Prime Time: Momentum (2015)

I have said it on numerous occasions, but there are people who will always get me to watch any movie, for all sorts of reasons. I have been a fan of Olga Kurylenko since her time spent being the highlight of a very messy Bond film, Quantum Of Solace. So I went in to Momentum with the small hope that it would provide me with some easy, unsophisticated, entertainment. That hope soon disappeared.

Things begin with a robbery, one that doesn’t go to plan, and everything is about to get very tricky for the robbers, who have inadvertently stolen a drive that contains some very sensitive information. Olga Kurylenko is Alexis, the most skilled of the robbers, and she ends up being aggressively pursued by the ruthless Mr. Washington (James Purefoy) and his assistants.

That is all I want to say about Momentum. Trust me, that is plenty. The first feature directed by Stephen S. Campanelli, this is an absolute mess from start to finish, a muddled heap of clichés and ineptly-shot action beats. It’s so bad that I am amazed Campanelli has been allowed to make more movies after it.

To be fair, most of the awfulness is delivered by the script, by Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan (two people who have done much better work on films actually directed by Marcus). It’s absolutely ridiculous throughout, and not in an entertainingly knowing way. The main character is always a step or two ahead of the villain, despite relying on one piece of good fortune after another, and the supporting characters are so barely sketched out that they really needn’t even be there. And you get Mr. Washington taking every opportunity to pretend to be reasonable and eloquently comment on the situation as it is unfolding.

Campanelli takes the script and does nothing to help distract from it. Every decision made seems to highlight either the incompetence or the lack of budget, or both, and most viewers will be keen for this to get to the final scene. There’s one wince-inducing torture sequence, but it feels as if it has been placed here from some other film.

Kurylenko isn’t at her best here, and cannot really sell herself in the role, unfortunately, so the saving Grace turns out to be Purefoy, who at least seems to enjoy being committed to the performance of his one-note villain. Everyone else seems to come from either the cheapest supporting actor agency or Rent-a-thug, with the only other standout being Shelley Nicole, as a badass woman named Ms. Clinton. You also get a cameo from Morgan Freeman, who can easily now put this film as one of the very worst he has been involved with.

You may just glean enough enjoyment from this if you go in with the lowest of expectations, maybe, but it’s pretty terrible, even for the type of entertainment it aims to provide. That still won’t stop me from checking out the many other Kurylenko movies I have yet to see though. I’ll just never revisit this one.

3/10

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Yule Love It: Secret Santa (2018)

Everyone knows, despite what Christmas SHOULD be about, that the holiday season often ends up being one that is full of stress, obligations, and tensions that can rise to the surface and turn into arguments when everyone had had one or two drinks too many. Secret Santa takes that atmosphere, the family dinner with everyone ready to bring up long-held grievances as they do their annual duty, and ramps things up to an amusingly excessive level.

A Leslie Kies plays April, a young woman dreading the family get-together. She's taking her boyfriend (Michael Rady) along with her for moral support, but it's going to be a tough time for everyone. April has a mother (Debra Sullivan) who can barely create one sentence that doesn't contain at least a subtle dig, a sister (Ryan Leigh Seaton) who seems very jealous of her, a slightly withdrawn brother (Drew Lynch), and a stepbrother (Nathan Hendrick) who has brought along a girlfriend (Michelle Renee Allaire) he  has been dating since meeting in a strip club. There are a few other family members there, but that's the core group I'll namecheck in this review. As things start to turn more overtly nasty around the dinner table, with resentment and insults being passed around in all directions, violence soon erupts. And things just get worse and worse. It's almost as if something has happened to make everyone lose any sense of self-control at the worst possible time.

Written by director Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan (which may be why she managed to get so many great lines of dialogue, although many of the leads get some gems), Secret Santa is a horror comedy with the emphasis very much on the comedy. Those seeking actual scares or an abundance of gore will be disappointed, but it's still very much a horror film in terms of the violent eruptions and general bloodshed (and there are some amusingly abrupt and impressive kills). The pacing is perfect throughout, as is the mix of the comedy with whatever level of discomfort is being played out onscreen.

Direction from Marcus is also very good. The film doesn't look as if it has the biggest budget ever, unsurprisingly, but Marcus tries hard to distract you from that. Moving outside the house for a while stops it from feeling too restricted to that one location, the money has been used to ensure that the effects work is top notch, and the script does the rest of the work, carrying viewers smoothly and quickly through a Christmas time that starts off feeling like your normal stressful seasonal experience and ends in a much more extreme place.

Kies is a decent lead (although this is very much an ensemble piece), and I've already mentioned Sullivan getting to deliver some great lines, but it's impossible to nominate one of the cast members ahead of any of the others. Seaton is hilarious bitter throughout, Lynch (a familiar face to anyone who has seen clips of his comedy routines online or on TV) is sweet and funny, and Hendrick has an absolute blast playing his hyped up asshole character, who still somehow remains quite likeable and entertaining before everything goes south.

Secret Santa is a perfect antidote for those sick of the deluge of schmaltzy TV movies available at this time of year. It's not interested in being cheery, it's not wanting to teach you any morality lesson (well, beyond the obvious one of maybe not resenting your family members so much that you want to violently attack them), and it seems to wink at viewers and say "yes, this time of year can be as awful as it is wonderful, but grit your teeth and we'll get through to the end together." I had a blast with it.

8/10

You can pick up the DVD here.
Americans can pick it up here.