No. 356 : Woman of the Hour (2023)

 

Woman of the Hour at the IMDb

Anna Kendrick stars and directs this film which, although based on a promising premise, was ultimately disappointing.

 

It’s the 1970s and Sheryl, played by Kenrick, is an aspiring actress. She fails to get any proper acting jobs but her agent promises her some exposure by casting her as the girl on a TV dating show.

As she goes about her business and prepares for the gig we also get regular vignettes of a photographer who is also a serial killer. He meets and enraptures various woman and takes them on photo shoots in the desert, before murdering them. These sequence were very matter of a fact and brutal and this caused my wife to bail out after 40 minutes. I can see why as the scene were disturbing and the film as a whole can’t be seen as entertainment.

 

Still, I pushed onto the end and although it was decent, the film was unsatisfying and seemed somewhat embellished, which having read up on the details appears to be the case.

 

The film is well realised with cheezy 70’s sets and costumes, so it is a bit jarring when Sheryl is full on ‘me too’ slagging off the idiotic men and suffering the host who mutters the ‘C’ word in her direction. I’m not saying it was right, but what we saw on screen didn’t ring true of the 1970’s that I remember.

 

The actual TV show begins about an hour into the film and Sheryl is described as ‘the Woman of the Hour’ which seems a bit on an unlikely way to justify the name of the film, which doesn’t make much sense anyway.

 

The show rumbles on with the sassy Sheryl going off script and coming up with her own complicated questions to flummox the dopey male suitors. I may be off target here, but I’m guessing a tightly scripted TV show wouldn’t tolerate such dalliances – ask me about my ‘Weakest Link’ experience!

 

The host, not unreasonably, gets irritated with Sheryl, but she finds an ally in the make up woman. Meanwhile an audience member recognises the murderer as a criminal and tries to get him arrested but is thwarted by idiot men, who seem over represented in this picture.

 

The serial killer demonstrates his wit and charm – as well as his backstabbing skills against his fellow bachelors - and wins the day and a date with Sheryl. Despite picking him Sheryl soon smells a rat and has a narrow escape after an awkward dinner. As a coda we see the killer's next attempt at a kidnap and murder before some captions tell us how things played out.

 

I think this story about a killer who happened to appear on a TV game show was a bit thin for a full feature. I feel sure that all of Sheryl’s ad-libbed questions and her after show date were all invented and I doubt the added tension of the person reporting the killer during the taping actually happened. As I mentioned this seemed like a jarring modern take on a 50-year-old incident and it didn’t ring true.

 

The direction by Kendrick was OK but some scenes lingered too long, and the pacing was poor. I also disliked the jump around timeline, with it often unclear where we were with the serial killer’s journey.

 

Overall it’s probably worth a look but ultimately it is a small piece of TV trivia stretched beyond breaking point to justify a full feature.

 

Best Bit: The closing scene with the girl acting for her life was well done

‘W’ Rating 12/23

No. 355 : Weird : The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

 

Weird : The Al Yankovic Story at the IMDb

This film was offered up to me by Amazon who are obviously aware of my dubious tastes. I am not immune to the acquired taste of Weird Al and I can honestly say that ‘Hardware Store’ is a rock solid classic.

I was a bit reticent about Daniel Radcliffe playing Al in this parody bio-pic though. I’ve never rated him as an actor and I’m sure all of his career stems from the fall out from his stint as Harry Potter. It must be easy to get a film green lit when you have such an established fan base behind your star. He also seems unlikeable as a person and regardless of your position on the debate I think his behaviour against JK Rowling, who effectively gave him his entire career, is indefensible.

 

Still, we all like a laugh so let’s have a look. The film lost points for me right away when it was clear that our old friends the non-linear narrative and the unreliable narrator were being employed. The film opens with Al being rushed to surgery but as so often happens the narration guides us back to the subject’s childhood. This sees a young Al being held back with his parents with his Dad assaulting a door to door accordion salesman. I appreciate that this was done for laughs but when the film is a biopic it annoys me when stuff gets totally made up. How can you trust anything that’s said going forwards?

 

The film doesn’t concern itself with accuracy however with Al’s affair with Madonna and his dealing with Pablo Escobar covered in detail. There were a few laughs as Al’s fledging career is helped by Rainn Wilson’s ‘Dr Dememto’. His parody and polka-based songs soon take off and there is a knowing nod to his niche popularity when a star-spangled pool party has all the celebs, such as Devine and Pee-Wee Herman fawning over Al.

 

The film was produced by ‘Funny or Die’ and they clearly used some of their influence to get a load of guest stars who showed up for a single scene such as Jack Black, Michael McKean and Conan O’Brien who managed a very poor impression of Andy Warhol. The pool party was the best scene and it went downhill from there. Basically, as soon as Evan Rachel Wood’s Madonna shows up you should bail out.

 

The film sees Al rise to greatness and then succumb to the temptations of stardom. He overcomes Michael Jackson parodying his song ‘Eat it’ with the inferior ‘Beat it’ and manages to reconcile with his father. Will All see a happy ending, or will it be one awards show too many?

 

This film was OK, but I thought Radcliffe was miscast. They clearly used Al for the songs and Potter’s buff body didn’t really suit the wimpy character he was playing. I could see the argument that the casting added to the self-serving bio-pic nature of the film but he just looked like a British guy in a wig.

 

The format and narrative of the film was a lot like ‘Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story’ and it was about as 20% as good as that stone cold classic. It also borrowed heavily from Howard Stern's 'Private Parts' and again it doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as that wonderful film.

 

Al himself shows up as a music executive who turns himself down for a contract and it almost seemed that the whole film was nothing but wish fulfilment on the part of the Polka Prince. I would have preferred more laughs and less self-reverential stuff barely disguised as satire. It was fun for the many cameos, but I came away learning little about the subject and having had too few laughs to justify my 100-minute investment.

 

Best Bit: The pool party.

‘W’ Rating: 13/23

No. 354 : Who Is Erin Carter? (TV) (2023)

 

Who is Erin Carter at the IMDb

If you are going to give your TV series an interrogative title it would probably makes sense that you ensure that after enduring 7 episodes your audience is likely to give a shit; but I didn’t.

This by the numbers and cliché-ridden Netflix drama could be seen as a harmless pastime but the lazy writing and terrible acting made it feel like a complete waste of time.

The timeline of the series jumps around a bit but basically you have a woman living with her husband and child in Barcelona – but there are secrets! Things start to unravel when she stumbles upon a supermarket robbery and takes down one of the baddies who recognises her. We’re meant to be impressed by her fighting skills, but the bad guy goes down like he’s in the WWF and all our girl does is some high-level shoving. One robber escapes and Erin is worried her cover may be blown.

What cover you ask? Well, a long flashback shows her at police training college and quickly kicked out when she beats up an annoying fellow cadet. The predictable shady man from black ops invites her to join his division and within five minutes she’s infiltrated a gang and helping with a bullion robbery. You’d think someone with more that a week at training college would be a better option, but a quick training montage puts that concern to bed.

The robbery goes tits up with one woman bank robber seemingly getting killed leaving her annoying daughter at a loose end. Erin confirms her recruitment was a total arse up when she flees to Spain with the child and sets up a new life.

Unfortunately, the supermarket robbers, who wear the same animal masks as at the bullion robbery – they must have gotten a job lot, - know Erin was the rat in the crew and soon the mysterious ‘Mr Big’ is after her.

Fortunately, Erin has a gullible husband and a helper in the shape of Emilio, who is a cop and who is happy to get involved in Erin’s manipulative schemes. Elsewhere a local bitch is making Erin’s school teacher ambitions difficult, but fortunately local businessman Duggie Henshall is on hand to exert some influence. I don’t think Henshall ever got over being outsmarted by Supercrew in ‘Common as Muck’ as he’s absolutely dreadful here. He looks like someone reading lines in a language he doesn’t understand who’s also late for a dental appointment. It gets worse when you get the predictable big reveal!

The meagre plot is spread wafer thin over the 7 episodes with the annoying daughter’s visions and drawings of people in animal masks and her behavioural issues being a complete bore. You do get the lovely Susannah Fielding from ‘This Time’ – A-ha – but she is given precious little to do apart from being a busy body at Erin's school. 

The whole farrago is meant to be like a female Jason Bourne with our heroine displaying mad skills – in truth the fighting and action are very poor and lacks the visceral punch of those movies. There is one decent car crash, but you can tell the budget went on that as the flashback sequences in ‘England’ show a sun baked paradise where they forgot to put down road markings – a bit like Barcelona really!

Evan Amhad does OK in the lead with poor material, but she didn’t convince whatsoever as a pocket dynamo superspy with multiple layers and a complicated past. She is better than her husband Jordi whoever, who looks like he wandered onto set looking for a lost dog.

The whole production seems by the numbers with no doubt a Spanish language version shot at the same time. There are a lot of subtitled sequences and it looks like an international audience was the plan from the start. I’m sure this made fiscal sense for the bean counters at Netflix but the result is an unsatisfying offering that will doubtlessly play equally bad in all markets.

The finale was unsatisfying, not least because it suggests a sequel may be in the works. If you want a Lady Bourne straight from Wish.com this may be the offering that you seek, but otherwise I’d suggest the answer to the question posted by the title is ‘couldn’t care less’.

Best Bit: The police car chase was ridiculous but a good smash up at the end.

‘W’ Rating: 9/23

No. 353 : World Trade Center (2006)

World Trade Center (2006) at the IMDb

 

 * I watched this film and wrote a review for my new Michael Shannon Blog 'Michael Shannon and On and On' which will debut sometime soon. Check back here later and I'll link it when it goes live. It would be a disservice to my one follower to not add a review here on the W movies blog, so I have adapted it for this audience with the more Shannon-centric comments removed.

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Five years after the devastating events of 9/11 director Oliver Stone assembled a star studded cast to try and tell some of the stories behind the disaster. It would be churlish to criticise it too much as it is well intentioned and celebrates worthy people, but you may find it a bit mawkish and sentimental.

The film centres on Nicholas Cage’s Port Authority cop John. After the attacks take place – mostly off camera; we see only a shadow of a hijacked plane – Cage is sent down to the site to assist in the rescue effort. He comes over as a bit cautious and fusses about looking for equipment as the towers burn and fall. I’m not sure what was being conveyed here – was he playing it safe and by the book or was he fearful of walking in to near certain death? His choices are quickly made for him however, when a tower collapses and he and his men dive into a lift entrance that quickly collapses. Most of the men are killed immediately, with another shooting himself in what I trust was a true incident, as it seemed a bit unconvincing in the film.

Cage and his colleague Michael Pena survive, but both are trapped by their legs. The remainder of the film documents their bid to survive as they comfort and cajole each other to stay awake and listen out for a rescue. As they do so we enter their minds and see flashbacks of better times. They also have visions of Jesus and imagined conversations with their wives. These scenes took me out of the moment somewhat and although they may be accurate to the men involved, it just seemed daft when a vision of Jesus came down to offer salvation. At least he brought a bottle of heavenly water with him.

Whilst our guys struggle with their predicament, the film intercuts with real life events, with stock footage from the day interwoven with scenes of the wives and family back home awaiting to hear of their men’s fate. The women in this film are poorly served with Pena’s partner, a pregnant Maggie Gyllenhaal, being annoying throughout and Cage’s Maria Bello having weird eyes. IMDb says her eyes were colourised for the film and it is poorly done and distracting.

We also get a couple of side stories with Michael Shannon's ex-marine accountant going back to the good fight and Frank Whaley's alcoholic character putting a plug in the jug so that he can offer medical assistance to the injured.

The trapped men are located and, after some digging and more bonding, both are eventually freed from their tomb. We then jump forward two years to see that they have done well in their rehabilitation with baby naming and marital difficulties seemingly resolved.

The films does well not to ponder on the political aspects of the events and focuses more on individual stories. This gives the production some heart, but it also makes it feel somewhat unsubstantial when it covers world changing events. The performances are mixed with a lot of shouting and screaming taking the place of real acting. Your sympathies lie with Cage and Pena from the start and the outcome was never really in doubt. The backstories and family dramas were decent but I didn’t like the wives much and some of the dialogue was too on the nose to be believable.

Overall I’d give the film a pass as it deals with tragic and emotional material well, but I never truly bought into the characters we were offered and their annoying families only served to distance me from the heart of the story. There was a lot to cover in a two hour film and I think ultimately it was a worthy but unsatisfying effort.

Best Bit : The building collapse was well realised and the sets were excellent.

'W' Rating 15/23