Five Great Films Set Over The Course of a Night

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

One of my current favorite directors Richard Linklater has currently released his spiritual sequel to his hit 1993 film “Dazed and Confused” entitled “Everybody Wants Some!!”, another drama comedy about a group of young people trying to survive the seventies. After his heavy and meaningful “Boyhood,” it’s nice to see Linklater coming back to a breezier departure that promises to be just as raucous and funny as its predecessor “Dazed and Confused.” Since I’m excited for “Everybody Wants Some!!” and consider “Dazed and Confused” a favorite of mine, I thought I’d list five great films that unfold over the course of a single night much like “Dazed and Confused” does. What are some of your favorites?

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Dazed and Confused (1993)

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Richard Linklater is a master at handling multiple storylines as well as various characters, allowing them to gel in to one very cohesive cinematic experience. Other directors would have a hard tie balancing out so many storylines, but “Dazed and Confused” manages to not only unfold in to a fun narrative, but also builds a myriad fascinating characters you’ll either love or hate by the time “Dazed and Confused” is over. A virtual successor to “American Graffiti,” this time Linklater follows a slew of characters over the course of one hectic night in the late seventies, as summer begins and school finally lets out. Director Linklater doesn’t have a singular thread bonding his characters, save for his ensemble’s core desire to find one last adventure before the summer comes around demanding some new form of responsibility outside of school.

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Selective Listening (2015)

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

It’s so very rare to see a film like Tim Prescott’s, and one that is so genuine and original. Prescott’s film reminded me a lot of something from Charlie Kaufman of Spike Jonze in where our protagonist is a victim of their mental disability and it somehow unfolds in to an interesting tale of whimsy and tragedy. I can’t believe what I was watching when I sat down to view “Selective Listening.” At times I was baffled, other times I was confused, but throughout the entirety I was completely compelled. “Selective Listening” is a unique take on mental illness, as we center on nice guy Harrison. Harrison is a normal guy who lives alone in his flat, except he’s a victim to his obsessive compulsive disorder. It also doesn’t help matters that he’s a victim of schizophrenia and he can often hear various voices in his head.

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My Boyfriend’s Back (1993) [Blu-Ray]

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Say what you want about Bob Balaban’s horror comedy “My Boyfriend’s Back,” but it’s one of the more pleasant and twisted films to ever come out of the nineties. This was a decade where horror almost died, and what horror there was was deadly serious. “My Boyfriend’s Back” is a funny and sometimes demented take on acceptance with Andrew Lowery giving a bang up performance as Johnny Dingle. Dingle is a love starved high schooler who has the deepest affections for his lifelong love Missy McCloud. To win her heart, he stages a fake grocery store robbery to save her, but things go awry when an actual robbery ensues, and Johnny is murdered. Mysteriously, he comes back from the dead and is told that he can lurk around, but only in the confines of the town cemetery.

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Happily Ever After (2016)

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Director Joan Carr-Wiggin’s “Happily Ever After” is like a nice slice of pound cake. It’s inoffensive, kind of bland, but still has a sweet spot every so often. Carr-Wiggin’s film is a mixture of Cameron Crowe, “Lady Bug,” and “Beautiful Girls” in where a nearing thirty year old comes back to their home town to find everything is the same as when they left it. Or perhaps maybe it isn’t. For Heather, she’s spent her life giving up looking for her happily ever after, and has found that she has come home to a town of people that are seeking their happy ending, and can’t quite admit that they’re unhappy in their current lives. When Heather goes to visit her ailing father in the hospital, she crashes in to old school mate Sarah Ann. She’s a bubbly blond classmate who is devoted to getting married and building the typical Rockwellian life of a picket fence house and comfortable marriage.

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Five Reasons Why You Should Buy “Freaks and Geeks”

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

We “Freaks and Geeks” fans are a small but loyal community that have known who Judd Apatow and Paul Feig were before they became directors and producers of various hit theatrical comedies. Before storming the box office, Feig, with executive producer Judd Apatow, created the short lived “Freaks and Geeks” which sadly only lasted one season. Thankfully the show lived on thanks to the internet and gained a new fanbase by playing the series on cable. That’s how I discovered the series and fell in love with it.

After a campaign from fans online, “Freaks and Geeks” finally garnered a very acclaimed deluxe release on DVD, and now after many, many years, Shout! Factory is offering fans a brand new deluxe Blu-Ray release of “Freaks And Geeks.” As a fan of the series, I highly suggest it to folks that love coming of age period drama comedies as it’s right up there with “Wonder Years” and “Happy Days.” Here are five reasons why you should buy the new release if you’ve never seen the series before.

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Creed (2015) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

The Rocky saga has always been about parental issues and how parenting and lack thereof define our characters. Rocky had no real parents thus he was always thought of as a loser who gained a dad through Mickey. Adrian and Pauley were each others’ parents, while Rocky’s own son is somewhat a distant memory by the time “Creed” rolls around thanks to Rocky’s own destructive quest for glory. Despite their bonding in “Rocky Balboa” Rocky is still a lonely hermit of a man who runs a restaurant and lives in Philadelphia, still mourning the loss of wife Adrian and best friend Pauley. His effect has had more of a profound effect than he ever realized, as director Ryan Coogler reaches in to the Balboa mythology to touch on another family within the fold of the series that we rarely visited.

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