I think it is possible that director Taylor King has created one of my favorite indie films of the year. I didn’t entirely know what to expect going in to “Super Hot” but it ends up being such a great horror comedy, despite some small flaws here and there. “Super Hot” has its inspirations close to its chest, combining “Booksmart” with “The Craft” to form this unusual amalgam that works shockingly well.
Category Archives: A+ Indie
New Deal for Artists (1981)
When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president during the midst of the Great Depression, one of his most ambitious programs to combat the widespread poverty and unemployment of the day was the Works Progress Administration. This program was designed to upgrade and reinforce the national infrastructure, with a primary focus on construction projects involving roads, government buildings and bridges.
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Travels in the Congo (1927) [DVD]
In 1925, French filmmaker Marc Allégret’s traveled to the French Equatorial Africa colonial region with writer André Gide to create a documentary record of the customs and cultures of the diverse tribal groups within the region. Unlike other documentaries of that era, most notably Robert Flaherty’s “Nanook of the North” and “Moana,” Allégret took an observatory approach to the subject, capturing the everyday life and special events of the African people.
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Nuevo Rico (2020) [SXSW 2021]
Director Kristian Mercado Figueroa’s short musical is a brilliant and excellent look at the end of the potential creeping end of the American territory known as Puerto Rico. Though fiction, Mercado brings to light the very troubling developments that could change how Puerto Ricans connect to their homeland. In the near future, the raw land of Puerto Rico has been destroyed in favor of a futuristic dystopia now known as Nuevo Rico.
Workhorse Queen (2020) [Slamdance Film Festival 2021]
It’s been a long, rough journey for drag queens to become accepted among modern society. After decades of being pushed in to the underground to celebrate their art form, now we’re at a rare moment in time where the drag profession is now being celebrated. After RuPaul’s efforts to inject the drag queen lifestyle in to the world with her hit series “Drag Race,” drag queens went from being pushed in to darkness, to now taking pictures with awe struck children, and hosting concerts with families and children.
And yet, after all of it, there’s still so much more to be done.
Teenage Emotions (2020) [Slamdance Film Festival 2021]
Director Frederic Da has a knack for adding some appeal to the mumblecore sub-genre. While I normally don’t like the narrative format, “Teenage Emotions” is a great platform for it. A mix of John Hughes and Greta Gerwig, “Teenage Emotions” works hard not to be pigeonholed. It’s a teen drama, but also a candid look at the monotony of high school. It’s a romance but also lacks a clear cut resolution of the various sub-plots. It also wants to be taken as both a narrative and a semi-documentary all at the same time.
Shorts Round Up of the Week: 1/29/21
It’s been a while since I’ve delivered the Shorts Round Up of the Week as I was previously incapacitated with the flu for most of December. Now that we’re on a new year and a new chapter for the site, I thought it only fitting to unveil the first “Shorts Round Up of the Week” for 2021.