By: Jeff Ching Despite the title, Vengeance is really not a revenge movie (though revenge is part of the plot), and it’s especially not an action movie. Actually, it’s much better and smarter than what you’d expect. It’s a very ambitious film that attempts many things: it’s a fish-out-of-water comedy with a dark sense of humour, a murder mystery, it’s satirical, it’s philosophical. The movie has a lot to say about the current state of America…
From Awesomeness Films (You Get Me, Spontaneous, Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series) comes Honor Society, a teen movie that’s darker than expected. Considering how annoying the film’s smug trailer was, I appreciated this unexpected edgier approach. However, the execution is imperfect and isn’t nearly as measured as it should be.
Produced and completed during our current era of COVID, Apples is a strange and accidentally timely import from Greece, following a vacant mind (Aris Servetalis) during the early stages of a pandemic that’s quietly sweeping over the public. Victims who are affected by the unknown sickness lose their memory at the drop of a hat. Those who don’t have any immediate support are referred to a rehabilitation program for the unidentifiable where they must complete…
By: Jeff Ching I was excited when I found out that Stanleyville was the feature directorial debut of Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, who wrote 2013’s The Father – one of the most criminally underrated dark comedies of all time. The Father was a Canadian film about a husband and father trying to move on with his life after dealing with the shocking news of his wife getting arrested for cheating on him…with a minor. What a concept, and a hilariously…
Dual is a nifty near-future sci-fi that starts with an interesting and obviously satirical premise and elevates it to make comments on the dire state of personal interactivity. It’s well-trodden territory for this genre, but writer/director Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defense) still finds original ways to keep his audience laughing, entertained, and on their toes.
Written by Jenny Lester and directed by Amy Northup, What She Said dubs itself a “feminist dark comedy” – an apt description for a film that combines dry humour with a frank examination of sexual assault and its consequences.
Zola, to an extent, is experimental with its narrative. While it flows coherently, the film is very much still in tune with its source material – a series of tweets explaining a story that’s “strange yet true” – and presents itself as someone spinning you a wild yarn (intercut with tangents and outbursts).
By: Trevor Chartrand In the delightfully surreal Death of a Ladies’ Man, director Matt Bissonette addresses some hard-hitting subjects in a mature (yet somehow silly) way. This darkly funny film was heavily influenced and inspired by the work of Leonard Cohen, and the late artist’s presence in the film will not go unnoticed. The film explores themes and ideas present in Cohen’s music, and features a soundtrack that includes plenty of Cohen songs.
Promising Young Woman is a provocative call to arms that’s both committed to its cause and impossibly funny. It’s one hell of a feature-length debut from writer/director Emerald Fennell, who has previously acted on the UK’s Call the Midwife and Netflix’s The Crown, as well as wrote for AMC’s Killing Eve.
