FILM REVIEWS:
BACK IN ACTION (USA 2025) *
Directed by Seth Gordon
BACK IN ACTION is a 2025 American action comedy film (the title refers too to a number of other films with the same title) directed by Seth Gordon from a script he co-wrote with Brendan O'Brien. The film stars Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Andrew Scott, Jamie Demetriou, Kyle Chandler, and Glenn Close.
The film begins with an uninspired action set piece in which two CIA agents are undercover, and who have been sleeping together. Emily Cameron Diaz) discloses that she is pregnant. She and Matt (Jamie Foxx) escape a near-death mission that invokes some silly key. They use their escape to escape the CIA and adopt new identities. Flashforward. They are now parents with a smart-mouthed daughter and son.
At the 30-minute mark, one realizes how lame the script is, and that the film has not generated a single laugh-out-loud laugh. Not to mention the lacklustre action scenes. Romantic action films are hard to excite genres, the most successful so far appears to be THE FALL GUY, which was in reality just so-so, though aided by some death-defying stunts. Then, Former CIA spies Emily and Matt are pulled back into espionage after their secret identities are exposed. Ir is a hard fight which film is worse? The ridiculous black ANNIE also starring Foxx and Diaz or this one?
A bit of boredom relief comes from actress Glenn Close playing Emily’s mother
Netflix releases BACK IN ACTION on January 17, 2025. Best to be missed!
Trailer:
THE LAST SHOWGIRL (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Gia Coppola
Shelly (Pamela Anderson) has been a Las Vegas showgirl for over 30 years, the feather and crystal-adorned centrepiece of Sin City’s last remaining traditional floor show. The stage and the women she shares it with are her loving, bickering, sequin-clad family. When the stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista, an island of masculinity in a sea of women) announces the show will close permanently in two weeks, Shelly and her co-workers must make decisions for their future. But the future looks different when you are 50 (or 57 to be more accurate, of Shelly’s age) rather than 20, and your sole job skill is dancing.
Emotionally floundering, Shelly tries to reconnect with a daughter she hardly knows, which proves just as difficult as losing the only job she has ever had. Bolstered by her best friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a brash cocktail waitress who laughs a little too loud and too often, Shelly must find her place in a world that she shut the (stage) door on years before.
As outlined in the film’s plot, the theme is sombre and depressing. It does not help that the script stays away from much-needed humour or from any uplifting feel-good moments,
Clearly, this film is intended to do BAYWATCH’s star Pamela Anderson’s celebrity comeback. It is a tough role and credit is due to the actress playing herself, a one-time sex symbol now suffering from the clutches of aging.
Jamie Lee Curtis and Pamela Anderson deliver brave performances that highlight the cruelty of aging. The body might still look good, as in the case of the two characters the two actresses play, but the wrinkles in their over-made-up faces give their ages away. And no amount of makeup can hide them. When Shelly is shown an audition dance by a young cast member for a new job, Shelly has to admit that she cannot perform all the flexible moves. They wish to settle down but time is no longer on their side.
Director Coppola’s film stays away from the Las Vegas live show performances. Through this omission, the film lacks the razzle-dazzle of the show business industry that also undermines the tragedy of growing old in an industry that does not take care of its people. Director Coppola seems more eager to show the downside of the business. The beginning scene with Shelly failing an audition is an example, the segment is too brutal to watch, as Shelly insists that she is still beautiful at the age of 57. The film tells of Pamela Anderson’s Shelly’s difficult life that comes with aging, which is in truth, her own life as well. Anderson plays herself and it is a shame Jamie Lee Curtis steals the show from under her feet,
But something feels missing in director Coppola’s film. One thing for sure is that there is nothing in the film that is insightful and what transpires on screen is what is expected and predictable. It is also brutal to see old age catch up on someone as it catches up on everyone including every person in the audience watching the film. There seems to be nothing at the end of the rainbow of age.
Trailer:
LA PIETA (also known as PIETY) (Argentian/Spain 2022) ***
Directed by Eduardo Casanova
A mother and son relationship taken to the extreme is the premise of this new disturbing surreal and horrifying drama entitled LA PIETA (The Pity) an Argentinian film that opens this Friday on Digital including Film Movement.
A mother-son relationship has always attracted attention, though mostly in a negative way. The cause of homosexuality was initially believed to be due to the strong bond between the male and son of his mother. In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) refers to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father (Shown in the film with a torn photograph of the father) first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development.
Mateo and his mother Lili (Ángela Molina) have been inseparable for years. The two share an apartment, answer questions for each other and spend practically all their moments together. But this bond becomes fraught when Lili is diagnosed with a fatal illness. This is where the film starts when the words: “You have cancer” are heard on the soundtrack with the clock showing 6 sharp in the year 2011. The film then flashes back to three weeks earlier of the diagnosis. With the limited time Lili has left, the pair take their toxic mother-son relationship to extreme ends.
The pair do everything together for eating. sleeping and even vomiting together. There is no escape. In one scene in the hospital where the son is taken, the mother insists on being in the same room with him, and when the response is a ‘no, she insists that the door of the room remain open. But even when the son, attempts to leave the hospital through the exit, he finds himself unable to do so. Then, the mother appears to stop the boy.
In Spain, teenager Mateo and his mother Libertad live together in a lavish, pink apartment. Mateo is increasingly aware of his mother's overbearing behavior, such as refusing to ever get separated in public, always sleeping together, and answering for him when asked questions. After Mateo tries to flee during Libertad's hospital checkup, she purposely injures Mateo's toenail when trimming him back at home. When she is sleeping, Mateo tries to run away, but experiences a severe headache and collapses on the street. There is news on TV about North Korea and the events there eventually play a part in the lives of the two.
Director Casanova loves to film in pink. From the wardrobe of the two at the dinner table to the pajamas and bedroom into the bedroom to even the floor and walls of the residence, pink is the preferred colour of choice. The colour gives the boy the look of being gay, though the sexual orientation is never addressed in the film. The pink look also gives the film a surreal and futuristic look.
It should be noted that this film is produced by Spanish horror master Alex de la Iglesia, famous for films like MUTANT ACTION, DAY OF THE BEAST, THE LAST CIRCUS, and WITCHING AND BITCHING. LA PIETA is a “gorgeously vulgar and shocking” work unlike any other. Winner of the Special Jury Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Casanova’s latest film is a “strange, yet surprisingly heart-breaking film” that encapsulates “bizarre art horror at its finest" (as described by Dread Central).
Intriguing, disturbing but ultimately wickedly entertaining, LA PIETA feels like a cross between Alex de la Iglesia who produced the film, and Pedro Almodovar.
LA PIETA primers on VOD, Digital and Film Movement January the 17th, Friday.
Trailer:
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Belgium/France/Netherlands 2024) ***½
Directed by Johan Grimonprez
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT is a 2024 documentary film directed by Johan Grimonprez about the Cold War episode that led American musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.
The word music or jazz is omitted from the title as the soundtrack also contains narration. Featuring excerpts from My Country, Africa by Andrée Blouin (narrated by Marie Daulne aka Zap Mama), Congo Inc. by In Koli Jean Bofane, To Katanga and Back by Conor Cruise O’Brien (narrated by Patrick Cruise O’Brien), and audio memoirs by Nikita Khrushchev.
For lovers of jazz, the doc includes archive footage of performances of the best jazz musicians of the century led by Louis Armstrong. These include Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Melba Liston, Eric Dolphy, and others.
The film begins on a morning in February 1961. Singer Abbey Lincoln and drummer Max Roach crashed the UN Security Council to protest the murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the newly independent Congo. Sixty yelling protesters throw punches, slam their stilettos and provoke a skirmish with unprepared guards as diplomats look on in shock. Decolonization spins the world upside down, infusing it with a sense of hope.
Six months earlier, sixteen newly independent African countries were admitted to the United Nations, triggering a political earthquake that shifted the majority vote away from the old colonial powers. The Cold War peaks as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe on his desk at the UN General Assembly, in reaction to the neo-colonial power grab unfolding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Denouncing America’s color bar and the UN's complicity in the overthrow of Lumumba, he demands immediate decolonization worldwide.
To retain control over the riches of what used to be Belgian Congo, King Baudouin of Belgium found an ally in the Eisenhower administration, which feared losing access to one of the world’s biggest supplies of Uranium, a mineral vital for the creation of atomic bombs. Congo takes center stage to both the Cold War and the scheme for control of the UN. The US State Department swings into action: Jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong is dispatched to win the hearts and minds of Africa. Unwittingly, Armstrong becomes a smokescreen to divert attention from Africa’s first post-colonial coup, leading to the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected leader
At best, the collage of archive footage and excellent soundtrack captures the horrors of the Cold War and their injustices done to the people of the DR of Congo. At best too is the awesome jazz soundtrack performed by the jazz musicians that make the movie.
The extremely dense doc coves much in little time despite its 2-and-a-half-hour runny g time. It won the André Cavens Award for Best Film from the Belgian Film Critics Association (though the doc is definitely ant-Belgium considering all the atrocities the doc reveals by the Belgium colonists, an example being a poet being jailed with a lifetime sentence by just writing a few lines that decocts white and black people.
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT opens in theatres on January 17th.
Trailer:
WOLF MAN (USA 2025) **
Directed by Leigh Whannell
WOLF MAN is a 2025 American horror film directed by Leigh Whannell (he did direct the excellent 2020 THE INVISIBLE MAN) and co-written with Corbett Tuck. It is a reboot of The Wolf Man (1941).
The film begins in an Oregon setting. Titles on the screen inform the audience that some animal had bitten a missing hiker and now possesses what natives call the ‘face of the wolf’. The titles are supposed to explain the origin of the Wolf Man. The film then moves to a boy and his father (Sam Jaeger) living in the Oregan woods. The hiker/wolf lives in the woods and attacks only at night. The father is as strict as hell, and the boy can only obey and obey though he is clearly totally afraid of the father. This opening segment, an introduction to the film takes a full 20 minutes to complete, Flash forward! Family man Blake Lowell (Christopher Abbott) relocates from San Francisco to Oregon with his workaholic wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) after inheriting his childhood home, left vacant following his estranged father's mysterious disappearance and presumed death. At the farmhouse at night during a full moon, the family is attacked by a werewolf that claws Blake's arm. They barricade themselves inside the home, but soon Blake begins to transform into something horrifying, jeopardizing the safety of his wife and daughter.
The film totally dishes the age differences of the actors. One need not be a nitpicker to be aware of the problems. Actor Sam Jaeger plays Blake’s father (he is 47) who is only 9 years older than Blake played by Christoper Abbott who is 48 years old. Blake’s daughter is played by 10-year-old British actress Matilda Firth who looks like 10 years of age because of her build but the parents speak to her character as if she was four, not as 10. She is also treated no more like a baby.
Despite an impressive and compelling first half, the film falls about right at the halfway mark once the car has the accident and the wolf attacks the family car. The film fails for two reasons. One is that the first half of the film is extremely well done with a character build-up complete with believable family dynamics which is totally thrown to the wind into the second half. The idea of a human turning into a world caring for the family, such as Blake as the wolf still caring for his family is inconsistent with Blake’s father turning on him. The ending also seems a cop-out with the mother and daughter running away towards the horizon. The conflict between the female (mother and daughter) and the male (the father) could have been developed further.
WOLF MAN was made with a modest budget of $25 million. In the season of dew blockbusters, its only competition appears to be Lionsgate’s DEN OF THIEVES 2 and another Lionsgate opener FLIGHT RISK next week. WOLF MAN would have no problem recuperating its production costs. WOLDF MAN opens in theatres on January 17th, 2025
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