Film

A Cannes Palme d’Or winner that trades plot for character, with Mikey Madison and a stellar ensemble stealing the spotlight Writer/director Sean Baker’s Anora is a uniquely different film that stands apart for its commitment to character-driven storytelling over plot — a choice that earned it the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival….

An $8,000 budget, but  Found delivers more chills and substance than Hollywood’s multimillion-dollar nightmares In order to cleanse my horror palate after the shitstain that  Terrifier 3  was, I decided to find the cheapest, dirtiest little horror film I could dig up. The winner? An $8,000 indie gem called  Found, streaming on Tubi and more. And let me tell…

HIGH TIDE IS A QUIET STUNNER Lourenço, a handsome, thirtysomething, Brazilian man, is deeply in love with his boyfriend Joe. But in a surprise move, Joe dumps Lourenço while the two are on vacation in Provincetown, MA. Lourenço is devastated and stranded in P-Town at the end of the season. With only a tourist visa,…

Pharrell’s journey, piece by piece: An unexpected and inspiring look at the quiet genius behind decades of music. Morgan Neville, known for his ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, has done it again with  Piece by Piece, a film that dives deep into the life and career of one of the most influential music…

AN UNHOLY WRECK There are bad movies, and then there’s Terrifier 3, a festering pile of cinematic waste so atrocious that it’s not only the worst of the year but one of the worst I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting through. Damien Leone couldn’t make a shittier movie if he tried. Hell, he may…

GRINDHOUSE 101 [Editor’s Note: An ode to Grindhouse films, the 2007 pic Grindhouse consists of two features, Planet Terror by Richard Rodriquez and Death Proof by Quentin Tarentino. Preceding and separating the features are faux trailers by Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, Eli Roth  and  Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright. Grindhouse was a box office disaster, making only…

THE HORROR OF A HORRIBLE THIRD ACT The Substance had me hooked — really, truly hooked — for 90 glorious minutes, and then : it feels like they yanked some middle school kid off the street and said, “Hey, wanna ruin a movie?” Because that’s the only explanation for how this thing nosedived so hard….

THREE YOUNG PERFORMERS TURN THIS FILM INTO A PARADISE Here in California, a title like Paradise is Burning  (Paradiset Brennet) brings to mind one of the most devastating wildfires in our history, the one that decimated the northern California town of Paradise in 2018. In fact, when I saw the title, I thought it was a…

DEFINING MUSIC IS TOUGH TO PIGEONHOLE Music For Black Pigeons is a 90-minute documentary film by Jørgen Leth  and Andreas Koefoed without a specific plot. Viewers get to see a variety of jazz greats during candid scenes that often take place at recording sessions dating from the past 20 years. There are some heartwarming moments and…

HEAVYWEIGHT FILM ABOUT FEATHERWEIGHT BOXER Life inside the boxing ring is hard. And, apparently, life outside the boxing ring is even harder. At least it is for Detroit-based, former featherweight boxer, Bernard “Bang Bang” Rozyski who is the main focus of director   Vincent Grashaw’s new sports drama Bang Bang. Though many years past his winning…