Let’s get on with it…[This list could be subtitled “heavy-handed metaphors” since even a straight-forward genre pic like Mandy Lane has artier aspirations to really be about sexual paranoia and obsession among teenage boys, and untrustworthy teen girls playing off those emotions.]
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane…This long-shelved horror film was supposed to be released in 2006, but sat around gathering dust until October of this year and it’s already on netflix so what does that tell you? It’s supposed to be an “homage” to 70’s teen slasher films but since they still make those movies, I’m not sure that it isn’t just derivative garbage—-actually, maybe I am sure. The big kills aren’t suspenseful so much as gruesome, and the ending twist makes very little sense because the movie doesn’t even stick with it. Grade: D+
The Wall…An art project masquerading as a coherent film about a woman who retreats to a cabin in the woods but is walled off by a giant invisible forcefield that won’t let her leave or interact with another human being. It’s supposed to be an arty metaphor for isolation, but that’s so heavy-handed and obvious you wonder what you’re supposed to do with the other 100 minutes of the movie since there’s not much else to it. Grade: C-
The Girl…Abby Cornish plays a down-on-her-luck Texas single mother whose son is in foster care. In a misguided effort to get the money to get her back, she begins smuggling Mexican immigrants across the border just like her dad (Will Patton) but this quickly goes awry and she begins taking care of a young Mexican girl separated from her family. The movie pulls a quick switcheroo from low-boil, hard-scrabble crime drama to something much more sentimental, and I can’t say that’s entirely welcome. Yes, it’s clever that the poor, quasi-racist blonde woman who’s struggling to get her son back winds up with a third-world daughter, and I liked seeing moral ambiguity on the usually straight-laced Will Patton, but something about this drama felt naggingly unconvincing. Grade: C
Upside Down…Oof, this clumsy, one-note film involves two worlds that are actual mirror opposites of each other since the “down theres” are poor and gravity bound while the “up theres” are literally and metaphorically above them. A down-there boy falls for an up-there girl, and that’s all there is to say…because that’s all there is to the movie. I never felt properly invested in the central romance, and the visuals aren’t nearly wild enough to justify this movie being more than a short film instead of over 100 minutes long. Grade: C