Author: BRWC

Leonor Will Never Die: Review. By Joe Muldoon.

As much of a tribute to familial love as it is to 80s Filipino action flicks, Leonor Will Never Die is a deliciously meta action-comedy from the mind of writer-director Martika Ramirez Escobar. The titular lead of our tale, Leonor (Sheila Francisco), is a beloved filmmaker who spends her retirement rewatching her own filmography – much to the behest of her son Rudy (Bong Cabera), whose annoyance at his mother grows with her neglecting to pay her electric bills.

Lonely after the divorce from her ex-husband and death of her beloved son Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides), Leonor secretly spends her time writing a screenplay for a prospective film, ‘The Return Of The Kwago’, its lead character being a stand-in for her lost son. As some screenwriters will surely be able to relate, Leonor’s immersion into her story becomes reality-bending, the boundaries between fact and fiction blurring away. Stepping outside for a smoke break, a falling television set sends our weary writer into a coma, and waking up inside her own story, Leonor is now the unlikely hero of her unfinished screenplay.

With its fourth wall-breaking and film-within-a-film scenario, Escobar’s writing makes for a marvellously mind-bending and incredibly inventive picture. As some have already noted, the film works as a fun introduction to Filipino cinema culture for a prospective non-Filipino audience. Beautifully captured is the retro lo-fi feeling of old 80s B-movie action flicks, which were unabashedly dreadful, but secretly extremely enjoyable.

Tossing aside the screenplay rulebook, Leonor Will Never Die is a startlingly original and ambitious exercise in style, and one that is unafraid to laugh at itself. Stealing the show is Sheila Francisco, whose performance as Leonor is genuinely endearing, and builds a great case for the creation of unconventional action heroes, far from the ultra-macho figures who typically inhabit our screens. This is an excellent feature-length debut for director Escobar, who has more than proven herself to be a talent to watch.

By Joe Muldoon.

Scream VI: The BRWC Review. Jake Peffer.

The Scream franchise has remained one of the most consistent series in the horror genre. Despite a couple of movies being a tad underwhelming there isn’t a bad movie in the franchise. That continues with Scream VI which is the follow up to last year’s Scream (2022). This time around we follow the survivors of the previous movie; Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega), Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding), as they move out to New York.

While there, a new Ghostface begins to terrorize their college campus beginning a new string of murders. With the help of a couple legacy characters, Gale (Courtney Cox) and Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), the remaining kids do everything they can to stop Ghostface once and for all.

Being a direct follow up to the previous movie, Scream VI takes everything that worked last time and manages to ramp things up but also do certain things just different enough to make it all work. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have once again filled the void of director Wes Craven and managed to make the second-best movie in the series. While some aspects of the movie are played a bit safe, when it comes to the kills and the tension things get ramped up to an eleven. This is easily the bloodiest and goriest entry, but the directors are careful to never overdue it. One thing the Scream series has always done well is walk the line between horror and comedy and here is no different as not only is there plenty of great horror elements, but the movie is very funny and most of the comedy lands quite well.

Switching the location to New York this time around actually works in favor of the movie. By being set in the big city it allows more spots for Ghostface to strike and opens of the characters to have to question their every move as even being in public surrounded by other people may no longer be safe anymore. The opening sequence here is the first in the series to gravitate towards something different than what’s been done before, and it is a welcome change of pace.

There are little things throughout that the directors decide to do differently than previous entries, getting away from the typical formula and allowing something new to transpire on screen.

This is the first entry to not feature the character of Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, who has been the final girl throughout this entire series up to this point. While it would have been nice to have her return the movie doesn’t skip a beat in her absence. The young cast does a great job taking over the series while still allowing previous characters such as Gale and Kirby time to shine. Everyone apart of the now self-proclaimed “core four” are all great once again. Melissa Barrera really comes into her own in this performance and now really feels like the new Sidney for the series. Jenna Ortega continues her rise as a megastar providing some great moments here. Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding as the twins are both great comic relief but can hold their own in the tense moments as well.

Scream VI is exactly what this franchise needed. It does a great job paying homage to the original movies and characters while simultaneously building the ground work for the new characters to develop and set up many possibilities for future installments.

Despite the final reveal of Ghostface being a bit underwhelming, Scream VI is a great slasher movie for a new generation that is sure to please fans of the original movies.

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story – The BRWC Review. By Jake Peffer.

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story takes an in depth look at the website from how it got started to its recent backlash. Pornhub has managed to become the internet’s most famous adult entertainment platform. This has allowed sex workers and content creators the ability to showcase their work and make a profit from it. The company itself has gone on to make billions of dollars making it one of the biggest websites in the world. Recent allegations of the site allowing underage content and non-consensual material has caused outrage with anti-trafficking organizations seeking justice for the victims and for the website to be shut down entirely.

Director Suzanne Hillinger expertly creates an engaging documentary about a subject that is often seen as taboo. She does a great job showcasing the opinions and perspectives of both sides. There are many interviews throughout that include the content creators who are just trying to make a living by uploading their content to the website, as well as those against what the website has allowed to be shown on the site including minors and non-consensual videos. It is refreshing to see a documentary not lean to one side or the other and showcase the opinions of people from different walks of life.

The film never glorifies sex work but shows just how big the industry is and how valuable it is for certain people’s way of living. A few content creators get to showcase how they produce their own content and how much work they actually put into it to make a living. Getting to see these people and just how important this lifestyle is for them makes the documentary feel more personal. Things get even more personal when the allegations and lawsuits against the website start coming into play.

Many women have come forward to call out Pornhub for allowing videos that they didn’t consent to, to be posted on the website. It is heartbreaking seeing young women talk about these videos not being taken down, or finally being taken down but then uploaded continuously as the owners of the website don’t take these matters as seriously as they should. These allegations have caused the industry to change over the past few years including even sites like Twitter and Instagram to get more strict on what type of content is allowed to be posted.

Overall, this is a great look into one of the adult entertainment industry’s biggest websites. Seeing the different perspectives from all walks of life allows the documentary to show an unbiased look into  a touchy subject. Money Shot: The Pornhub Story does what all documentary’s should do, make you care about a subject that you may not have had any interest in before and showing you the good and the bad that comes from it.

Esme, My Love: Review. By Joe Muldoon.

Minimalist indie thriller Esme, My Love is the debut narrative directorial feature from Emmy award-winning sound technician Cory Choy. A young mother, Hannah (Stacey Weckstein), takes her daughter. Esme (Audrey Grace Marshall), on a woodland camping trip, their final destination being Hannah’s parents’ old home. Along the way, Hannah strays into the liminal realm between reality and delusion, and her fluctuating sanity does not go unnoticed by the increasingly concerned Esme.

The confused mother insists upon digging holes in the ground, and makes constant mention of an elusive person she refers to as ‘Emily’ – just why does she dig, who -or what- is Emily, and why must they find her? My questions here are not entirely rhetorical, because after finishing the film, I am not myself sure I could properly guess the intended answers – if, indeed, there are any. Herein lies the film’s downfall; its ambiguity borders upon incoherence. Next to no clues are given to the audience, and we are left with an assortment of jigsaw pieces to a puzzle whose final intended image is a murky mystery.

To be sure, many of the darkly psychological sequences deliver some enjoyable thrills and spills, but their impact is somewhat dulled because of the lack of clarity regarding their relation to the overarching story. Hannah is often subject to rather distressing visions, but their unexplained and often abrupt occurrences leave the audience feeling perplexed. At times, the picture becomes a meandering tapestry of peculiar hallucinations of the magical realism variety, ultimately left frustratingly unresolved. The identity of Emily remains perhaps the greatest source of puzzlement; is she a total invention of Hannah’s imagination, the spectre of a lost life, an astral messenger?

Most impressive about the film are the terrific cinematography and the acting performances by the sole two cast members, Weckstein and Marshall. As events unfold and small revelations are partially uncovered, the mother-daughter pair bounce between closeness and distance, between tenderness and terror – if their performances here are anything to go by, my advice is to “watch his space”.

The interpersonal relationship of the troubled twosome is decidedly the best feature, and Choy’s exploration of generational trauma, grief, and loss gives their interactions a welcomed layer of intrigue. Esme, My Love is an excellently-acted, beautifully-shot, and incredibly slowly burning thriller that is ultimately let down by its obfuscated overall plot. All elements and potential for a great thriller are there, they simply lacked the clarifying glue to fully execute them.

By Joe Muldoon

Taking place in the future, and in space, the movie follows Molli and Max, two people that continue to run into each other over the course of twelve years. Throughout the years they build a good friendship and learn many things about one another but are never quite sure if they can take the next step. Both Molli and Max have their own adventures throughout the twelve years as well as many encounters together that continue to grow themselves closer to one another.

How ridiculous can a movie be? Molli and Max in the Future might just take the prize in that debate. This is a movie that tries its hardest to be over-the-top insane. Setting a romantic comedy in the future and in space sets the filmmakers up for so many possibilities to get weird and this movie doesn’t shy away from getting weird. Whether it’s using a futuristic box to see how well sex is going to go between two people or characters having sex with giant tentacles, this is a movie that likes to get crazy.

Utilizing a lot of green screen for the space effects makes things look overly cheesy, yet at the same time it adds a little bit of charm. The filmmakers clearly are trying to make things as goofy as possible when it comes to predicting the future and for the most part it works well enough. One of the biggest strengths of the movie is the chemistry between Molli, who is played by Zosia Mamet, and Max, played by Aristotle Athari. Both actors play off of each other expertly and their performances are the highlight of the movie.

While this romantic comedy has its heart in the right place it feels like it’s missing something in the comedy department. There aren’t many funny moments throughout the movie. Some one liners do work and there some humorous moments from time to time but ultimately the movie ends up being not all that funny. The over-the-top humor can be a bit grating at times as it feels like the filmmakers are trying too hard to be funny causing most of those jokes to just fall flat.

In the end, Molli and Max in the Future is a small indie comedy that wants to be more than it actually plays out to be. While there is plenty to enjoy it feels like there is something missing throughout the runtime. The two leads work well together and add a lot of heart to the story. It falls just shy of being a worthwhile watch but it isn’t a total misfire either. Despite setting its aspirations high the movie settles for just being average.