Category: REVIEWS

Do you remember that feeling at the start of the summer holidays – no alarm clock, warm days, no school, time to dream… and in Lola’s case, a forced friendship with Zack. Lola is a teenager with a worried mother, time to fill, and a lot of pink stuff. Instructing a teenager to be productive and not mope suggests that things are not as they seem.

Add in upbeat Zack, and life appears to improve however Lola continues to have days where “it’s hard to get out of bed”, and not many people to whom she can tell the truth. Putting any hopes on hold, she attempts, at her own pace, to function. 

Discussing illness, particularly mental health, can be a delicate premise in film. However, I can think of a few great examples involving both teenagers and health: Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980); John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985); Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999), with all its secrets and repression; The Fault in our Stars (2014), based on John Green’s book of the same name; and of course Little Miss Sunshine (2006).

Actor/director Ella Greenwood wrote the Faulty Roots screenplay as a way to accurately articulate her own experience of being a teenager with a mental illness. First-time director Greenwood managed to finance the film using crowd-funding, and attract a remarkably large crew.

The film was made with the goal to promote mental health awareness in teenagers, as well as show the way it affects relationships and life. The visual distraction of the jolly colours and deco was obviously used as a device to counteract the nature of the topic – depression. Or perhaps they were used as a symbol of how we use more appealing things in life to divert us from the less lovely things, the subjects we’re told to keep private.

Zack (Sani Thabo) and Lola (Ella Greenwood) successfully portray the whole range of teenage awkwardness and discomfort and leave us with the question: Is it enough to ride on another person’s enthusiasm rather than dealing with your own demons? 

Produced by Greenwood’s company Broken Flames Productions, that focuses on female-centered stories. Look out for their next short film, Dreary Days, currently in production.  

Douglas ‘Arm’ Armstrong (Cosmo Jarvis) was a boxer on his way to greatness until something went wrong in the ring. Having nowhere to turn, Arm is employed as a heavy by a gang who are in the drugs trade. Then one day one of the gang does something unspeakable and Arm is told to deal with him in the only way they know how.

Arm is hesitant as he has a family to think of, his ex, Ursula (Niamh Aglar) and their autistic son, Jack (Kiljan Moroney), so when Arm does what needs to be done, he decides to do right by them. However, when things go wrong for Arm and the wrong people come after him, he finds himself dealing with the way that his life has turned out and fighting for survival.

Calm With Horses is the feature debut from director Nick Rowland. Set in rural Ireland, Calm With Horses finds its setting in a rather ordinary place, but Rowland manages to keep the tension throughout, even when Arm thinks he’s in the clear. What starts off as something rather predictable ends far more emotionally than anyone could have imagined and it’s down to Jarvis’ great performance.

Although Arm is initially portrayed as a typical hard man and may be hard to relate to, by the end he becomes a more fleshed out character as the audience really feels for what he is going through.

Arm is a man tormented by his past, worried for his future and troubled by his daily life. It’s in Jarvis’ performance that the audience sees a man who cannot help but be the way that he is and yet there is the glimpse of a good man behind it all. The scenes with Arm and his son are a mixture of sweetness and frustration as the audience sees Arm try desperately to connect with his son.

However, he never comes across as abusive because Jarvis shows Arm’s frustration is only born from misunderstanding and not from a lack of love. By the end, there may not be a dry eye in the house, even from those muscle-bound alpha males that may be the film’s target audience.

Abel’s (Louis Garrel) girlfriend, Marianne (Laetitia Casta) has something to tell him. She’s pregnant and the father is one of their good friends, Paul. On top of that because of Paul’s parents and their values on pregnancy out of wedlock, they must get married as soon as possible. In fact, they’re getting married very soon… in ten days.

Some years later, Abel and Marianne reunite, for Paul’s funeral, and it isn’t long before their feelings for each other start to reignite, despite Marianne’s son, Joseph (Joseph Engel) and his wild imagination nearly pulling their relationship apart.

Then there’s Eve (Lilly-Rose Depp), Paul’s younger sister who has always had a crush on Abel since she was a child, but now that she’s a grown woman and despite her slight awkwardness whenever she sees him, she decides that now is the right time to make her move.

A Faithful Man is a quirky French romantic comedy that at first seems like something of a vanity project. After all, Louis Garrel is not only the lead, but is also the co-writer and director, so the whole thing starts to feel like a male fantasy gone out of control. However, behind this romantic comedy’s unusual set up is a morality tale of sorts that tells the audience that having is not always as pleasing as wanting.

As the story goes on, the love triangle does start to get a little convoluted and when Paul has to make a big decision it may divide the audience. However, this is the point where the movie saves itself at the very last minute as it pulls back, showing the reality of everybody getting what they always wanted.

At the heart of the story is a tale of grief, regret and loss, with every character longing in some way for something they have lost and wishing that things had turned out differently.

However, despite some unusual behaviour from some of its characters, the part of the story that the audience may have forgotten is the part that ties it all together. A Faithful Man gives its audience pause for thought as it comes to its final moments and feels more substantial than its short running time, but its mixture of dark comedy and underlying drama manages to keep a steady balance.

Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is a fearless black market mercenary with nothing left to lose when his skills are solicited to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord. But in the murky underworld of weapons dealers and drug traffickers, an already deadly mission approaches the impossible, forever altering the lives of Rake and the boy.

The very first scene of Sam Hargrave’s Extraction immediately hooks the viewer. We see a bloodied and battered Chris Hemsworth stumbling around and looking utterly defeated. He looks like if he takes one more hit, he could die. Hargrave throws us into the action instantaneously and perfectly sets up the tone for the rest of the movie to come.

Extraction was a movie that I was truthfully dreading to watch. Nothing about the marketing impressed me. I happened to see a commercial for the film on television about a week or so ago, and I actually found myself scoffing after watching it, thinking that it looked like a painfully generic and over-the-top movie with not a lot of fun to be had. Gratefully though, I was wrong.

The first act of the film is easily the biggest problem with the whole thing. It is full of a ton of set-up scenes and it takes a good thirty minutes to actually get pulled into the story. I found myself getting a tad bit restless in that first act due to there being very little of entertainment value. There was lots of exposition and scenes with Chris Hemsworth sleeping on a cliff for some reason.

But once that second act comes into play, the film as a whole picks up in spades. It almost becomes a completely different movie with non-stop, brilliantly filmed action for the rest of the movie onwards. The stunt team that worked on Extraction need extreme praise for their efforts here.

Throughout the years, I have seen countless action movies, and so saying that the action and stunt choreography here truly blew me away should be saying something. A lot of it actually reminded me of the incredible work that is shown and loved in the John Wick franchise. There are dozens of close-quarters, white-knuckled sequences that had me holding my breath.

These moments are further boosted because we feel a genuine connection to the characters as well. At first, Hemsworth’s Tyler Rake seemed like the stereotypical “action movie god” character that comes across as invincible and one-note. However, as the movie progresses and the more we learn about his past, the more interesting he becomes as a whole.

As for the main villain, he was also a character that I was unsure of how to feel about at first. He actually reminded me a lot of the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day for an incredibly long time. It wasn’t until the third act that he actually got some characterization and felt a little bit vulnerable.

But dynamic here between Chris Hemsworth and Rudhraksh Jaiswal was the other big standout next to the action. The two feel so authentic in their roles and by the end of it all, I was emotionally wrapped up in their characters and I felt something for both of them. Is the story a little bit familiar? For sure. However, it is fairly interesting and I felt a true connection to the characters. It has its problems, but those seeking a gripping action film are going to have a blast with this one.

Extraction‘s story may be a little familiar, but its absolutely incredible action and stunt work mixed with the lead performances make this an adventure worth experiencing.

When fisherman, Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman) uncovers an outbreak on the isolated Mi’gMaq reserve of Red Crow he brings his community together so that they can be prepared for the repercussions. Six months later and there are differing opinions on how to deal with things as it seems that the people in the Mi’gMaq reserve are the only ones that are immune from the disease.

Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) and his wife, Joss (Elle Maija Tailfeathers) are doing the best to keep order in a time of chaos, but when Lysol (Kiowa Gordon) becomes restless, the draw of the outside world gets ever closer, becoming even more dangerous.

Blood Quantum is a slow burn zombie horror movie and Shudder exclusive from writer/director Jeff Barnaby. However, Blood Quantum is not just another exciting name given to a zombie movie. It refers to a colonial blood measurement used to determine an individual’s Indigenous status which has sadly been so often used as a tool to erase Indigenous people. So, bearing all that in mind Blood Quantum is not just another flashy, violent and seriously broody zombie horror, as it has a unique point to make at the heart of its story.

The way that the movie progresses is more thoughtfully paced and meaningful than the average zombie movie, so it may not be for people who are just looking for a blood and gore fest. It also may not be for people who may not be coping with the current situation either, because at the time of writing some of the dialogue may touch a nerve.

However, Blood Quantum does indeed deliver on its pints of blood while bringing a realism and human story that not many would have considered. It does so with great cinematography, a nuanced and well thought out cast of characters and a metaphor less on the nose than is brought up in movies such as Dawn of The Dead.

Having something more in common with World War Z (the book, not the movie) rather than Zombieland, Blood Quantum gathers together a cast of characters which the audience will care about.

The occasional cliché can be forgiven as they are staples of the genre, but Blood Quantum shows that with the right voices behind the camera, there may still be some weight left in a genre that many think may have run out of ideas.