It’s a shame that in 2022, a year filled with movies about movies that landed with a thud, that the best one, “5-25-77” will have gone largely unnoticed and ignored. “5-25-77” is a love letter about movie making, it’s an ode to the art of filmmaking, and how film can also be a reflection of how we view life. Director Patrick Read Johnson’s coming of age drama comedy is a pretty excellent indie film, one that I’ve been waiting for over five years to watch that is now being available to view for a wider audience.
Category Archives: A+ Indie
The Thing That Ate the Birds (2021)
Director Dan Gitsham and Writer Sophie Mair’s horror short is a masterful creepy tale about dysfunction and what happens when your actions have dire consequences. I wasn’t sure what to expect with “The Thing that Ate the Birds,” but partners Mair and Gitsham deliver on all fronts as a complex and creepy genre entry.
Skinamarink (2023)
**Mild Spoilers Included in Review**
One of the exciting things about intelligent horror is that it can often inspire a lot of debate and interpretations among the fan base. They’re fun to read, and will be with “Skinamarink” now in the annals of the horror film. Like most modern horror, “Skinamarink” built its reputation going viral on the internet with its word of mouth as a terrifying movie. I’m happy to say that “Skinamarink” is quite terrifying but not in the ways you might think.
Stonks Goes the Distance! (2022)
Stock trading and investing might not sound like the most obvious choice a children’s book, but the 2021 “Stonks on the Moon!” by the pseudonymous Professor Clark offered a playful mix of child-friendly fiction (complete with anthropomorphic animals and a story about believing in one’s purpose) with sly tributes to investing world’s machinations – including the “to the moon” focus of “apes” and characters that bore more than a coincidental resemblance to Tesla chieftain Elon Musk and financial analyst Keith Gill.
Continue reading
The Greatest Radio Station in the World (2022)
In August 2021, David Owen of The New Yorker published an article that declared WPKN-FM in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to be “the greatest radio station in the world.” It was a highly subjective opinion, of course, but Owen’s celebration of the community-supported station’s free-form programming made a cogent argument about how this eclectic station was able to maintain its originality and spirit during a time when too much of radio broadcasting has become stale and predictable.
Continue reading
Dancing Pirate (1935) [Blu-ray/DVD]
The 1935 production “Dancing Pirate” has gained footnote status in movie history for several accomplishments: it was among the few productions nominated in the short-lived Academy Award category for Best Dance Direction, it was the first musical feature shot in the three-strip Technicolor process, it was the last film produced by the independent Pioneer Pictures studio, and it included uncredited blink-and-you-miss-them appearances by a young Rita Hayworth and future First Lady Pat Nixon as members of the dancing ensemble.
Continue reading
The Jackpot Hit (2022)
A pair of would-be gangsters trying to break into the Mafia receive an assignment to disrupt a poker game gathering of mobsters and steal the considerable money at stake amid the card shuffling. One of the hoods (Joey Ambrosini) is too eager to succeed while his comrade (Keont’e Collins) is going into the assignment with too much apprehension.
Continue reading