Tony winning actress, writer and director Sarah Jones turns her “Sell/Buy/Date” sex work show into a 100 minute “teachable moment” movie. She uses “protests” against the just-announced “film version” of the play as an impetus to exploring the subject further via professionals involved in the work, porn actors to pole dancers to prostitutes.
Jones’ noble intentions lead to some informative interactions and confessions kind of buried in a mockumentary that starts humorous and talks its subject to death long before “That’s a wrap.”
It’s a laudable effort packed with facts and eye-opening perspectives. But the glib packaging makes for a mostly humor-starved, clinical and tedious film. If nothing else, she underscores the point that this can of worms promises to open. “It’s a complex” subject.
Jones begins by introducing us to characters from her play — Lorraine, her “Jewish bubbe” mascot and conscience, Bella a “sex work studies” coed, Nereida, a Dominican/Puerto Rican civil rights activist and Rashid, a young Uber driver whose guise she assumes to have somebody “street” to bounce a lot of these ideas off and get “KnowwhutI’msayin’?” takes.
The announcement that her long-running show might become a movie earns her Internet blowback, which elderly Lorraine sums up as almost fitting for someone who was “so busy trying to be ‘the wokest,'” and got lost in this subject she still doesn’t know everything about.
So Sarah and her entourage visit a “sex positive pole dancing class” and hear from Tish Roberts, a human rights activist “still walking in that life” as a prostitute.
She meets with Lotus Lain, a porn actress and sex worker advocate, who warns Sarah “You’re about to get yourself canceled!” A quick Instagram pose with Lotus can fix that.
We and Sarah take a tour of Nevada’s famed “Chicken Ranch” legal brothel, led by Alice Little, a prostitute and (BDSM) “educator.”
We hear from a transgender sex worker, and from porn actor/”Adult Media Monetizer” and former Biohazzard rock star Evan Seinfeld. Sarah sits down with Indigenous women activists who point to the “man camps” of the labor intensive oil and construction industries being a magnet and impetus for sex work, especially in nearby Native American reservations.
Jones, like the viewer, gets a bit of whiplash from the “their business is them” self-exploitation view of women selling their looks and bodies, and the opposing view that those profiting the most and suffering the fewest consequences are the men who run the brothels and the “johns” who are barely punished for soliciting sex workers.
Transgender sex worker and activist Esperanza von Secca lectures our playwright, actress and filmmaker about what a “violent business this is for women to be in.”
It’s a lot to “unpack,” Sarah says as herself. And her various guises from the play react differently to each new piece of information, each shift in point of view from “empowering” and giving women “agency” to what an “exploitive” “trap” this work often is.
Also muddying the waters is the ever shifting language of this subject, and the vaguely less pejorative euphemisms thrown about here are enough to make some worry about”doing the work” to keep up with the latest terminology or vex the hell out of anyone fretting about “weasel words” taking over the conversation.
“Still walking in that life?” Give me a break.
A couple of film stars — Rosario Dawson and Bryan Crantson — show up for “advice to Sarah/support Sarah” cameos.
Taken as a whole and received as a film, “Sell/Buy/Date” isn’t a particularly graceful vehicle to disseminate all this new-to-most-of-us information and perspectives. The connecting scenes with Sarah in disguise as Rashid or Bella, etc. feel clumsy and grow less amusing the longer “Sell/Buy/Date” goes on.
The documentary material is informative and mind-opening. The mockumentary surrounding it is a bit of a drag, and lets the movie down.
Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, profanity
Credits: Sarah Jones, Rosario Dawson, Evan Seinfeld, Alice Little, Amy Bond, Esperanza Fonseca and Bryan Cranston.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Sarah Jones. A Cinedigm release.
Note the clever use of an orchestral version of the Stones’ “Paint it Black” as tasty subtext. Tim Burton has given Jenna Ortega a terrific star vehicle. Nov. 23, we find out if it paid off.
That Romeo Montague is one fickle fop in “Rosaline,” a fanciful, lighthearted riff on The Girl He Left on that Other Balcony.
An adaptation of Rebecca Serle’s novel, it conjures up an unseen character from Shakespeare’s play, a girl young blood Romeo pined for until he spied the fair Rosaline’s fetching cousin. Serle gives us a plucky Rosaline, young woman with smarts and wits and agency, and makes her a comical wild card in that tale of “woe…of Juliet and her Romeo.”
Watchable, reasonably well-cast and handsomely mounted, the three letters that come to mind most often in describing “Rosaline” are “ish.”
It’s funny-ish. Charming-ish. Clever-ish. And it ends with a flourish that almost rectifies the shortcomings that precede it.
Kaitlyn Deaver of “Booksmart” is our title heroine, a spunky “modern” young woman chafing at the restraints and “arranged marriage” machinations of her Capulet padre (Bradley Whitford).
“I’m too YOUNG to get married!” “LOOK at you. You’re almost too OLD!”
And then she has to go and get herself swept off her feet by the smooth-talking swooner, Romeo (Kyle Allen).
“I swear at sight that I never saw true beauty until this night!”
She is smitten, but not without reservations. “Why are you TALKING like that?”
Yes, this is a smart-arsed YA take on this tale of woe, complete with smatterings of profanity (a couple of f-bombs included) and a recognition that The Bard of Avon created the theater’s first-ever gay BFFs. Here, it’s Paris (Spencer Stevenson), Rosaline’s confidante.
But her mentor is her nurse, given snide spark by Minnie Driver. Sure, believe “together forever.” But “Bloody hell, cover your TRACKS woman.”
A sailing date with Dad’s one suitable “arranged” suitor (Sean Teale) is where Rosaline’s designs on Romeo are derailed. Weather delays mean that it is Juliet — played by onetime “Dora the Explorer” Isabela Merced — whom Romeo spies and tumbles for, forgetting all thoughts of fair Rosaline. She even gets to hear him using the same lines he used on her.
The cad.
The fun stuff here is Serle and the filmmakers mashing up of the plays — a little “Taming of the Shrew,” a hint of “All’s Well that Ends Well.” I got a small kick out of Rosaline trying to break up the big Montague-Capulet swordfight on the square.
“You ALL have big swords. Why don’t you put’em back in your pants, now?”
The “cutesy” touches are reminiscent of “A Knight’s Tale,” throwing in modern profanity and setting this or that moment to Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” or Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love).”
You’d think with the director of “Yes, God, Yes” (Karen Maine) behind the camera, this comedy would take flight. Too much of what’s here stops just short of paying off with a big laugh. Blame the script or the tentative players (aside from Deaver, none of the younger cast members knows how to stick a punchline), but for all its intended charm and hilarity, “Rosaline” always settles for “ish.”
Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive material and brief strong language (f-bombs, etc).
Cast: Kaithlyn Deaver, Isabela Merced, Sean Teale, Kyle Allen, Bradley Whitford, Spencer Stevenson, Christopher MacDonald and Minnie Driver.
Credits: Directed by Karen Maine, scripted by Scott Neistadter and Michael H. Weber, cased on a novel by Rebecca Serle. A 20th Century film, a Hulu release.
“The Accursed” is the kind of by-the-book demonic “curse” movie that you just know somebody’s going to have to consult a “book” at some point.
The cover is always leather. Or perhaps human skin? There’s always a pentagram on it, and sort of evil illuminated manuscript pages contained therein.
In this generic and generally uninteresting meander of a movie, the book only shows up late and plays no real role in the outcome. But as random as it begins and ends, as many peripheral characters get mixed-up in the messy goings-on, the book shows up because you’ve simply got to have one. Every hack horror screenwriter knows that, even if he has to grimace away the decision to name his movie the same as a film that came out just last year.
A mother (Alexis Knapp) and daughter (Kai Phillippe-Knapp) visit a “witch” in the land of live oaks bathed in Spanish moss.
“Don’t come inside until the screaming starts,” Mom orders. She may be requesting a curse cast upon some rival — “I want the Devil himself to take possession of her.!” — but we start to smell a trap. For the witch.
“Three months later” the new nurse and newly motherless Elly (Sarah Grey) takes a job as in home caregiver to an aged, catatonic crone (’70s and ’80s cinema and TV mainstay Meg Foster). The officious martinet doing the hiring (Mena Suvari) insists that Elly not leave the remote house while her charge is still breathing. Maybe that’ll be just for the weekend. But she gives Elly and the pal Beth who drops her off (Sarah Dumont) the “all kindsa wrong” creeps.
Something doesn’t add up. And it’s going to take Elly, Beth, the mother-and-daughter we met in the first scene, and that pentagrammed book to sort out.
We assume that’s how this will find its way to coherence, excitement, blood and revenge.
The effects — mainly a gnarled hand that crawls out of this or that mouth, a hand attached to something even bigger, and makes its way into another — are pretty good.
The cast isn’t bad, by B-movie horror standards.
But the confusing set-up, with a prologue that whatever the script back-engineers it to do seems unnecessary, hamper this and the frights and confrontations are rarely more than the mildest chills.
It’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for the second “Accursed” to come our way in less than a year, by-the-book or not.
Rating: unrated, bloody violence
Cast: Sarah Grey, Sarah Dumont, Alexis Knapp, Meg Foster and Mena Suvari
Credits: Directed by Kevin Lewis, scripted by Rob Kennedy. A Screen Media release.
Not an epic weekend for the first kids’ film since the over-performing “League of Super Pets,” which is destined to fall just shy of $100 million (under $94) thanks to having zero competition save for lingering “Minions” money for a month and a half.
“Lyle Lyle Crocodile” is charming, earning just enough critical endorsements to entice parents but plainly not enough parents as it checked in with an $11.5 million opening
“Smile,” the seriously sinister but not nearly as scary as “Barbarian” horror tale that opened last weekend held onto audience share and interest and attention as it pulled in $17.6 million, a mere 22% drop off from its $22 million or so opening.
“Amsterdam” checked in with a $6.5 million opening, which means it’ll be the last time (after “Joy” preceded it) that we’ll see anybody give David O. Russell Margot Robbie and two Oscar winners money ($80 million budget? Really?) for an epic that isn’t quite.
Speaking of bombs, “Don’t Worry Darling” tailed off and fell well behind “The Woman King” on its second weekend of release, $3.475 second week that also saw it shed hundreds of screens.
“Woman King” has cleared the $53 million mark, with another $5 million+ weekend ($5.3).
“Avatar” has earned another $23.3 million, and counting, with its re-release, warming audiences up for the long-LONG awaited sequel.
“Bros” is disappearing faster than you can say “Has Lindsay Graham seen it yet?”
“Top Gun: Maverick” rejoined the top ten, edging “Bullet Train.”
Something called “Terrifier 2” ($825K) also sucked some of the horror BO away from “Barbarian,” which managed a mere $2.18, over $36 all-in and already way behind “Smile.”
“Rite of the Shaman” is a well-intentioned filmed homily about the righteous path for an aspiring holy man to take in his teens, when he’s still learning how to process grief, compartmentalize life’s many struggles and deal with bullies.
It’s entirely too touchy-feely and squishy to grapple its subject in a compelling and meaningful way.
The writing lacks subtlety, with the clumsiest “let’s jam all the backstory and exposition into this one monologue” I can remember. The acting is uneven — tepid to unpolished.
But as we see a kid who has stopped speaking after losing his father and shaman grandfather lash out — in his own way (Google reviews of businesses, online complaints about a teacher) — we’re shown the ripple effects of hurt, something this boy Kai (Tyrell Oberle) will learn from, change and make amends.
Kai is a soulful boy at one with nature, wandering the mountains near his Utah home, communing with the owl and connecting with the plants. He has a way with them, which the lady (Kim Stone) who runs the local nursery has picked up on. His enthusiasm for living things extends to biology class, where not speaking doesn’t keep him from being the star pupil.
But at home, Kai is coping with another impending loss. His mother (Janice Spencer-Wise) counsels and questions him from her sickbed. Is she going to die, too?
Flashbacks show us the lessons and simplistic meaning he should take from his mother’s Gaelic heritage and his father and grandfather’s Viking lineage. As this comes from his late shaman grandfather (James H. Martin), we assume Kai doesn’t need Ancestry.com to confirm this.
And as the boy was given the hippy, crystal-cleansing, sage-burning, spirit-animal-loving name of “Kai,” shaman does seem like a viable life path, ordained at birth or not.
Kai has a cute girl he swaps emails with at home and notes with at school. And as sick as his mother is, he still has time to wander the mountains.
But add bullying on top of everything he’s dealing with, and he just snaps. His silent lashing-out spreads all over his world. Can he center himself, see the damage and find a way to undo it?
The sometimes sappy dialogue — “I miss the sound of your voice, my son.” — an-inspiration-a-day advice dispensed from flashbacks and heavy-handed folk ballad/melodramatic strings score weigh on this otherwise feather-light movie and hamper any self-actualization messaging.
Yes, it slips into tie-dyed “insipid” and that gets in your head and permeates the film to such a degree that it infects the language you have to use to review it.
But the couple who directed and wrote the film (Alicia Oberle Farmer, John D. Farmer) as a star vehicle for I assume their son (Tyrell Oberle) at least deliver a sweet undertone that atones for some of these shortcomings, if not all of them.
Rating: unrated, PG-worthy
Cast: Tyrell Oberle, Janice Spencer-Wise, Lauren Holdt, James H. Martin and Kim Stone.
Credits: Directed by Alicia Oberle Farmer, scripted by Alicia Oberle Farmer and John D. Farmer. A Gravitas Ventures release.
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