Category: REVIEWS

When I was younger, in the early ages of the internet, I remember there being a website called ‘Death Clock’. This was a one-page site that ‘predicted’ how long you had left to live. Obviously, it was not real, however, it did pique the interest (and morbid curiosity) of me and my school classmates. More than 10 years later, and it’s strange to see a film revolving around this idea.

‘Countdown’ is a horror film written and directed by Justin Dec and starring Elizabeth Lail (Once Upon A Time) as Quinn Harris, a nurse who downloads a mobile app called ‘Countdown’. This app is one page that gives you a countdown on how long you have left to live. After downloading it and discovering she has only two days left, she tries to see if she can bypass the system and cheat death.

This should’ve been renamed ‘Final Destination 6’. The concept is extremely similar in that the main characters are trying to cheat death and figure out how to do so. In this sense, the film would’ve benefited from being a fun horror movie with creative death scenes. Instead, ‘Countdown’ is a film that tries to go down the character development route with commentary, technology and our morbid curiosity with the End and demons. Unfortunately, this makes for a less interesting film than it could’ve been.

And, yes, I did say demons.

The film goes into a silly mess once this aspect is introduced and, unfortunately, just gets more ridiculous right up until the great, and unexpected, ending. But, by that point, it’s too late and a film that carried potential is completely wasted. Yes, it has some decent scares in it, and the cast do a good enough job in this but, in the end, this is all undermined by the empty and bland plot.

Overall, ‘Countdown’ was fine. The worst thing that can be said about a film is ‘Well, it had potential’ and this film definitely fits that statement. It would’ve been a lot more interesting if it had replaced the character development and commentary for a mystery plot and creative deaths scenes.

While Elizabeth Lail carried the film well enough and there were some good scares sprinkled throughout, it was not enough to hide this fact. While I wouldn’t recommend seeing it in cinema, it would be a decent Halloween movie to rent later in the year. Order a pizza, get a few friends together and switch the lights off. The Countdown has begun…

3/5

In a U.S. – Mexico border town the magic of first love is cut dangerously short when a boy hustling to help his family inadvertently finds himself in the middle of a violent trafficking network after the girl he loves is kidnapped. – //sincielofilm.com/

Directed by Jianna Maarten, Sin Cielo is set in the borderlands of Mexico. It addresses the real danger of kidnapping, trafficking, and femicide in that area. 

Fenessa Pineda (Rambo: Last Blood, 2019) plays Delia, and David Gurrola (the US version of Shameless, 2016) is Memo. Ordinary teenagers who, separately,  find themselves quickly out of their depth.

Maarten likes to build dread into her stories (Dinner with Ana, 2013; Fervor, 2015) Bringing each element of production together into a fine balance—cinematography, editing, soundtrack—that evokes the change in air pressure before an electrical storm.

A counterbalance to the impending turmoil there is so much beauty to be found in the landscape, and the characters’ lives, captured by cinematographer Marcin Banasiak.

There is no simple answer to this for the families that live with a combination of fear, stoicism and grief. But it is evident that Sin Cielo is a call to action to fight an issue prevalent, not just in Mexico’s borderlands, but globally. 

Maarten lists the names of hundreds of missing women and girls as a reminder that, though this is a fictional short, it is very much grounded in truth.

TRAILER – SIN CIELO from Salaud Morisset on Vimeo.

The film has been nominated for several awards, and has taken home the Grand Jury prize at the Seattle International Film Festival for Best Narrative Short.

Greta: Review. By Brandon Topp.

“Greta” is a Brazilian film, which made its debut at the Berlin Film Festival last February. Its first-time director Armando Praca took the ball and ran with a story about an elderly gay man who harbours a fugitive, and relentless sadness throughout a riveting journey. 

There are a number of striking reasons for folks to check out this film, and among them are a mesmerising visual palette, powerful and brutal dialogue, as well as its unwavering lens. 

Let’s Begin With How it Looks

I’m not a camera person, so I can’t speak to what technically made this such a vibrant and memorable watch for me. There was something nostalgic about it, perhaps they shot on film, or just did something to make it seem that way. Regardless, I didn’t know what time I was in, and that complemented the dreamy pace and progression of the narrative. 

Another aspect of that made the visuals of the film so memorable, was the interesting looking cast, and brilliant set design. Our lead Pedro, played wonderfully by Marco Nanini, is an overweight, sweaty, defiant, and passionate man who bares all emotionally and physically. The fugitive he captures looks like a young, broken, Brazilian De Niro. Adding onto the cast, the  lights and landscapes of this world of hospitals, night clubs, and sweaty-male sex scenes all coalesce in a unique, strange, and artful story for the eyes. 

These Characters Are Harsh & Real

The film begins with Pedro taking his transgender friend to the hospital, where she receives news that she’s terminally ill. Though constantly being sidetracked with his own sexual adventures, and the harbouring the fugitive thing, Pedro tries to be there for her in his own way. Some of her reactions are brutally honest, and inform a tone carried by all the characters throughout the film. That tone read to me something like, we are going to stare the most glum aspects of life dead in the eye without wavering. 

This Movie Stays Real In The Rarest Way

There are some long, tough sex scenes throughout Greta. For most mainstream tv watchers I know, they might be tough to watch. For one thing, gay sex is not depicted nearly as much in cinema as straight sex, and so it’s a brave move for the filmmaker to go for it. Also, gay or straight, these sex scenes are long and intense. And in my mind, that absolutely serves as a strength of the film. 

These scenes are true cinematic magic, with visceral texture and passion and exhaustion and sadness. They stay true to the film’s well-accomplished allegiance to staring at this beautiful man’s sad and horny chapter of his later days. 

Greta is a wonderful film and a true original worth checking out if you get the chance. 

Hustlers: Review.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) impacted the world in all the worst ways it possibly could. Cinema is now telling the stories stemming from its immense impact and has been for throughout this decade. Those inhabiting the seedy underbelly of Wall Street are who so many films rightly vilify and target. But what, up till now, went unspoken for on the silver screen, was the new breed of criminal the GFC brought on by virtue of the dread and desperation it generated. Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers tells that story, a true one at that, adapted from Jessica Pressler’s article on two women who, after years of legitimate work in strip clubs, decided they had no other choice but to drug and steal money from wealthy men.

The film alters their names to Destiny (Constance Wu) and Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). Destiny is a youthful, almost innocent, figure when we first meet her starring into a back room mirror of her new working establishment. Quickly she is awed by the sheer amount of cash Ramona is thrown during a single stage dance, there’s so much she knocks it off the stage and doesn’t even blink. Wisely Destiny approaches her for guidance, and on a rooftop with one fur coat warming them both the unassuming beginning of a legitimately chilling group of criminals occurs.

This was 2007 when Wall Street was simply bursting with cashed-up men more than happy to unload money on any woman who would even look at them. Infamously though, things took a turn for the worse. As the harshest of the impacts from the GFC began to hit in 2008, being a stripper became much less profitable, and in amongst all the chaos, Destiny falls pregnant and moves away, not seeing Ramona again until two years later. Here, in what was a fateful meeting for the struggling Destiny, Ramona cuts her friend in on a scheme that kept her more than afloat during impossibly hard times.

The original plan of Ramona and her minions (Depicted here by Lili Rinehart and Keke Palmer) reeks of being criminal but likely falls into some messy legal grey area. It was simple, they got rich guys drunk enough to get them back to the club, then convinced them to blow all their money there, and all the while the women were receiving a sizable cut of all the spending.

This is a practice colloquially known as “fishing”. When regular fishing began to fail, thanks to too many men managing to keep their wits about them, Ramona turned to a concoction of her own making, described to us as part Ketamine, part MDMA. “Just a sprinkle” as both the article and the film say, and it was as simple as that. Suddenly, after ingesting their spiked drinks, targeted men would end up so zoned out that they could be robbed blind, and none of them would ever have it in them to go to the police, and more than likely they wouldn’t even remember what happened.

Throughout, the film sporadically cuts us back to Elizabeth (Julia Styles) who is interviewing Destiny in 2014 about their fishing and how they came to it. And all too soon for the characters of the past, her questions begin leading us to their downfall. In watching this, I saw so much of Goodfellas in the story; everything is very much about how Destiny defends what she tells us she did.

The film is rather sympathetic to her, which is where the two films heavily differ. However, both lead to one same inescapable conclusion, each set of characters get caught and found to be the criminals they are; they are condemned, as they should be. When this moment comes for Destiny and Ramona, they fall forever away from grace, and into far less lavish lives, just as Henry Hill did.

Constance Wu shines as Destiny, she is the least trustworthy of narrators just as she should be, and her evolving arrogance forming to make her so untrustworthy comes across great on screen. But it truly is Lopez who steals the show with an utter powerhouse performance. In Hustlers, everything comes back to Ramona, from the beginning of their little gang to its bitter end on account of her trusting the wrong person, Ramona is all-encompassing, and so is Lopez.

If it weren’t for how often Destiny seems to protest that she did nothing wrong it would be easy to see Ramona as the only true criminal of this film, everything was her idea and she knows it and loves it. It’s all about side hustle ideas. Yet when all is said and done, her humanity shines through, and we find she did care for Destiny all along. As the film says, “She didn’t get into the business to make friends, it just happened”, and it just happening is why she feels so much guilt come the end. Lopez embraces all of this, and in doing so, delivers her most exceptional work ever.

Hustlers is a thoroughly entertaining view of crime in a post GFC era ruled by desperation. Come the credits all are depicted as the criminals they are, even if sometimes it feels as though the film didn’t want to.

Do you like rock bands, scary creatures and British humour? Then you’ll LOVE Geoff Harmer’s Dead Air. The film centres on girl rock-band Monster Kitten, who are on a plane travelling to their next gig. Unbeknownst to them, there is a mysterious Japanese crate in the hold with some very strange sounds coming out of it…

The little critters that are eventually unleashed are actually lovingly made puppets which make for a fun little film Theres a particularly wonderful moment where The Bassist (played hilariously by Kate Davis-Speak) whacks one of the creatures with her guitar which made me chuckle. 

It’s Josie and The Pussycats feel injected with thoroughly British punk girls makes for a very silly dynamic. There’s also some wonderful use of animation which shows that one can pack a lot of different techniques into a low budget short.

And guess who’s driving this bad-luck plane? Terry from the Inbetweeners who adds some extra banter. (That’s veteran British TV actor David Schall btw, you’ve probably seen him in at least two of your favourite shows). 

Geoff Harmer and writer Peter Hearn have created a very interesting concept here, and we here at BRWC are looking forward to a feature film announcement, or TV mini-series… maybe? You can do it Geoff!

You can listen to an interview with Geoff and Kate on the BRWC podcast. 

Dead Air is screening at film festivals internationally. Congrats to Kate Davies-Speak on the birth of her baby boy.

Dead Air – Teaser Trailer from Geoff Harmer on Vimeo.