After watching the insane promotional music video for Excess Flesh last fall, the film immediately jumped to the top of my “must watch” list. Blood, sex, psychosis, and all the other things that make a genre film exciting were there, all infused with a song.
This debut feature film, directed by Patrick Kennelly–co-written by Kennelly and Sigrid Gilmer–centers on Jill (Bethany Orr), a young woman who has struggled to find her footing in Los Angeles. She’s become a shut-in, much to the frustration of her beautiful and outgoing roommate Jennifer (Mary Loveless). Jennifer is highly critical of Jill and her inertia, and often targets her with abusive comments. Jennifer rationalizes her cruelty as being direct and no nonsense, but it chips away at Jill until she snaps one day and chains Jennifer to a wall. While Jill descends into madness, Jennifer’s chances of surviving the ordeal grows increasingly unlikely.
Read MoreRocky Balboa is up there with Superman as one of the greatest fictional characters of the 20th century, the original Rocky is generally considered one of the greatest American movies ever made. It spawned a franchise with an inspiring but uneven legacy. Watching Rocky IV, the character, though still written and portrayed by Sylvester Stallone, is unrecognizable compared to who he was in the first couple of films. Rocky V was an attempt to correct that, but was deeply flawed and very poorly received. To this day, when most people think of Rocky, they think of the utter ridiculous that was Rocky IV. Even if Rocky V was a much better film, I still do not believe it would have been embraced at the time of its release due to audience expectations of what a Rocky film should be. The franchise was all but dead (as the character would have been if Stallone went with his initial idea to have Rocky die at the end of the fifth film). Fortunately the failure of Rocky V paved the way for the sublime Rocky Balboa in 2006. No one, myself included, expected the film to be much of anything. Stallone wisely used that perception to his advantage, crafting the most fitting companion piece to the original film and giving the character a most deserved and well-earned send-off. But just as Rocky’s story comes full circle, the story of Adonis Creed begins.
Read MoreStanding out among the glut of indie horror films is never an easy task. A strong trailer is typically a safe and effective way to grab audiences’ attention and build buzz, but every film has a trailer. It’s hardly unique. Perhaps that is why I was so pleasantly surprised to hear about the upcoming film Excess Flesh not from a trailer, but a music video.
Music video tie-ins to films were prevalent throughout much of the 90s, garnering frequent airplay on MTV and showing off a hard-to-ignore tune folks would find in the film once it was in theaters. In that tradition, Patrick Kennelly, the director of Excess Flesh, and the film’s composer Jonathan Snipes teamed up to create this excellent video for the track “I Don’t Race” featuring the film’s star Mary Loveless.
Read MoreAcclaimed Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is no stranger to Fantastic Fest, appearing in 2013 with Jodorowsky’s Dune and again last year for the documentary My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn directed by his wife Liv Corfixen. He returned once again this year with Fantastic Fest serving as the perfect launching pad for his new book Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing.
Read MoreWill (Logan Marshall-Green) is invited to a dinner party thrown by his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) in the home they once shared. Neither Will nor the rest of the guest list has seen Eden in two years, not since she attempted suicide following the accidental death of their young son. Both Will and Eden have moved on: Will brings along his new girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi); Eden is remarried to David (Michiel Huisman), someone she met during her recovery. The reunion of Will and Eden, along with their closest friends, is expected to be painful, but even Will can’t expect what comes next.
Read MoreLondon-born Piotr (Itay Tiran) moves to rural Poland to marry Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska). Her father Zgmunt (Andrzej Grabowski) has gifted them a lovely but rundown house that’s been in the family. Piotr has plans for restoring the house and the wedding ceremony will be held in the adjacent barn. On the eve of the wedding, Piotr discovers buried human remains on the property. Zgmunt casts doubts as to what Piotr found and urges his new son-in-law not to tell Zaneta. Over the course of the wedding reception, the usually cool Piotr sudden;y becomes more and more erratic. Zgmunt and his son Jasny (Tomasz Schuchardt) work to keep the party going and explain away Piotr’s behavior–he’s on something, he’s epileptic, it’s food poisoning, and so on. It’s soon clear he’s been possessed by a dybbuk, the restless spirit of the young woman whose remains he found.
Read MoreNot every movie we managed to see this year’s Fantastic Fest could get a full review or discussion. There’s just too many and not enough time. However, we wanted to share as much as we could, so here are some quick thoughts and first impressions on films screened.
Read MoreIf Cloud Atlas and Adaptation had a lovechild who grew up to be the coolest kid in school, it would be named Zoom. This feature directed by Pedro Morelli and written by Matt Hansen dazzles with kinetic style, effectively weaving three narratives together into a singular study of the standards of beauty and the creation of artist works.
Read More“God exists. He lives in Brussels.”
With those lines, The Brand New Testament begins.
Fueled by a playful exuberance reminiscent of Jeunet’s Amélie, this new film by Jaco Van Dormael explores the writing of a “Brand New Testament” by the 10-year-old Ea after she leaves behind her curmudgeon of a father, who is in fact God (the Old Testament one through and through, delighting in creating the annoyances that plague mankind from his relic of a desktop PC) and her quiet mother who sputters around their drab apartment embroidering, vacuuming, and admiring her baseball card collection. Ea wasn’t the first child to leave the household. Her brother JC (i.e., Jesus Christ) left and never returned, though a statue of him comes to life in Ea’s bedroom, offering himself as a sounding board for his younger sister.
Read MoreIn 2011, DC Comics made the surprising and controversial decision to reboot their entire line of comics, erasing years of continuity and starting fresh. In promotional images for the reboot, all their main characters had new costumes designs that reflected this new era. No longer were DC’s heroes clad in spandex. The red trunks Superman famously wore for decades were gone. His costume (and the costumes of his peers) more resembled battle-ready armor. But unlike the rest of the Justice League, Superman was featured in a second promotional image with a completely different and even more surprising outfit—a t-shirt and jeans.
Read More
