In 1951’s The Lavender Hill Mob, Alec Guinness plays Holland, a milquetoast bank clerk. He routinely supervises the delivery of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gold bullion. Honest to a fault, viewed by his coworkers as a goody two shoes, he’s the kind of bloke who reads to his elderly landlady at night. He would never. Right? When means, inspiration, and opportunity come together, however, Holland breaks bad and, with a ragtag crew of mismatched outlaws, heists his latest load.
Sucks to be Helen (Louise Brealey). She works nights at the chicken-packing plant, lives with her dirtbag ex and his idiot 20-year-old baby mama, and cares for his dying mother, Gwen (a wonderful Sorcha Cusack), who’s as close to a mother as she’s ever known. When Joanne (Annabel Scholey), her schoolgirl crush, returns to town, it lights something ablaze within her.
In Eternal, a rift on the ocean floor threatens to destroy not only Earth’s climate but the burgeoning relationship between a young submarine pilot and aspiring singer.
From the 1970s to the ‘90s, London’s Scala theater was a haven for cinemaniacs. From arthouse to exploitation and everything in between, they screened oddities, avant-garde experiments, and whatever the hell they wanted.
12 years after skipping town, career thief Trojan (Misel Maticevic) returns to Berlin, desperate and looking for work. What he finds is a world that’s moved past his old school ways, adopting new technology and the unfamiliar attitudes of those who adapt to such things, and a list of old contacts who have gone straight or otherwise left behind the life. When he finally lands a job, a four-person art heist, things spiral ever out of control. Such begins Thomas Arslan’s Scorched Earth. (Not to be confused with the DTV post-apocalyptic joint starring a certain disgraced former MMA star of the same name.)
First-time feature writer/director Francis Galluppi’s crime thriller The Last Stop in Yuma County takes a simple, straightforward set up, fills it full of eccentric characters, piles on one complication after another, and ratchets up the tension and pressure until it must explode. It’s a hell of a first film, polished and sure-handed, and apparently caught the right eyes even before release, since the filmmaker has already been tapped to helm the next Evil Dead movie.
Another week, another direct-to-video action-thriller. Lately, many of these stars either Aaron Eckhart or Olga Kurylenko, and director Jesse V. Johnson’s Chief of Station happens to feature both. (It truly only stars Eckhart, with Kurylenko relegated to a supporting role, but we’ll take it.)
