Author: BRWC

Monolith: Review. By Joe Muldoon.

A young journalist (Lily Sullivan), known as ‘The Interviewer’, has recently been publicly disgraced and sacked from a newspaper for ethical misconduct. Hiding away at her parents’ isolated home and attempting to claw back any semblance of a journalistic career, she launches an unsolved mystery podcast called Beyond Believable. She scours her emails for any possible stories, and the search is surprisingly fruitful.

Hidden amongst a slew of interview requests and vitriolic hate mail is a story about a woman who possesses a peculiar object – an object that apparently ruined her life. The journalist naturally smells the potential in the story, and so sets about calling the woman. What follows is the beginning of a bizarre mystery that gradually unravels itself throughout the film.

Over the phone, the woman talks of how she acquired the ominous brick around twenty years ago, and how sickness and a series of visions followed – that is, until it was stolen and sold to a German art dealer. The journalist promptly calls the art dealer, whose phone manner is frankly creepy. Being the unethical person she is, she has recorded the entire conversation (initially without consent), and soon edits it into the debut episode of her new podcast.

To her delight, the podcast is incredibly well received, and soon follows a rapid influx of stories from others who have also received these eerie black bricks. As is expected with the internet, conspiracy theories begin to fly around, most of which are outrageously outlandish. The newfound podcaster only encourages it – that is, until she herself receives a package on her doorstep. Just what are these bricks?

Set almost entirely in a single room, Monolith is a masterclass in how to do more with less. Far from purely being a sci-fi mystery, director Matt Vesely and writer Lucy Campbell have created a film that astutely speaks to contemporary society. Incrementally unfurling the mystery through a series of recordings and conversations, Monolith examines our relationship with information and speculation on the internet. Generating a sublimely ambiguous atmosphere, it leaves the audience mostly in the dark, our own imaginations creating much of the horror.

By Joe Muldoon

Deadland: Review. By Jake Peffer.

Deadland follows U.S. Border Patrol Agent Angel Waters. One night out on patrol he makes an apprehension of a man laying in a river, who he believes to be dead. While transporting him back to the station the man awakens to Angel’s surprise. Once Angel brings the man back to the station he leaves him there to go home where his estranged father has shown up for the first time in his life.

While Angel deals with his father’s sudden arrival one of his fellow agents at the station ends up accidentally shooting the man that was brought in. Angel and agents Hitchcock and Veracruz take the man and bury him in the middle of the desert. Afterwards the group starts to see visions of this man leading them to believe there may be more going on than originally thought.

This is a movie that was quite a surprise. It’s not often that you see a movie dealing with supernatural elements while also touching on the trouble at the U.S. border but Deadland does it and makes it work incredibly well. Director Lance Larson has put together quite a movie here that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout its runtime. The balance between dramatic beats and the supernatural elements works to the movie’s advantage as it keeps the audience guessing until the final climax. Almost everything here is executed well, and the movie never runs out of steam.

While Deadland doesn’t boast a well known cast the actors do a fantastic job at portraying their characters. Roberto Urbina is great as the lead Angel Waters putting in a stellar performance that will hopefully give him some notice in the industry.

Character actors Chris Mulkey and Julio Cesar Cedillo as two other agents provide some great tension throughout the movie. The rest of the cast all do well in their roles respectively, making for a great ensemble cast.

There isn’t much to dislike in Deadland. It moves at a smooth pace and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The cast all put in great performances and director Lance Larson shows signs of being a really solid director. It’s a movie that will keep you guessing but also give your skin goosebumps at some of the imagery that is shown. Once this is available it is highly recommended to seek it out as it will surprise most audiences.

The Artifice Girl: Review. By Joe Muldoon.

What happens when artificial intelligence far exceeds the Turing Test? At what point do artificial beings become deserving of equal human rights? How can we be sure that we are in control of our own creation? Franklin Ritch (tripling up as writer, director, and starring actor) asks all of these questions in his latest venture, philosophical sci-fi drama The Artifice Girl. Ritch’s combination of sci-fi and AI ethics is thoroughly captivating, at once simple enough to appeal to the layman, and thought-provoking enough to appeal to philosophers and sci-fi fans alike.

Gareth (played by none other than Ritch himself) is an internet vigilante who develops a new program tasked with capturing online child predators. Initially brought in by the secret service upon suspicion of online predatory behaviour, it soon comes to light that the vigilante has unwittingly been communicating and sharing intel with McCullogh (David Girard), an undercover agent under the supervision of Agent Helms (Sinda Nichols). Gareth has been developing an astoundingly advanced AI called Cherry (played by Tatum Matthews), currently used as a live face-chatbot with the sole purpose of luring child predators.

Though some minor teething issues with the Cherry software exist (particularly with regards to improvisation in verbal exchanges), the bot’s abilities are shocking. Her uncanny humanness provides great discomfort for McCullogh, who is troubled by how Gareth refers to the bot as “her” rather than “it”. Little comfort is given to McCullogh when Gareth argues that he refers to Cherry as “her” in the same way that people do cars or boats – Cherry’s thoughts and desires exist purely within the remit of the source code behind her.

The strength of Ritch’s writing truly shines through his utilisation of time leaps, which effectively split the film up into three sections, each one showing the staggering growth of Cherry’s developmental stages. As she advances, questions of autonomy and rights are brought to the forefront of the team’s debates, McCullogh fiercely against using Cherry for any operations without her consent.

With the rapidly advancing capabilities of AI, at what stage will we consider AI beings to be equals (if not superiors, considering they will eclipse us with their superintelligence), and to be deserving of autonomy? Then, what if these beings –our own creation– have wishes and goals that run contrary to our own? By the time of sci-fi icon Lance Henriksen’s introduction as the elderly Gareth in the film’s third act, Cherry is effectively indistinguishable from a human – does this not make her a person?

Possibly the greatest low-budget science fiction film of recent years –certainly one of the most thought-provoking– The Artifice Girl is a delightfully clever picture, and a very valuable contribution to a constantly-evolving genre. The Ghost In The Shell asked us what it means to be human, Ex Machina asked us if we can trust AI, and The Artifice Girl asks us what we do when AI desires autonomy.

A pandemic production, part of The Artifice Girl’s brilliance resides within the fact that such a minimalist set production is stretched to maximalist bounds. Abstaining from the typical high-octane action sequences to be expected of the genre, it instead strips back any action, replacing it with almost pure dialogue – an uncommon, but welcomed, move for a science fiction picture, and a gamble that paid off. As the story draws to a close, Cherry laments that, “now I’m cursed with pain and sadness”, and a final question is asked of the audience: should we halt nonhuman development not as a safety precaution, but as an act of mercy?

By Joe Muldoon

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul – Review. By Joe Muldoon.

Set two years in the wake of the 1972 Munich massacre, Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (one of his finest works) is a bothersome and unsettling tale of unlikely love and unabashed hate. As a rainstorm engulfs Munich, Emmi (Brigitte Mira) takes refuge in a small bar largely frequented by North African immigrants. After she orders a drink, a patron plays a German tango single on the jukebox, and a young Moroccan man, Ali (El Hedi ben Salem, who was Fassbinder’s lover at the time), offers the lonely widow a dance.

As they dance together, they exchange conversation, Ali communicating through broken German. Refusing to allow Emmi to walk home alone following their dance, Ali insists upon walking her back to her apartment. This is much to the bemusement of the racist crones living on the floor below, who obnoxiously quip that Emmi must be buying a carpet from Ali. Not wanting him to leave so soon, she offers her newfound companion a bed for the night, which he gratefully accepts.

The two fall in love, soon becoming wed to one another, much to the chagrin of Emmi’s so-called friends and family, and surprise of Ali’s. Snide underhand comments are directed towards Ali, and he is received with pure revulsion by Emmi’s bigoted family, unhidden contempt burning through their eyes. As the couple spend more time together publicly, Emmi notices a rapid change in treatment; people she has known for years act with coldness towards her, and others stare disapprovingly.

In what is perhaps the film’s most powerful and effective scene, Emmi breaks down into tears, the immense weight of her newfound ostracism having taken a large toll on her happiness and relationships – Ali maintains a stony composure, long-numbed to such behaviour. Fassbinder does not shy away from showing the flaws of his characters, for when a Yugoslav woman joins Emmi’s cleaning team, she readily joins her coworkers in excluding the poor expat, desperate to fit in again.

Otherness takes centre stage as the overarching theme of the picture; “Angst essen Seele auf”, indeed. Feeling homesick and constantly aware of his outsiderness, Ali seeks Morocco where he can find it; with his fellow expatriates, with the Arabic music available on the bar’s jukebox, within a bowl of couscous (on the rare occasion he can procure some). Despite living and working just as his German native neighbours do, he cannot shed his otherness, their gaze permanently affixed to him.

Astonishingly shot in 14 days, Ali: Fear Eats The Soul is an excellent work of cinema, but not a pleasant one. Fassbinder infuses a markedly Fanonian spirit within the film, unafraid to showcase the appalling racism with which North Africans and Arabs have historically been faced in Europe, particularly “since Munich”. Ali’s story may be fictional in this case, but his strife is depressingly resonant for millions of migrants, even today.

By Joe Muldoon.

Operation Fortune: The BRWC Review. By Jake Peffer.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre is the latest movie from director Guy Ritchie. Keeping in line with the majority of his filmography this another action/thriller with a touch of comedy. This time around we follow Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) and his team (Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes and Bugzy Malone) as they try to recruit one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars, Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), to help them on an undercover mission. They are trying to stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology run by billionaire Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant) as the fate of the world is at stake.

It is very clear that Guy Ritchie likes to stick to this genre of movies. Every once in a while he’ll make a Swept Away or an Aladdin but he knows what he does best, make slick action movies with a nice dose of comedy. Operation Fortune walks a fine line between the action and comedy, while maybe relying a little too much on the comedy at times. As you’ll get with any movie starring Jason Statham this is an action packed thrill ride and Ritchie does not shy away from getting into some ridiculous territory. That being said the action is all shot competently well and is a lot of fun.

There are some pacing issues throughout the run time. Some action sequences feel a little too long and there are a few moments that feel like they could have been cut to tighten up the story. A lot of the jokes don’t hit all that well but there are still plenty of humorous moments that even things out. The biggest problem with the movie is there is never a sense of danger for the main characters. Sure they get into many shootouts and are in situations that could cause them harm but it never really feels like they might not make it to the end. They never quite feel invincible but with everything these characters go through things tend to go a little too perfectly for them.

Jason Statham has built a nice career out of essentially playing the same character in almost every movie he’s made. While he is always typecast he does play this type of character extremely well and here is no different. One of the biggest standouts in the cast is Aubrey Plaza. Seeing her get to show off her action chops is a breath of fresh air from the type of roles she typically plays. Josh Hartnett is funny throughout as the goofy comic relief even though he is laying it on a bit too much in certain scenes. Hugh Grant makes for a convincing villain getting to be both intense yet funny at the same time. Both Cary Elwes and Bugzy Malone are nice additions to the cast however they don’t get quite as much to do as the rest.

Overall, Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre is an action packed and solidly entertaining. It is a mid tier movie from Guy Ritchie but that’s not to say that it isn’t enjoyable. Despite some missteps there is plenty to like and it is definitely worth checking out when it hits theaters.