Director Carlos Andre Stevens’s “The Alchemist’s Letter” is quite an accomplishment. It’s a fairy tale that also works as a cautionary tale about the ills of greed, and the dangers of over ambition. Would you trade memories and family for piles of gold? That’s what the alchemist asks his son when he leaves behind a letter that gives him a stern warning on what putting aspirations over the truly important things can do to a person.
“Up Route” is another fun film from director Jordan Wippell, the man who is becoming full of surprises as his career progresses. With a strong screenplay by Brandon Scott and Brett Chapman, “Up Route” is a visit to the Grindhouse sub-genre that pits two men against each other in a road trip.
I loved Jordan Wippell’s “Meat” if only because it’s the slow unraveling of the inner conscious of a suburbanite that’s been repressed likely since childhood. It’s the inner delving in to the mind of a man who is unraveling before our very eyes and all we can do is watch. “Meat” has a very simple premise, but one that’s effective and suggestive when it closes to its credits sequence.
“Dawn” is an absolutely devastating film which is belied by its unbelievably vivid visual style of its innocent decade. Director Rose McGowan has a keen directorial sense, delivering one truly dark and vicious short film that is made even more gut wrenching thanks to the eerie performances by the entire cast.
And everywhere, eighties geeks just had the largest orgasm after watching “Kung Fury.” In fact, if you’re an eighties geek, I dare you not to break down in tears while watching. David Sanberg’s “Kung Fury” is bleeding eighties ephemera from every orifice. It’s a sweet eighties homage that mixes every cliché imaginable right down to the screaming police sergeant forcing a new partner on his rebel cop. Triceracop. There’s actually a goddamn Triceracop.
Scottie is experiencing a change of life that has him rethinking where he’s going and even worse is the fact that his massive success has nothing to do with drive or ambition. It’s merely dumb luck. Director Chris Esper’s “Please Punish Me” is a funny and charming dramedy about a man looking for a direction in life who finds it in the unlikeliest of places.
Director Alex DiVincenzo takes the “Scream” formula and gives it a modern dysfunctional twist with a film I can only describe as a laugh a minute satire. Commenting on the nature of auto correct and its utter horrific ability to take words in to inappropriate new variations, “The Horrors of Auto Correct” is brilliant.