The Kitchen (2019)

It’s not easy being a single-income family.  If anything should happen to that source of income, things can be difficult for the entire family.  This is no different for criminals.  Jimmy Brennan, Rob Walsh and Kevin O’Carroll are members of the Irish Mob.  They get arrested by the FBI while robbing a convenience store, leaving their respective wives in the lurch.   The Mob helps with finances, but it’s not enough.  Kathy Brennan, Claire Walsh and Ruby O’Carroll decide to take things into their own hands.

This might sound like the basis of an exciting movie.  And it is, to an extent.  Or, at least, it could be.  Some of the plot twists, you can see coming.  They work with various other members of the organization until the organization puts pressure on them to stop.  Others seem contrived or forced.  Ruby, a black woman, has a racist mother-in-law to contend with.  The entire dynamic seems a bit much.

It would also seem that the movie would end one of two ways.  Either the women end up dead or everyone else does.  At times, it seemed like it was difficult to tell which way it was going.  They would do very well.  Then, they’d face a big setback, which they would deal with.

Most of the movie is the three women working their way up.  They collect protection money from places where the Mob hasn’t been protecting so well.  They earn respect, expand their territory and take on another mob.  It eventually comes to a head when the husbands are released early, but the women are good at what they do.

Comparisons to Widows aren’t undeserved.  Both movies involve a group of women who have to step up in the absence of their criminal husbands.  With The Kitchen, they’re not as reluctant, but the basic storyline would seem to be the same.

The movie seemed haphazard, though.  It was as if someone took episodes of a TV show and put them in a blender.  It was coherent, but it was all over the place.  The women start off struggling, but not a lot was shown to establish this.  (We see Kathy go on one job interview.)  Then, they extort money.  (So, Claire needs a little encouragement, but goes all in after that.)  They do what they have to until the husbands get out.  Again, they do what’s necessary to survive.

I think the movie could have been done better.  It almost looks like there’s enough material for two or three movies here.  It seemed to me like half the movie was missing.  I might have had the first movie be the women hitting rock bottom before making their way alone and the second movie dealing with the husbands getting out and the women going all in.  I would say that this is a good movie to maybe check out of the library one night.

IMDb page

Spectral (2016)

I had heard that Netflix doesn’t actually produce stuff in house.  Rather, they contract with studios to make stuff.  Apparently, Spectral is a bit different.  Universal Pictures had produced the film for another distributor.  When that deal fell through, Netflix saved the day and brought the movie to their streaming service.  In some ways, this is good.  Someone gets to see their script make it to a screen, even if it’s not the big screen.  The bad news is that it has the reputation of essentially being direct to video.  In the case of Netflix, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  They’ve had some offerings I’ve liked, such as The Little Prince and The OA.

The movie starts with Clyne debating the use of technology as weapons while working at DARPA.  Since he’s no longer necessary for the project he’s working on, he can be sent to a war zone in Moldova.  Why Moldova?  Clyne has to sign a nondisclosure agreement to find out.  The military there is fighting an enemy that’s invisible and has taken out every military person sent at them.  The hypothesis is that the insurgents there have some sort of invisibility cloak, but that doesn’t explain how bullets pass through them or how the enemy can pass through walls.

What they do know is that the enemy does show up on goggles and Clyne has a very powerful version of those goggles, which he brings with him.  When they go out, Clyne gets a good look at the enemy, which appears to have human features, like a face.  The scary part is that they can jump from third- or fourth-story windows without being hurt.  No one has any idea how to stop them.

So, how do you stop the perfect enemy?  It’s by chance that Clyne picks up on several clues that let him figure out what’s going on.  He’s able to modify his machine so that it emits light to make the ghosts visible.  He’s also able to make weapons out of parts he happens to have available.  He and his military escorts even figure out where the specters are coming from.  He’s able to save the day rather efficiently.

There was a line I saw once:  I’m not sure if you have too much medication or not enough.  That’s the case here.  I’m not sure if the movie runs too long or isn’t developed enough.  If the running time was shortened, you could have a nice episode of an anthology series like The Outer Limits.  If the plot was developed enough, you could have a better feature-length film.

The movie was good on a lot of technical points.  The effects are great and the basic plot is pretty solid.  It’s just that there are very few side stories.  We don’t have Clyde talking with any of the military people about their childhoods, for instance.  There are no bonding moments.  The story is a straight line from Clyde going to Moldova to Clyde saving the day.  There is a sort of beginner feel to the story.  It’s like you put a first-person shooter fan in a room with a Final Fantasy or Resident Evil fan and told them to come up with a script.  I’m not saying that I could have done much better.  It’s just that the story lacks a certain depth.

It’s not exactly a war film, as it doesn’t deal with war directly.  It’s a sci-fi/horror film that uses a war zone as a backdrop.  If you’re into sci-fi or horror, but not that much, this is a pretty good film for you.   The story’s easy to follow, at least.   It’s not particularly scary for most adults, but is not a movie for children.  The ghosts are pretty scary, as they look vaguely like people and tend to kill many of the secondary and background characters.  It’s also set in a war zone, so there’s that.

It‘s interesting to think that this could have been released in theaters.  It used to be that Syfy was known for bad movies.  I’m not saying that Netflix will pick up this honor, but it seems that Netflix can afford to be less selective.  They have had some good titles, such as The OA and The Little Prince.  However, this one is maybe less so.  It’s enjoyable, but isn’t really that dynamic.

IMDb page