suicide_theory 6.5

THE SUICIDE THEORY Review

Dru Brown’s Australian crime drama The Suicide Theory is an interesting character piece that frames ideas about life, death and fate around an endearing premise. The film begins simple enough with a desperate man hiring a cold and remorseless hitman in order to kill himself, having not had much success on his own. The catch here is that the man is apparently incapable of dying. The two men eventually form a bond, and their tragic pasts converge in a gripping and satisfying way.

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Fantasia Fest 2015: Final Wave of Films Announced

The final set of Fantasia Fest films has been announced for its 2015 edition, and they have once again outdone themselves with a massive amount of great looking entries including the love action Attack on TitanAdrien Garcia Bogliano‘s latest, Scherzo Diabolico, and three

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STUNG Review

I’ve always been a sucker for the creature feature; describe a movie as “giant killer (insert literally any noun in here),” and I’ll probably be excited to check it out – the campier the better. Such is the case with director Benni Diez’s feature debut, Stung, which involves giant killer wasps. It’s, gross, violent, silly and sometimes just plain stupid but in the best kind of way. Top it off with two completely ridiculously fun performances from Clifton Collins Jr. and Lance Henriksen, and you have yourself a bloody good time.

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Filmquest 2015: Short and Sweet – The Shorts Part III

A daunting 150 short films are currently being screened at the Megaplex 17 at Jordon Commons in Sandy, Utah, for the Second Annual Filmquest Film Festival, which celebrates the horror, fantasy and science-fiction genres.

These films represent a wide variety of themes

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Filmquest 2015: Short Circuit – The Shorts Part II

A daunting 150 short films are currently being screened at the Megaplex 17 at Jordon Commons in Sandy, Utah, for the Second Annual Filmquest Film Festival, which celebrates the horror, fantasy and science-fiction genres.

These films represent a wide variety of themes

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Filmquest 2015: Lighting a Short Fuse – The Shorts Part I

A daunting 150 short films are currently being screened at the Megaplex 17 at Jordon Commons in Sandy, Utah, for the Second Annual Filmquest Film Festival, which celebrates the horror, fantasy and science-fiction genres.

These films represent a wide variety of themes

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LAFF 2015: IT’S ALREADY TOMORROW IN HONG KONG Review

The films that comprise Richard Linklater’s Sunrise Trilogy are considered by many to be some of the best independent features of the last couple decades. In the trilogy, two strangers meet in the first film, and each subsequent film picks up their story several years after the previous installment. It’s very much like the acclaimed 7 Up saga, in which a group of individuals are revisited every seven years. With that in mind, it’s easy to dismiss Emily Ting’s feature film directorial debut as a “Linklater wannabe,” but though the formula may seem familiar, Ting’s directorial style and writing are not. It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong is an engaging and relatable romantic drama that poses some interesting, awkward and heartfelt questions about life, love and the pursuit of talking plush toys.

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The 2015 Filmquest Film Festival

For the second year in a row, the science-fiction, fantasy and horror genres descended upon an unsuspecting Utah populace. The second largest film festival in the state of Utah has returned with a new offering of the fantastic. From June 18 to

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LAFF 2015: BE HERE NOW Review

“Never stop; never stop fighting till the fight is done.”

It seems rather odd for Be Here Now to open with a quote from The Untouchables, especially when one takes into consideration just what this particular film is about. Lilibet Foster’s powerful, intimate and emotional documentary chronicles Andy Whitfield’s battle with life-threatening cancer.

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THE WOLFPACK Review

If I told you that there was a premise for a movie about seven children who were locked in a Lower East Side apartment for their whole lives who then finally decide to break out and see the world, you might think that it sounds like a lovely piece of fiction. But the kicker about Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack is that it is a factual documentary that is truly stranger than fiction.

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DWF 2015: WELCOME TO HAPPINESS Review

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: If you aren’t a fan of Wes Anderson’s catalogue of films, you’ll have problems with Oliver Thompson’s Welcome to Happiness. Stylistically and tonally, this is an Anderson clone, from the slow-motion walks to the quirky sets and camerawork. If this is something you can look at as homage, rather than cloning someone else’s voice, then you’ll have a good time with this film.

frank 7.5

DWF 2015: HELLO, MY NAME IS FRANK… Review

Figuring out how to get an audience to see a film that viewers may have preconceived notions about can certainly be a challenge, and it rests in the hands of the filmmakers and promoters to do just that. Hello, My Name is Frank… – a coming-of-age, road-trip film that features a developmentally disabled individual – appears on the surface to be exploitative in the worst kind of way. However, this film is filled with endearing characters on a journey that isn’t at all exploitative and has plenty of heart, laughs and cussing.

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BFF 2015: Award Winners Announced

The 18th annual Brooklyn Film Festival has officially wrapped, and with that, the winners of this this year’s awards have been announced. Joseph Frank and Zachary Reed‘s Sweaty Betty won the award for Best Feature Film, and Ryan Carmichael‘s for But Not for Me won

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DWF 2015: HONEYGLUE Trailer

Screening at this year’s Dances with Films Festival in Los Angeles, we have the first trailer for Honeyglue, from writer-director James Bird. The film stars Adriana Mather as a young woman who discovers she only has three months to live and decides to

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NYFF 2015: Robert Zemeckis’s THE WIRE to Open Fest

Robert Zemeckis‘s The Wire, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, has been announced as the opening night film of this year’s New York Film Festival, which is set to kick off September 25 – October 11. The film is based on the true story of Philippe

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DWF 2015: ALL I NEED Review

The setup for Dylan Narang’s feature debut, All I Need, is simple enough: a girl awakes, tied up in a room with multiple other girls – some dead, some unconscious – and she’s unaware of how she got there. Now she must escape before a masked killer comes back and kills her.

Sound familiar? Where this film slightly deviates from those like it is that there’s another story unfolding while the girl, Chloe (Caitlin Stasey), is trying to make her escape. The perspective randomly shifts to a guy being sent on seemingly random errands by a seemingly random Russian man over the phone. The two stories appear to have nothing to do with one another, but guess what? They eventually converge.