film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Category: REVIEWS

Here is where you would find our film reviews on BRWC.  We look at on trailers, shorts, indies and mainstream.  We love movies!

  • A Recipe For Seduction: The BRWC Review

    A Recipe For Seduction: The BRWC Review

    I understand we’re in the heart of awards season, but I am endlessly compelled by the Lifetime TV short/KFC commercial-hybrid A Recipe for Seduction. Featuring the talents of Mario Lopez as the famed Colonel Harlan Sanders, this 15-minute mini-movie gained waves of attention when it was announced early last week. I was amped to experience an unabashedly goofy TV experience that would generate waves of conversation.

    To my surprise, it’s Sunday mid-day release was met with muted apathy. I found a mere few reactions to the special’s existence last night, leaving me searching for hours (okay, more like a few minutes) for where I could watch a re-run. Once I finally engulfed the short-lived special, I was utterly baffled and amused by what’s on display.

    A Recipe for Seduction Jessica (Justene Alpert), a precocious heiress stuck in a loveless relationship with the brash Billy (Chad Doreck). After declining his proposal, Jessica begins to have an affair with the affable chef Colonel Sanders (Mario Lopez). Their relationship draws ire from Jessica’s mom Bunny (Tessa Munro), who works with Billy to break up the pair at any cost.

    That’s the gist of what this 15-minute experience has to offer. While it was impossible to outstretch audience’s grand preconceived notions, the short deliveries the kind of guilty-pleasure comfort food that’s synonymous with its brand.

    The secret ingredient behind A Recipe for Seduction’s success lies in its straight-faced self-awareness. This mini-movie packs the gamut of a Lifetime movie conflicts into its truncated package, stuffing every frame with outlandish twists and turns. The trio of directors (Armand Prisco, Natalie Prisco, and Eric Ecklerman, who work under the pseudonym of Jean) operate with a bright adoration for soap opera melodrama, mining several humorous bits out of the genre’s over-the-top nature (characters are often lightly hit but fall over as they had just been shot).

    Perhaps the short’s biggest allure lies in Mario Lopez’s casting as Colonel Sanders. Lopez may be more synonymous with his recent hosting duties, but the Saved by the Bell star delivers a strong performance as the restaurant’s iconic mascot. Instead of playing the role with a campy cheekiness, the actor’s deadpan sincerity sells the Colonel’s equally distinguished and mysterious image. He commands the screen throughout the special, often leaving audience’s hungry for more of his steely-eyed delivery.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0e7Bj_7T3k

    A Recipe for Seduction is a uniquely enjoyable oddity, though its appeals are relatively limited. I don’t mind the reduced screentime, as the KFC-based gag could get tiresome if stretched out to a feature-length film. That being said, I wish the short had a little more meat on the bone. A lot of the wild twists are made without proper development, with scenes often feeling disconnected as the narrative propels forward at a scatter-shot pace. I wish the material had more time to marinate, as the final result can sometimes feel like a half-baked gimmick.

    Some will write off the short for its evident corporate motivations (at the end of the day, it’s basically a well-produced KFC skit), but I had a blast with A Recipe for Seduction. In a year chock-full of bad news, it’s a pleasure to delve into something that’s so openly farcical (and yes, I had to include as many food puns as possible).

  • Breach: Review

    Breach: Review

    While his box office glory days may be fading, Bruce Willis’ steely persona continues to endure onscreen. Alongside a few assured dramatic performances (Glass and Looper), the Die Hard action star continues to gun down foes on the big and small screen alike. His latest low-budget sci-fi/action hybrid Breach packs some self-aware charms, but this by-the-numbers Alien clone never elevates its disposable roots.

    Breach follows a well-traveled mechanic (Bruce Willis) who maintains an interstellar ark fleeing the dying planet. Unfortunately, humans are not the only passengers on board. A shapeshifting alien creature takes residence, infesting the last vessels of humanity in the process. The crew must think quickly to stop this menace before it destroys mankind.

    Some elements of Breach are well-tuned to the film’s makeshift B-movie frequency. Bruce Willis delivers one of his most affable performances of late, livening his grizzly bear presence with some deadpan comedic frames (his character spends most of the movie drinking moonshine while bad-mouthing his alien foes). There’s an endearing “I don’t care” energy that fits his jaded character like a glove. Few spew corny machismo lines with Willis’ sternly charismatic touch, often elevating the standard-issue material on the page. Thomas Jane also indulges in his character’s campy roots, having a blast as an over-eager military admiral.

    Breach reaches agreeable competence for its inherently midnight-movie form, but there are few areas where the film truly excels. Director John Suits’ familiarity with genre machinations doesn’t serve his noticeably cheap production values well. The Xbox 360-level visual effects are clumsily drawn onscreen (the aliens are more humorous than scary), while Suits’ flat visceral eye fails to imbue any creative flourishes to overcome the cheapness. There’s some potential in Suit’s semi self-aware approach (the practical alien/zombie effects are cheekily crafted), though the wishy-washy tone never finds a consistent voice.

    When the sturdy veterans aren’t onscreen, Breach struggles to stay afloat. Screenwriters Corey Large and Edward Drake underserve the cast with blandly-flavored stereotypes. Up-and-comer Cody Kearsley’s wet blanket protagonist rarely brings enough energy to leave an impression onscreen, while Rachel Nichols has little to do in her thanklessly truncated role. Similar to the uninteresting characters, Large and Drake don’t know how to re-spin the film’s formulaic conventions. You can sense a few earnest attempts to pay tribute to its genre forefathers, but they are done with little understanding of what made those predecessors so enthralling.

    Breach does little to stretch above typical Sci-fi channel fare. I wasn’t entirely disinterested by this campy throwback, but its runtime flies by to mostly disposable results.

  • White Lie: Review

    White Lie: Review

    Katie Arneson (Kacey Rohl) is a dancer. She’s in a loving relationship with her girlfriend, Jennifer (Amber Anderson) and she uses social media regularly to raise money for cancer charities. Katie is also faking her cancer diagnosis and raising the money for herself, although in her mind she’s not doing anything wrong.

    Then one day a discrepancy comes up in her medical records, so Katie sees no other option than to find somebody who can forge the correct documentation so that she can keep her life together.

    However, things start to unravel for Katie when she goes to see her father, Doug (Martin Donavon) to get some money from him and he sees right through her façade. From that moment on, things go from bad to worse as Katie struggles to maintain her lie and ensure that she is still loved.

    White Lie is a dramatic character study of a woman faking cancer written and directed by Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas. After researching many other cases where people have done he same thing, White Lie never aims to judge Katie for her actions, but merely presents her life and her lies leaving it up to the audience to decide what motivates her.

    Rohl gives a great performance as a woman who clearly is in over her head and at times her determination to keep doing what she’s doing verges on sociopathy. However, Rohl manages to make Katie into a real person who at times even brings out sympathy in the audience, even when they know what she’s doing is wrong.

    White Lie is bound to divide the audience when they view the film as without any clear motivation, the audience is allowed to imprint anything they like onto Katie.

    Some may find her to be a ruthless opportunist driven by the attention she gets from social media, while others may see her actions as a cry for help. Either way, the movie is all the better for showing Katie’s life and not making her out to be a victim of her own mindset or a soulless money-hungry internet influencer.

  • Paintball Massacre: Review

    Paintball Massacre: Review

    Jessica Bentley (Cheryl Burniston) is newly engaged and has been invited to a school reunion, although her fiancé is unable to join her. She soon gets reacquainted with her friends from school such as Lauren Bryce, (Natasha Killip) a self-obsessed glamour model, Sara Ryan (Aoife Smyth) a woman who’s seen The Fast and The Furious a million times and Nathan Brown (Lee Latchford-Evans) who Lauren instantly takes a shine to besides not remembering him at all at school.

    After a few drinks the reunion surprise is sprung on Jessica as a way to bring them all together – paintball. Some of them are eager and Jessica is really reluctant, but after some peer pressure they all go off to face the competition.

    They’re met by their paintball Marshalls; Shelly (Katy Brand) and Eddie (Robert Portal) who show them how it should be done and make sure that they know the rules. However, after they really get into the match things get very quiet and when the red team investigate the blue team’s base, they realise that they’ve all been brutally murdered.

    With a killer on the loose with a modified paint-gun and some traps especially laid out, this will be a reunion Jessica will never forget.

    Paintball Massacre is a British horror comedy which takes on a simple premise and sets it in a very British way so that those who remember their school days or know what school reunions are like can laugh at the variety of characters in the movie. The issue is that although Paintball Massacre has a good idea behind it, the execution could use some work.

    As the friends reunited start to theorise about who the killer could be, suspicions arise and as they are blaming each other, the killer is bumping them off one by one. This does lead to some speculation about the killer’s identity, particularly as it may be Jessica’s fiancé, but for people who know the format of these kinds of films then there’s nothing new or original to offer.

    There’s also very little known about most of the characters and although that makes for good fodder as the audience watches them all get killed, it also doesn’t mean that they have anything to root for when it comes down to the final few survivors. Although tightly scripted with a good idea of what the audience wants, it’s already been done too often.

  • Promising Young Woman: The BRWC Review

    Promising Young Woman: The BRWC Review

    Hollywood tries to operate as an inclusive space, but the lingering racial and gender inequalities still exist throughout all working industries. Thankfully, more diverse voices are getting their opportunity to express intimate sentiments on screen, including acclaimed Killing Eve screenwriter Emerald Fennell. Her debut effort Promising Young Woman has endured a long journey since its Sundance debut (originally scheduled for an April release), but this lighting-rod effort will surely become a focal point of awards conversations. Simply put, this an exceptional film, one that critiques its relevant subject matter with weight and thoughtful craftsmanship.

    Promising Young Woman follows Cassandra Thomas (Carey Mulligan), who spends her days working her ordinary coffee shop gig. Once night comes, Cassandra hits the town to exploit ill-advised men, catching them amidst their forceful behavior. After stumbling upon a forgotten foe, Cassandra seeks vengeance for the crimes that impacted her past.

    Fennell’s big-screen debut lacks the frequent missteps of first-time filmmakers. She allures audiences in with her electric visual flourishes, utilizing luminous lighting and pop confectionary tracks to set the mood effectively. Right when we’re comfortable, Fennell grounds her narrative with a settled realism, with the two contrasting styles playing seamlessly into her thematic conceits. The vibrantly-stylized visual dynamics are a fitting critique of the male’s sexualized gaze towards innocuous women, while the grittier visual elements represent Cassandra’s lingering demons. Every shot is constructed with thought and flair, as Fennell marries the two sensibilities with effortless ease (she also imbues a sense of unease that permeates throughout the runtime).

    Several films have zeroed their sights on male’s casual abuse and objectification, but few have hammered that conceit home with such gravitas. Whether it’s vapid-PC yuppies or overtly vulgar cave men, Fennell’s screenplay dispels any simplistic truths by running the full gamut of problematic behaviors. A loaded supporting cast of notable character actors helps portray this dynamic further (Bo Burnham, Max Greenfield, Adam Brody are among the group), with Fennell cleverly taking well-liked figures and showing the dark behaviors behind their personas. Fennell also does an adept job of displaying the multitude of ways women are pushed into subservient roles.

    After entertaining audiences with a bevy of twists and turns, Fennell empathetically delivers her thesis with a stunning third act change-up on conventional formula. While it won’t win everyone over, I appreciate the writer/director’s favoring of realistic steaks while still balancing the dourness with some crowd-pleasing frames. It’s a joy to watch a film fearless in its pursuit, continually playing off the audience’s expectations with winning results.

    The true heart of Promising Young Woman lies in Carey Mulligan’s awards-worthy performance. Mulligan has excelled throughout her career, but the role of Cassandra gives the actress new dimensionality to employ in her performance. When she’s going through town to punish cruel males, Mulligan adopts a chameleon-like persona as she balances her own persona with common female tropes. When the character is given an isolated space onscreen, Mulligan powerfully displays the emotional loss that drives her actions. Mulligan and Fennel extract thoughtful nuances from Cassandra’s continual struggle to move forward, reflecting the everlasting damage done by the cruel acts the film powerfully condemns.

    Emerald Fennell’s astute balance between style and substance morphs Promising Young Woman into one of the year’s most accomplished features. I hope the writer/director and Mulligan receive the awards recognition they deserve.