“Raiders!” is easily one of the best films of 2016. It’s a compelling and incredibly emotional tale of how one movie influenced a trio of young boys, and how that piece of art not only paved the road for their future, but also save them in many ways. What becomes incredibly evident throughout the duration of “Raiders!” that makes what unfolds before our eyes a truly gut wrenching journey is that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were men influenced by movies. Thanks to their love for serials and Westerns, they were motivated to make “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as a means of confronting their love for classic serial adventurers. After seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in theaters, young Eric Zala sought out to remake of “Raiders” but with teenagers in place of the adult actors.
Tag Archives: Indie Film
Fantasia International Film Festival 2016 Wrap-Up
This year’s edition of Fantasia was their 20th, having missed only three or four, I was eager to attend this anniversary year. As usual since moving from Montreal to Southern California, I was only able to attend for a short period, so I made sure to enjoy it as much as possible, making it a point to see films with a crowd and going to the official festival pub while attending the same week as the market and a few friends. I also made a point to see as many movies as possible, seeing a grand total of 28 films for which the reviews can be found at the below this piece (before the list of winners).
Girl in the Basement (2016)
Jared Skolnick and Kt Baldassaro’s short thriller is a vicious bit of human introspection that explores how far we are willing to go to survive. Not to mention what areas of darkness of our humanity we’re willing to explore if it meant living for just one more day. Despite the somewhat over the top finale, Kt Baldassaro’s performance is powerful and absolutely gut wrenching. You can almost feel every bit of pain and torment she experiences, and almost root for her, despite the fact the situation she is in offers absolutely no hope or light at the end of the tunnel. Kt Baldassaro plays Susan Larch, a young medical student who is attacked by a serial killer outside of her house and kidnapped.
Brix and the Bitch (2016)
Director and Writer Nico Raineau’s award winning “Brix and the Bitch” is a remarkable drama about the powerful love two women share, and how it can potentially decide their future when one of them is stuck in a terrible situation. Dre Swain is fantastic as Bitch, a martial artist who engages in a near endless string of fights for an illegal gambling circuit. Despite her girlfriend Brix’s insistence that she stop before she’s killed, Bitch engages in bone shattering fights every night.
Session 9 (2001) [Blu-Ray]
Brad Anderson’s supernatural thriller is perhaps one of the most criminally overlooked genre entries of the early aughts. In a time where most audiences are embracing cinema about the supernatural, “Session 9” deserves another look and so much more praise than ever. Director Anderson doesn’t opt for cheap jump scares and shocks, so much as he does a slow boil and uneasy thriller that culminates in a rather disturbing explosion. Upon first viewing “Session 9” it’s safe to say the climax threw me for a loop and kept me thinking about it for days. “Session 9” feels so much like a real life dramatization of actual events, thanks to director Anderson’s digital photography and tendency to film in one setting for the duration of “Session 9.”
Clown (2016) [Blu-Ray/Digital]
For such a unique premise and concept, it’s surprising how unremarkable “Clown” ends up being, in the end. Despite its best efforts, “Clown” feels like a short film that perhaps should have stayed a short film, as most of its narrative feels spread out to fit a hundred minutes. And I don’t know how they’ll pull off a sequel, if the final scene is any indication. “Clown” probably watches a lot better as a short film, but it breezes through the premise in the first thirty minutes and stops being interesting by the end of the first hour. Kent is an average dad who finds out the clown he had booked for his son’s birthday has cancelled. Anxious to keep his promise of a clown, Kent goes rummaging through his basement and finds a clown suit locked in a mysterious chest.
All Girls Weekend (2016)
“All Girls Weekend” isn’t anything that the cool poster promises. It’s an ensemble, is set in winter, and is not really a slasher movie. Lou Simon’s horror movie is actually a film in the vein of “The Descent” and “The Ruins” where a group of young female hikers going away together for a fun weekend end up getting lost in the middle of the woods. Before long their hike turns in to an endless trip in to insanity where the woods are seemingly sentient, and hell bent on driving them mad. What keeps “All Girls Weekend” lackluster and the aforementioned movies white knuckled horror entries is simple: The characters.
While the all female cast seem to do their damndest to pull in great turns (and many of them look like they can potentially dominate horror down the road), the concept of being lost in the woods and going hungry and thirsty never seems to dawn on them. At all. When another of their friends is stabbed in the leg with a branch and is seemingly so wounded she can barely breathe, the friends do nothing but apathetically mock one another. When she dies, it has no punch dramatically and adds nothing. After leaving her corpse behind one of the characters literally asks aloud “Aren’t we all upset?” to which the other replies, “Of course. God I’m thirsty. Anyone have any water?”
Compare that with the devastating claustrophobia and the delirium of running around in a dark cave in “The Descent” and the difference is apparent. What should have been a mind fuck about falling victim to a sentient natural landscape comes off as a mere nuisance to the characters most times. By the time they realize they’re in deep dung, it’s too little, too late. It’s a shame since I really enjoyed Simon’s previous horror outing “HazMat,” and I love her idea of filling these genre entries with more minority characters of great importance to the narrative. Sadly, “All Girls Weekend” is filled with truly vapid and unlikable protagonists, feels stretched thin, and is under developed.
Available on VOD.