After spending some time on the festival circuit in 2018, and providing a fan screening during 2019’s San Diego Comic-Con, genre-bending Freaks finally gets the theatrical treatment. Freaks relies far more on character work than action and writing/directing team Zack… Read More ›
Audiences cultivate a certain expectation depending on the film distributor. With Warner Bros. Pictures, odds are you’re getting something fairly mainstream; whereas A24 almost always releases genre-pushing indies. In the middle lies Neon, where it handles mainstream documentaries like Apollo… Read More ›
**Trigger Warning: While not discussed in detail, the film does center on a female character post-rape and that aspect will be explored within.** Director Juliane Block is not afraid to tackle difficult subjects. Her 2018 film, 8 Remains, examines toxic… Read More ›
Looking at the catalogue of films writer/director Mike Gan has developed, each film appears to deal with the darker sides of humanity. This is not to say that there aren’t protagonists, but that they are muddied and never completely wholesome…. Read More ›
Probably for as long as there have been parents and children, there’s been a war waging between generations. Parents tend to think that the ones coming up have no regard for way things used to be and children think it’s… Read More ›
Every family has their traditions, the little things that they do in order to carry forward to the future the notions of the past. Where things tend to get tricky is when someone marries in. Suddenly it’s not about one… Read More ›
No matter the genre, the most compelling stories are the ones which tap into something primal in the audience. Fear, delight, rage, and joy are ingrained in us as a means of survival in an uncontrollable cosmos. A good writer… Read More ›
If you’re a child of the ‘80s, there’s one car that pops into your mind the moment you think about the era; a vehicle made famous by Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future series and infamous throughout automotive history. The… Read More ›
The act of creating is a cathartic experience for most. That feeling of something welling up inside which must be written, crafted, or molded or else the creator will burst. Sometimes this results in an extremely personal work which resonates… Read More ›
When you think of horror films, what names come to mind? If you’re going old school, you’ll get John Carpenter, Wes Craven, George A. Romero, Mary Lambert, Sam Raimi, Tobe Hooper, Takashi, Miike, Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, and David Cronenberg…. Read More ›
The urge to create complications, to produce bigger and stronger obstacles within stories, is one of many balancing acts writers manage when crafting their stories. Introductions of characters and settings, moving the narrative forward, designing conflict – these are all… Read More ›
Oscar-winning director Denys Arcand offers The Fall of the American Empire, an eclectic genre mash-up combining crime drama, a thrilling heist adventure, and a social commentary. This French-Canadian film spoken almost entirely in the beautiful language of French (and subtitled… Read More ›
Examining the credits of this film, Keith Sutliff’s impressive effort becomes apparent as he worked as the writer, director, producer, production designer, art director, and lead actor. Undertaking all of these responsibilities to bring together a vision for this project… Read More ›
More often than not, a documentary reveals as much about the person behind the camera as it does about the person in front. Like all things, what we see is a matter of perspective and point of view. The documentarian… Read More ›
From writer and director Michael Matteo Rossi, Chase follows the title character’s (Damien Puckler) journey as he attempts to maneuver his way out of a life of crime, violence, and deception. There is a solid layer of intriguing foundational material… Read More ›
Ana Murugarren’s The Bastards’ Fig Tree tells the story of Rogelio (Karra Elejalde), a soldier who’s fighting on the side of the fascist Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. One night, he and several colleagues raid a house and execute… Read More ›
There’s a constant argument between generations about who had it worse vs. who had it better. The “always on” digital generation may scoff at the concept of their predecessors’ reliance on books for information, while the analog generation derides their… Read More ›
On the surface, legendary director Brian de Palma’s latest project, Domino, looks like it has solid potential to be a successful under-the-radar crime drama. With a cast including Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau and Carice van Houten of Game of Thrones fame, as… Read More ›
Expectations are frequently a killer when it comes to enjoying a film. Maybe it’s the fault of marketing in the way it frames a film. Maybe it’s what the audience brings to the experience. But however audiences approach a film… Read More ›
Given his roles in Slumdog Millionaire, Chappie, and HBO’s The Newsroom, the last person audiences would picture as a methodical badass is Dev Patel. That’s bound to change after audiences get a glimpse of him in writer/director Michael Winterbottom’s The… Read More ›