Kammati Paadam (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]

kammatipaadamAfter a friend’s frantic call, Krishnan returns to his childhood and teenage years’ village to find his friend and what happened to him.  Through a series of flashbacks, their lives are shown through school age, teen years, early adulthood, etc.  With a script written by P. Balachandran with collaborative writing by Ajithkumar and G. Sethunath and directed by Rajeev Ravi, the film weaves back and forth through time showing more and more of lead Krishnan’s live as well as his friends and love’s lives.  The way the years are mixed together with different actors for only a section of them requires one to pay attention to film as only details such as more white hair show the time passing.  Even with this, the film is fairly easy to follow until the search for Ganga really heats up and more characters are added.

Continue reading

Miruthan (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]

miruthanIn the small town of Ooty, India, a toxic spill transforms people into blood-thirsty, fast running, wire-stunt performing zombies. Director Shakti Soundar Rajan takes a fairly typical zombie story, mixes in an unrequited love story, a dash of political observation, a Bollywood musical number, wire-stunts, and a good sense of humor about the whole thing to create a zombie film that doesn’t feel like it’s just hitting the tropes and its marks mechanically, it’s fast paced and fun while adding a special touch to its subject.  The idea of mixing Bollywood style film with zombies might not seem like an obvious choice but here it works of course, the humor being quite on point adds to this and to the enjoyment overall.

Continue reading

Fetish Factory (2017)

fetishfactory_2In a private burlesque parlor in Hollywood, performers and VIP clients face off with a zombie attack. Directed by Staci Layne Wilson from her own screenplay based on a story by Lony Ruhmann, Fetish Factory mixes burlesque dances and performers with end of the world and zombie tropes for a fun result.  Staci Layne Wilson takes the zombies sub-genre that is all over the place lately and focuses it by bringing her personal touch to it and adding a varied group of beauties to fight them off. Granted, this in and of itself is nothing new (we’ve seen hotties and strippers fight zombies before) but her usage of actual burlesque performers and actresses adds to this in a way that changes from the usual boobs and blood route these films take.

Continue reading

Hive (2016)

hiveIn the end what will win out and be our undoing will be apathy. It’s the willingness to just sit back and allow evil, to apathetically cling to our faith without challenging those that seek to do wrong. It’s our talent for not doing anything, and allowing injustice. It doesn’t matter what we believe, what politics we subscribe to, but when the world comes literally crashing down on us, we’re all just bugs ready to be squashed. “Hive” is set in a world where its breed of insectoid people have been split and divided by beliefs, religion, and class.

Continue reading

Numb (2016)

numbRebecca Martos is a pretty fantastic and mesmerizing actress who manages to successfully lead what is an utterly compelling look at the state of grief and depression. Martos plays Astrid a young woman who has been driven to alcoholism thanks to her utterly consuming depression. Most of her time is spent in a perpetual state of numbness as she hangs out in bars and looks for new ways to feel something. She’s accepted a long time ago that she can’t feel anymore, and now looks for new sensations that could potentially drive her down a dark road.

Continue reading

Gary from Accounting (2016)

garyfromaccounting“Gary from Accounting” sets the stage for the ultimate in awkward encounters where a mix up transforms in to basically a life crisis. After being invited to co-worker Nathan’s house, Gary from Accounting finds out that his wife Hannah, and her friend are staging an intervention to get him in to rehab for his alcoholism. What’s worse is that Gary wasn’t even invited and Nathan’s closest friend, coincidentally named Gary was the one actually invited for very crucial get together.

Continue reading

Citizen Kane (1941)

citizenkaneThe American Film Institute (AFI) will mount a special 75th Anniversary screening of the restored master at AFI FEST, the Institute’s annual film festival in Hollywood, on November 13th.

Who’s to know what would have been gained had anyone ever discovered what Rosebud meant? All we ever really know is that, like the faceless reporters that pounce on the death of Charles Foster Kane explain, it probably never really would have mattered. What ever piece of the puzzle would have made Charles Foster Kane feel whole was lost a very long time ago. We can never really pin point when and how, but why that gave him immense satisfaction and the feeling of completion was gone. As we gander at the endless piles of trash Kane collected over his years, as well as speak to the endless people Kane eventually began to collect, it’s pretty clear nothing could ever really give Charles Foster Kane a sense of fulfillment or make him feel complete.

Continue reading