“September Dawn”
Directed by Christopher Cain
The architects of this last decade’s Mormon Film Renaissance had to expect that eventually an equally zealous group of filmmakers would produce films with equally poor production values, equally poor acting and equally ham-fisted proselytizing agendas.
That time has come.
“September Dawn,” the reductive portrayal of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, is the first in perhaps a wave of response to the near-criminal onslaught of Halestorm-produced films (“The Singles Ward,” “The R.M.,” “Churchball”).
Surprisingly, the greater of these two evils rests with “September Dawn” — because casting Dean Cain in anything is always the wrong choice.
“The Nanny Diaries”
Directed by Shari Springer Bergman and Robert Pulcini
In “The Nanny Diaries,” Scarlett Johansson (a refreshing, coke-free break from her contemporary, Lindsay Lohan) endures a post-modern take on the classic Cinderella equation: overbearing, bourgeoisie matriarch rails against the beautiful-intelligent-of-humble-origins servant girl.
Only in this envisioning, the “step-daughter” character isn’t related — she’s paid for, proving that in portrayals of the upper-crust, blood no longer runs thicker than cash.
“Mr. Bean’s Holiday”
Directed by Steve Bendelack
The assumption was, following Rowan Atkinson’s dual transgressions on the silver screen (1997’s “Mr. Bean” and 2003’s “Johnny English”), the actor had been banned from starring in anything of feature length.
Unfortunately, such is not the case.
Reprising the role of his famed Mr. Bean (with the well-worn ease of Kevin Smith in a Silent Bob costume), Atkinson flubs, stubs and murmurs his way through a holiday aux France.
As France has already played host to one of this summer’s least anticipated and most underwhelming sequels (read: “Rush Hour 3”), one can’t help but await the release of other, sub-par Francophone sequels.
Look for “Leprechaun: In The Bastille,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles Get Cannes-ed” and “John Carpenter’s Vampires, Avec Sang” to release sometime this year.
“The Ten”
Directed by David Wain
Using the Ten Commandments as a template, these ten compiled shorts attempt to probe into the hilarity that results from the bending/stretching of these rules.
The key word to note, from above: attempt.
“Illegal Tender”
Written and directed
by Franc Reyes
So, if we take the base ingredients of “Star Wars” — that is, one part fatherless protagonist, one part evil-larger-than-life-baddie responsible for killing said father, one part traveling into unknown territory, mixed with an eventual assumption by protagonist of his father’s lifestyle in order to enact revenge (in “Star Wars,” Luke dons the lightsaber, in “Illegal Tender,” his equivalent dons the gat) — and prepared the story inside the cooking pot of a modern Latino family rife with a gangsta past, what do we get?
Perhaps the best bad Latino-gangsta movie since “Harsh Times.”
Wait?that was the last Latino-gangsta movie?