Movie Nation

Otherwise, your movie doesn’t exist. Otherwise, there’s no point in reviewing it.

Yes, this is a lecture on when it’s time for you to ask critics to review your film. Because a lot of you need to have that explained to you and I can’t keep interrupting my days to respond, question you and look up whether or not you’ve taken the steps you must take BEFORE asking for coverage.

Can people actually see your movie somewhere? The benchmark for most of us in the reviewing business used to be “Do you have distribution?” But that business model has changed, even though I always prioritize movies that have a studio backing them and not movies that every distributor you have approached had turned down.

Think about it. Maybe they’re telling you something. And as much as you want people to rent it on Amazon via your self distribution, the titles that are picked up by even the bottom feeders of film distribution are more likely to find an audience, an audience that might read my review before renting it.

I do not write reviews just for myself, any more than you make your movie just for yourself, no matter how cute you think that might be to say in an interview.

Conversely, writing reviews that no one will FIND unless they worked on the production, have a Google alert chasing their name or are your RELATIVE who is so so proud of you or put money in your movie, is useless to me and people like me.

I have spent a staggering amount of time these past couple of years instructing movie-makers who want to send me links, or get me to show up at screenings of their movie and review that movie. As more and more kids are pumped out by film schools, it’s become obvious that these very basic pre-marketing MARKETING efforts are not being covered in college.

If you haven’t done the most basic things to prove your film exists in the cinema cosmos, why should I or anybody else be bothered?

You haven’t gone on imdb to enter the title, its credits, a poster. Virtually anybody involved with a film can log it into IMDb (subject to the site’s approval). Many films never have anybody officially assigned to do this.

Here’s a tip. Getting distribution, even in the streaming Brave New World, is hard. Getting your movie acknowledged as something that actually exists by listing it on IMDB, a widely used, searchable website that is the repository for most things cinematic, is EASY.

If you haven’t let Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, MRQE.com know that you’ve spent all your money and other’s people’s money on getting a movie made, and more money on THE POSTER, you’re still invisible to the people who can shout your message (advertise it) to the World…via the worldwide web.

This basic internet profile work should be done BEFORE the film shows up at its first festival. No, making your own website doesn’t cut it. And that costs money. IMDb is free (unless you go for IMDb Pro, not a bad bit of money to spend). FIRST STEP, IMDb.com.

Your film was accepted in a festival? NEXT STEP, get it on RT and Metacritic and MRQE.

The IMDB page you should get up there BEFORE that, while it’s IN PRODUCTION. It’s not difficult, but it does take a little time. It’s your movie, why should I be spending MY time doing this for you?

If you’ve spent money on a publicist, GET THEM TO DO IT. Specify this. “Do you know how to get my movie on IMDb, RT, Metacritic, MRQE?” If they don’t (it’s not hard, it just takes time), hire another publicist.

I have run into a couple of publicists this week who literally have no idea what that’s about. Fire them. Get somebody better.

It’s all part of the same ecosystem, and the end goal of all involved is the same — to get your movie noticed, get it an audience and by extension, get traffic to these aggregator websites and to review websites. Like this one — MovieNation.

I have helped and helped and helped and while it doesn’t take a whole lot of extra time to for me to get you on Metacritic and RT, that time adds up. This is your job, not mine. And I have NO time to do your IMDb placement for you.

BEFORE you send a movie to critics, somewhere around the time you build and pay for your “official site” (still useful, though not as useful as you might think, unless you have merch/downloads/DVDs/tickets for sale on it), for the love of Pete get it on IMDb and use that link to ask RT and Metacritic and MRQE to create pages for it. THEN send it to critics.

Carry on, then.

Here’s a hunk of horror as slow as MO-lasses on a cold day in Natchez.

Slow of foot, slow to get going, slowly-delivered violence, slow of speech in that Deep South sort of vernacular, that’s “Hallowed Ground,” a nakedly obvious piece of Cracker Gothic horror exploitation.

It’s about a blood sacrifice cult kept barely at bay by Native American spirits in the Bad Dentistry Belt of the Deep South — rural Mississippi.

And it’s about a lesbian couple that runs afoul of said cult on a make-up/make-out weekend in the backwoods. Haven’t these two love birds (Lindsay Anne Williams, Sheri Eakin) seen “Duck Dynasty?” Not where they should be going.

Alice (Williams) cheated on Vera (Eakin), and now they need a little quiet time…SLOW quiet time — to get back to where they once belonged.

But the solemn, self-serious greeting of Nita (Mindy Van Kuren) at the lodge where they’re to stay should be a warning.

“You’ve entered a sacred place…Listen to the silence. It can bring you….peace.” Walk to the ancient burial mound. Enjoy serenity in the woods. But be very careful about the property line, and not crossing it. The neighbors? They’re “vehemently” protective of it.

Alice gets it. “None of the reviews mentioned the creep factor about” the lodge. Vera, a college professor and “expert” on Native customs, is more respectful. But she’s the one who injures herself as they, of course, cross that property line.

And that’s when the trouble really begins. A kid with a freshly-killed cat warns them away, and his dad (writer-director Miles Doleac) may be seem more forgiving, but we know better. We’ve seen and heard from Sandy, the caretaker (Ritchie Montgomery).

“I have smoked marijuana…enJOYED it…I’m a, what they call it? Progressive!”

Still, it takes AN HOUR before the dudes in the scarlet robes and deer antlers show up and all this hooey about “blood sacrifice” pushes the romantic problems of Vera and Alice out of the picture. Sure, the photographer Alice slept with (Jeremy Sande) has shown up and is vile, in a makes-your-skin-crawl way. But they’ve got REAL problems, now.

A prologue tells us how long this local “dragon” cult has held sway, since at least 1889. There’s a hint of the Klan about this crowd, from their costumes and Latin (ish) incantations and intolerance of homosexuality. The group isn’t exactly integrated, either.

There are hints of horror picture elements that might have worked, here. But every scene is hobbled by inane dialogue delivered by the stiffest cast this side of the cemetery.

It’s hard to get a laugh out of even the most exaggerated Southernisms, delivered at a funereal pace.

“Y’all GIRLfriends, huh? Romantically enTWINED? Dang me to Hay-ell!”

And it’s not just blood and gore that take “Hallowed Ground” into the real of cheap (cheaper/cheapest) exploitation. The whole good-looking-actresses-making-out business is as obvious as a 70s porno. Not that I’d know that much about such things.

Writer-director Doleac pads what could have been a streamlined plot with flashbacks to Alice’s cheating (nude modeling with the photographer) to goose up the titillation factor. He even throws in a bare-bottom caning.

Doleac makes a good villain, Montgomery a potentially fun elderly “explainer,” but he talks so slowly the jokes don’t land. The leading ladies flirt with competence, here and there, and the third actress topping the cast is just dreadful.

A good director can cover up a lot of performance sins, but Doleac’s shoot/editing lets every take go on too long, spotlighting the acting ineptitude, sucking the energy out of performances. He’s apparently never heard that classic stage direction, “Again, but FASTER.”

Still he got his nude scenes in, and a bare-bottomed “caning.” So there’s that.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, nudity

Cast:Lindsay Anne Williams , Sheri Eakin, Ritchie Montgomery, Miles Doleac, Jeremy Sande

Credits: Written and directed by Miles Doleac. An UnCork’d release.

Running time: 1:57

Satanic rituals and softcore lesbian porn.

This version of “Hallowed Ground” is from actor turned director Miles Doleac promises to be a money-making machine when it opens in early June.

John Singleton broke out with “Boyz N The Hood,” for which he was nominated for the best director Oscar. He was the first African American filmmaker so nominated.
He built a career out of action films (“Shaft”) and movies about the black experience (“Beloved,” “Rosewood,” “Baby Boy,” “Poetic Justice”) and for a time had to wear the label “The Important Black Director Who ISN’T Named Spike Lee” with as much grace as he could summon.

His family just shut off life support for him as he won’t recover the “massive stroke” he suffered last week.

He made a “Fast and Furious” sequel, backed “Hustle & Flow” and like a lot of filmmakers over 40, struggled to get much traction and get projects made in recent years.

I think we may have chatted about “Rosewood” when it came out.

But the memory that sticks out is being in New York and watching him direct a scene from his 2000 remake of “Shaft” in Times Square. He was positively giddy, dancing around the set. A later account in I believe “Premiere Magazine” had producer Joel Silver suggesting he “dance your ass over behind the camera and get me a take.”

Damned killjoy.

He never did become “The Next Spike Lee.” Tastes ran a little too close to say, Brett Ratner, for that. He did some good work and will be remembered for it, launched important careers and can be forgiven for that run of bad pun African American drama titles that followed “Poetic Justice” (named for Janet Jackson’s poet-character in it, “Justice”).

He had more movies and projects in him, more life to live. And 51 is a ridiculously young age to die. RIP.

Any doubt these two have moved on from mainstream cinema — permanently — is answered and underlined with this trailer.

Not a laugh in it.

Gemma Arterton and Luke Evans also star in “Murder Mystery,” which streams June 14.

Oh my, might STX have made a dirty cop thriller?

Not Chadwick Boseman. He’s the detective sent to figure out why eight police officers died in a drug raid, and kill or catch — in that order — the people responsible.

What will he discover as he closes Manhattan’s “21 Bridges,” shuts down subways and ferries, swamping the island with a “flood of blue” in this manhunt?

Sienna Miller, Keith David and J.K. Simmons also star in “21 Bridges,” which opens July 21.

Matthew Glave and Emily Bett (different billing on the poster and IMDb, “Emily Bett Rickards”) are the stars of this May 24 release (VOD, limited theatrical), which may explain why Blue Fox has it and it’s going to those platforms rather than full court press theatrical.

“Funny Story” looks cute, if kind of predictable. Made it into a lot of festivals, won some awards — Santorini, Santa Cruz, Southhampton.

And the five star reviews are all over it…from “The Movie Waffler” and her/his ilk.

But again, looks cute. So maybe.

Variety (@Variety) Tweeted:
#AvengersEndgame slaughtered records with a $1.2 billion global debut https://t.co/22IjCAri6F https://t.co/0NnGfP0AF0 https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1122818056680394752?s=17

Simon Pegg & Nick Frost’s Stolen pop Picture To Adapt Ben Aaronovitch’s Epic Fantasy Drama ‘Rivers of London’, report via Deadline.com. https://t.co/GglHJqBTpj https://t.co/Th91c8gKgk https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1122817818947244032?s=17

A six year-old boy comes home, drops his books, fetches a glass of milk and a drawing he did and calls for his mother. He finds her, in bed, empty bottles of pills littering the night stand.

He puts down the milk, pulls the covers up to her chin and kisses her. “Goodbye, Mom.”

The boy has to endure his father’s furious erasure of her from their lives, burning mementos, photos, the works. “She was NEVER here…She did this to US. Understand me?”

“Just Say Goodbye” begins with those gripping moments, and proceeds to squander them in a lukewarm melodrama about Jesse (Max MacKenzie) ten years later, bullied, guilt-ridden and miserable, with only one friend, our narrator Sarah (Katerina Eichenberger).

Screenwriter Layla O’Shea, director Mark Watling and star MacKenzie make this kid so passive that it takes a while for empathy to build up enough before Jesse hits his one friend, his great defender Sarah with his Big Reveal.

“I can’t wait till I’m gone.” He’s talking about college, right? Wait, he’s just 16. What he’s really talking about is taking Mom’s way out. He’s killing himself.

The rest of the movie is Sarah trying to talk him out of it and Jesse feigning glibness at his big plans.

“You’re 16. You make it sound like life’s over with already.”
“Isn’t it?”

Jesse insists that every shirt he buys has a pocket because he’s saved one photograph of his mother from his dad’s (William Galatis) Mom-Purge. That’s a nice detail in a movie that could use a lot more of those to go with the kid growing up to be an aspiring artist, the standard-issue (and way too old for high school) bully (Jesse Walters) and the bottles Dad crawled into after Mom killed herself.

The dialogue is stilted, and in general the movie could use a few more hints that these teens are real teenagers — in their preoccupations, their hormones, their speech.

Jesse just takes every injury and insult the bullying Chase dishes out, leaving it to  Sarah to ineffectually stick up for him, even when the non-swimmer is dragged into the lake where he might well die.

“You were letting yourself drown!”

“We’ve all got to go sometime.”

The performances are generally tepid, with Eichenberger not capable of ginning up sympathy for MacKenzie’s Jesse by herself. His motives seems more questionable than your average big screen suicide and MacKenzie’s performance is more morose than empathetic.

There’s tension in the finale, but everything that comes between that gripping opening and that climax has a seen-this-before/I-know-what’s-coming quality.

It’s topical and never terrible. But “Just Say Goodbye” plays as if a word was left out of end of the title — “Already.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, suicide, alcohol abuse and profanity

Cast: Max MacKenzie,  Katerina Eichenberger, Pamela Jayne Morgan, Jesse Walters, William Galatis

Credits:Directed by Matt Walting, script by Layla O’Shea. A Leomark Studios release.

Running time: 1:46