So Much Trouble In The World
My thoughts on God & Country, Land of Bad, My Sole Desire and No Way Up
Produced by Rob Reiner, God & Country is a documentary by Dan Partland that charts, in eye-opening and blood-boiling detail, the rise in Christian Nationalism and how a relatively small number of far-right Christians have attempted, and largely succeeded, in redefining Christianity in ways that are often diametrically opposed to what is written in the Bible and how this has contributed in part to the sharp divisions that we see in our country today. Using a number of Bible passages as a sort of guide, the film investigates both these developments and the people behind them via interviews with scholars, journalists and, most significantly, with a number of conservative Christians who are nevertheless concerned with what has been happening, ranging from the creators of VeggieTales to Rob Schneck, a former clergyman who makes a number of startling revelations, such as an apparent mandate to deliver sermons derived from the teachings of an avowed Nazi supporter. Although much of the material is undeniably compelling, the presentation is nothing much to write home about—it is the usually array of archival clips and talking head interviews—and there is the unavoidable sensation throughout that Partland is essentially preaching to the choir. God & Country is still worth watching, especially if you want to get a better grasp on what has been happening in this country over the last few years, but it seems that if it had been made with some greater degree of ambition, it might have had a better chance of luring in precisely the sort of viewers who need to see it the most.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate” is, of course, the famous line from Cool Hand Luke but it could also be used to sum up Land of Bad, the new war drama from director William Eubank. As the film opens, a Delta Force team, led by Sugar (Milo Ventmiglia) and including Abell (Luke Hemsworth) and Bishop (Ricky Whittle), prepare to clandestinely parachute into the jungles of the Philippines in order to rescue a CIA asset who has been taken prisoner in the midst of a secret war. Tagging along with them is Kinney (Liam Hemsworth), a rookie officer who has not been fully trained for such a mission and who seems more reliant on the information provided by the drone pilots from thousands of miles away than by what is all around him. Although the mission seems simple enough, things start going sideways when the technological assistance fails and the group finds itself under attack. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, tightly wound drone pilot Reaper (Russell Crowe), who has been communicating with Kinney, does everything he can to try to extract the group and get them to safety while at the same time dealing with the laxness of his fellow drone jockeys, most of whom seem more interested in watching the NCAA finals than in doing their jobs.
Despite the current technological aspects featured in the story, Land of Bad is essentially a meat-and-potatoes war story, the kind that will no doubt be considered by many to be a “dad movie,” and for a while, it is a reasonably effective one. The action beats in the early going are mostly staged in a clean and efficient style that is at times brutal to watch without ever quite tipping over into cartoonishness. It also has a quietly effective supporting turn by Crowe, playing a guy with evident anger issues who is trying to keep an even balance while dealing with the events unfolding around the world, the lack of commitment from his fellow pilots (who seem more concerned with macho posturing than in correctly analyzing the data on the screens in front of them) and a wife who is about to give birth. The problem is that the attempt by Eubank and co-writer David Frigerio to intertwine the two stories is not entirely successful—by cutting between the two, the film ends up reducing the tension in both of them—and towards the end, it more or less devolves into standard-issue carnage and even throws in a ticking clock element that sees the Crowe character racing to try to get to a phone in the—ta-da—nick of time to stave off disaster. Ultimately, Land of Bad is little more than a middle-of-the-road war film—the kind that will never go down as a classic in anyone’s mind but which might pass the time adequately enough if you stumble upon it on cable sometime down the line.
As the French import My Sole Desire begins, we see Manon (Louise Chevillote), a young woman currently at loose ends in regards to what she wants to do with her life, standing outside a Parisian strip club for a while before mustering up the courage to enter. As it turns out, she isn’t there to see the show—she wants to become one of the performers. After a successful audition, she is hired and begins learning the ropes from the other performers, ranging from everything from using the routines as a form of artistic expression to how to manipulate the audience members into forking over more money. After a rocky (not to mention icky) start, she begins to fit in and forms a close bond with Mia (Zita Hanrot), a drama student who is performing while trying to get into a prestigious theater school, with whom she performs a number of super-steamy routines. Before too long, the relationship between the two ends up blurring the line between the professional and the personal. Things are fine for a while but there are a couple of unavoidable obstacles—the fact that Mia has both a long-time boyfriend (Thimotee Robert) and a young daughter and Manon’s unwillingness to give up meeting clients outside of the club for higher-paying assignations—that threaten to break things up between them for good.
Although this description may make My Sole Desire sound like the kind of mindless skin show that you could find playing late at night on Skinemax back in the day, I promise you that there is much more to it than just that. Directed and co-written by Lucie Borleteau (whose previous features have included the intriguing erotic drama Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey and the quietly terrifying psychological thriller Perfect Nanny), the film is a nuanced and thoughtful look at sex work that recognizes both the pitfalls and the pleasures that can come from that form of employment without delving into clumsy moralizing melodrama and benefits greatly from the convincingly natural performances from the women portraying the dancers. The film also manages to weave a convincing erotic spell in regards to the relationship between Manon and Mia but that is due less to the explicitness of what we see (although we do see a lot) and more because we care enough about the characters (thanks both to Borleteau’s empathic direction and the strong performances from Chevilotte and Hanrot) so that when the more intimate moments do arise, they exist for reasons other than to give viewers an eyeful. The film is also surprisingly funny at times, offering up such oddball pleasures as a strip performance that turns into a scene from a Chekhov play, an amusing cameo from documentary legend Frederick Wiseman as a customer at the club and what is surely the most memorable group performance of “La Marseillaise” to hit the screen since Casablanca. My Sole Desire stumbles a bit in the late going as the tensions between Manon and Mia come to a head but it makes up for it with a final sequence that manages to wrap things up on just the right note. This is a smart, sly and largely fascinating look at sex, love, money and friendship and while most viewers will no doubt be lured to it solely because of the sexual content, it is the deft way in which it handles that other material that will induce them to not only stick with it but to do so without hitting the fast-forward button.
No Way Up may look like just another idiotic shark movie but don’t be fooled—it is, in fact, just a run-of-the-mill idiotic survival drama that just happens to have a shark pop up every once in a while to nibble on a lesser cast member whenever things get dull. Sophie McIntosh stars as Ava, the overprotected daughter of a governor who is heading off to Cabo for a vacation with boyfriend Jed (Jeremias Amoore), his broheim buddy Kyle (Will Attenborough) and her ever-present bodyguard Brandon (Colm Meaney). Alas, a flock of birds take out one of the engines, leading to the debris ripping a large hole in the side of the plane before it crashes to the ocean floor. The good news is that an air pocket in the back half of the plane means that the few survivors, which also include flight attendant Danilo (Manuel Pacific), adorable moppet Rosa (Grace Nettle) and her grandmother, Iraq war vet Mardy (Phyllis Logan), can hold out for a bit. The bad news is that the plane is perched precariously on a ledge and is in constant danger of teetering over into the abyss. If that weren’t enough, a shark comes snooping around to snack on passengers, both dead and alive, and potential rescuers alike from time to time as well, forcing the dwindling group of survivors to make a last-ditch effort to reach the surface and the possibility of safety.
Although the advanced hype for the film has strained to make it seem like something along the lines of Sharks on a Plane, the film is closer in tone and feel to one of the old Airport movies, particularly Airport 77, in which a plane crashed into the Bermuda Triangle and pilot Jack Lemmon struggled to get the passengers to safety. Of course, this is the Frontier Airlines version of such a film, which means that instead of the lavish trappings of those films, director Claudio Fah has to make do with a no-star cast (save for Meaney) and CGI effects of a fairly dodgy nature. That wouldn’t be too much of a concern—if you aren’t willing to give a little bit of leeway to a film in which a shark goes swimming in a downed plane in the first place, you probably shouldn’t bother with it in the first place—except for the fact that none of the rest of it works much either. Instead of playing up the essentially ludicrous premise, Fah tries to keep things serious, which only serves to make it seem even sillier, and gives it a plodding pace that is constantly working against the ticking clock premise. As for the characters, none of them are especially interesting and the one played by Attenborough is so relentlessly obnoxious throughout that the film’s decision to let him remain uneaten for so long seem like an exceptionally perverse move by screenwriter Andy Mayson. Sure, unless Jaws is your only exposure to the sub-genre, No Way Up is almost certainly not the worst shark-related movie that you have seen in your life but its relentless mediocrity could make it among the dullest.