Let’s cut to the chase: Chad Ferrin’s “Parasites” is easily one of the best movies of 2017. It’s culturally relevant, very creepy, compelling, gritty, and packs a punch of a climax that is both incredibly evocative and promises to keep audiences debating for days. Set in Los Angeles, three college friends are on the way home accidentally find themselves stranded in skid row. While there, they become victims to the predatory Wilco, a vicious and violent homeless man who leads a massive army of wayward individuals. After terrorizing the trio of youths, events spiral out of control prompting Wilco to scramble to conceal his crimes. When character Marshal survives out of pure chance, he flees for his life, prompting Wilco and his army to track him down and hunt him in the middle of the city. Now Marshal has to fight for survival, and look for help.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Joe’s Violin (2016)
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE – Kahane Cooperman’s short documentary “Joe’s Violin” is a touching, emotional, and pretty extraordinary portrait of the value of objects, and how music can touch us and bind us together as human beings. Centered on Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold, director Cooperman explores how Joe spent most of his young life struggling to survive in concentration camps. Despite all logic indicating that he bring along bare necessities like food or clothing, Joe kept his beloved violin with him throughout his life. A now 91 year old Joe donates his violin to a Bronx music school, and he reflects on his life as young Brianna Perez prepares to perform with it.
Withdrawn (2017) [Slamdance Film Festival 2017]
Adrian Murray’s “Withdrawn” is like Gus Van Sant attempted mumblecore but decided to make it even more droning and monotonous. It’s kind of like performance art through and through, all testing our patience for the insanely mundane and minute, while character Aaron goes through his every day life literally doing nothing. About halfway he has some financial scheme planned to keep his rented room but that’s not the important element. It’s all about how tedious the film can get and if we’re willing to wait for our pay off, if it ever comes at all. Aaron fixes a fern. He looks up tutorials on trying to solve a rubiks cube, and even has a five minute telephone discussion where we only hear him talking to and responding to the individual. Yes, I get it.
My Father Die (2016)
After the murder of his father and his becoming deaf following a blow to the head, Asher trains himself and prepares for the day he will be able to avenge his brother from that man. When the man is released from jail early, he goes on the path of revenge. Written and directed by Sean Brosnan, this first feature film takes a story of revenge and twists it by keeping it all in the family. The film takes the usual revenge due to a family member’s death and mixes it up with the murderer also being family (not a spoiler, it is part of the official synopsis). The way he builds the story is quite straight forward and his characters are all heavily flawed but somewhat attaching in the case of his lead, Asher, and his friend Nana. All the characters have rough lives in a very poor deep south, but some have goals and are trying to make a better life for themselves, making them more interesting than the others.
Beware the Slenderman (2017)
In 2009, the horror fiction website Creepypasta helped create one of the more popular modern boogey men of horror. While many people expected the newest boogeyman would be born on film or television, aptly enough he was born on the internet. Much to the surprise of everyone, the Slenderman (an enigmatic fictional monster whose ability to lure children in to the woods and collect them for nefarious purposes) became much more than a simple meme. He was a pop culture sensation, and out of him spread a cult of loyal fanatics. One of the most infamous cases involved the incident of two twelve year old girls who lured their best friend out in to the woods and attempted to stab her to death as a means of appeasing the slenderman.
Hotel Coolgardie (2017) [Slamdance Film Festival 2017]
I’m pretty surprised at how entertaining and compelling Pete Gleeson’s documentary “Hotel Coolgardie” ends up being. It has such a weird and odd premise that threatens to be so dull and monotonous. But by the end of the movie I was more than thrown in to this surreal situation and cared about the two focal points of the movie Lina and Steph. It doesn’t have a huge social message or political aspirations but is a pleasantly engrossing tale about two foreigners in a new land, both of whom struggle to adapt amidst a large lifestyle of sexism, xenophobia and alienation. You’d think a premise for a documentary of this ilk would be reserved for art house movie fodder, but the fact it has happened for years is so fascinating and makes you wonder who else has walked in to Hotel Coolgardie.
Suck it Up (2017) [Slamdance Film Festival 2017]
I’ve always been a fan of movies that examine how deaths can affect the ones we love and how it can create a pretty significant ripple. “Suck It Up” is a bit of “Garden State,” and “Ordinary People” mixed with mumblecore here and there. While I appreciate director Jordan Canning’s efforts to create this drama about how the death of one of the more important people in their lives affected them drastically, the script from Julia Hoff seems to be almost bereft of drama to the point where scenes just stretch out in to nothingness. There are a lot of really drawn out moments where almost nothing happens. In brief scenes where Canning tackles the dynamic between our characters Ronnie and Faye, “Suck It Up” presents only slight glimmers of an emotional character study.