A couple of streaming films to mention first up, one of which is a mild recommendation and one of which you should avoid at all costs.
Echo Valley (Apple TV) is described in its blurb as an “edge-of-your-seat thriller” which stars the consistently excellent Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney, whose recent American Eagle jeans commercial caused a bit of a backlash and garnered praise from US President Donald Trump.
Leaving aside the politics, this is more a mid-tier thriller than anything that will live long in the memory. How far will a mother go for her daughter? This is essentially the question, but what starts as a promising premise begins to unravel fairly quickly as the plot veers off in odd directions. It’s still worth a watch on the sofa if you have a spare 100 minutes.
I watched Eenie Meenie (Disney+) on Friday night, and I can barely remember anything about it as I type this. A lot of money was thrown at it, and it feels like a movie that was originally destined for the big screen, until somebody presumably did a handbrake turn. Samara Weaving plays a former teenage getaway driver who now works in a bank, but she is dragged back into her former life in a bid to save the life of her unreliable, mostly ex-boyfriend. A lot of elements of the film feel familiar from others you’ve watched before, and although Weaving puts in a good shift, the rest of the characters are one-dimensional, and I’m afraid my interest wore out faster than the clutch in one of Edie’s getaway vehicles.
Elsewhere, Sorry, Baby has become one of my favourite big screen films of the year so far. Eva Victor writes, directs and stars in this tale about Eva and a ‘bad thing’ that happened to her. It’s told across a series of chapters, and is a story of human kindness, enduring friendship, and healing from PTSD. Whilst we don’t see the ‘bad thing’, where Agnes is sexually assaulted by her professor after going round to his house with her thesis, there is a long shot of the exterior of his house as the light fades before she leaves, watched silently by him as she puts her boots on, that leaves us to imagine the horrific ordeal she’s been through.
In fact, wide, unrushed shots are plentiful, and I thought this was a really beautifully shot film. We’ve seen enough films that depict sexual violence in every graphic detail, and I loved the blend of daft humour, Agnes’ blossoming relations with her neighbour out in the sticks, and the encounter with the man at the sandwich shop was worth an extra star on my rating alone. Oh, and the closing scene with Agnes chatting to her friend’s baby was also exceptional. A solid 5 stars out of 5, but sadly it’s been shown on very few screens. I had to go to Cineworld Sheffield to catch it, but have no regrets about doing so.
Alex Cann's weekly film blog - 9th January
