Review: Chosen Family

Year: 2024 (UK Digital Release 2025)

Director: Heather Graham

Screenplay: Heather Graham

Starring: Heather Graham, John Brotherton, Andrea Savage, Michael Gross, Julie Halston, Thomas Lennon, Julia Stiles.

 Synopsis is here:

With films no longer being the centrepiece of media consumption, I was surprised that I now miss genres that I’ve usually been more dismissive of. Romantic comedies are one of those genres. Once a staple of the film calendar, rom-coms feel rarer these days, with many relegated to online streaming platforms.  Such films have not been completely eradicated. However, Google a list of recent romantic comedy titles and bear witness to rather deary, forgettable titles.

Enter Chosen Family; a frizzy but mostly harmless rom-com, with the main draw being Heather Graham operating as lead, writer and director of the whole shebang. The tone found in Chosen Family is what many would expect from its director. It’s a sugar bubble of a movie. Sweet and light but with not much else inside.  It’s never afraid to look a bit silly. However, this leads to problems in the third act when the narrative wants to say somewhat serious things. Late on, the film delivers a plot revelation which hits a bum note, asking the audience to take on board a deeply emotional incident in a movie that was at first far more invested with Graham performing an inappropriate dance-off with a child. Films like Chosen Family inadvertently highlight how much of a deft touch directors have with their material.

Chosen Family is well-intentioned in what it’s trying to do. Graham plays a people-pleasing yoga instructor, Ann. A woman whose romantic life is in the trash heap, while her family pepper her with their mini manipulations. Her solace lies with her friends who stand by her through thick and thin. Even when the group have suspicions that the handsome date they’ve picked for her (John Brotherton) may have a hidden flaw. For the most part, Chosen Family has all the markings of a live, laugh, love motivational slogan come to life.

What’s interesting is what Graham has taken from a storied career as an actress, with much of the film managing to have the vibe of her multi-episode stint as Dr Molly Clock on Scrubs. Chosen Family bounces along with a Sitcom energy, packing a truckload of typical plot points and dialogue that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 30-minute, 22-episode season of a show called “Something Breezy” or similar. The film’s form compounds the televisual aspect, with Graham using repetitive drone establishing shots and standardly blocked compositions as main visual decisions. Nothing is that bad, but not much is particularly striking. Although enough of it is passingly distracting.

It helps if the viewer still has one foot stuck in the early 00s. Chosen Family is a film in which Graham’s hapless yoga instructor is doing enough to live comfortably as a rather basic gym teacher (the film nearly always has her starting and finishing lessons but rarely having her do anything strenuous), yet seems astonished at the idea of broadening her appeal using social media. Not everyone can establish popularity on internet platforms, but Graham’s character is way out of the loop. So much so that the film uses the old “she accidentally posted too much on socials” as an inciting incident for the film. There’s a naivety here, as the world is now almost trained to post every little opinion of themselves with impunity. Graham’s character is only just past the ideal age for the social media platforms the film recognises. This makes Chosen Family feel behind the curve with certain things. Don’t believe me? The black landlord who urges Ann to go on socials is a great example.  There’s a tiredness in the stereotype that leans more towards a sort of innocence than any malice.

This weird innocence is part of Chosen Family’s charm.  Ann is an amalgamation of what I think of Graham in a few of the roles I’ve seen her in. Naïve, attractive, yet strangely passive and happy-go-lucky. She’s never been a go-to actress for heavy, poignant roles, which is why some of Chosen Family feels odd late on. But her on-screen presence is pleasant enough to watch, even though much of the film seems to involve Ann asking her friends, “What do I do now?”. A sizable chunk of Chosen Family stems from autobiographical strands of Graham’s life, so it is interesting to see how Ann is conceived as a character, even though a lot around her is half-baked.

It should be said, however, that Graham picks a seasoned cast of character actors who all have their appeal. She also has the guts to give certain plot strands on slightly more melancholic terms than expected, with the film’s obvious title being particularly on point. It’s also nice to see Julia Stiles in the role of Ann’s substance-abusing sister, despite being sidelined for long stretches of the movie. But this seems to be the case for much of Chosen Family. Graham scatters a broadly amusing variety of raw materials, but nothing fits together well enough to make anything solid.

Chosen Family is available on Digital Release from 21st April.

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Review: Street Trash

Year: 2024 (UK Release 2025)

Director: Ryan Kruger

Screenplay: Ryan Kruger, James C Williamson, Roy Frumkes

Starring: Sean Cameron Michael, Donna Cormack-Thomson, Joe Vaz

Synopsis is here

In the age of content rehashing, it’s difficult to watch a remake of a cult hit without feeling a pang of cynicism. The first question on the lips is often “What’s the purpose of this?” with the answer being the IP being cheap far too often. The original Street Trash was an infamous 80s exploitation feature, part of an extremely specific pool of films described as “melt movies”. In these movies, toxic substances or similar materials would simply liquify characters in the movie into thick, viscous gloop. The original Street Trash played out like a series of vignettes in which a group of unhoused people fall afoul of some toxic alcohol and begin to disintegrate. There’s some vague plot involving a violent leader of a gang experiencing Vietnam flashbacks, however, the film is more of an exercise in offence, while also drawing focus on a sub-culture of people who were left out of mainstream cinema's indulgence in excess. Ryan Kruger's remake tries to delve into similar annals of shock value but is held together with more plot threads.

The year is 2050 and Cape Town is experiencing a gilded age. A large sector of the city is now homeless, with a smaller segment still being able to live well.  The city’s major has come up with a scheme to wash away the city’s homeless problem: melt them with drones. It falls to Ronald and his rag-tag group of friends to risk all they can and fight against a society and government who wish to exterminate them.

Whereas the original Street Trash dealt with neglect of the poor, this new remake has a lot more to say about the Government just plain wanting them dead. Street Trash redux makes some smart plays in its back pocket. Moving the action from Brooklyn to Cape Town has a lot more immediacy. The conspiratorial focus on shady government types looking to kill off the poor with toxic spraying drones holds a kernel of relevancy within its far-fetched shell. It’s chaotic multi-channel montage opening riffs on films like Robocop (1987) and District 9 (2009), and the general feeling is that the film isn’t merely giving you the same thing as before with a spit shine. Street Trash redux keeps the nostalgia pandering low and does what it can to stand outside its predecessor’s shadow.

However, the original Street Trash was cult for a reason. Its incessant need to try and offend with puerile humour got grating fast. The best thing going for it is its visuals and effects. The original has a decent moment of craft behind it. Even though it fills the screen with bland casual racism/sexism, it does so with a strong amount of visual flair. There was also a sincerity to its boorishness. This new version tries to follow suit but suffers from being born into a brave new world. Its attempts to be un-PC are even worse. Not because it’s more offensive. Considering the film is set in South Africa, the new trash feels more sensitive to race than the Brooklyn Trash, with the distinct feeling that the filmmakers were worried about watchful eyes. The original Street Trash’s humour felt baked in and organic. There was a devil-may-care nature to the original film that the second film doesn’t feel brave enough to ascribe to.  

The most effective thing about the new Trash is that it has more gloop, gore and violence. Kruger has more resources allowing him to invest in more florescent gut-busting. There’s a lot of Friday night beer fun to have while watching the film's effects. The film's main plot, while still scattershot, is still tighter than the original film, with the narrative lending itself to films like Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989). However, despite this, while consistency wasn’t a major part of the original trash, it certainly felt less scattershot. Kruger’s film is happy flinging things at the wall to see what sticks, including imaginary friends, Peep Show-like characters only seen in first person perspective, and surprisingly more stakes. Donna Cormack-Thomson’s female lead is seemingly in place to be an audience surrogate and give more emotional heft. It’s hard not to feel like her character is here to have people forget how badly the women in the original film were treated. That said, the more disintegrating bodies also look like they’re trying to do the same thing.

There’s still a small amount of fun to be had in places. The performances have a lot of gusto, while some of the more deadpan lines are also tittersome. And while visually the new Trash doesn’t have the same energy as the original, the film looks good for the most part. However, it’s probably not enough to recommend Street Trash. Its social relevance is welcomed, but it doesn’t have that much to say. The film has some bad taste but feels reluctant to go full throttle with things. But ultimately while Street Trash gives itself enough purpose to separate itself from its original movie, there’s not enough here to make it that memorable.

Street Trash will be in UK Cinemas from 10th January and on Digital and Blu-Ray from February 17th

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