No.291 : Where Hope Grows (2014)

Where Hope Grows at the IMDb

Calvin is a former baseball player who froze up when he made the big leagues and started drinking. He has issues with his daughter and a rudderless existence. Don’t worry Calvin - some redemption is in the post.

Calvin strikes up a friendship with Produce a young man with Down’s syndrome, named after the section of the supermarket in which he works. Lucky he wasn’t put in charge of panty liners. Produce is positive and knowledgeable but unable to attain his dream of being ‘Employee of the Month’. His nasty bass calls him a retard and is later chastised by Calvin who tells the black gentlemen that ‘We don’t use the ‘R’ word, the same as we don’t use the ‘N’ word’. Sounded a bit threatening to be honest.

Produce sings in a gospel choir and it was when this was revealed that the fear overtook me - is this a Christian film that I had stumbled onto by mistake? At first it wasn’t overly overt but after an hour there was a long discussion about praying, and I realised I’d been suckered in - Hallelujah! The answer to that question was that God wasn’t a genie who granted wishes so you might not get what you want. Sounds like you’d get the same deal by not praying at all!

Anyway Calvin, inspired by Produce, manages to kick the booze and applies for a job at a local baseball team. Perils abound however, as Produce is being bullied by Calvin’s daughter’s dickish boyfriend, Colt. Colt was also a bit busy with his hands with the daughter in scenes reminiscent of an after school special, only to be told ‘My dad was right about you’ before she leaves. It does ramp up later on however, with an attempted rape at the Laser-Tag; but we were never in doubt about how the day would be saved.

Calvin manages to stay sober but his friend Milton still drinks - and drives. Remember that for later.

After the laser tag fumble a misunderstanding sends Produce away in the huff. With everyone searching who will find him and what tragedy will befall our hapless cast? Can Calvin stay sober and will Produce get the accolade he really wants?

This is the kind of film they’d show you if the Sunday School teacher was ill. There was the mildest of peril, good advice and a strong dose of Ned Flanders type vitamin church.

The redemption of Calvin was never in doubt and they went down that tired old route of learning from an innocent. In that role David DeSanctis did well although the whole thing was just a bit too nice and twee for my liking.

I didn’t like Calvin much who seemed a bit of a dick berating the manager over his choice of ‘Employee of the Month’ - yeah you know best you pisshead! The climatic fallout was poorly managed, especially by the daughter who says ‘Produce hit Colt and it’s bad’ rather than ‘Colt tried to rape me and Produce decked him’ which would have prevented any issues.

The closing scenes, where we’re led to believe one character had died before the big reveal that it was another were laughable - if anyone bought that I have some magic beans available at a reasonable price.

Not one for me, but if you like some feel good stuff and a dose of Godliness this could be for you.

Best Bit : There‘s been a rape up there!   ‘W’ Rating 12/23

No.290 : Where to Invade Next (2015)

Where to Invade Next at the IMDb

In part two of our documentary double bill we take a look at this offering from Michael Moore. I wasn’t looking forward to it much as he has gotten a bit preachy of late, but it was good fun and interesting, albeit lacking some balance.

Moore opens the film by claiming he’d been summoned to the Pentagon by the joint chiefs of staff so he could advise them. From this point you realise that we are in the realms of fantasy and you may need to order in a truckload of salt to accept what follows. The military ask for Moore’s advice as they haven’t won a war since WW2. Where are they going wrong and what can they do to improve matters?

Moore agrees to ‘invade’ various countries and to take bits from them to improve America. This is clearly a flimsy premise, but it does help Moore showcase some good socio-economic policies that could benefit the United States.

He starts in Italy and is agog at the holiday entitlement of the workers. One couple share their holiday snaps which includes the knockout wife in a variety of skimpy bikinis. Italians get 35 days of paid holidays a year whereas Americans are guaranteed zero. Moore, who presumably had done his research before he set off, stands open mouthed at the revelation. He’s also amazed by the two hour lunches and numerous other worker benefits. He says Italians are as productive as Americans but doesn’t show his working. He also skips over the fact that the Italians are an economic basket case who are constantly needing bailouts. He qualifies this by saying he’s there to pick the flowers and not the weeds. This, to me, is a bit of a cop out. It’s like saying Auschwitz has excellent parking facilities and forgetting everything else that went on there.

Each segment ends with Moore planting an American flag and saying he’s claiming whatever good stuff he finds for America.

I enjoyed the fun and breezy outlook and, if you can overlook the agenda, there was a lot to like and to learn. The French, for example, have four course, free school meals including a cheese offering. It was fun seeing the French kids laugh at the sloppy Joes and fish sticks consumed by their American cousins. Again Moore came up with slightly questionable data when he said the French meal cost the same as the American. I’m guessing that’s because the American has a corporate mark up, but no details were given.

The tour included German health care - with a rather gratuitous nude couple in a spa - Finnish education and liberal Portuguese drug laws. In isolation each of these policies were a good idea, but they were all shown out of context. Free college education for all is great but what is the health service like? Are they kind to wildlife? Are they mortgaging their children’s futures for benefits now?

This was of course an entertainment and not designed as official economic policy. It was a shame the UK didn’t rate a visit and to be honest we’re probably more aligned with the Americans than the Europeans these days. Of course he did praise the NHS in ‘Sicko’ so maybe we had our turn then.

Moore looked a lot older than his 60 odd years and was pretty infirm on his feet at times. He did however retain his sharp wit and talent for showing the absurd. I could see Americans reacting badly to this, as he basically says that every aspect of their society and culture is done better elsewhere. A lot of the points would be hard to argue, although I think I’d have the fish sticks ahead of that fennel and aubergine number any day!

Best Bit : Spa Day! 'W' Rating 20/23

No.289 : Which Way Home (2009)

Which Way Home at the IMDb

It’s time for a documentary double bill here at the ‘W’ Movie Blog. Our regular reader will attest that we cover all genres here, except perhaps porno, with the odd documentary feature a nice change of pace from the usual westerns and people being hit in the balls in frat movies.

‘Which Way Home’ (No question mark) is an Oscar Nominated documentary from 2009 which follows several children as they try to illegally enter the United States. I thought most illegals were Mexicans, but most of the people we follow are from further afield in Central America - Honduras, El Salvador and the like. These people are dirt poor and the idealised images of the US they see on TV are a persuading force in making them take the perilous journey of hundreds of miles on the back of freight trains.

The main children we follow are Kevin and Fito who are both barely teenagers. We get a bit of background of their plight as well, with cutaways back to the family home where their families are interviewed. The first stage is to get into Mexico and that seems relatively easy. The Mexicans seem nice with locals offering the kids food and a government body helping with advice and medical aid.

The train companies don’t want them however, but are unable to do much as the freight wagons are festooned with dozens of riders. We meet several other travellers and hear horrific tales of rape and murder. The kids are pretty streetwise but clearly vulnerable and prone to tears.

We also follows some migrants who end up in detention or even dead. People smugglers are happy to abandon their charges and there is one terrible sequence where a poor family have to go bureaucratic hoops to get their son’s body back from the Arizona desert where he perished.

The film was pretty unflinching, but the spirit of the children and their desire to pursue a desperate dream was enough to make it a positive experience rather than a depressing one. The filmmaker did well to keep track of her subjects over a 2000 mile journey that must have taken weeks. The camera work was excellent too, with a lot of shots taken from between and on top of the freight cars.

They didn’t follow the ‘show don’t tell’ rule  as there were regular captions giving additional information about what we were seeing - usually horrific statistics. I liked  this and felt that I came out of the film having learned something rather than having just watched some poverty porn.

Captions at the end let us know how most of those followed fared and it largely wasn’t as how they would have wanted. No doubt things will be worse now, a decade later, and it would be interesting to see the same documentary today.

The film didn’t attempt to offer solutions, merely presenting a snapshot of a humanitarian crisis that has to be addressed. Clearly if their home lives were better there wouldn’t be any reason to leave but I doubt economics would ever allow that to happen.

This was an excellent documentary that offered a lot of food for thought. Next time you moan about your train being five minutes late, spare a thought for these guys.

Best Bit : The 9 year old girl was adorable, hope she made it.  20/23

No.288 : Wind River (2017)

Wind River at the IMDb

Hawkeye out of the Avengers and the non-twin Olsen sister star in this mystery thriller set in the Wind River native American reservation in Wyoming.

Hawkeye is out tracking a mountain lion as part of his role as a wildlife and fisheries officer. He stretches his range by showing he is good with a gun as well as a bow when he shoots a coyote in a scene a bit too real for my liking. Hope they at least ate the body afterwards. Instead of his quarry he finds the body of a young woman, six miles from anywhere, in her bare feet.

The local tribal police call in the FBI and get Olsen for their troubles. She was the nearest officer and has to be kitted out in some 80’s ski wear that once belonged to Hawkeye’s daughter before she can visit the murder scene. We learn that he married a native American woman and had a son and daughter, but the marriage fell apart when the daughter died in unsolved circumstances three years earlier,

What follows is a bit of ‘Witness’ style ‘fish out of water’ detective work as Olsen, with Haweye’s help, tries to solve the crime whilst avoiding putting her foot in a big cultural pat. They run down some junkies and, after shooting one, get a clue. Ultimately all the clues are tracks in the snow, so just keep looking down and you’ll do fine.

Issues with the death certificate mean that Olsen can’t call in all the Feds she’d like, so she has to make do with the tribal police and her own instincts. All trails point to the local oil drilling settlement and with a gruesome flashback and plenty of gun play the truth will out. Can we have some healing too please?

This was a superior offering that was well worth it’s high IMDb rating of 7.8. To be honest it had passed me by on release as it does look a bit bleak from the outset. It is ‘inspired by true events’ and the closing caption says loads of native American girls are raped and murdered but no totals are kept. You can see that the film was therefore motivated by an agenda, but it was a worthy one and it was wrapped in an exciting and thoughtful blanket of thrills.

The detection was OK, but when the body was found two options were given for the victim’s starting point and it turned out it was one of them. The oil drillers were a mental bunch and their behaviour did seem a bit ridiculous both in the flashback and in the showdown scenes. One says the snow and silence drove him mad but that didn’t explain their collective mentalness and a shootout that made the OK Corral look like water pistols at dawn.

Hawkeye was a familiar character as the broken man looking for redemption, but he gave good value. Olsen was a poor version of Jodie Foster as seen in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ as the rookie FBI officer, but she was prepared to get down and dirty with no make up and a series of unflattering outfits and I was grateful to her for that.

The massive body count and brutal fights mean this isn’t one for the squeamish but it was fast paced and exciting and the locations were fantastic. It did seem unsatisfying that Hawkeye’s daughter’s death wasn’t explored in more detail but I guess a resolution to that may have seemed a bit too neat to be believable. Maybe for the sequel.

Best Bit : Wyoming Standoff  ‘W’ Rating  : 20/23

No.287 : Whirlpool (1949)

Whirlpool at the IMDb

Black and white melodrama from 1949 now - well you have to spoil yourself sometimes. I actually quite enjoyed this one although the promised whirlpool never appeared - not even a Zanussi was on show.

The film starts Gene Tierney, who is a lady, and looks like a young Joan Collins on a good day. She helps herself to some five fingered discount at a department store but gets collared by the store detective. The store is about to call the cops but then a man shows up and points outs she’s rich and not black, so they let her go - and it was a $300 mermaid pin she nicked too!

It turns out stealing is OK if you are rich, and our lady, Ann, is independently wealthy and is married to a famous psychotherapist. I couldn’t tell you the names of any psychotherapists today, but I guess in the 1940s you had to make celebrities where you can - what with ‘Love Island’ being decades away.

Ann’s saviour, David Corvo, (Jose Ferrer) calls her up the next day and asks for a meeting. Ann suspects he’s a blackmailer and writes him a cheque for $5000 but he rips it up. Is he really a nice man or has he bigger plans for the easily suggestible Ann? We quickly know he’s a wrong ‘un when he hear of his money worries on the phone; and why has he snagged that glass with Ann’s finger prints on it? Ann is also warned off David by a former conquest of his who is suing him for the $60k (200 mermaid pins in old money) he embezzled from her.

After a few sessions with our hypnotist and fortune telling bad guy, Ann heads out after picking up some recordings and heads to a remote house. When she arrives she finds the dead body of the $60k woman and no memory of how she got there. She must have been hypnotised but you can’t make a non-killer kill under hypnosis and the main suspect is in hospital recovering from a gall bladder operation.

Will Ann get the electric chair or will her husband and the police chief engineer a way to get her off?

This was a decent offering if you can blot out the bombastic and sweeping soundtrack. It was fun to see different times with the privileged few bossing about their servants and waiters with aplomb. “You can clean up later” Ann tells her black maid with a sweep of her hand. Fuck you very much you murdering klepto!

The plot was pretty straightforward and we had no doubt as to what was happening throughout. The bad buy hypnotising himself seemed a bit daft as was the method of his downfall - just have her chuck them in the fire!

Tierney was good in the lead but a bit weak and simpering. The character may have demanded that, but I’d of hoped she may have sorted something out herself rather than rely on the men folk. I liked Ferrer as the slimy baddie with his penchant for ‘making love’ to vulnerable ladies. The stiff upper lipped and bow tied wearing husband played by Richard Conte was really dull and you can see why Ann went looking for shoplifting thrills. Filling out the cast was Charles Bickford who didn’t impress as the hard as nails police chief who, for some reason, allows a murderess and her husband out for the night for a session of deus ex machina plot resolution. Oh well, he was probably lonely due to having a dead wife.

Directed by Otto Preminger the film has good credentials and is well made. A lot of what goes on seems ridiculous now, but it’s an interesting throwback and although there is not one surprise it is an entertaining ride.

Best Bit : ‘He’s a pure shit’  ‘W’ Rating : 17/23

No.286 : Wild in Blue (2015)

Wild in Blue at the IMDb

Sometimes you start a film and if you weren’t writing an unread ‘W’ movies blog you’d cut your losses and watch something else. ‘Wild in Blue’ is such a film and it was a trial to sit through its nihilism, pretentiousness and jerky camera actions.

The film opens with our hero, Charlie, with a gun in his mouth. He has it in and out of there several times but, alas, decides to save us form an early night and chooses to keep on living - well if you can call it that.

Charlie is a nasty piece of work and has many fantasies which may or not be real. He has a threesome with a couple of hookers before strangling them. He offers poor old Karen Black, in what was her last role, help in fixing her car before smashing her face in with a hammer. That scene was plain nasty and if it wasn’t for the terrible makeup, I’d have been quite disturbed by it.

All the while Charlie is filming his activities and offering us his ponderous narration. He says his film  is intended to ‘help us bury the dead things inside of us’ which is very generous of him, but frankly, he shouldn’t have bothered. The film uses Charlie’s footage as part of the narrative so we get lots of static-filled VHS shots and focus that looks like the steady-cam was on a bungee rope. I’d imagine this process was to draw us into Charlie’s world and to give us a voyeur’s view of the action - well that and it’s cheap.

Charlie makes a friend who is also weird and wants to be hurt. I may have misread this but I think the friend didn’t exist except in Charlie’s mind as no one else reacts to him when he’s perving about, and Charlie acts out the friend’s fantasies. Things may look up when Charlie gets a nice girlfriend. Again I’m not clear if the sociopath is imagining things or she’s a hooker, but she is quite game for most things, usually involving strangulation.

At times it looks like Charlie will take it too far and the last elongated scene is of him filming himself strangling her with the film intercut with him being beaten up as a child by his Dad, the Stunt Man himself, Steve Railsback. Seems a strange thing for a family movie to be made of, so again it may all be playing out inside Charlie’s frazzled brain. Will the ‘why did she agree to be in this?’ girlfriend survive and will Charlie find the gun he was playing with at the start? I can help to look!

This was a God awful film that looked like some dreadful film school project - cheap and with every cut and effect filter you can imagine. Amazingly IMDb says it won some awards - must have been ‘Least Use of Focus in a Feature Presentation’. There was no attempt to engage you with the characters with scenes dragging on for an age in a clearly improvised and meandering manner.

You could see art house types lapping it up, but it just grated throughout with its industrial noises and strobing lights setting the scene for people to have rough sex with their clothes on. Prudish yet extreme is a strange mix.

The slightly upbeat ending and reveal came about 80 minutes too late for me to care and I’m just glad it’s done. Let’s never speak of it again.

Best Bit  : I love a good skirt - (way more than this stinker) 6/23

No.285 : While We’re Young (2014)

While We're Young at the IMDb

This film of middle age yuppie angst opens with a screaming baby - never a good start. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a childless couple who, after holding their friend’s baby, decide that parenthood is not for them. They had tried and failed to conceive before and are now settled into their comfortable and carefree lives.

Ben is a documentary filmmaker, but his work can only be found on eBay and his latest feature has been in production for eight years. He does teach a class in film making, and it’s here that he meets Kylo Ren, a young hipster film maker who eulogises over Ben’s questionable movie career.

Ben likes the fawning and soon the pair become friends, with Kylo’s wife, her off ‘Mamma Mia’, joining them for double dates. The older couple envy the free spirited youths and soon start to adopt parts of their lifestyles such as wearing silly hats and doing hip-hop aerobics. Ben and Kylo start to help each other on their projects and Ben is jealous when Kylo makes and edits a hit film is a few days, as his 8 hour epic is boring as hell and nowhere near finished.

Ben’s initial annoyance soon blooms into full blown irritation as he discovers that Kylo’s film may not have been as honest as he made out. Also, is Ben’s father in law, a celebrated documentary film maker, real reason that Kylo zeroed in on Ben? And will illicit kiss at a shaman dope session also signal problems for the forty something couple?

The older couple become alienated from their peer group of friends and with a gala celebration of the father in laws work due, will Ben expose the dodgy practices used by Kylo and are they really all that important? Will children come back into the equation or will they accept what they have?

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach this film pretty much delivered what I was expecting. Lots of middle-aged angst and an examination of relationships set against a backdrop of coffee bars and sunglasses. It was OK though.

I liked the seduction of Ben as he was enticed into the hipster lifestyle. We all knew Kylo was a bad lot from the start when he kept leaving Ben to pay the bill, but Ben was blinded by the praise and energy of his younger rival. It was good that Ben started to see though the façade and it was a clever twist when his big exposure of his rival was met with a resounding ‘so what?’ from all in attendance.

Ben’s slavish devotion to the truth at all costs lost him sight of what really mattered - the truth of the story being told. It was questionable that Kylo set up his story, and the detection angle for Ben was decent, but at the end of the day people need to be entertained and if a narrative shortcut can lose several hours of Turkish politics, then we're all for it.

The performances from the two male leads were good with the two females not getting much to do. The whole enterprise was somewhat slight and I don't doubt that this one will fade quickly from the memory, but it was an enjoyable slice of life with some interesting questions asked, if not fully answered.

Best Bit : Ben's Film Gets the Critique it Deserves   16/23