A cop who moved to woods to live a minimalist life after his career went South is called back to his previous life to investigate a star’s wife’s murder. The actor is the prime suspects, but it may not be so simple.
Ghosts of the Ozarks (2022)
Following the Civil War, a young doctor is asked to join in uncle in a utopic village in the Arkansas. Once there, he slowly discovers that many secrets are protected by the locals and that crossing them is quite dangerous.
Last Survivors (2022)
A father and son living off the grid in a post-apocalyptic/post-wart situation soon find more and more outsiders coming closer and closer to their home. As decided by the father, they dispatch them one by one, until one day, the son sees a woman and cannot bring himself to follow his father’s others. After his father is wounded and he needs to find medicine, he finds her and meets her, leading to questioning everything he thought he knew.
Ken Maynard Rides Again
On this episode of “The Online Movie Show,” we jump in the saddle and ride out into the B-Western horizon to celebrate the life of cowboy star Ken Maynard. Film historian Geno Cuddy is the guest on this episode.
Honeycomb (2021) [Slamdance 2022]
It’s always thrilling when you can see the beginning of what you hope will be a long, seasoned career of filmmaking. Avalon Fast is a filmmaker that has immense promise, and it’s fascinating that she delivers a movie that’s so jarring and unnerving, and absolutely original. Director Fast has a great habit for making the audience uncomfortable, opening the film on a weird portrait of a woman in a honeycomb, and then contrasting it with the image of innocence with one of her characters lying along a serene field. From there, it only escalates.
The Bootleg Files: Ouanga
BOOTLEG FILES 793: “Ouanga” (1936 horror film starring Fredi Washington).
LAST SEEN: On Vimeo.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On cheapjack public domain labels.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: No one is rushing to get it into home entertainment release.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: The film has been restored, but no one is rushing to put it out on Blu-ray.
Fredi Washington earned a degree of cinematic immortality for her startling performance as Peola, the light-skinned Black woman who is repeatedly thwarted in her attempts to transcend the racial barriers of Jim Crow America by passing for White in the 1934 classic “Imitation of Life.” This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime role for Washington, both in terms of the quality of role and the exposure it afforded her – at a time when Black women in Hollywood studios were either cast as maids or nightclub singers, Washington found no offers to score a dramatic encore.
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Clean (2022)
A man with a violent now living a very quiet life must reconsider his stance and reconnect with a long-buried part of himself when the stakes change.