Worth Mentioning - De Corpo e Alma

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Cody watches a thriller and a heartbreaking docuseries.

DIG (2022)

Thomas Jane once played the Marvel Comics character The Punisher, but in the opening scenes of director K. Asher Levin’s thriller Dig his character Scott Brennan is more reminiscent of Thor, making a spectacle of himself by threatening people with a hammer. He first wields the hammer when he wades into a party to retrieve his teenage daughter Jane (played by Jane’s real-life daughter Harlow Jane, whose mother is Patricia Arquette). Then when he sees that someone who cut him off on the road is at the next pump over at a gas station, he grabs his hammer again. This is when Brennan learns the folly of bringing a hammer to a gunfight, as his tough guy act at the gas station results in his wife being shot dead and his daughter being deafened by the sound of the shot.

The story then moves ahead more than a year to find that Brennan and Jane are, understandably, having trouble getting along. She blames him for getting her mom killed and destroying her hearing, and he blames her for the situation in return. If she hadn’t gone to the party, they wouldn’t have been out that night. Now Levin and screenwriters Banipal Ablakhad and Benhur Ablakhad proceed to put Brennan and Jane through a harrowing ordeal that will make sure they’re able to reconnect as father and daughter... but it’s also something that they might not survive.

Brennan works in home remodeling and salvaging, and through his job he catches the attention of Victor (Emile Hirsch) and Lola (Liana Liberato), a pair of goofy, over-the-top redneck criminals. Victor and Lola have a stash house out in the desert, where something very important and very incriminating is buried under the patio. Now a housing development is going to be built where the stash house sits, there’s going to be a lot of construction and digging going on out there – so Victor and Lola need to get what’s under that patio and move it. And they need tools Brennan uses in his profession to do the digging.

Brennan thinks he’s doing just another job, so he takes Jane along with him. She can stay in their camper out back while he and his employee work inside the house. But then Victor and Lola show up with their guns... and for more than half of the movie, Brennan and Jane are in the clutches of these bloodthirsty knuckleheads, being forced to dig for them. And forced to witness them kill other people who are unlucky enough to cross paths with them.

Dig is an entertaining thriller with a strong emotional core, the drama between Brennan and his daughter. It’s also a rather silly and improbable one, where you have to let some logic slide and watch characters make ridiculous decisions. You also have to go along with the fact that Brennan and Jane have plot armor, because Victor and Lola are cold-blooded killers and have ample opportunity to murder their captives, but for some reason they don’t pull the triggers of their guns in those moments. They keep messing around long enough to let their captives get away from them. Multiple times. But despite the fact that any viewer is going to know that things wouldn’t really work out this way, the film still manages to be a good time. Even though Brennan never gets his hammer back out.

The worst part about watching Dig is the sound mix, as you might find yourself increasing the volume in order to hear what people are saying, and then Levin attempts to blow out your eardrums, like what happened to Jane, with his odd musical choices. The music in this movie is much louder than the dialogue, which brings a level of irritation to the viewing experience.

You can always count on Thomas Jane to turn in a solid performance, and he does that once again with this movie. Hirsch and Liberato appear to have enjoyed chewing the scenery, which works for their characters. Harlow Jane is the most impressive of the bunch, as this is one of her first acting roles. This will probably be the introduction to her for a lot of viewers, and she makes a good first impression. Her performance is almost entirely silent, but she is able to get across all of the anger, fear, heartbreak, and desperation that Jane feels over the course of the film. It will be interesting to see where her career goes from here.

The review of Dig originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

A BRUTAL PACT: THE MURDER OF DANIELLA PEREZ (2022)

In the final days of 1992, Brazilian actress and dancer Daniella Perez was stabbed to death, her body found at the edge of an undeveloped area in Rio de Janeiro. It was a shocking event – and then came the astounding revelation that Perez had been killed by one of her co-stars from the telenovela she was working on, a show that had been created by her mother Glória Perez. And this co-star was aided in the murder by his pregnant wife. Thirty years later, we have this very informative five-part docuseries, which was released through the HBO Max streaming service. But as informative as the documentary is, it still doesn’t make it any easier to understand why this crime was committed. The murder of Perez was completely senseless. The perpetrators gained absolutely nothing from her being removed from this world. It’s baffling and heartbreaking. And it gets worse, because the people who killed Daniella Perez basically only got a slap on the wrist before being sent on their way. They’re out there enjoying their lives now, this mind-boggling, cold-blooded murder far behind them.

Blog contributor Priscilla is from Brazil and was a child when Daniella Perez was murdered. She clearly remembers when she first heard the news that Perez had been killed, and the effect the news had on her and Brazil at large. Being from the U.S., I hadn’t heard about Perez or her murder until Priscilla informed me decades later. So it was fascinating to learn all about the person we lost and the crime that was committed by watching this documentary. It was also heartbreaking. The documentary is filled with interviews with Perez’s friends and family members. The people who knew her and loved her. And they go over every imaginable detail that could be discussed about how the crime was dealt with and how the murder of Daniella affected their lives. As a result, this is one of the most intensely emotional documentaries I have ever seen. Especially the first episode, which has a major focus on the night Perez’s body was found and her funeral. I could barely make it through that episode without breaking down in sobs.

A Brutal Pact: The Murder of Daniella Perez is well worth checking out, but be prepared to be outraged and devastated.