in this movie?,” he’s gone. Perry needed at least two extra scenes where he could have killed someone or at least maybe cursed a little or anything else that could have established him as someone other than Tyler Perry making a strange cameo appearance.)

Taylor Sheridan both directed and had a hand in the script. Sheridan previously wrote Hell and High Water and Sicario and both directed and wrote Wind River. These are three of the best films of the past decade and, yet, in the early scenes especially, Those Who Wish Me Dead almost feels almost like a parody of those previous films. The early scenes, where Hannah hangs out with the other smokejumpers, especially ring false, with the blue collar dialogue feeling forced and artificial. Sheridan does better when directing the action scenes but there’s still an overwhelming blandness to the whole film. There’s too much talent involved for Those Who Wish Me Dead to be terrible but, at the same time, it’s hard not to feel that there’s also too much talent for it to be this forgettable.

Horror Film Review: Wendigo (dir by Larry Fessenden)

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2001 film, Wendigo, tells the story of a family in the Catskills. Some families go to upstate New York and they hang out with the dance people and learn a lesson about tolerance, class conflict, and dirty dancing. Others leave New York City and head up north because they’re trying to get away from the stress that comes from being a New Yorker. The film is about the latter and, to be honest, I don’t blame them for leaving the city. While it’s true that I don’t live in New York, I’ve seen enough clips of Bill de Blasio speaking to know that I also would want to get away from that 8 foot monster.

Of course, there are monsters in upstate New York as well. Just as South Texas has to deal with chupacabras, it would appear that Upstate New York has a Wendigo problem. According to the film, the Wendigo is a man who turned into a monster after committing cannibalism. The Wendigo can assume any shape and …. well, it’s basically just a real bitch to be around, I guess.

At least, that’s how it inititally appears when George (Jake Weber) and his wife Kim (Patricia Clarkson) and their son Miles (Erik Per Sullivan) are just starting out their trip upstate. George accidentally crashed into a deer and gets into with a local hunter named Otis (John Speredakos). Otis is really upset that George took out that deer before he got a chance to. George apologizes but it doesn’t seem to do much good. Later, when the family reach their cabin …. well, things just continue to get out of hand. Are they being harassed by the hunters or is it the Wendigo?

Or could it be both!?

As you may have guessed, I had a bit of a mixed reaction to Wendigo when I saw it. On the one hand, I appreciated the way the film captured the feeling of isolation and there’s a few nicely surreal dream sequences. If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know how much I appreciate an effective and surreal dream sequence. However, Wendigo is also a rather slowly-paced film. It’s only 91 minutes long but it felt much longer and Otis is such a total caricature that it made it difficult for me to take his character seriously as either a hunter or, for that matter, a legitimate threat to anyone’s safety. As a viewer, I took one look at Otis and I thought to myself, “There better be an actual monster in the film because if this guy is the villain, it’s going to be a long 90 minutes.”

As for the cast, Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber were believable if not terribly interesting as the parents. It was especially interesting to see Clarkson in a horror film, as this isn’t a genre with which one really associates her. (Jake Weber at least has Medium on his resume.) Erik Per Sullivan also did an okay job as Miles. I was glad that he wasn’t as annoyingly precocious as a lot of a child actors tend to be. The supporting cast is a mixed collection of performers who try too hard and those who don’t seem to be trying at all.

Wendigo has got some effective, Shining-influenced visuals and it ends on an appropriately ambiguous note. The film has its moments but, ultimately, it was a bit too slow-paced and uneven for me.

Shattered Politics #92: White House Down (dir by Roland Emmerich)

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

To say that the 2012 film White House Down is stupid is probably unnecessary. After all, the film was directed by Roland Emmerich and Emmerich specializes in making stupid films.

And, in many ways, White House Down is prototypical Emmerich film, a long and self-important collection of mayhem and heavy-handed pontification. In the case of this film, liberal President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) is pushing for a treaty that will magically bring about world police. Naturally, a bunch of evil right-wingers (including characters played, somewhat inevitably, by James Woods and Richard Jenkins) don’t want world peace so they hire a bunch of mercenaries who attack the White House. It’s all a part of a plot to force Sawyer to launch a nuclear attack on Iran because … well, why not? Fortunately, aspiring secret service agent (and kick-ass combat veteran) John Cale (Channing Tatum) is there to work with the President and save the country.

And, since Emmerich is from the bigger is always better school of filmmaking, many familiar landmarks are blown up and it takes the film well over two hours to tell its simplistic story. To be honest, if your action movie can’t get the job done in under two hours, then you’re going to have problems. Once a viewer has spent two hours watching one movie, it’s inevitable that he or she will start to question the film’s logic. If the film’s clever enough, all lapses and inconsistencies can be forgiving. If the film is White House Down, it’s a lot less easy to be forgiving.

Of course, from a political point of view, Emmerich tries to have it both ways. For anti-government types like me, it’s always fun to watch Washington D.C. blow up. For those on the right, White House Down presents a situation that can only be solved by heroes with guns. And, of course, Democrats can view White House Down as wish fulfillment, an alternative timeline where Barack Obama actually is as sincere and effective as they wish him to be.

In fact, if anything saves White House Down, it’s the chemistry between Foxx and Tatum. Wisely, neither one of them appears to be taking the film that seriously and both of them seem to be having a lot of fun blowing things up. Channing Tatum, in particular, deserves some sort of award. How many bad films have been made tolerable by Tatum’s willingness to laugh at himself? I’ve lost count but White House Down definitely benefits from his presence. He and Foxx make Emmerich’s style of filmmaking as tolerable as it will ever be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AXbiCdmXgw