Every Ghost Has an Orchestra (2017) [Oceanside International Film Festival 2017]

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Emilie Black

A paranormal researcher and music composer goes to a barn to find the Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) in the old wood as he believes objects have memories of sounds from their past.

The film about researcher and compositor Michael Esposito is directed by Shayna Connelly, the film shows Esposito as the star at the center of the subject. He is shown as a prominent figure in the field while no others are interviewed. This renders the exploration of the subject a bit thin and one dimensional. Having no other experts corroborate his information or his research makes it less credible as it’s all from one point of view with no supporting evidence or opinions. This doesn’t mean the film is not interesting, but as a documentary short, using other experts would have helped it be more powerful and feel like the makers did more research.

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You Have to See This! NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell (2007)

Posted on August 11, 2017 by Felix Vasquez

“New York wasn’t burning. It was burnt!”

Director Henry Corra’s exploration of what New York was in 1977 is quite fantastic and a surprisingly rare chronicle of the political and economic turmoil that ironically bred timeless art and music. As a born and bred Bronxite, 1977 is a mythical year, and a period of the decade that I’ve heard about very often from elder family members. In particular, the night of the infamous black out of New York, my mom and uncle were stuck in the edge of downtown Manhattan and had to brave their way home during the mass looting and rioting. “NY77” garners a very unique tone that balances out the inherent importance of the year, the depressing living conditions of the city, and the obvious fun that was had by most, who managed to endure poverty with laughs and creativity.

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Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown (2017)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Phil Hall

Gregory Monro’s documentary offers a scattershot overview of Jerry Lewis’ life and career, with a heavy emphasis on the funnyman’s peaks while carefully avoiding the controversies and failures that he generated. Lewis was the son of entertainers who put their careers before his childhood needs, and an emotional low point occurred when his parents managed to miss his bar mitzvah because they had stage engagements. The film notes that Lewis’ meteoric success in the late 1940s when he was barely out of his twenties created friction with his father Danny Lewis, a singer who never achieved stardom.

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Starless Dreams (2016)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Phil Hall

This entry in Mehrdad Oskouei’s trilogy on Iranian youth in their nation’s justice system – following It’s Always Late for Freedom (2007) and The Last Days of Winter (2011) – focuses on teenage girls at a rehabilitation and correction center. This facility looks nothing like the stereotypical Iranian prison: the girls enjoy pizza parties, play Truth or Dare and engage in playful snowball fights. Indeed, at times the facility feels like a happy sorority rather than a hijab-clad version of Orange is the New Black.

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Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America (2016)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Phil Hall

Tiffany Rhynard’s documentary focuses on Moises Serrano, who came to the U.S. at the age of 18 months with his illegal immigrant Mexican parents. The Serrano family settled in rural North Carolina and lived without legal problems until 2007, when state laws began to crack down on the ability of illegal immigrants to have a driver’s license or obtain college scholarship funds.

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Red Gringo (2016)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Phil Hall

During the early 1960s, singer Dean Reed tried and failed to achieve stardom in the U.S. music scene. But he found a surprising level of popularity in South America, particularly in Chile, and for most of the 1960s he was a ubiquitous figure in the continent’s entertainment industry. Miguel Angel Viduarre’s documentary traces Reed’s unlikely stellar rise in South America, with rare recordings and film and television appearances that show the handsome performer perfectly at ease with Spanish-language lyrics.

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78/52 (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Felix Vasquez

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a hardcore film and horror buff and one of the first shots of a horror movie I ever recall watching was the scene in “Psycho” where Marion Crane is stalked in her shower and mercilessly stabbed to death. It’s a scene I’ve seen at least a thousand times since I was a child and its effectiveness and impact have never worn off for me. Every scene, every second, every single shot is so deliberate and meticulous that Hitchcock creates an entity on to itself in a genuinely flawless horror film. It’s not often you’ll find a full length documentary about one shot in an entire movie, but the iconic moment with Janet Leigh is a sequence that warrants so much examination and analyses. It’s every bit the symbolism and metaphor audiences of the fifties weren’t expecting.

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