Real Housewives Recap

Awkwardly real reality creeps into Real Housewives of Dallas

Brandi is outwardly bubbly but inwardly sad about her hubs always being away.

Photo courtesy of Bravo

In real life you probably wouldn’t stand alone in a room, stare at your phone, and sigh like a tragic heroine. You most likely wouldn’t plan a sit-down with your best friend in a restaurant to berate her for supposed slights. Or loudly confront another sorta-friend with printed out texts that impugn your character.

In real life, you’d just cross people you’re mad at off the Christmas list, unfriend them on Facebook, and be done with it.

Real Housewives of Dallas — like other “housewives” in the ever-expanding Bravo series franchise — routinely do the unreal versions of de-friending, however. And they do it in heavy makeup. With a camera crew focused on every word and sigh.

Episode six of the 10-episode run of RHOD was chockablock with such amusing nonsense and a moment or two of awkwardly real reality. It’s not news that these shows are hell on marriages. Each incarnation of the popular series has seen couples call it quits. Among the Dallas housewives, it’s Brandi Redmond whose home life is in turmoil at this juncture.

This week Brandi took a break from chugging “Jesus juice” (wine) with giggly best bud Stephanie Hollman to try to reconnect with husband Bryan. He’s out of town on business a lot, leaving Brandi at home in their echo-y mansion with their two little nanny-free daughters.

Brandi, you’re a fine girl. What a good wife you would be if only you could make Bryan understand how lonely you are in your gilded cage. (They’ve been together since high school, so that’s about 20 years a deux.)

Quick with crude jokes and a bit too open with pal Steph about Bryan’s nasty personal habits (chewing his toenails and picking his nose), Brandi is outwardly bubbly but secretly sad. This week she put on a bright orange mini-dress for “date night” with Bryan at Texas de Brazil.

In a tight close-up shot, she nervously orders a martini and tries to tell him she feels neglected and wants more together-time. He sits stone-faced. “I feel like I give you all the attention,” he says.

“I don’t understand you,” Brandi says, so quietly there are subtitles on the screen.

“Okay, dude,” Bryan huffs, “I’ve had enough. I’m done.” Exit Bryan as “sad electronic music plays.” (That’s what the subtitles say.)

This is genuinely awful. We feel you, Brandi. Stay strong. (According to Bravo’s show blogs, the couple is still together.)

Meanwhile, back at other people’s mansions, charity stalwart LeeAnne Locken holds hands and prays aloud with her bestie Tiffany Hendra (rocking a side ponytail that would make Andy Cohen squeal) in the driveway of minor housewife Marie Reyes. They ask for divine guidance for the shouting match about to ensue. Something about nasty text messages Marie has sent to Tiffany about LeeAnne.

None of that is as interesting as Marie’s head ornament in this scene. It seems to be made of entwined twigs. Perhaps she bought it at a sample sale in Middle Earth.

Later in the hour Cary Deuber and plastic surgeon husband Mark shop for glittery dresses at Stanley Korshak, then he works the camera for a photo shoot wherein she doffs her top, revealing some top-grade bazooms, and flips into a handstand while wearing leather pants.

Cary says Mark’s hobbies are “cooking, photography, and sex.” In every shot, he’s on her tighter than Spanx on cellulite.

A teensy crack of discontent is revealed in the seemingly hunky-dory marriage of mega-mansion dwellers Stephanie and Travis Hollman. He wants to control her every move, including her decorating efforts. She says (not to him) that “I want him to trust me.”

Travis objects to the window treatments she’s picked out for their sons’ bedrooms. He says he doesn’t like curtains. So she throws him some shade: “He has the worst taste in the world.”

Exhibit B in her case is then introduced to the jury: huge statues of Samurai warriors guarding the front yard of their suburban palace. Travis bought them and planted them there. “I named them Gayle and Oprah,” Stephanie says.

Brandi and Stephanie are then seen dressing the scowling warriors up with shiny scarves, beads, and other frou-frou. It’s the happiest Brandi has looked in weeks.

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Real Housewives of Dallas airs at 9 pm Mondays on Bravo. You can also watch episodes online.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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