darksidelingua

Childhood friends Pape, Koby and Rashid, now married have made an outing every Friday Night, a tradition in their lives, even though their wives try to talk them out if it. What they do at these outings is "unimaginable". Koby has a grudge that he must settle with Pape so he honours a deal with a notorious pimp Jake the Shadow to get one of his whores Missy in trouble to get back at Pape. Missy on the other hand wasn't to buy back her freedom, like her friend Debra in order to pursue a singing career, but Jake has a plan in motion.

It was a perfect hook up but on the wrong night.

Friday Nights can be freaky.

And if you watch this on a Friday night you will want to slit your wrists, for real this film is so so bad.

The movie is named after the female cult that feature in the film. They are called the Twilight Sisters, perhaps because most of their cult like ceremonies are performed at twilight, or perhaps not. It is more than likely the makers just thought that the title sounded good. I digress.

The leader of the Twilight Sisters is Soso. Soso is in conflict with her boyfriend Joe's sister, Angel. Angel is continuously battling with Soso to leave her brother alone. She believes that Soso is a bad influence.

In a bid to make Angel's life a misery Soso enlists the help of Charles, a known ladies man. His job is to seduce Angel, make her fall in love and then dump her. The plan backfires and Charles and Angel fall madly and deeply in love, much to the chagrin of Soso.

From here the film descents to a whirlwind of nonsensical events...

The opening scene of the film is with the leader of a group- the Sisterhood of the black bra – initiating some new recruits. The premise is that the group exists to "fight chauvinism." The new recruits are given a beatdown, the reasoning behind it that they will become fearless and will "never fear being beat by a man.." the whole situation is reminiscent of being online in a black Greek Letter Organisation, the pledging/rushing process that takes place across colleges in the USA.

In the next scene we see one of the black Bra sisters (named after the undergarments that they clothe their breasts in) visiting a guy's house. He persuades her to come and have a look at his place. That is her intention but when she wants to leave he wants her to stay longer. She gives her excuse to leave, "I don't normally visit guy's houses." His response is laughable, "But you know I love you…We have known each other for a good two weeks." He rapes her and it is here we get to find what the Black BRa is all about... Definitely one to watch!

A couple, Uche the pastor and Lesley the pastor's husband are hounded by the Lesley's mother for "refusing to produce grandchildren." It is said as if kids are eggs for sale in the supermarket and as if every act of sex is a guarantee of a child. This is a recurring theme in Nollywood, and it is always the grandparents (normally grandmother) acting as if their daughter (in law) has personally abused them by not having a child in the "required" time. Impotence is looked upon as a curse and something that one brings upon themselves. There is no sympathy bestowed on those who do not have children and want them or those who are infertile in the sense that there is in the west. Women are hounded the most and the blame is most often put on them as opposed to the man.

One day armed robbers break into the home and Uche is raped. While at the hospital she is mute and not responding to anyone so the doctors suggest moving her to a psychiatric ward. Her mother is distraught and begs her to "pray herself out" of the situation. Even in the psychiatric ward the psychotherapist played by Halima whips out the bible when she is perturbed by the patient howling at her. She then gets Uche's mother to read bible verses to her until she calms down. The issue of religion and all that surrounds it is so pervasive in Nigerian society that it even infiltrates even medical establishments as a bonafide method of treatment.

Not long after the rape we find out that Pastor Uche is preggers. This means even more trouble for her...

"Please sit down, you know that I hate it when you stand around looking like servants" "But Madam, that's what we are." The film opens with Olivia, the madam of the house presenting her four servants with a pay off check of 6 million naira. We learn that since her mother, who employed the servants died she has been alone with only the servants in the house.

We also learn that she has sickle cell anaemia and may be soon to die, hence the reason for the pay off to the house staff. Olivia claims to want to do "something else" with her life, not feeling fulfilled with her current state.

The servants accept the cheques and then approach her concerned, not knowing what to do with such an extraordinary amount of money. It is as if their positions had them resigned to a life of servitude. Olivia even tells them, "Do you guys want to die as servants, don't you aspire to do anything better with your lives." Olivia plans to go away to live a more simple "normal" life having being raised in a wealthy family. She asks her boyfriend Geoffrey to go along with her, and he agrees. She departs almost immediately, leaving the servants distressed and in tears. It is a touching moment and shows us that love and humanity amongst humans knows now social class.

Olivia is humble and does not treat people differently because of status or what they have. We see this again when she hails a taxi in the road to go and pick up Geoffrey to start their new life together. When she gets out of the taxi to go and get Geoffrey she leaves her luggage in the car. The driver David asks her if she would like to take her luggage with her to which she replies no. He then tells her, "but people are not supposed to leave taxi drivers with their luggages." To which she simply states, "that is my biggest fault. I'm too trusting." When Olivia goes to get Geoffrey she is told that he has "travelled" effectively abandoning her, leaving only a note. She is shaken and tells the taxi driver to take her "anywhere." Meanwhile we find out that Geoffrey did not in fact go anywhere and was actually inside the house simply avoiding Olivia. His reasoning being that he did not want to "gamble with his future" by being with a "sick and dying girl." Olivia makes the journey alone and checks into a hotel before going to Lugbe settlement, a poor community a whole world away from what she is used to. She passes by a woman called Comfort's house where she sees a notice requesting a governess for her daughter Barbie. She is interviewed on the spot and acquires the job despite her inexperience. Olivia, Comfort and Barbie connect on sight and so begins Olivia's new life.

Beyonce is the President's daughter. Wealthy and spoilt, anything she wants she gets. This includes Raj. Beyonce meets Raj whilst out shopping and approaches him in a forward manner, showering him with compliments and then paying his bill before handing over her phone number.

Raj and Ciara, the poor orphan the girl who saves him are estranged after the hospital incident, although there is not a moment that he is not thinking about her, wanting to find her and thank her for saving his life. He does eventually find her and they begin dating. Whilst Beyonce is falling in love with Raj (pronounced Rush by most in the film), he at the same time is declaring his love for Ciara and even goes so far as to break her virginity. He also announces his intention to marry her, all the while juggling the two women.

Why are the two main female characters named after black American pop stars?

The deceit comes to light one day when Raj comes home with Ciara (to introduce her to the family) and finds Beyonce sitting on the sofa with his mother and sisters. He sees unperturbed by this sight, and with his arm cosily around Ciara he introduces her to all in the room as his fiancée and Beyonce as "The lady who has been so kind to us." Eiwoooooooooooo! The shock in Beyonce's face, to be treated as she were some kindly philanthropist.

Beyonce in a rage takes Raj out for "a word." Ciara steps outside shortly afterwards and hears the whole conversation. She now knows that Raj has been cheating on her and is highly distraught. In his defence he exclaims,

"I had to sleep with her. She came on too strong and I couldn't resist."

After being rejected by Raj Beyonce starts her mission to break up his relationship with Ciara by any means necessary.

Camila lives happily with her grandmother until a marriage proposal comes her way by a fella called Donald. She does not like him on first meeting as he is arrogant and boastful, however on her grandmothers encouragement agrees to go on a date with him. It is a disaster and her disdain for him is intensified; he continually ogles other women and insists on swigging from a bottle of whisky throughout the date.

After this date he proposes marriage to her and she refuses. He is outraged at the rebuff and she receives a letter from him to say that unless she marries him the debt that her father owed his for the land that their house is built on will need to be paid in the coming months. Camila was not aware that her father owed his before his death and is distraught upon the devastating news.

She is adamant that she will not marry Donald and so Camila leaves the village to go and seek fortune in the city to save the house that she and her grandmother live in. We see that Camila is basically a good girl but her circumstances force her into doing some bad things. We learn from this film that sometimes essentially good people are driven by circumstance to do bad things.

I love this film.

There is a Part 3 to this film called Last Fight, so make sure you get that too!

Patience plays Benita's mother who is married but always going out at night to her husband and son's dismay. They believe that she is not behaving like a respectable wife and mother.

She is definitely the one wearing the trousers in the relationship, treating her long suffering husband like trash.

Soon enough they cannot all live together as a family and Patience and her daughter move in with her toy boy... the story gets more exciting, just watch and see!

Well... nothing has changed with Tony Umez. He is still a useless actor with a twisted up mouth and annoying way of speaking. Luckily he isn't as awful as he has the potential to be in this film.

The story goes like this: Joy and Odili are a married couple with two children. Odili was laid off his job over a year ago and so his wife Joy supports the family.

In the opening scene we see Odili arguing with his wife, (or I should say really himself as his wife is not doing much responding) about his situation. He is angry with Joy because she has hidden his sleeping tablets. she does not want him to become dependent on them and he gets worked up because he feels that she is emasculating him by being the breadwinner, as well as being him feeling generally down about being deserted by his friends and mocked by outsiders.

One day Odili is handed a life line by his friend Chima. Chima has been offered a business contract worth 5 million Naira, which he wants to collaborate on with Odili. However there is a catch. Odili needs to give Chima 500, thousand naira for the deal to go ahead, which of course he does not have. He tells his wife about the situation and in a loving and generous gesture she offers him her entire savings of 80, thousand naira which Odili nastily throws back in her face. This is the beginning of their relationship breakdown.

If you have not watched this film you may want to stop reading here.

*************SPOILERS*************

Odili is desperate and willing to do anything, and when I say anything I mean ANYTHING to acquire this money so that he can be the breadwinner again. This is where Stella played by Clarion comes in. Stella is in say her late 30's and unmarried and is willing to go to any means necessary to catch herself a husband. Of course Clarion excels in the role as woman scarred by desperation. It is roles like this when she is in her element.

Odili approaches Stella to ask for a loan so that he can complete the deal with Chima. He has less than a week to get the money, so time is of the essence. We find out that Stella and Odili have a history. In fact Odili knew Stella before his wife, and they embarked on an on off romantic relationship over the years in which it appears that Odili used Stella for sex and money and was not interested in wedding her, which is apparent when he marries Joy, a new woman in his life.

Stella, bitter from being duped by Odili refuses to give him the money unless he gives her the thing she craves for the most - A commitment, which means marriage. Odili in his desperation agrees to this, as long as the marriage can be kept secret.

I thought her desperation was a bit far fetched, not so much in that she would go as far as bribing a man to marry her, but in that she would brag about bribing a man to her friends, after all would that not be embarrassing? When Stella tells a friend that she meets on the road about how she bribed Odili into marrying her, the friend is all praises and, "gimme five giiiiiiiirl!" As if, essentially paying somebody to marry you is the best thing in the world! Are some women really that desperate? Is that the result of society stigmatising unmarried women out of their twenties? And if indeed some women are that desperate would they really shout out their scheming plans from the rooftops as if it were something to be proud of? One thing that stood out for me in the film was the use of the Lord's name in vain. Chidi asks Odili where he got the money from and he concocts a fantasy story about an Old School friend returning from the United States, exclaiming, "I knew God would do it for me!" in an attempt to obviously shut Chidi up, were he thinking of asking any further questions with regards to the acquisition of the money. I found it an absolutely ridiculous statement to make at the same time, considering that it was his ungodly, lies deceit and cheating that allowed him to get his hands on the money.

Genevieve Nnaji shows great versatility in this role and does a great job in portraying someone who is mentally ill following the curse put on her by Stella. Her paranoia and disassociation are ON POINT! Emmanuel France too is great as the "Nutty Professor." The scattered speech and gross delusions of grandeur are perfected to a T. I love that he invites Joy into his "mansion" which in actuality is a broke down hut with a dirt floor and filthy battered objects cluttering the place.

In this film it can be seen that the idea the mental illness is caused by possession by the devil or a Juju curse still pervades. The film reinforces this in that we see the start Joy's insanity after Stella's Juju ceremony. It would be nice for mental illness to be portrayed in a way where it is not characterised by evil spirits. In a way where you can not just wake up one morning, rub your eyes and become sane again because the one who cursed you died, as happens in this film.

Overall I enjoyed the film. I thought it explored themes that are very important for us to consider and explore in today's society. The film was up tempo and kept you engrossed. The cast were excellent and played their roles very well. I also liked the fact that they kept it in one part, and still managed to fit in a well developed plot.

There has been a lot of controversy with regards to it being too soon to release a film about September the 11th. I personally thought that it was not too soon, and didn't see the problem in the film being released.

After reading all the controversy, I had to get my hands on a copy of this film! I succeeded in the task set and I just finished watching it.

I was NOT impressed at all. I imagined it would be more hard hitting than it was. To me a good film MOVES you, and I didn't find it very moving at all. This is a list of reasons why I wasn't enthralled with this film and why this film will not stick in my memory after today:

1)The characters were one-dimensional. None of the characters were explored in that much detail. Because of this you didn't get to KNOW any of them and thus could not FEEL for them.

2) I found the acting very blah. Not enough emotion was conveyed. I would imagine that if you were being hijacked you would have a look of terror on your face pretty much consistently, even when trying to hide it.

3) The layout of the film with the flashbacks at the beginning... I didn't think that worked very well.

4) What was with the air hostess announcing "Just a bit of turbulence" on the loudspeaker after half the plane already knew they were being hijacked... what kind of bull is that?

5) How comes everybody had the same identical black flip mobile phones? And why were all of them were able to use them in the middle of the sky. I personally have never been able to use a cell phone on a plane when it gets to a certain height. Everyone who wasn't on a cell phone used the satellite phones.The hijacker would glance over and give a mean look and the person would bend their head lower and the hijacker did nothing all... not a warning.... NOTHING!

6) The hijackers were like baby cats (you know that word that can refer to a cat or female genitalia). The one hijacker that they sent to overlook the whole plane whilst the others were in the cockpit, looked about 16, and really timid. I would imagine a real hijacker to be a bit more aggressive and threatening than that, and considering he was such a wimp I don't know what took so long for the other passengers to beat him up.

7) The "bombs" the hijackers had around their waists were as flat as pancakes. If they really did contain explosives, there would have barely been enough to blow up half a body.

8) The whole Lords prayer thing at the end before the guy gets ready to go and "rush" the Islamic fundamentalists, so as to conclude the film on a Islam VS Christianity flex, when people are feeling emotional about the whole thing I thought was lame.

The thing that I did find really realistic was the incompetence of the authorities. They had about 50 million phone calls and they still were acting like they didn't know what was up. How typical!

I felt somewhat sorry for the poor woman who tried to report the hijacking and got transferred to about 100 people and ended up getting hung up on in the end.

My favourite bit was were where one of the guys on the plane call his mother and his mother says to his father,

"Call the police." His father's response was,

"Can they fly?"

Well that's all I remember for now folks.

A wonderful film which pulls at the heartstrings. Rodrigo Santaro as Neto portrays the tormented soul of a teenage boy locked up in a mental asylum so well.

This is a film that completely draws you in and makes you question the intentions of those who are supposed to be helping people. The doctors told Neto's parents that they were looking out for his best interests and kept prolonging his stay there. They knew that he was not mentally ill, but tried to create a situation in which he would end up that way, so that they could continue to collect money from his parents.

Film highlights the evils that people will do all in name of the money.

I don't understand how the reviews on this are all good and rating the abysmal film between 8-10 stars... what a joke! Somehow I think the reviews are fake or written by people with the absolute minimal taste.

This film is unwatchable. From watching the first 30 minutes only (or maybe even less I cant recall, but I do know I could not go on any further) I know that the acting is absolutely atrocious, as was the script and the whole set up... Who in the hell distributed this mess? I have two friends who also bought the same film (it was going cheap on a street corner) and they too were unable to finish watching it. It wasn't even funny hahaha awful... just straight Awful!

Oh my this was meant to be a comedy and it just wasn't funny. Granted it tried but it missed more times than it hit.

The storyline was blah. Stiller gets jilted by his wife on their honeymoon. a week later he meets Aniston and they start dating. That is it. Nothing happens and it has no "point." Usually in films like this where we gain insight into someone's life, something extraordinary happens or there are poignant moments where we empathise with the character. Not with this rubbish.

There was almost Zero chemistry with Stiller and Aniston and you couldn't really believe their relationship was real.

In summary the whole film was a disappointing mess.

I absolutely love this film!

It needs to be watched if only to drool over the lovely Khalil Kain who I have been in love with since I saw him in Juice. That man is too fine!

The storyline about three women embarking on a singing career and their manager captures you and the acting is excellent and very dramatic. A must see!

The film explores the relationships between the Divas as well as their individual and collective relationships with Mr Kain the main character. We see how fame, love and money can tear as well as build their relationships.

I can't imagine that anyone could possibly like this film and I am one of those people that likes bad movies. When somebody tells me something is bad I will usually be able to get some entertainment value from a film, and rarely is it that I will not watch a film through to the end.

I started this nonsense with high hopes. It sounded like an interesting concept. A bunch of young adults taking off on a crime spree and someone filming it all...documentary style.

First off the acting was awful, there is no way you could imagine the events happening for real. They take turns in front of the camera talking complete rubbish. After 20 minutes of this I fast forwarded hoping to get to something more interesting. It never happens.

There is nothing more I can say. If you had the misfortune of ever having to endure 5 minutes of this nonsense...SORRY. If you bought it. Write to the producers and DEMAND A REFUND!

I really liked this film. It is set in the gang infested neighbourhood nearby Chicago's Little Village. Raul's destiny as a member of the Latin Crowns street gang seems predetermined, more out of circumstance rather than making the choice to be a gang banger. Raul (Mauricio Mesa) seems to simply be following in the footsteps of his older brother Freddy.

The film moved along at a steady pace. It kept you hooked and there was never a moment that I felt bored. In particular the lasting images that I have of the film are that of blood and gore and tormented teenage souls.

Raul's relationship in the film is touching because it is so pure and seemedly unaffected from his gang banging lifestyle, where women are their lifestyle are treated merely as sex objects (a gang bang in exchange for coke is one of the scenes that comes to mind.

In summary I say watch it. There is the blossoming love story, betrayal, deceit and lots of shooting. Ingredients for any good film.

This film is very bad. Not bad enough to absolutely not continue watching, but that in itself is bad enough. The actors are pretty lame and try to compensate by being over the top and dramatic, but even so these grand dramatics do not add amusement or entertainment.

One of the main actors insists on taking of his clothes of at every opportunity much to my horror as he seems to have a half shaved chest or some kind of pigment discolouration which just made me feel ill at the mere sight of it.

In summary this is a lame rip off of American Pie, down to the sex scene with the pie. I would say don't do it, specially at the prices they are trying to charge for it on DVD!