‘Emily the Criminal’ Wonders: What’s the Deal with Student Debt Leading to a Life of Crime?!

August 9, 2022

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , 1 Comment

Emily the Criminal (CREDIT: Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment)

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke

Director: John Patton Ford

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: R for A Few Nose-Bloodying Encounters

Release Date: August 12, 2022 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Emily Benetto (Aubrey Plaza) is an aspiring artist who has the chops and the connections to make a real professional go at it. But she’s a young adult in the 21st century, so it’s no surprise that she’s also tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Her gig delivering food orders is hardly making a dent. Ergo, she dips her toe into a scheme as a “dummy shopper,” in which she buys high-value goods with stolen credit cards for an underground operation. And she’s kind of good at it! But when you commit to a criminal lifestyle, you’ve also got to always be looking over your shoulder.

What Made an Impression?: I’m on vacation this week, but I wanted to make sure I checked in for a sec to give you my quick thoughts about Emily the Criminal. The One Big Thought I had was that the dummy shopper recruitment method kind of reminded me of a curse being passed on a la The Ring or It Follows. The colleague who gives Emily the tip seems like he’s ready to get out of  the game, you know? But ultimately, Emily kind of embraces it and we get the sense that maybe she’ll be running her own mini-empire soon enough. So in that way, it’s more like a multi-level marketing scheme. You find empowerment where you can when you’ve got all that debt.

Grade: 3 out of 5 Credit Cards

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Lowriders’ Could Stand to Inject Some More Clarity Into Its Engine

May 9, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Gabriel Chavarria, Demián Bichir, Theo Rossi, Melissa Benoist, Tony Revolori, Eva Longoria

Director: Ricardo de Montreuil

Running Time: 99 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Petty and Felonious Lawbreaking

Release Date: May 12, 2017

A motion picture is a fine method for introducing the masses to a subculture’s rituals and personalities. Thus the intriguing nature of the specimen that is Lowriders. Cars with amped-up hydraulic systems that allow for the vehicle to bounce up and down have served as set dressing in plenty of films, but they have never really been the main attraction. There is admirable moxie to titling something after an entire pastime, thus implying that it is encapsulating the whole culture. Unfortunately, Lowriders does not do the legwork to illuminate newcomers, nor it does not care to let them in.

Danny (Gabriel Chavarria) is a young graffiti artist caught between two worlds that should be one: the traditional lowrider-obsessed space of his father Miquel (Demián Bichir) and the renegade lowrider-obsessed realm of his ex-con brother Francisco (Theo Rossi), nicknamed “Ghost” for the years he gave up to the law. This is a stock family conflict and thus not particularly unique. Chavarria, Bichir, and Rossi commit passionately, but the conflicts – while believable – are not compelling. Specific details must be added to issues like drinking problems and familial abandonment to make them pop.

Lowriders’ means of letting viewers into its world is primarily accomplished by the perspective of Danny’s new girlfriend Lorelai (Melissa Benoist, the current go-to all-American girl). She is a photographer, eagerly snapping up all that Danny introduces her to. Alas, the film never really explains what she has learned. When a winner is declared at the lowrider competition, it is a key moment that sets up the stakes for the rest of the film. Trouble is, it is not clear what the rules of the contest even are, and thus it is hard to be invested in the rightness or wrongness of any victory. That lack of clarity is a plague throughout: subplots are resolved way too cleanly, there is a weakly attempted swipe at the art world, and at least one character’s motivations are impossible to track. Without attending to the story engine properly, the end result just sputters out.

Lowriders is Recommended If You Like: Shortcuts

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Public Urinations