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Sundance ’22: Cringe Turns Utterly Chilling in Knockout Psychological Horror ‘SPEAK NO EVIL’

There are certain moments in life when everything in our body tells us to run away from a situation but we still hesitate because we want to be polite. Maybe it’s a weird conversation with a glassy-eyed drunk we got trapped in at a fundraiser. Or a flirtation turned suddenly uncomfortable with some girl we met at a bar. We don’t want to hurt the feelings of strangers. We stay out of some bizarre (and overly trusting) Western societal norm. We afford the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes to those who have not earned it. In Speak No Evil, all kinds of instinctual alarms go off but no one is paying attention to their instinct. They’re playing right into the hands of societal expectation – and then they are exploited. Read More

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Sundance ’22: ‘KLONDIKE’ a Funereal Drama About Ground-Level Russia-Ukraine Conflict 

July 17, 2014. Irka (Oksana Cherkashyna) and Tolik (Sergey Shadrin) live humbly in the Ukraine border town of the Donetsk, an Eastern region of disputed territory during the dawn of the Russian-Ukraine Donbas war in Klondike. They’re expecting a child. The film opens as the couple discuss birthing plans and getting somewhere safe to deliver the baby in voice over. Jolting viewers out of even one moment of calm, an explosion rips through the house, leveling a wall of their abode clean off. Commercial airline MH17 has just been shot down right in their front yard.  Read More

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Sundance ’22: ‘FRESH’ a Horrific Meat-Cute That Takes a Bites out of Modern Dating

A one-of-a-kind allegorical delicacy, Fresh revels in taboo subjects to poke fun at the stomach-churning appetites of the modern dating world. A delirious mash-up of cheesy romance and body horror shlock, the debut film from Mimi Cave begins in deliciously grotesque fashion, showing flashes of both American Psycho and Martyrs as her devilish meat-cute puts a dark spin on the idea of “finding the right guy”. Overnight, chemistry and flirtation turns to imprisonment and cannibalism, giving new meaning to the phrase “eating butt.”  Read More

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Tribeca 2021: Adrien Brody’s ‘CLEAN’ an Ugly, On the Nose Neo-Noir With Intense Dumb Guy Energy 

In Clean, Adrien Brody is a garbage man named Clean. After a tragedy in his past that haunts him to this day, Clean has gone clean. He’s trying to redeem his past mistakes by cleaning up the streets of Utica. Taking out the trash, literally and metaphorically. Dirty cops and rancid garbage, all must go. An ugly and hilariously on the nose watch, Clean is the kind of self-serious neo-noir that amplifies its navel-gazing faux-grittiness to a point of self-parody, complete with stuffy, gravelly voiceover, written as an obvious attempt to ape Alan Moore’s oft-copied steely nihilism, with streaky, smoky nighttime cinematography that adds nothing but another layer of comical try-hardiness to the overall picture. Read More

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Tribeca 2021: Endearing Werewolf Whodunnit ‘WEREWOLVES WITHIN’ Channels Edgar Wright

Like Clue with lycanthropy, Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within is an ensemble-driven horror-comedy with lots of earnest charm and plenty of satisfying laughs. A hairy whodunnit about a small Vermont community terrorized by what they assume to be a werewolf, Werewolves Within is that rare effective video game adaptation, reworking Ubisoft’s multiplayer Mafia-like VR game of the same name into an endearing and tongue-in-cheek werewolf whodunnit. Read More

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Tribeca 2021: ‘ULTRASOUND’ a Hypnotic Layer Cake of Mindf#ckery

From the very first moments of Ultrasound, something is off. In fact, a lot of things are off. There’s the obvious fact that the movie starts with a brilliantly uncomfortably ‘car breaks down in the rain’ moment where a soaked man seeks shelter in the only house nearby, the kind of scene audiences are instinctually trained to beware in movies. But there’s little moments too. Little touches that you’ll catch where something is certainly not as it should be. A woman’s bulging pregnant belly is there in one scene and gone in the next. A fully-stocked room service tray is wildly out of place on a deserted country road. Like a Find-The-Mistake picture book (think Dr. Seuss’s ‘Wacky Wednesday’) the anachronisms and scrambled bits of reality in Ultrasound just keep stacking up. Read More

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Tribeca 2021: Cloaked in Disillusion and Furs, ‘WILD MEN’ Battle Existential Crises

In Thomas Daneskov’s Wild Men (original title Vildmænd), Martin (Rasmus Bjerg) has lost his way. A family man with a wife and two daughters at home, Martin’s absconded to the craggy mountains of Norway, clan in Viking attire and armed with a makeshift bow and arrow. He plans to get back to his roots and live off the land like his hunter/gather ancestors of 3000 years ago but his aspirations are beyond the reach of his skillset. We’re witness to Martin’s plentiful limitations as he hunts a goat, striking it in the haunch from afar but unable to track the bloody trail to his would-be dinner. Left instead to smash and charbroil a small toad. The next scene he wretches up his amphibian meal, hunched over and helpless, into the icy river below.

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Tribeca 2021: Darren Aronofsky-Produced Revenge Thriller ‘CATCH THE FAIR ONE’ A Grim Swing and a Miss 

Native American women go missing, are sexually assaulted, or are murdered at an average of ten times that of the non-native population. These crimes are predominantly carried out by non-native criminals. Reasons for these staggeringly high rates range from a lack of institutional concern, indifferent law enforcement policies regarding missing young women, and the multitude of jurisdictional cracks between Federal and Tribal lands. All point to an overall lack of care and concern for the most marginalized within these communities, with about a third of these victims being under 18 years of age. And yet the statistic persists.  Read More

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Tribeca 2021: Collegiate Athlete Possessed by Competitive Spirit in ‘THE NOVICE’

Ernest Hemingway famously opined, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” I’ve taken this sentiment to heart in my own life, allowing a competitive spirit with myself to drive my ambitions, both professionally and athletically, rather than trying to compare my skill with others. The Novice, the arresting debut feature from writer-director Lauren Hadaway, explores what happens when an obsession with besting yourself goes too far. As witnessed here, there is no nobility in obsession.  Read More

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Tribeca 2021: India’s Illuminating ‘The LAST FILM SHOW’ a Deeply Personal Love Letter to Film

In Pan Nalin’s The Last Film Show, the death of film has never hit harder. The Samsara director and Indian auteur has established himself over the years as a filmmaker with a distinct flair for visual storytelling, his films a kaleidoscopic whirl of images that speak to the simple power of colors and lights to evoke an emotional response. With an impressive career making documentaries, feature films, shorts, commercials, and television, Nalin looks back on his own journey to becoming a filmmaker in The Last Film Show, his most autobiographical and personal effort to date. 
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