Tag Archives: Rachel Willis

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Back to the Future

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Lola

by Rachel Willis

Two sisters invent and control a time machine in director Andrew Legge’s historical sci-fi drama, Lola.

In 1941, Thom (Emma Appleon) and Martha (Stefanie Martini) can access broadcasts from the future with their device, Lola. They discover David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and other great musicians from the future. However, they also realize they can send precise warnings to fellow Britains about impending German air raids. What they do saves lives.

Though their efforts begin with mere warnings, the sisters start to reshape the future with the help of a British soldier who verifies the authenticity of each German broadcast. When Thom decides to take matters into her own hands, offering more than warnings, she loses Britain the U.S.’s support in the war effort. And that’s just the first mistake.

As with any movie about time travel, changes in the present affect not just the immediate future, but the far distant future, as well.

A 78-minute story leaves little time to make the point that some things are best left alone, but still Lola does a lot of meandering. The tension from decisions made is never allowed to build.

There is also the strange idea behind the film’s surface message that it’s best not to act, as any action you take can have unknown repercussions on the future. I’m not sure this is what the filmmaker intended to convey, but this is what comes across.

A large portion of the film comprises stock footage and montages depicting how the sisters change the war effort. It becomes tedious, making the film’s run time feel much longer than it is.

There is also the dubious notion of a found footage film that takes place in 1941. Martha’s camera is explained (it also conveniently captures sound), but several other cameras appear in places where it doesn’t make sense. You’re left wondering who exactly is behind the camera.

While Lola has a one or two stand out moments (invented superstar Reginald Watson, for example), the overall output is a mess. The theme of leaving the present unaltered based on what one knows of the future has been explored before. Lola offers nothing new save a questionable perspective on taking any action at all.

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Movie Magic

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Once Upon a Time in Uganda

by Rachel Willis

Cathryne Czubek’s film Once Upon a Time in Uganda might be the most fun you’ll have watching a documentary.

Centering her film around Ugandan filmmaker Isaac Nabwana (styling himself as Nabwana IGG), Czubek has fun bringing Isaac’s world to life for her audience.

Thrown into the mix is Alan Hofmanis, a New Yorker who became so enamored with Isaac’s work that he abandoned his life in New York (primarily a cat he left with his mom) and moved to Uganda.

The two struck up a partnership of sorts. Alan focuses on bringing international attention to Isaac’s films. Isaac focuses on the Ugandan side of the equation.

Once Upon a Time in Uganda’s only flaw is that it’s not sure where to fit Alan into the narrative. Though his role in Isaac’s success can’t be ignored, he has an overblown view of himself regarding Isaac’s creative process. The documentary places too much weight on Alan when this should be almost entirely Isaac’s story.

And what a story it is. A brick maker in Wakaliga, Kampala (restyled Wakaliwood by Isaac), Isaac’s dream is making action movies. The times we see Isaac behind the camera or at his computer in his living room working on special effects are a joy. His films are a community event. With a budget of $85 to $200, everyone, from the actors to the crew, volunteers to create action movies that are laugh-out-loud funny.

Also due to the low budget, the team works with what they have, welding prop guns and camera tracking arms whenever they need them. It’s a process unlike anything you’d see on a U.S. movie set, but the camaraderie of Isaac’s crew is what makes watching the documentary such a delight. It’s all hands on deck, and everyone is having a good time.

That’s not to say Isaac doesn’t have problems. Issues around money crop up from time to time. Even though it seems Isaac comes across some level of success, it isn’t monetary success. When he accepts a TV deal to create a series for Uganda’s largest media empire, it leads to strife with not only his crew, but with Alan as well.

But you will find yourself rooting for Isaac the entire time. Even if low-budget action movies aren’t your thing, Isaac’s enthusiasm for movie making is palpable. It makes Czubek’s documentary stand as one of the finest send ups to the joy that is movie making.

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Make the Canadian World Go Round

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Montreal Girls

by Rachel Willis

A man searching for his way in life is the subject of director Patricia Chica’s character study, Montreal Girls.

Though he arrives in Montreal to enroll in a pre-med program, it’s immediately clear that medicine is not a path Ramy (Hakim Brahimi) has chosen for himself. It’s an honor to study medicine at the university to which he has been accepted, but Ramy’s true passion is poetry.

Chica sets up a nice familial relationship for Ramy, establishing early that he is close with both his uncle (Manuel Tadros) and cousin, Tamer (Jade Hassouné). Tamer – a singer in a local punk band – introduces Ramy to the two women who will occupy most of his time in Montreal – Desiree (Jasmina Parent) and Yaz (Sana Asad).

Most of the film follows Ramy as he gets to know the women, all while reflecting on the last moments he spent with his mother before leaving for university. Her passing has had a profound impact on Ramy, and this is perhaps why he tries to cling so hard to the elusive Yaz.

While Desiree is more accessible, Ramy struggles to find his way with both women. It’s a mirror for the ways he struggles with his choice to study medicine. One offers safety and security; the other, passion and uncertainty.

While on the surface, it seems the Montreal girls are the driving influence behind Ramy’s choices, everything he does comes back around to the mother he has lost. Through brief scenes, we can sense the intimate relationship between Mother and Son.

At times, the film falls victim to clichés, but tenderness adds a layer of sincerity to those clichés. The film never feels trite, even while it treads familiar ground.

While most of the characters come to life, Yaz is relatively flat. Though this is how the character wants it – the persona she has created for herself – we never feel connected to her in a meaningful way. But this is part of the lesson Ramy learns as he navigates his new life. There are some people who will inspire you, even while they remain elusive. While this works to deepen Ramy’s character, it does leave a little to be desired for the audience.

Most of what the film does works to serve its purpose. The few moments where it stumbles almost feel necessary as it accurately reflects Ramy’s world.

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Play Acting

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Love Gets a Room

by Rachel Willis

Trying to keep the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto from succumbing to despair, a group of actors performs a lighthearted musical-comedy in director Rodrigo Cortés’s film, Love Gets a Room.

The film is set almost entirely within a theater over the course of a single performance. As the actors perform onstage, things are thrown into chaos backstage when Stefcia (Clara Rugaard) learns she can escape the ghetto with Patryk (Mark Ryder). The problem is her love, Edmund (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), would be left behind.

The performance of the play is based on real events from 1942. Written by Jerzy Jurandot, Love Gets a Room was performed in the Warsaw Ghetto by a troupe of actors. For the film, the actors are given a backstory that shines a light on the harsh conditions for the people imprisoned in the Ghetto.

There are several taut scenes, including a moment when a Nazi soldier arrives in the theater and takes a seat in the audience. Scenes like these best serve the film, perfectly juxtaposing the lighthearted nature of the play with the very real terror in the heart of everyone at the mercy of the Nazi soldiers in their midst.

It’s unfortunate the film never quite captures the right tone when its characters struggle with the possibility of escape. The dialogue often feels unnatural, which sometimes fits with the theater-like tone, but more often weakens the film.

The score doesn’t work for the most dramatic scenes. It serves the film well when the focus remains on the play, but backstage, it heightens the melodrama rather than the drama.

But it’s a devastating conundrum – to leave behind those you love when a chance of survival is presented. It is also distressing to watch a group of people in utter fear of their captors, trying their hardest to survive, when their fates have already been written.

However, Love Gets a Room struggles to maintain the sinister nature of the situation. While it successfully captures the need of the audience to laugh at a light-hearted stage play, the characters backstage never quite come to life. This creates a disconnect, which is unfortunate since the subject matter is so very important.

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Slip of the Tongue

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Persian Lessons

by Rachel Willis

A random trade in the back of a transport van gives Gilles (Nahuel Peréz Biscayart) a chance to survive the Holocaust in Vadim Perelman’s film, Persian Lessons.

The trade – a book in Farsi for a sandwich – seems inconsequential, even poor, but it prevents Gilles’s death when the van is unloaded in a field and everyone is executed. There’s a deputy commandant, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), looking for someone who speaks Farsi, so Gilles is spared – the book used as evidence of his nationality.

The problem is that Gilles is not Persian (Iranian) and doesn’t speak Farsi.

The situation creates immense tension as there are several soldiers who suspect Gilles (known to the soldiers as Reza) is lying. One makes it his goal to reveal the deception. As Gilles tries to create a language to fool Koch, we watch as he struggles to remember the words he’s invented. He keeps them straight using a pneumonic device based on the names of the prisoners entered into a register.

Because of Gilles’s peculiar status, he spends almost equal time with his fellow prisoners and the Nazis around them, but he is a part of neither group. And because of his unique access to Koch, and the fury this incites in some of the soldiers, we spend more time with these men and women than we do the prisoners around Gilles.

We watch as soldiers and officers flirt and gossip and attend parties, humanizing them in a way that makes them more sinister. These are the actions of people you might know – those who view what they do with enthusiasm or indifference. They form relationships with each other while dehumanizing the Jewish people around them. It adds an ominous realism to these characters.

Koch is the most disturbing. He helps Gilles on several occasions, but it’s clear if he were to ever find out Gilles is lying about his identity, the retribution would be swift and cruel. There is no real affection between the two; Gilles is fully aware of his precarious situation, even as he takes advantage of it. Koch is a means for Gilles’s survival, but never a friend.

As the film progresses, there is a constant tension. As prisoners are transferred from one camp to another, Gilles is physically spared, but the emotional toll of watching so many men, women, and children shipped to their death wears on him. His physical and emotional demeanor deteriorates throughout the film.

Perelman’s striking and terrifying portrayal of one man’s experience is one that will resonate for some time.

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Screening Room: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Flamin’ Hot, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, Daliland & More

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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Flamin’ Hot, Daliland, Mending the Line, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, Aloners, All Man: The International Male Story

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The Loneliest Number

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Aloners

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director Hong Sung-eun offers a contemplative portrait of solitude and loneliness in her film, Aloners.

Jina (Gong Seung-yeon) wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, has dinner and goes to bed. This is her life on repeat. She eats at the same restaurant each lunch break. Her interactions with other people revolve around chit-chat with her supervisor on smoke breaks, the occasional exchange with a neighbor, and countless callers in the call center where she works.

Otherwise, Jina’s constant companion is a screen. Earbuds in, she walks, rides the bus, eats, and moves through her day connected to a screen. She even sleeps with the TV on.

Several things happen to rattle Jina’s solitary existence. She’s tasked with training a new employee in hopes of keeping the turnover rate down at her job; her father gets in touch with her regarding a lawyer’s visit; and a neighbor in her apartment building dies.

It’s Jina’s father (Park Jeong-hak) who tries hardest to connect, though her new colleague Sujin (Jeong Da-eun) also attempts to engage her. Rather than take her father’s calls, she watches him through a home video camera set up in his living room. When her colleague brings her coffee, she wordlessly accepts.

This is a slow film, but a certain sadness and apathy hangs over Jina. Gong is phenomenal at displaying the anxiety that comes with human interaction, and her expressionless face carries more weight than any dialogue. It’s hard to say what, if anything, Jing feels.

And while there isn’t much action, the film is never boring. The character study is an affecting examination on how being alone can change a person. Was Jing always like this or has she learned to shut down as a result of her isolation? Can she truly be happy on her own so much of her life?

The film takes place before the pandemic, for a post-pandemic audience Aloners is a slow, striking film that resonates deeply.

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Evil in Oils

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Cracked

by Rachel Willis

Haunted objects are never creepier than when they have eyes that can stare back at you – even follow you as you move around the room. Such is the premise of director Surapong Ploensang’s film, Cracked.

When her father dies, Ruja (Chayanit Chansangavej) travels from the U.S. to Thailand to sell two of his paintings, both of a woman in a red scarf with gold snakes encircling her body. Though it’s clear that Ruja is uncomfortable in her childhood home, she braves the journey to oversee the restoration of the paintings because their sale will pay for a needed eye surgery for her daughter, Rachel (Nutthatcha Padovan).  

It’s a reasonable premise for horror, but Cracked never creates the right atmosphere to generate fear. The paintings at the center of the film aren’t very disturbing – although, as cracks begin to appear, they do become a little creepier. The use of snakes and their imagery result in the most success, mostly by playing on phobias. But a wrestling match with a white bed sheet is more humorous than scary. Ploensang’s attempts at jump scares are too heavy handed, and there isn’t enough tension to keep you on edge.

Most disappointing are missed chances for horror when we see through Rachel’s eyes. The camera work in these sequences is blurry, representing her deteriorating vision. Ample opportunity for creepiness, yes? Unfortunately, not in this film.

Cracked shifts between present day and flashbacks. Used more carefully, sequences of Ruja’s childhood could have added to the mystery of terror of her childhood home. Unfortunately, Ploensang flashes back too rarely in the beginning and too often at the climax.

Though supporting performances are uneven, ancillary characters add texture to the solid lead turns. In fact, the acting is the film’s strongest component. Chansangavej convinces, and Ruja’s fear might have been contagious if the surrounding elements had been more believable. And when Rachel is being terrorized, Padovan’s dread is heart wrenching.

It’s not enough, though. Within the subgenre of artwork horror or object-oriented horror, Cracked is one of the less memorable entries.

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The Devil You Know

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The Thief Collector

by Rachel Willis

There’s an old adage that you can never really know someone. In director Allison Otto’s documentary, The Thief Collector, she puts this at the forefront with a modest couple, Jerry and Rita Alter, from middle-of-nowhere New Mexico, who happened to be art thieves.

Or at least, that’s how it seems.

After an estate sale, three men, Rick, Dave, and Buck discover an unattractive painting placed behind a bedroom door. It isn’t until a local artist recognizes the painting that they look into it further. One Google search later, the men discover the painting in their possession is Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre, stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985.

So, how did Jerry and Rita, two teachers, come to have this painting in their possession?

The Thief Collector wants to answer this question.

There is a lot of reliance on Jerry’s short stories to paint a picture of two people who were “thrill seekers” (also conveniently one of Jerry’s story titles). There is documented evidence that the couple lived a fascinating and exhilarating life – one full of travel and adventure in parts of the world many will never see.

However, any writer of fiction would be appalled to think after their death, their stories would be taken as fact – and as evidence of crimes. While this could be the case for Jerry, it’s all speculation.

There is more compelling evidence to implicate the Alters in the crime, but there is a lot of filler in the documentary. Readings from Jerry’s short stories serve as narration for scripted scenes – with Glenn Howerton as “Jerry” and Sarah Minnich as “Rita”. While these scenes are an over-the-top kind of enjoyable, they’re not evidence of wrongdoing, no matter how much the filmmakers might wish them to be.

By focusing on Jerry’s stories, there is a lot of reaching rather than revelation.

Where the documentary succeeds is in its blend of interviews, in footage of the Alters’ many trips, and the vast collection of art in their home. The reenactments don’t quite fit, but they’re amusing.

Of course, the film would have been better served if it tightened its focus to what is known about the theft and the Alters. The interviews with friends and family give a good back and forth on the film’s theme – that the people you’ve known many years, maybe even your whole life, may have a dark side. It’s definitely something to ponder.

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Ole Ole Ole

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Gringa

by Rachel Willis

When her mom dies, rather than live with her grandparents, Marge (Jess Gabor) decides to track down her long-lost dad (Steve Zahn) in Mexico in directors Marny Eng and E. J. Foerster’s film, Gringa.

It makes sense that our narrator would choose to find a dad she doesn’t know rather than live with her mother’s parents. The little we see of them shows they’re too critical, nothing like Marge’s supportive mother.

This is one of the film’s strengths – we’re able to glean a lot of information about Marge, her mother, and her grandparents during the film’s first fifteen minutes.

The other strength is the actors. Each is captivating on screen, particularly Gabor. She is a relatable, sympathetic young woman who fails to fit in. She copes with her depression by binging, her bulimia telegraphed early to help us understand this complicated young woman.

Unfortunately, Patrick Hasburgh’s script tries to be too many things at once, and none of the issues raised are given the weight they deserve. If the film had struck the right comedic balance, this could be overlooked, but because there is a seriousness to the tone, these difficult issues come across as shallow.

Alcoholism and bulimia are treated as switches a person can turn on or off at will. Marge’s problems are apparently solved by a month-long trip to Mexico with a near-perfect father. The fact that he left Marge and her mother when Marge was two is too easily forgiven, and when the climax comes, it’s predictable and uninspired.

This is also a sports movie, bringing all the tropes you would expect. Unlike her team at home in California, Marge – the gringa – quickly fits in with her soccer teammates in Mexico. They’re initial reluctance to have her on their team is quickly replaced by appreciation when she helps them win a critical game. Several montages take the place of moments that would have been better represented with honest dialogue.

Yet, the movie has its moments. Zahn is charming, as are several members of the supporting cast. Gabor is easy to root for; you want her and her dad to find their way. But the film is a patchwork of too many ideas and tones to effectively hook the audience. You might be carried along by what works, but it’s more likely you’ll disappointed by what doesn’t.