How do you stop the city’s most insane criminals when you yourself are on the brink of insanity? Who do the heroes turn to when they’re about to lose their minds? That’s the questions asked during the sequel to “The Depression of Detective Downs” a wonderful closer to an already great saga about Detective Rolando Downs, a well meaning detective who is so at odds with life that all he can do is watch the days fade away all the while witness his luck turn sour with every passing moment.
Category Archives: A+ Indie
Just About Famous (2010)
I really hope Blue Collar Films manages to re-visit “Just About Famous” someday, because there is at least ninety minutes of entertaining material to be tapped from the lives of celebrity impersonators and their confrontations with people who are convinced they’re the iconic celebrities they resemble. However as a fourteen minute feature, “Just About Famous” is a hysterical and absolutely entertaining documentary about the lives of a small group of celebrity impersonators who resemble some of the most famous people in America, for better or for worse.
Teddy (2011)
The funny thing about “Teddy” is that there is no reason for it to go beyond an eleven minute run time. This film’s premise is so hackneyed and predictable, it’d barely make a decent feature length film. Which is not by any means a criticism, just an honest observation. You have to respect Slasher Studios for comprising an entire narrative and condensing it in to only eleven minutes.
Wake (2009)
It feels as if “Wake” has come from a deep place in director Dan Marcus’s life and it shows in one of his first short features about a young man whose relationship with his parents may be damaged. And even worse, irreparable. That’s the genuine premise behind “Wake,” a movie that touches on what happens too often in this life. How we take for granted love and affection and view it as weakness and annoyance.
Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)
Jason Eisener’s “Hobo with a Shotgun” was such a long time coming it’s ridiculous. With a movie that’s dared to defy all expectations, it’s very much a twisted balance between Troma and pure unadulterated Grindhouse madness that has the potential to reach mainstream audiences with a wider theatrical release. With “Grindhouse” flopping, and “Machete” floundering at the box office, “Hobo with a Shotgun” is a breath of fresh air, a movie so utterly filled with mind-blowing grindhouse tropes and a genuinely interesting story that you can almost feel the piss stained theater floor under your feet, while watching what essentially adds up to being a tongue in cheek and darkly disturbing take on the class warfare in America. This is Jason Eisener’s America, a world where the battle of rich and poor amounts to trips in to Scumtown USA where we lay our scene.
Scalene (2011)
Margo Martindale is amazing. That was my first reaction upon viewing her portrayal as the mentally anguished mother Janice Trimble in Zack Parker’s brutally demented and compelling revenge drama “Scalene,” a movie about points of view and how sometimes our own is all we need to get us through the night. Martindale commands an ingenious movie about the end of a tragedy and the beginning of lunacy where mom Janice Trimble is forced to confront many issues in the run time of the film. One of which is the possibility that her mentally disabled son brutally raped a college girl.
Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula (2011)
Ah that Dracula sure does get around, doesn’t he? He’s met more historical figures than Forrest Gump. In the grand tradition of “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula,” “Emmanuelle vs. Dracula” and “Batman vs. Dracula” comes the lost adventure of two of the world’s most notorious criminals and their confrontation with the lord of darkness. Timothy Friend’s horror crime thriller is in the hokey tradition of absurd battles and there hasn’t been one more absurd since Bonnie and Clyde’s meeting with the undead. Tiffany Shepis stars as Bonnie along Trent Haaga as Clyde in their efforts to thwart off rival criminals and the lawman as they travel across the country. Now down on their luck after a series of unfortunate events leave them penniless and without a car, they meet up with an old friend promising them a big job robbing a local bank.