Tag Archives: Sophia Ali

Shudder Premiere

Running to Stand Still

Leave a comment

Find Your Friends

by Hope Madden

I love Shudder. Truth is, Shudder is the only station I know how to find on our TV. I mean it. How I look forward to each new Shudder original! Happily, most of them live up to the excitement.

But every once in a while, you get a Find Your Friends.

Five unreasonably attractive and clearly alcoholic twentysomething besties wreak havoc on their livers and look good doing it. And screw the a’holes at this yacht party because these party bitches are headed to Joshua Tree to a better party followed by some desert tripping. Hell yeah!

I rarely stop watching a movie once I start it because it’s my job to finish the movie. I had to remind myself of this during Find Your Friends no fewer than four times before we even got to Joshua Tree.

We spend time with Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zión Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Maddy (Sophia Ali) twerking, doing shots, slapping each other’s asses, taking Molly, smoking joints, taking ‘shrooms, more shots, making out with strangers, driving wasted, saying “pussy” hundreds of times, talking incessantly about dick, and living as if we don’t exist in a country where you get away with rape but go to prison for defending yourself.

But that’s sort of writer/director Izabel Pakzad’s point, I suppose. That humans aggressively oblivious to their own safety still deserve safety, which is true. And that young women are often so frequently coerced and misused that they bond over it, joke about it, numb themselves to it. Also valid.

And that no women live in Joshua Tree at all. Only pick-up truck driving rapists and rifle carrying misogynists. This seems less accurate.

The heavy handedness of the film’s story and the one-dimensionality of its characters make it hard for Pakzad to build any momentum. There really is a story of female rage swimming beneath the sea of alcohol, but the story is so slight and the film so long and the climax so abrupt and the final shot so unearned that the message is tough to get behind.

New In Theaters

Green Screen, New Deal

Leave a comment

Uncharted

by George Wolf

Just like most – if not all – video game adaptations, Uncharted suffers from being driven more by cheat codes than character. And then later when some people you don’t really care about take time for flippant quips while free-falling over the Banda Sea, the stakes are never going to feel consequential.

But if you set all that aside and give in to the brazen ridiculousness of the latest Indiana Jones knockoff, there’s some fun to be discovered.

Tom Holland steps into the adventurin’ boots of Nathan Drake, a wannabe explorer who’s tending bar in New York when he’s recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) for a big score.

Sure, Nathan knows all about the legend of the “biggest treasure never found.” Somewhere there’s about $5 billion in gold that was stashed away eons ago by Magellan himself, and you know what that means!

It means they’re gonna be short one barkeep come Happy Hour, because Nate’s going globetrotting.

Of course, Nate and Sully aren’t the only ones calling for this booty, and in no time they’re battling a familiar mercenary known as Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), the mysterious Chloe (Sophia Ali), and various goons sent by the villainous Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas).

Holland proves adept at parkour and trading mildly amusing barbs with Wahlberg, leaving director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) to keep his foot on the gas and let the green screen whizzes go to Funkytown.

Not all of that greenery carries ready-for-prime-time polish, but the film’s second half makes sure there’s so much of it in your face you’ll hardly have time to notice.

And if you’re game to keep the brain unplugged, stay put during the credits to notice some extra derring-do that maps out directions for the next Uncharted course.

New In Theaters

Films Against Humanity

Leave a comment

Truth or Dare

by Hope Madden

Do people over the age of 8 still honestly play Truth or Dare? This idea surprises me. Aren’t there video games kids can be wasting time with?

I suppose the real surprise is that it took four years for a film to rip off It Follows. The new PG-13 horror from Blumhouse, Truth or Dare, takes a stab at it.

No, it’s not sex. But it is a curse that you pass on to other people to save yourself. A super lame curse that blends the clever concept of It Follows with the by-the-numbers structure of one of the later Final Destinations and wraps it all up in a faux-contemporary cautionary tale about the digital age.

Yawn!

I’d point out that co-writer/director Jeff Wadlow was primarily lifting from his own 2005 film Cry Wolf, but I decided to go with movies you might have seen—movies that merit imitation.

So. Goody two-shoes Olivia (Lucy Hale) plans to spend her final spring break as a college student building houses with Habitat for Humanity, but her trampy bestie Markie (Violett Beane) and their binge-drinking roomie Penelope (Sophia Ali) have other plans. They guilt Olivia into spending the time with them, their boyfriends and an ethnic minority/gay sixth wheel in Mexico.

Hooray! Six slasher stereotypes—I mean, six best friends!—head south to flirt with alcohol poisoning and make bad decisions. Like playing grade school sleepover games and going to that decaying old mission.

Truth is, there are moments when one performance or a single intriguing notion or a clever call-back threatens to save a scene, by the final reveal you realize how heavy-handed the film really is.

Performances are bland, kills lack inspiration, there aren’t even enough of the prerequisite jump scares to keep the target PG-13 audience interested.

If you are of-age, hopefully you bought some beer with that ID because you’ll need the lubrication to help you glide past the lapses in logic, sometimes comical dialog and one laugh-out-loud moment at the vending machine.

Brad (Hayden Szeto, who deserves better) hears the ominous sound of an otherworldly voice calling out his name.

Except that it sounds exactly like some stoned guy hiding on the other side of the candy machine trying out his spooky voice and stage-whispering, “Braaaaaaaaadddddd!”

My entire row laughed.

So, there you go. There is some enjoyment to be had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLXgDaajBmw