Screeching meets social-minded speechifying in Black Coffee, which can’t decide whether it wants to be a fluffy and disposable romantic comedy about kicking a gold-digger to the curb and finding love with a likeminded young professional, or a slightly more serious-minded relationship movie-cum-treatise on the present-day African-American urban experience.
It’s obviously important to writer-director Mark Harris that Black Coffee makes a statement about African-Americans supporting African-American entrepreneurs and businesses, which is fine. But this theme is rather unsophisticatedly interwoven, and Harris’ film is too shot through with trite expressions of familiar scenarios, and additionally weighed down by phony redemption and catharsis pegged to its significantly boorish supporting characters, to connect in any meaningful way. It may be packaged slightly differently, but this Coffee is a cheap, tepid store-brand blend, of dubious quality. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (One Village Entertainment, PG-13, 85 minutes)
Daily Archives: January 13, 2014
Divorce Corp.
Nature may abhor a vacuum, but it seems lawyers also abhor arenas of life untouched by their professional advice or air-quote helpfulness, which goes a long way to helping explain the $50 billion a year cottage industry in (often contentious) divorce. A back-stiffening look at this sprawling problem — somewhat unsurprisingly unique to the United States in terms of its cost — director Joe Sorge’s documentary Divorce Corp., narrated by Dr. Drew Pinsky, makes a persuasive case for the reform of family law court, and in particular an attempted decoupling of money from issues regarding parental custody and visitation rights. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Candor Entertainment, unrated, 93 minutes)
Voodoo Possession
“There is a fate worse than death,” posits the back cover of the new-to-DVD horror flick Voodoo Possession, starring Danny Trejo. Yes, and it might involve being locked in a room with Jessica Simpson, and this schlock stuck on an alternating repeating loop along with some irritating indie tripe.
Burdened by guilt and other unresolved feelings, Aiden Chase (Ryan Caltagirone) strikes out for a Haitian mental asylum in search of his brother Cody (David Thomas Jenkins), a doctor who’s gone missing. With his television producer ex-girlfriend Bree (Kerry Knuppe) arranging to enter the country under the guise of a documentary film crew, Aiden, once there, discovers that his brother was dabbling in black magic and voodoo with his charges. A bunch of the inmates/patients seem possessed by a bloodthirsty spirit, as does a decidedly menacing hospital administrator (Trejo). Aiden, then, must delve into this unsettling world in an effort to rescue his sibling.
Written and directed by Walter Boholst, Voodoo Possession doesn’t exactly aim for high art, it’s true, but it also doesn’t really connect on a basic level as a piece of trashy, down-and-dirty genre entertainment. Truth be told, none of this is really the fault of Trejo, who simply shows up and cashes in on his previously established presence in a supporting role. The film features a nice central setting, and production designer Kalie Acheson achieves good work on a budget, but its dialogue and plotting are frequently insipid, and Boholst and director of photography Matthias Schubert overdo all the stylistic flourishes, in an attempt to prop up writing and performances that just don’t work.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case stored in turn in an attractive, complementary cardboard slipcover, Voodoo Possession comes to DVD presented in a decent 2.35:1 widescreen transfer, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. Apart from the obligatory chapter stops, bonus features consist only of a short and rather self-congratulatory behind-the-scenes featurette. Still, to purchase the DVD via Half, click here; to purchase it via Amazon, click here. Or if brick-and-mortar establishments are totally still your thing, by all means, have a go at one of those. D (Movie) C- (Disc)