Christmas has come early for Wes Anderson fans, as the director has reteamed with The Darjeeling Limited star Adrien Brody for a new train-centric adventure. The short film is a pretty inventive, and probably expensive, way for H&M to advertise some new
This week’s Kickstart Sunday pick comes to us from director Catherine Eaton and her upcoming mystery The Sounding. Expanded from a short film by the same name, The Sounding revolves around a young woman living with her grandfather on a remote island who
This week’s Kickstart Sunday pick comes to us from the master of schlock himself, Frank Henenlotter, and his upcoming documentary The Trial of Mike Diana. If the name doesn’t sound familiar, Mike Diana was a cartoonist who, in 1994, was arrested and
Arcanum Pictures has embarked on a new project titled The Dead Kids Club, a series of interwoven short stories evoking splendid images of classic teen horror books like Goosebumps and Fear Street. The first entry, The Givertaker, has been released online for
This week on Kickstart Sunday, we’re looking at the latest feature film from director Theodore Collatos (Dipso), titled Tormenting the Hen. The film is a psychological thriller about a couple heading to a rural town in order to show off their play at a
A few weeks back, Kevin and I covered an anthology film called Collective: Unconscious on the podcast, an interesting experimental film where five filmmakers interpreted each other’s dreams to surprisingly great effect. Now, the creators of that project, Dan Schoenbrun and Vanessa McDonnell, are working
Let’s be honest – nobody looks forward to cleaning. That’s why apartment cleaning services like Handy have seen crazy growth over the last few years. Still, that doesn’t mean cleaners and maids don’t make for compelling film topics! Take a look at our list of our favorite cleaning-focused movies.
9
There are a number of aspects to the feature-length debut of Albert Birney and Jon Moses that can be seen (and should be seen) as impressive achievements in the realm of DIY creativity and execution; so many, in fact, that deciding upon the most crucial of these executions in terms of rendering the film an overall success is an impossible task as all of these imaginative facets are integral to the film’s overall charm and allure. The handmade sets, the creature costumes, the original music, the animation techniques, among others all coalesce into one of the more singular films to surface in the past decade (or so); one overloaded with imagination and fantasy.
This week’s Kickstart Sunday pick comes to us from writer-director Wendy McColm and her dark comedy Birds Without Feathers. The film revolves around six individuals whose lives intersect as they attempt to desperately find human connection.
9.5
Khawaja and Puca have constructed a dense work, disheveled in its themes and structure seemingly about everything and nothing in particular all at the same time, and yet they have also created a work that is concurrently lightweight given its tone and sense of humor, a jovial jumble of carefree attitudes that cover the surface of a penetrating look at the therapeutic ability of creative expression and the fortifying nature of collaborative relationships.
8
Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan’s enigmatic debut, For The Plasma, seemingly about everything and nothing all at the same time rests at the intersection of cerebral over-complication and tongue-in-cheek, lo-fi jaunt, all on a nearly non-existent indie budget. The film’s playful avoidance of categorization or its incessant need to avoid any normal, discernible narrative path will surely have viewers, either, reveling in the ambiguity of it all or steadily growing ever more exasperated by its opaque nature.
10
A miscellany of genres presented with a potpourri of visual stylings, Momoko Andô’s 0.5mm emulsifies screwball comedy and affecting drama into one epic emotional traversing across generational divides. Entrance into the lives of these pensioners is reluctantly granted through stereotypes and book-cover judgments then coaxed via blackmail into living arraignments that, in turn, give way to complex character portraits of lonely men in the diminuendo of life, cast aside from society and left to wilt away in their homes.
8.5
An unidentified war rages in the vicinity of an unidentified location within an unidentified time period in Aaron Schimberg’s directorial debut, Go Down Death, a cinematic adaptation based on the fabricated writings of folklorist Jonathan Mallory Sinus; a fluid traversing of vignettes, punctuated by mortar shells and rocket explosions, hosted by a collection of eccentrics killing time in their own ways.
8
With Green, her directorial debut, actress/producer Sophia Takal has taken the surface-level simplicity of the film’s thematic frame and transformed it into a nuanced exploration of inferred motivations and assumed objectives through a gradual probing of seemingly harmless interactions (both verbal and nonverbal), examining the psychological impact of insecurity, envy and jealousy.
This week’s Kickstart Sunday pick is the latest from directors Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn, titled 2 Plains & A Fancy. Being a fan of their last film, L For Leisure, I’m very pumped to check this one out, which takes place in
7
Manatos buries the addiction thread underneath the reconnection attempts of two estranged siblings - Cullen (Leo Fitzpatrick) and Ian (Cris Lankenau) - tentatively groping for entry-points with little to no success, sub/consciously hopeful that nostalgia and adolescent replays might broker the reparative bond they are after.
