Alex Phillips’ feature debut All Jacked Up and Full of Worms plays out like a never-ending string of hallucinations. It’s never clear what’s actually rooted in reality and the movie becomes so surreal, it’s impossible for it to return to normalcy.
Filipino American comedian Jo Koy (known for his Netflix specials Live from Seattle and Comin’ In Hot) makes his debut as a leading man in Easter Sunday, a loosely autobiographical comedy that draws on cultural and family dynamics to conjure relatable situational comedy.
By: Liam Parker Scary movies are supposed to keep us up at night. Things that go bump in the night and lurk beyond the shadows rob us of our ability for a good night’s sleep. John Farrelly’s The Sleep Experiment, however, has the opposite effect: it leaves you begging to close your eyes. But wait, the movie isn’t bad! You’ll feel the need to escape to slumberland in order to feel safe again.
By: Liam Parker Reminiscent of Jason Robert Brown’s hit musical The Last Five Years, The Swearing Jar takes the traditional tropes of a rocky relationship and turns them completely on its head. The Swearing Jar is a masterclass in storytelling. What begins as a beautifully sombre tale of love and heartache accented by musical interludes of haunting beauty, descends into a striking and refreshingly human tale of sorrow, loss, and grief.
Jordan Peele has quickly proven to be a filmmaker with a lot on his mind, which he then translates effortlessly to the screen. His intelligent writing for Get Out earned him an Oscar, and Us convinced audiences that Peele’s feature-length debut wasn’t just a fluke. Peele’s third film, Nope, allows the writer/director to expand his scope; both with his screenwriting and as a visual storyteller.
Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone, Coraline) is a gifted visionary. Even when his stop-motion animated movies become too outrageous or “out there”, it’s a pleasure watching him throw caution to the wind to create art. Selick has teamed up with Netflix and Academy Award winning screenwriter Jordan Peele (Get Out) for his latest stop-motion horror-fantasy Wendell & Wild, a freaky flick involving an orphan making a connection to the afterlife to make…
Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) aspires to give audiences a different type of police procedural with Decision to Leave, but I’m afraid he’s put too much of his focus on trying to deliver innovation rather than a story that’s either compelling or accessible.
By: Liam Parker Nostalgia in cinema is a fickle thing. If done right, it can invoke memories of a forgotten time; sparking comforting feelings in those that lived through it and sparking interest in those who didn’t. Done wrong however, and it can feel like the film is just rehashing old material – like your drunk uncle telling you the same jokes you read in a dog-eared joke book from your elementary school library. While…
By: Jeff Ching When I first saw the trailer for Ticket to Paradise, opening with that scene of George Clooney and Julia Roberts as two divorcees who don’t want to sit beside each other on the plane, I wondered whether this was some kind of spin-off of Oceans 11. How interesting of an idea for these characters to get their own movie; an aftermath of what happened to their relationship after that big heist…or multiple heists….
Terrifier was an excellent example of how word-of-mouth benefited an indie. If you were within horror circles (or chatting with other Netflix subscribers about what random movies were in your queue), people couldn’t stop talking about the film’s antagonist (a sinister and silent clown named Art played by David Howard Thornton), as well as how unforgivably gnarly and violent Damien Leone’s movie was.