SYNOPSIS: In “Sweetness,” a new teen thriller now playing in theatres, the thin line between reality and fantasy is blurred when a 16-year-old meets her drug addicted rock star idol.
CAST: Kate Hallett, Herman Tømmeraas, Aya Furukawa, Justin Chatwin, Steven Ogg, Amanda Brugel. Directed by Emma Higgins.
REVIEW: A “Misery” for a new generation, “Sweetness” essays a teen crush as it escalates from fandom-from-afar to an up-close-and-personal obsession.
Like many 16-year-olds, Rylee (Kate Hallett) has posters of her favorite singer Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas) plastered over her bedroom walls. The lonely girl, still stinging from the loss of her mother in a drunk driving accident, finds an escape in his lyrics. His music changed her life. Before she found his songs, she says, “I was really messed up.”
The chance to see her idol perform live in concert turns into something else when, after the show, she gets separated from her best friend Sidney (Aya Furukawa) and is almost injured when Adler, driving while high, runs her down.
As he drives her home, she realizes he is battling addiction and makes the snap decision to save him from himself by kidnapping him and holding him hostage at her home.
As Payton detoxes, the situation escalates pushing Rylee to extremes to prove her tough love is genuine. “Helping you will be the greatest thing I ever do,” she says.
Despite the title, there’s very little sweetness in Rylee’s tale of obsession.
Writer/director Emma Higgins keeps the story taut as she details what happens when Rylee’s, (played with urgent Annie Wilkes energy by Kate Hallett), parasocial relationship becomes flesh. Her empathy soon turns evil as the situation spins out of control, leaving her convinced that nobody understands her except the rockstar she has chained up in the basement.
Recent films like “Lurker” and “Hurry Up Tomorrow” have examined the obsessive nature of fandom, but Higgins, while going hard at the premise, offers up some moments of dark humour that help take some of the edge off Rylee’s extreme behavior; actions born from obsession, grief and loneliness.
“Sweetness” may not have an entirely original take on obsessive fandom, but interesting work from the leads and some shocking twists earn it a recommendation.
Raw talent and artistic ambition drive Darren, played by “Letterkenny’s” Kelly McCormack, to take extreme measures to make ends meet in “Sugar Daddy,” a new drama now on VOD.
Like many young, struggling artists Darren has a roommate and several part time jobs but still has trouble paying her bills. When she gets fired from a catering gig, she turns to a website that sets up paid dinner companions with older men who want company but not commitment.
Her friends think the job is turning her into a commodity, but she stays with it, spending time with Gordon, a wealthy business man played by Colm Feore, who appears to share her love of music.
As her life spirals, she connects with a lost sense of self-esteem and creates experimental music that bares her reshaped soul.
“Sugar Daddy” is a coming-of-age story about an artist finding her way.
Darren is a prickly character, indecisive, often rudderless but she’s utterly compelling. Director Wendy Morgan uses a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio to ensure we can’t ignore her, but it is McCormack, who also wrote the script, that captures the character’s brilliance, capriciousness and self-centeredness. It is a multi-layered performance that edges into stereotypical tormented artist territory before finding grace notes in the Darren’s lessons of empowerment.
“Sugar Daddy’s” ideas on patriarchal structures in the arts and the people who create aren’t as experimental as Darren’s music and videos but they lay a solid foundation on which Morgan and McCormack to build a carefully constructed character study.
“Becky,” a new thriller featuring former sitcom star Kevin James as the King of Criminals, and now on VOD, is a mix of home invasion movies like “The Strangers” and plucky-kid-fights-back flicks like “Home Alone.”
Lulu Wilson is the title character, a fourteen-year-old who never got over the death of her mother. When her father Jeff (Joel McHale) announces his engagement to girlfriend Kayla (Amanda Brugel), Becky goes ballistic and takes off into the woods behind their weekend cottage, hiding out in a treehouse fort. She narrowly misses the arrival of Dominick (James), a neo-Nazi with a swastika tattooed on the back of his bald head, and his goons. They’re there looking for a key that was supposed to be in a container in the basement.
Trouble is, it isn’t there.
Thinking Jeff knows where it is Dominick resorts to the usual home invasion techniques of information gathering—intimidation, snarly rhetoric and when all else fails, torture—not realizing that Becky is lurking in the woods. When he discovers where she is, and that she has the key, he sends the goons to get her. What he doesn’t realize is that the tween is, “as strong willed and vindictive as they come.”
Cue the homemade deathtraps and bloodshed. “There once was a little girl who had a little curl in the middle of her forehead,” she taunts Dom. “When she was good she was very, very good but when she was bad she was horrid.”
“Becky,” I suppose, was to be to Kevin James what “Foxcatcher” was to Steve Carell, or Mo’Nique in “Precious,” a way to break out of comedy and into drama. While it is shocking to see the “King of Queens” without a quip on his lips or Adam Sandler at his side, that’s the only shocking part of this performance. Perhaps it’s his hilariously stilted dialogue or maybe it’s just hard to take a guy who made a career playing a heroic mall cop seriously.
Either way, he’s supposed to be a bad, bad man but compared to Becky he’s a peacenik. Set loose in the woods, the teenager calls on every ounce of her bottled-up rage to unleash holy, bloody hell on the men who did her family wrong. She lets her freak flag fly in ways that would make Anton Chigurh look positively tame by comparison.
“Becky” doesn’t have a whole lot of surprises. Instead it relies on bloody situations to drive the horror of its message home.
Russell Peters reflects on his career as a comedian. Plus, should you wait around for a big break in your career? The Pop Life panel, actor Amanda Brugel, jazz singer Matt Dusk and supermodel Stacey McKenzie, discusses.
Tune in Saturday nights, 8:30 pm (ET) on the CTV NewsChannel and again at midnight on CTV or watych the whole thing HERE!
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
The Pop Life panel, actor Amanda Brugel, jazz singer Matt Dusk and supermodel Stacey McKenzie, share whether they had a ‘big break’ in their career.
Tune in Saturday nights, 8:30 pm (ET) on the CTV NewsChannel and again at midnight on CTV or watych the whole thing HERE!
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
