Red Rover is an indie rom-com that questions the motivations behind one’s passion to enlist on the Mars One Project—and about the infection of wanderlust; everyone here is fear and loathing in Toronto, bumbling about as errant Huckleberry Finns. And Red Rover accomplishes that goal without any Passengers SFX pretentions, so Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt fans need to hit the emergency escape hatch button: this is not the film for you. For Red Rover isn’t a movie about exploring the frontiers of outer space, but the frontiers of one’s inner space. Yes, exploration is essential to human survival. But it’s not the exploration itself that’s the problem, but where we explore.

Philosophers Nikolai Gogol and Johann Wolfgang von Gothe expounded on man’s failed, perpetual quests for satisfaction: there’s always that one, elusive desire that weighs us down like Prometheus to a rock. For man is always searching for something else, something better; so busy looking down into our foolish, electronic devices that we never see the answer right in front us. We never realize that, while we may not have everything we want, we always have everything we need: each other. And it’s as easy as lifting our face and lighting another’s world with a smile. (There’s no reference to either writer in the film or any “electronic subtext”; that’s my interpretation of the material.)

And in Damon’s case, the answers, the happiness he aches for, don’t lie 33 million miles away, but right here on Earth.

Damon (Kristian Bruun of NBC-TV’s Departure and BBC America’s Orphan Black) is an ordinary average guy; a lonely, unemployed geologist dumped on by his report-stealing jerk of a boss and a heartless ex-girlfriend. To fill the emptiness, Damon putters around the beach with his metal detector.

It’s there that he meets Phoebe (Cara Gee of the SyFy Channel’s The Expanse and Harrison Ford’s recent film, Call of the Wild), a bohemian musician handing out promotional flyers—while wearing an astronaut suit, complete with helmet—for a reality TV series that will chronicle the Red Rover Project to Mars.

And with his life swirling in the past, and with Phoebe’s extroverted passion, Damon’s going for it. And he passes the application process. And the final interview process for the mission becomes a catalyst for turning his life around, as Damon gives an inspiring speech about exploring the unknown for the right reasons; on how we, as humans, can only grow by not wallowing in the past. And he soon realizes he doesn’t need to go to Mars to accomplish man’s prime directive: be truly you.

Shane Belcourt developed his writing and directing career with a series of shorts and feature documentaries. Discovering his background, in conjunction with watching Red Rover, his feature film debut, I couldn’t help but think of the similar career trajectory of William Eubanks: Belcourt has that same eye; the same passion.

Director William Eubank’s first two, under-the-radar films, the low-budget science fiction dramas Love (2011) and The Signal (2014), rightfully received worldwide critical acclaim for their ingenuity on a tight budget. And 20^th Century Fox took notice and handed him the director reins of Underwater. And I have no doubt the major studios will be knocking on Belcourt’s escape hatch sometime soon, for he has an equally bright future as a storyteller.

Red Rover makes its DVD, PPV, and VOD premiere on May 12. You can learn more at the film’s official website and Facebook page. Speaking of indie filmmakers, especially of the not-easy-to-shoot-on-no-budget sci-fi genre, I invite you to discover the low-budget gems Space Trucker Bruce by Anton Doiron and Robert Goodrich’s Ares 11.

Disclaimer: This movie was sent to us by its PR department. As always: you know that has nothing to do with our feelings on the movie.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

You’re Monte Light, a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado’s theatre program. You meet Drew Carey on CBS-TV’s long-running gameshow The Price is Right. And you walk away a winner.

What would you do with your winnings?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Monte Light, who’s honed his craft across five award-winning shorts and received kudos from the Toronto Wildsound, Las Vegas, and Austin Film Festivals — in addition to contributing a segment to the 2018 horror anthology 2 Die For (which features a segment from For Jennifer‘s James Cullen Bressack) — decided to make a movie with the $11,000 he cleared from the game show.

And as with the similarly, ultra-low budget sci-fi romps Space Trucke Bruce and Ares 11, this writer is as impressed-as-hell with the end result. So keep that all in mind because, if you’re expecting an Ad Astra with space walks and moon buggy battles in the frames of Space, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re a film lover who appreciates inventiness against a tight budget, then you’ll appreciate Monte Light’s efforts. If you enjoyed the claustrophobic settings of John Carpenter’s Dark Star, which we mentioned in passing in our reviews of Space Trucker Bruce and Ares 11, then you’ll enjoy your journey on The Udo.

In the year 2050, the BrightSTAR Corporation launches the five-manned deep-space mission Udo to terraform the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, with experimental nanotechnology.

The crew is headed by Dr. Ada Grey (Lara Jean Sullivan of 2Jennifer), an astrobiologist who developed the nanite technology used on the mission. The mission goes south when the nanotechnology develops into a man-made alien that threatens the crew and an accident leaves them each trapped in separate escape pods. A nice twist-of-the-plot statement about online relationships occurs as a romance blossoms between Dr. Grey and the mission’s French pilot Evan Durand (Kurt Quinn from Law & Order: True Crime), the mission’s last two survivors, over the pod’s communications system.

Since were on a low-budget, and even thought the story unfolds in real time, Light opted to use a cost-effective, psuedo-documentary-cum-found footage narrative. As result, we watch most of the film from the ship’s security cameras and we see the tale unfold in split-screen, complete with electronic interference. So, if it seems that the actors are inept, they’re not: the staring/talking into the cameras is part of the film’s narrative. Ah, but there’s more to the cameras and mics (as a cost-cut): they’re mounted around the ship to document the long-term psychological effects of deep space travel.

Sure, you can nitpick Space apart into stardust, but when one considers the non-budget Light worked with, the cinematography, set design, and limited CGI (for the ship’s exteriors) is top notch. And as we pointed out: the costumes developed by Doug Marr are simply astounding. And the experienced, but unknown cast (which features Len Kabasinski, currently directing Pact of Vengenance starring Leo Fong) sells the sets and the “reality” they live in, just as effectively as the cast in William Malone’s Alien ripoff Creature (1985) and Carey and Chad Hayes’s The Dark Side of the Moon (1990), of which Space’s budgetary sets and costumes reminds. Some may say the film could use a tighter edit, but we must again consider the “real time” aspects of the film and the surveillance camera narrative serves as a medical-psychological mission log.

Watching Monte Light’s $11,000 journey to Ceres unfold reminds me of William Eubank’s sci-fi indies Love (2011) and The Signal (2014). And Eubank’s ended up being hired by 20^th Century Fox to direct Underwater (2020). So I have a good feeling we’ll see Monte Light helming a major studio sci-fi film in the near future. As we pointed out with Anthony Z. James’s Ghost: It’s not the budget or the technology, it’s how the filmmaker uses the technology within that budget.

And Space is Monte Light’s beginning on an amazing journey through the stars of Hollywood. Watch him now, so you can say, you knew him when.

Space was released on March 31st by Random Media via Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Microsoft for XBox, and Vimeo, and as a manufactured-on-demand DVD. You can learn more about Random Media’s catalog on Facebook and about the film’s production on its official Facebook page. As of October 2020, you can also stream Space on the new 1091 Pictures service. It’s also now part of the programming of the Unidentified web channel on the XUMO streaming service that offers free-with-ads live TV streams as well as a TubiTV-styled “watch anytime” VOD stream.

Monte Light, along with his crew and cast, held a You Tube watch party on May 25, 2020, at the time of the release to offer additional insights to the film. Light has since returned to streaming platforms in 2023 with his homage to F.W Murnau’s Nosferatu* with Blood Covered Chocolate. As of April 2023, you can watch both of Light’s films as a free-with-ads stream on Tubi. (*We’ve reviewed the Klaus Kinski-starring remake, Nosferatu the Vampyre; click through to learn more about the Murnau original.)

Disclaimer: We weren’t provided with a screener for Space. We discovered it on our own and genuinely enjoyed the movie.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

If you’re in the market for an Asylum-styled Christian disaster flick, you just found it. And, as with most Christian flicks, the bible is interpreted — literally.

Well, okay. Maybe not literally.

There’s no mention of bees in The Book of Revelation (9:3-10 displays as an opening title card), but locusts. But who cares!? Let’s have some B-Movie fun! We dug Ants on a Plane, right? Throw your inhibitions for schlock cinema to the wind and just thank the Lord that John of Patmos didn’t interpret his future-visions of battle helicopters (at least according to dispensationalist Hal Lindsey) as sharks. And besides, we already had sharks doin’ da portmanteau waltz with earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, and tsunamis in the mockbuster wastelands.

So . . . hell has literally broken loose all over the world in the form of unexplainable “9-11-styled” attacks . . . meanwhile, deep in the jungles of Namibia, some entomologists discover a new hybrid of giant bees makin’ honey. Yep, nature is ready to run amok . . . right into a disaster flick.

Cut to Los Angeles: We have a trio of gang members fleeing the wastelands of La La Land. And they have a roadside showdown with two bible-thumpin’ n’ gun totin’ desert rednecks and a female sheriff. The mixed-bag sextet isolate themselves, George Romero-style, in the remote farmhouse of a god-fearing father and his “anointed daughter.” And yes, some zombies, well, if we portmanteau it, “ZomBees” created by bee-stings, do show up along the way.

And did you know the “ZomBee” plague was foretold by the book of Daniel 12:5?

“The multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: Some to everlasting life; others to disgrace and shame.”

See? It pays to know your bible.

Tsunambee was originally released in 2015 as Tsunambee: The Wrath Cometh, and received a truncated title and new artwork for its VOD reboot. Directors and writers Milko Davis and Thomas Martwick also collectively brought us The Jurassic Dead, Jurssaic Thunder. Davis made his debut with Raiders of the Damned.

As long as you give Davis and Martwick a wide berth and realize this was their debut feature film, and consider we had a fun time watching their most recent effort, Jurassic Thunder, you’ll have fun streaming their latest VOD offering as a free-with-ads flick on Tubi. Don’t want the ads? Stream it on Amazon.

Disclaimer: This was sent to us by Wild Eye Releasing.

Update: Do you want to be a part of a Milko flick? In November 2021, Team Milko launched a Kickstarter campaign for the production and release of his next film, Phantom Patrol.

About the Author: You can visit R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.