'A Day With RIA' is a reality show with a twist. Every day, beamed to devices across the US, 'RIA', a sophisticated domestic android, wakes up and serves her 'husband' Jack breakfast, showers and plans her day with him. The same day, over and over again, with tweaks suggested by the viewing audience who can vote to vary her routines. The twist here is that the 'Jack' she wakes up to (and goes to be bed with, although no sex until after 9pm) is a different person every day, one of a never ending parade of contestants who make their pitch to be in the latest episode of the reality show.
So far so Groundhog Day meets The Truman Show. But then the 25th Jack (Charlie Clapham), who just happens to be the son of the US vice president (Dean Cain, yes that one), encounters and, in a break from the norm, is taken hostage by RIA who has been hacked, for reasons that become increasingly menacing.
Back to those Brit music cast members; ex Bros member Luke Goss, making quite the name for himself in low budget thrillers, is the first Jack we meet. Later on it's the turn of Sinitta to don a pair of glasses and a labcoat as Dr Tonya Smithe (trivia lovers may wish to know that her screen debut at age 18 was in Jim Sharman's 1981 follow up to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shock Treatment). Elsewhere RIA, played by a very game Jessica Impiazzi, is actually quite effective as the android gone wrong, alternating between sexiness, domesticity and living product promoter (the show presumably being funded by advertising). Until the conspiracy elements of the plot kick in, and it all gets way too confusing, this is an amusing enough little comment on TV culture and the perceived role of women. Bizarre but not unlikeable, then.
Discovering an old book, containing the name Balam, Bella's investigations trigger a series of visions in which she's visited by demons and has her faith, and her strict chastity, called into question; understandably Damien is a little concerned, particularly when Bella becomes possessed by evil forces.
Couch's film, shot in 2020 but not released until 2021, possibly meant a lot to the director. Unfortunately its meaning is largely lost on the viewing audience, beyond its basic themes of good vs evil, faith vs disbelief etc. There's not a lot to look at here; Bella and Damien have a series of conversations about the state of their relationship, Bella gets a bit possessed and it doesn't end happily.
But Alone Together is a great example of the democratisation of modern filmmaking; if you have the equipment, some cast members and a lot of patience you too can make a movie. Whether it's good or not may be the point.
Three curmudgeonly filmmakers have arrived to interview Damien (Damien Seed - all the actors use their real names), a "vegetarian beef farmer", in a sort of Akenfield like experiment to document what is presumably a dying way of life. The three guys, Bobby (the director), Andy (Andrew McClay) and Hammer (Robert Brown, ok not all the actors then) are interested in Damien's genealogy, which can be traced back to the Picts via William Wallace.
Damien offers to show them the cottage where he grew up; a ramshackle building covered with signs, which, after a bit of research, turn out to be repetitions of a Celtic fire symbol; red headed Damien just may have links to a flame haired god called the Dagda and his son Aed.
Anyhow before long Hammer has gone missing while the team stay overnight; only his bloody shirt remains. Then we're into the angry villager/night footage so you can't see what's going on/running and swearing part of the film. Then it ends.
Damien scores some points for its key cast members a) all looking the same (it's the beards which makes it a tad confusing) and b) not being 20 years old (although under those beards I may be mistaken). Line of the movie has to be "Have you ever seen so many ginger people in a circle?".
The 'visions of filth' in this movie belong to an unnamed killer, played by Martin W. Payne, an actor prepared to go there in the name of art (as anyone who has seen 2019's Lonely Hearts or the following year's Millennial Killer will attest). Payne's character is in the latter stages of what is assumed to be bowel cancer (we get a graphic display of the sickness at work; yes it's that kind of film), reflecting back on his past murders, his modus operandi a combination torture/masturbation double hander (pun intended), accompanied by a wicked laugh, a bit like a video nasty version of Tod Slaughter. He is mentally teased by one victim (Rina Julia) who reaches out from beyond the grave to exact her revenge (Impey presages his film with a Biblical quote, warning that it's God's work only to repay evil with evil).
If you do get to see Visions of Filth, beware that a cold shower will be in order after viewing. It's pretty reprehensible stuff, plot free and nihilistic in extreme (albeit with a twisted moral conclusion). It's not really my sort of thing (it's a brave person that would admit it's their sort of thing) but it's a good film to have in mind for the next pub discussion where some know-all opines that Britain doesn't do 'cinema of transgression'.
Them (UK 2021: Dir Ignacio Maiso) Maiso's last feature, 2019's Prowler, was a headscratcher of a debut; his follow up is no less of a challenge.
In an unspecified setting - it's London but it could be now or the near future - a group of beings that were once human cannot now be seen by the human race. Occasionally there is a breakthrough when an actual human 'wakes up' and can see the ancient race, like Daniel aka Keeper 1 (Sindri Swan), but mainly humans lead repetitive lives, unaware of what's happening. But there's pressure to reset things, to take the world back to where the race remain undetected but still in charge.
That's the best I can make out of this impenetrable movie. Hats off to Maiso for not conveniently explaining what's being shown; the best that can be offered is Last Year in Marienbad via The Matrix.
In that the movie was made during the Pandemic, part of me wonders whether some of the 'great reset' conspiracy theories of the time have managed to seep into the techno neurosis of the film. It's well photographed, static, and impenetrable.
EBM looks to the setup of I Know What You Did Last Summer in its story of a woodland party that goes wrong when one of their number, Heather (Anthonia Whillans, whose early exit might be explained by the sheer number of behind the scenes functions she undertakes, according to the credits) winds up dead after everyone else is so strung out that they can't remember what happened. All the college kids worry about the academic impact of being associated with a corpse, so they dump her body in the river and pretend nothing happened. What we know, and the rest of the group don't, is that Heather was killed by someone in an Easter Bunny costume.
One year on, the survivors of that evening (minus one of their number, who has taken their life in the interim because of all the stress involved in the cover up) and their plus ones are all invited to a reunion. That the person who has sent the invitations signs themselves 'Heather' doesn't put anyone off attending. As the group congregate they follow as series of clues, Easter egg hunt style, to find out what's going on; these clues include a number of tapes, seemingly recorded by Heather. As the movie progresses, the inner secrets of all are revealed in such a way as any of the attendees could have been responsible for the murder; until of course they begin to get murdered, by someone in a bunny suit, natch.
Although EBM remains resolutely cheap (the location is mainly restricted to a Somerset youth hostel, presumably keen to do an out of season deal) there's something rather good about the complexity of motives and opportunity revealed by the cast as events pan out, helped by some nifty camerawork from DOP Robin Keane. The plus ones in the group add to the red herring score, and although the upshot is rather silly it's quite fun getting there, particularly the whole Rashomon like unreliable witness stuff. Jeffrey and Mundy have both been involved with features far poorer than this one. I rather liked it.
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