In this article, I look at films seen at home in April that were not on Netflix. Starting with a couple that were rented to watch and are available on all the usual services.
Jane
Ambitious high school senior Olivia Brooks (Madelaine Petsch) struggles with grief from the recent loss of her friend, Jane. When she gets deferred from her dream college, Stanford, she embarks on a social media-fuelled rampage using Jane’s account, against those who she believes stand in the way of her success, and then anyone she takes a dislike to.
I think you are meant to see Olivia as a normal, bright, student to start with in order to empathise with her when she starts making bad decisions. However, to me, she came across as a spolit, self entitled, brat immediately so I did not find her bullying behaviour out of character, thus lessening the impact of her actions. The performances by Petsch and Chloe Bailey as her friend, Izzy, are good though, and Olivia’s visions of Jane add a nice supernatural element.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Bullet Train Down
The late Tom Sizemore is top billed in this low budget action movie, released to cash in on the success of Bullet Train, though it is more of a Speed rip off. A terrorist places a bomb on the maiden trip of a new bullet train in California and it will go off if the speed goes below 200 mph. It is hard to know what is funniest, the risible CGI, the clunky script courtesy of Alex Heerman, the mostly terrible acting or the cheap looking set design. The highlights include passengers sitting around unconcerned as there is an explosive noise and a window caves in.
They then do not become more animated when the people in the next car bang on the door and scream for help as their carriage fills with smoke! There is also one of the worst staged fist fights I have seen. An ill looking Sizemore is unconvincing as an FBI agent, though he is not the worst performer on show. Carolina Vargas’ simpering reporter and social media obssessed couple Lesley Grant and Dylan J.
Harris are particularly bad but the wooden spoon goes to Caleb Lowell who looks confused to be on screen as some sort of train employee. Additionally, I enjoyed how everyone seemed amazed by the concept of train travel and seemed to think the speeds achieved were miraculous. Only Rashod Freelove as the ex military hero comes out of this mess with any credit.
Rating: 2 out of 10
On Sky Movies:
The Portable Door
Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson) and Sophie Pettingel (Sophie Wilde) are interns at a mysterious London firm with unconventional employers, including CEO Humphrey Wells (Christoph Waltz) and middle manager Dennis Tanner (Sam Neill) who want to disrupt the ancient magical world with modern corporate practices. This is by the numbers kids stuff with exaggerated performances and an annoyingly jaunty score.
Rating: 4 out of 10
On Amazon Prime:
Bankrupt Billionaire
This documentary tells the story of Seán Quinn, a businessman who became the richest person in the Republic of Ireland in 2008. But in 2012 he was declared bankrupt when he fell foul of the global recession. That very brief synopsis is as revealing as this film that I spent a lot of time wondering why it had been made whilst watching it. It is competently enough put together but very dull.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Perfect Addiction
MMA trainer Sienna Lane (Kiana Madeira) discovers that her boyfriend Jax (Matthew Noszka), the reigning champion, has been cheating on her with her own sister. She sets out to get revenge by training his rival Kayden (Ross Butler). This is an extremely predictable film with cheesy love scenes and non thrilling fights. I did not care about Sienna, or anyone else.
Rating: 2 out of 10
Sayen
In Chile, a shady corporation has bought some land, supposedly with the intention of building a sustainable future for the indigenous population, The Mapuche. Instead, they plan to mine it for cobalt. A young local woman, Sayen (Rallen Montenegro) finds out their plan and risks her life to thwart them. After a slow start, this builds into a fairly suspenseful action movie with an impressive performance from Montenegro. It does also fizzle out at the end, though.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
In Guy Ritchie’s new movie, regular collaborator Hugh Grant plays billionaire arms broker Greg Simmonds who is ready to sell a deadly new weapons technology. Spy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) and Hollywood’s biggest movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) try to stop Simmonds.
I find most of Ritchie’s movies to suffer from having more style than substance and this is certainly the case here. Sure it moves along speedily enough but does not really hold up and I did not particularly care about the characters. Although Grant’s bad guy is a bit over familiar after his recent performances, he is still enjoyable and the excellent Aubrey Plaza steals every scene she is in as a tech genius working with Orson.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Finally on Apple TV+:
Tetris
This did not sound promising from the synopsis, how the video game Tetris became a world wide smash. Never having played it, I struggled to see how I would care but a cast that included Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, the businessman who helped popularise the game, Toby Jones and Roger Allam as Robert Maxwell, enticed me to watch it.
Similarly to Air, that is still showing in cinemas, director Jon S Baird and writer Noah Pink, take a potential dull subject matter and make it pretty interesting. As the game originated in the USSR, Henk has to go to Moscow to try to get the rights and that passage of the film comes across as an effective cold war spy thriller. All the performances are good, and Sofia Lebedeva is outstanding as the seemingly helpful interpreter who turns out to be something much more sinister.
Rating: 7 out of 10