When his daughter is threatened by kidnappers, a deadbeat detective (Joseph Graham) sets out to investigate a cryptic note left behind, one that finds him investigating a case that involves time, space and a kitchen sink. Directed by Justin Perry (Nothing Really Happens), who co-wrote it with Amy Anderson — who also plays Jane — this movie is quite simply a ton of fun. Setting itself as a time, teleporting or magic kind of thing, this creates a Schrödinger’s cat situation out of that strange note and messages delivered to people saying things like “Don’t buy a sword.”
It’s strange in all the best of ways and moves at a rapid clip that never gets tired or plain. In fact, I kind of want to watch it again right now.
This was originally called Dickhead and I can imagine that the new title is helping it get seen more.
You can watch this and so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
The quantum suicide thought experiment is a lot like Schrödinger’s cat. In that, a cat, A cat, a Geiger counter, and a bit of radioactive poison are placed in a sealed box. Quantum mechanics believes that after some time, we can consider the cat to be both alive and dead. If you were to look into the box, you would find out the truth, but for now, you must assume that the cat is in both states.
A quantum suicide is an experiment where the box kills an occupant in a given time frame with a probability of one-half due to quantum uncertainty.
The difference?
The person inside the box is recording their observations of what is happening.
The significance?
This person is in a life and death situation and realizes it, unlike the cat.
There are also three rules, as written by Max Tegmark in Our Mathematical Universe:
The random number generator must be quantum, not deterministic, so that the experimenter enters a state of superposition of being dead and alive.
The experimenter must be rendered dead (or at least unconscious) on a time scale shorter than that on which they can become aware of the outcome of the quantum measurement.
The experiment must be virtually certain to kill the experimenter, and not merely injure them.
Man, I hate math.
Directed and written by Gerrit Van Woudenberg, Quantum Suicide is about a physicist on a quest for the Grand Unifying Theory of Physics.
You know, the Theory of Everything.
He builds a particle accelerator in his garage and begins his research into the nature of reality. In the process of his experiments, he suffers radiation poisoning, loses his vision and causes his partner to leave him. Yet in his obsession, which has seemingly destroyed his life, he finds some level of understanding and clarity. Only one test remains to finish his work.
This isn’t the kind of movie filled with action. It requires plenty of thought and attention. I really liked the messages within it, but trust me, it’s not for everyone. But for viewers ready to experience this film, it has plenty to reward you with.
You can learn more about this movie on the official site.
You can watch this and so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
Directed by Adam and Skye Mann, A Guide to Becoming an Elm Treestarts when Padraig (James Healy-Meaney) seeks out how to build a coffin for his recently deceased — but already buried — wife and works with a mysterious carpenter. The carpenter demands that this not be a simple project and requires not just the skills of hammer, saw and file but also the study of the trees and how they will lend themselves to making the perfect container for his lost wife. However, Padraig finds a book in the carpenter’s house that allows him to get done faster, which as you can guess, just goes wrong.
Shot in stark black and white and filled with Irish accents that may seem imperceptible to American ears — the closed captioning is a must — this is a film that is filled with longing, loss and magic that still finds itself in the world. It’s definitely worth a watch.
You can watch this and so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
Joe Sarno week (June 16 – 22) Joe Sarno was called the Bergman of 42nd St, but don’t let that stop you from watching his movies! He was able to shape dramatic stories that were entertaining and of-the-moment while working with tight budgets and inexperienced performers but he never lost sight of why people were buying the tickets – HOT SEX!
Also known as Kvinnolek, this Joe Sarno-directed and written movie is about Lisa Holmberg (Gunbritt Öhrström), who is the latest Sarno leading lady to be gorgeous and at the same time emotionally unsatisfied, no matter how well the rest of her high fashion life may be.
She heads to the country to rest and meets Ingrid (Gunilla Iwansson), a young girl who she convinces that she could escape her normal life and become a model. Of course, she also has her own designs on her young charge. Can Sapphic May and December — more like February and June — romance blossom?
This was brought to the U.S. by Cannon, which seemingly carried everything Sarno was making.
I love that when this played Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Press drama editor Thomas Blakely said “Yes” draws no from one critic: Swedish import is cheap, shoddy, ragged sex romp. They sent the drama editor to a Joe Sarno movie!
Meanwhile, I Am Curious (Yellow) was playing in New Kensington at the Dattola Theater.
Are you looking to achieve higher states of consciousness using nothing but the raw ass power of cinema? Would your friends or family describe you as “the weird one?” We want you to know that we’re here for you. We’ve carefully constructed our WTF (Watch These Films?) and BRIDE OF WTF short film blocks with weirdos JUST LIKE YOU in mind. Our yearly salute to the stranger side of short cinema is in fine form this year, with a slate of shorts positively guaranteed to make mush of your mind, which feels REAL cool. WE KNOW. We’ve seen them. Also, we aren’t telling you to go out and hot box your car before you watch these films, but we also aren’t telling you to NOT hot box your car before you watch these films!
The Shadow Wrangler (2024): Nan (director and writer Grace Rex) is trying to narrate Western romance novels from the tiny closet of her New York City apartment. There really are paranormal erotic Western paperbacks called The Shadow Wranglers! And then, as she gets to the best part — you know, the throbbing manhood — construction starts happening in her building and her ex also shows up to try to talk.
This is an interesting take on a woman trying to deal with the end of her relationship, a miscarriage and how life seems to not always be figured out. The ending may not seem to completely come together for me, but I really enjoyed what I watched and the touches of humor amongst the darkness.
Two Women Make a Lunch Plan (2023): Two women (Eilise Patton and Jade Kaiser) who have neither seen nor heard from one another in quite some time run into each other and make a plan to get lunch sometime in the future. Directed by Elizabeth Archer and written by William Longsden, this is a quick burst of, well, what it feels like when you just want to escape a conversation or make plans and can’t figure out either.
MAKE ME A PIZZA (2023): A woman (Sophie Neff) is starving, so she orders a Meat Lover’s Pizza that she can’t pay for. Yet, in that old adult film cliche, perhaps there’s some other way she can pay the delivery man (Woody Coyote). Yet he explains that sex can’t be equated to currency and wonders what is the true value of pizza? How does her offer of a carnal evening of pure pleasure possibly pay for all of the many hands that have gone into the creation of these slices?
Then, they decide to become a pizza yet somehow create a pizza god that asks them to leave their flesh behind to become part of the pizza. Will this make them free? Probably.
Directed by Talia Shea Levin who wrote the script with Woody Coyote and Katie Peabody, this is one of the strangest shorts I’ve seen in some time and that’s a complete compliment. It gets the 80s VCA porn aesthetic — was there one? — while making me so hungry for a hot slice of pie. You know. Pizza.
Like Me (2024): Directed and written by Ashley Lauren Thomas, this is about a woman named catlady 5406 (also Thomas) trying to get noticed on social media. And also, cutting her bangs. After drinking. Even as a dumb guy, I know that this is the worst of ideas. I mean, I don’t think it usually goes as bad as it does in this short, but bangs should only be touched by a professional. This has a happy ending, though, as our heroine does finally get the social media interaction that she craved so much.
One Happy Customer (2023): Set in the red-light district of a world that’s created with foam latex practical effects, miniatures and animation layered together, this is the story of a veteran sex worker who tickles the feet of her customers, takes their money and launches them into space. It’s not exciting any more for her, but then she meets a customer who makes her look young and he wants something special. And he’s ready to blow her mind.
Directed, written and produced by WATTS, this has an absurd level of production design. It looks like every single inch of this short has been obsessed over and it’s worth it. This is a world that doesn’t exist anywhere but in this movie and for this small amount of time.
The Rainbow Bridge (2023): Tina (Tru Tran) takes her elderly dog MeeMoo (Fat Tony) to a clinic claiming to enable human-pet communication in the last moments before death. Then things get strange, because the two mad scientists — Dr. Bailey Picadilo (Heather Lawless) and Herb (James Urbaniak) — running the place learn that Tina and MeeMoo share an unusually strong bond that transcends time and space. They might just be the key to something great. But is the cost too much to pay?
Directed and written by Dimitri Simakis, this gets into how Tina and MeeMoo can create a world between our world and the one of our dead pets. This is what the scientists have been working on for thirty years. I loved that MeeMoo explained that he is just a chapter in Tina’s life, not that it makes losing a pet any easier.
The phone number for the Rainbow Bridge — 323-685-2626 — didn’t work. Ah, my plans to speak to my chihuahua Cubby will have to wait. I plan on him being alive forever.
Body (2023): Jake (Aaron G. Hale) and his girlfriend Dawn (Leila Annastasia Scott) have no idea where that dancing Frankenstein’s Monster decoration has come from. But Jake definitely saw it move and stare at him.
If you learn anything from this short, directed and written by Ronald Short, it’s if you find what seems like a cursed object in your house, you get rid of it right away. Have we learned nothing from every Amityville movie? Those dancing decorations have always upset me and this movie has proved to me that I have always been right to be afraid.
Cart Return (2023): “Your chances of being killed by a cart are extremely low. But never zero…” With those prophetic words, Cart Return, directed and written by Matt Webb, begins.
You can tell a lot about people by watching if they return a cart or not. Melanie (Whitney Adkins) is one of those people who just refuses to bring her’s back. This brings out of reality and right into a horror movie.
She’s also one of those people who talks on her phone the entire time she’s shopping, bringing everyone into her self-absorbed conversation. There are quite a few grocery parking lots where I’d love to see this short happen for real.
The Curse of the Velvet Vampire (2023): Two Chinese horror aficionados meet in a cult video store to watch the mysterious vampire film called The Curse of the Velvet Vampire. which stars the band 802 and a lot of beautiful vampire girls. They even worked with Warpigs Brewing to create a beer called Velvet Vampire.
Directed by Christoffer Sandau Schuricht, who wrote the script with Poul Erik Madsen (he and Schuricht made The Beast Will Kill Us All together) and Andreas Asingh (the lead singer of 802), this gets the Demons mask in immediately and I wish there was a video store like this close to me even if it rents tapes that seemed cursed.
I love the look of this and wish we’d gotten the full movie that 802 was in, because whatever it is, it’s awesome.
Gum (2023): An obsessive gum chewer (Sean Moskal) is working to hit a deadline that seems impossible. He keeps chewing gum, as he always does, in an attempt to stay awake. Yet the more he bites into, the less teeth he has. Directed and written by Sam Elder. this is one short to miss if you have teeth loss or bloody mouths as your triggers. I guess it must be hard to blow bubbles with a mouthful of nothing.
Type A (2023): A man (Joe Briggs) is one of those Saw situations where must complete a task in exchange for his life. Directed and written by Jake Barcus, we discover that task is impossible, because it’s plugging an HDMI cord in, which is the hardest thing ever. Also, maybe you shouldn’t discuss rimming with a masked killer with a gun and a voice changer.
STAIRWELL (2022): Directed by Anthony Ceceri and David Britton, who wrote the script, this animated short has a young girl start to notice the patterns of the stairwell in her building. Each time she is on the stairs, there’s another dead animal, from fly to roach, rat to cat. Always something larger. Always something dead. Short, sweet and sinister, this is well made.
We Joined a Cult (2023): Directed and written by Chris McInroy, this is the tale of Wes (Kirk C. Johnson) and Luke (Carlos Larotta), two guys who wanted to play kickball and ended up in the cult of “He Who Blows In the Wind.” Things get as out of hand as you imagine quite quickly with possession, brain licking, blood sprays and Lenny (Brant Bumpers). McIntroy also made GUTS, which is one of the few films made lately that made me physically sick, so I’m super excited to report that this has tons of the red stuff and no small shortage of moments that will make you feel queasy. A success!
The 44th Chamber of Shaolin (2022): This starts with a disclaimer just like Jackass which means that I’m already a fan. The 44th Chamber of Shaolin is about the fake training that a kung fu master creates for a student who may love Shaw Brothers movies too much.
Directed and written by Jon Truei, this discusses chi powers and how if you train hard enough, you can defeat guns. You know, all that Dim Mak stuff. If you pay enough money, most karate schools will tell you that you can do just about anything.
Sifu Carlos (Santino Marin) believes that the kid (Marshieh Johnson) has the potential to be a Shaolin warrior, to enter the 44th Chamber, started by a killer monk that he passed on to ninjas. To become invulnerable to pain, you must taze yourself in the nuts as many times as you can. This gives you the defense that you require to fight anyone.
I loved this. Between the flashback scene and multiple stuns to the sack, this is cinema.
You can watch so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
Named in honor of the wild collections of short genre fiction curated by the luminary author Harlan Ellison, CFF’s Dangerous Visions block has long been the dark heart of their short film program each year, and this year, there were too many fantastic horror and sci-fi shorts for a single block to contain them so they’ve expanded things to include our virtual SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE DANGEROUS VISIONS block. No summer spent at Camp CFF is complete without the heaping helping of HOLY SHIT that are these two blocks!
Nian (2022): This ran on Hulu’s Bite-Sized Halloween and is directed and written by Michelle Krusiec. It’s about Gertie (Lauren Mei), an Asian-American student who is bullied. To defend herself, she turns to one of the mythological creatures from Chinese New Year, the Nian. It’s a mythological creature said to eat rotten children. I loved her grandmother (Dawn Akemi Saito) who is in no way shy or non-profane about how angry she is that someone would tell her daughter to go back where she came from.
I didn’t know anything about the nian before watching this. When the Chinese New Year begins — usually at the end of January — the nian arrives to feed on anything a village has, even their children. Demon masks — like the one in this film — protect kids from this creature.
This looks absolutely gorgeous and better than most modern films. It’s quick and to the point, but gives Krusiec time to prove a great level of talent. You can learn more at the official site.
Consumer (2023): The PR line for this is “What if John Carpenter directed an episode of Goosebumps?” Well, that sets me up for something interesting.
Matt Fisher (Nate Ridgeway) is the kind of sensitive soul that sits in the mall and draws sketches. Well, that enrages the local bullies, who are Corvette t-shirt-wearing Johnny Porterhouse (Jack Anderson), Jeff Sally (Jeffrey Nichols) and a punked out girl named Harvey Keller (Bethany Carroll) who draws all over his work and is so mean that I’d furtively make mixtapes for her and wonder why the only attention I could get from her was scorn. Yes, perhaps I was a young Matt in the late 80s. I absolutely love that Jeffy carries a morningstar with him like teens my age used to walk Beaver Valley Mall with nunchucks.
Matt then meets Dave (played by Matt Fisher, who directed this short) and is given a video game called Consumer that offers him the choice between forgiveness or consuming. His choice drives the rest of this movie.
Directed by Matthew FIsher and written by Maximum Byrd, this is the kind of movie where someone is handed a floppy disk and told, “Those bullies are going to get what’s coming to them.” As a longtime fan of movies like Evilspeak and Trick or Treat, I am always down with geeks rising up and getting their rightful revenge. Also: the company who made the Consumer program is Theophilus, which means “loved by God.” Hmm…
The idea of learning to forgive instead of being consumed is deep within this. Even better, this parable is told with gorgeous colors and angles, as well as a feel for the mall that is often missing in modern media that attempts to recreate the 80s. I had a blast with this. You can learn more at the official site.
The Noise (2023): Ella secretly struggles with an eating disorder to the point that during her birthday dinner, all she can hear is the calorie counts of the meal her family has made for her. This is called The Noise, a force that becomes a monstrous form that takes over Ella’s life. As someone who has struggled with their weight their entire life and continually tracks calories on an app, I have felt all of the voices in her head but never to this extent.
Directed by Jillian Shea Spaeder (who also wrote, produced and stars in this short) and Bryce Gheisar, this is a terrifying film that can also explain in a very visceral way what it’s like to constantly be worried about what we put into our bodies to a level that destroys your life. I really loved — as much as I can — the sound design of The Noise.
Ella is obviously not out of shape and is a normal girl. I felt for her and what she’s going through in this. And the film, from an artistic perspective, mixes so many difficult shots — a long running tracking shot outside, angle shots in darker lighting with The Noise being revealed, darker lit shots that are never lost — that this is a confident entry that could lead to some teachable moments for those who don’t understand eating issues.
You can watch it here:
Apotemnofilia (2023): Clara (Lucía Azcoitía) is having difficulty transitioning from her pregnancy back to acting. Now, confronted with a packed house on opening night, she can’t stop the buzzing that is going on in her head, even when she — spoilers on — begins burning her leg with cigarettes and repeatedly stabbing herself to remove whatever is inside her.
Directed and written by Jano Pita, this doesn’t shy away from huge displays of splatter and literal geysers of blood as the world is falling apart outside Clara’s dressing room door. I learned from my friend Joseph Perry that apotemnofilia means the “desire of amputation for a healthy limb” and wow, this lives up to that medical term.
Extra points for a poster that echoes Tenebrae and has such a striking black and red color balance. Wow. This one is something else.
Giallo (2023): When a movie says that it’s dedicated to the masters of Italian horror and the Ramsay Brothers (Mahakaal), you know that I’m already going to be predisposed to liking it.
Director and writer Yogesh Chandekar has put together what feels like an honest tribute to giallo, as the music by Achint Thakkar is absolutely perfect, the lighting is gorgeous — our heroine’s (Saiyami Kher) mother doesn’t live in Bava Heights on accident — and I love the look of the masked, black gloved killer. I want to give away the big reveal but it’s just so good that I want more people to see this and be as surprised as I was. If anything, it makes too much sense to be a giallo and I say that as a big fan of the filone.
Here’s hoping that more people get a chance to watch this, because for all the recent giallo tributes, this feels absolutely spot on in look and feel. It even has the soft darkness that only Italian film looks like. It’s astounding how much the streets of India can look like the dark alleys of Rome.
Night Feeding (2023): It’s 4 a.m. when a baby monitor goes off and alerts a new mother (Leah Shesky) that her child needs fed. The crying leads her through the darkness, but the lack of sleep and strange early and late — the small hours — time disorients her as she picks up her baby. As the infant drinks from her breast, she leans back and feels comfort in the fact that the crying has stopped. Yet as the music gets darker and the camera pushes in on her, something has to be wrong. And that’s when we hear the baby still crying even though there’s something attached to her nipple.
Directed and written by Sarah K. Reimers, this has to be triggering for mothers to watch, who will probably cheer when the heroine launches the demonic child. And the father (Andrew Coates)? He slept through all of it.
Come Back Haunted (2023): A reclusive woman (Toby Poser, who is part of the family that made Hellbender) must go against her normal behavior and connect with someone when a blood covered girl (Catherine Bennis) appears, screaming that she has to escape her mother (Virginia Newcomb). The woman tries to become a surrogate to the child, but there’s darkness out here.
Directed and written by Logan J. Freeman, this should remind you that there are horrible people out there as well as those that need help. Yet you should never invite anyone into your home, because just like little me who measured the distance between everyone’s fingers and checked for pentagrams on the pa;m to determine if they were monsters in my kindergarten class, you just never know.
This looks absolutely terrific and has some intense performances by each actor. I’d love to see this expanded into something longer but perhaps it’s perfect just the way it is. Yet another reason to never be near cornfields. Or maybe the monster is inside all of us?
The Little Curse (2024): Abby (Ciera Eis) and Trent (Adrian Honner) have inherited an old house of Abby’s eccentric aunt and are giving a tour to their Rod Stewart vintage t-shirt clad friend Ratboy (Charlie Lind). As they look through the basement, they find a trunk with a little girl’s dead body inside, holding a corn husk doll.
The first thing you should do in this situation is leave the house and never come back. The last thing is keeping the doll, which is what Abby has done. Well, that night, the little girl (Audrina Miranda) comes back for it. Has no one seen Ghosthouse? Leave toys in the coffins of children!
Directors Nicholas Berger and Dana Berry — who also wrote this — know horror pretty well, as well as how couples like to make fun of one another. A lot of it feels natural, but man, Ratboy reminds me of my friend Dillon and he deserves justice.
Strange Creatures (2023): Starting with a Jane Austen quote — “What strange creatures brothers are! You would not write to each other but upon the most urgent necessity in the world.” — and the sound of a phone call, we meet our protagonist as she parks her car. She remembers a phone call from her brother — before or after he died? –= and goes to where he died to seek out exactly what happened.
Directed and written by Nicholas Payne Santos, this breaks up the supernatural feel of this world with our ordinary sounds, like that iPhone ring that we hear every day. What is less expected is the still working payphone in the middle of nowhere. As her brother keeps calling and asking for help — she’s already seen something — our lead is reduced to panic and tears.
I’d like to see more of this and learn what happens next. It’s well made and I wonder where else Santos can take it.
Spooky Crew (2023): The Spooky Crew — Nancy (Olivia Peck), Tim (Jeff Pearson) and Emery (Jerik Thibodeaux) — are ready to go up against the local urban legend of Mary Jane (Wicken Taylor). Some of the team thinks that all of these paranormal things are fake. Some of them are skeptics. They all want you to pay into their Patreon so they can keep doing their podcast.
Mary Jane died on the night of her prom under mysterious circumstances and the Spooky Crew is on the case, live streaming their journey to discover the truth. Also: Tim is rocking a Vinegar Syndrome shirt, so of course I’d ask him to guest on our videocast.
Directed by Erin Bennett, who co-wrote it with Donny Broussard, this gets across the silliness of the whole livestream ghost hunts while remaining authentic to how they actually speak. Also: always pack face masks for when you go into places where there is mold. I mean, it’s as important as having that summoning spell.
Oddly, my town had the same legend but it was Mary Black. It’s the same as the Bloody Mary urban legend that they made an Urban Legendsequel about when people were all into folklore as slasher fodder in the 2000s.
My only criticism is that this ended way too soon. An entire movie of this would be a lot of fun.
Outer Reaches (2023): Directed and written by Karl Redgen, this is the story of two explorers trying to find a new home for the human race. Hargrave (Cam Beatty) and Nestor (Michael M. Foster) crash land on an isolated planet, they learn that the only thing there other than them are a swarm of sentient microorganisms. The air is breathable, but when Nestor gets them into his body, they must weigh the decision to leave. Is their own survival or the chance of spreading this virus going to happen?
The creature begins to speak through Nestor, telling Hargrave that if he wants his friend to live, he has to bring them into the universe so that they can have freedom after a thousand years. It’s an insidious virus that can even take on the voices inside Hargrave’s mind.
There are a lot of great ideas in this for such a short film. The effects are really good and the audio that finishes the film suggest that this isn’t over yet.
That’s Our Time (2023): Wow. Just wow. This movie floored me and I don’t want to give away the ending because it’s that great. It starts with Danny (Marque Richardson) finding that he’s unable to make a true connection with the people in his life. His therapist Dr. Miller (Debra Wilson, who is great in this and I didn’t even recognize her from Mad TV) attempts to show him that you must focus on the time you have left than the time you’ve already spent. But is it too late?
Directed by Alex Backes, who co-wrote it with Josh Callahan, this is a true surprise and perhaps the best short I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t wait to see what Backes does next.
The Cost of Flesh (2023): Alice is a totally paralyzed teenager and the only way that she can communicate with her brother and sister are through her eyes. That’s all we see in most of this film, just her eyes filling the screen and reflections of people within them. There’s an evil force causing this to happen, one that demands blood. Is her family willing to try and free her?
Directed by Tomas Palombi, who wrote the script with Flore Desbiens, this has such a cool look to it, shot in black and white and just remaining fixated on an uncomfortably close shot of an eyeball. We can hear the brother and sister, if barely see them, and otherwise can only hear the strained breathing of the teenager and the sound of thunder.
What a wild film and I can’t even imagine how terrifying the ending was to see on a big screen.
When Shadows Lay Darkest (2023): “It’s only a movie… it’s only a movie… it’s only a movie…” This film used that beloved language in its log line, as this is about a 1970s movie slasher terrorizing a real final girl from beyond her TV screen. It has to be difficult to go from yelling at dumb people in a slasher to suddenly being in their shoes.
There are some immeasurably inventive moments in this, as the TV itself is used to show what reality as become as The Shape-like character from the movie comes into our world. The real colors are replaced with the blues and reds of the horror universe, the synth music replaces any outside sound and then the TV goes black.
I saw and loved director and writer Jacob Leighton Burns’ film Shifter a few years ago, so it’s good to know that he’s still making movies. This is a triumph and one of the best put-together shorts I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Roger Is a Serial Killer (2023): A podcaster named Anne (Sara Paxton, The Innkeepers) believes that her stepfather Roger (Mark Reeb) is a serial killer. Or, well, maybe it’s better for her show Step-Killer if it’s Roger and not his business partner James (Chris Doubek), who planned all of their trips. Now Anne and Roger are worried that they’re about to be killed while her mom Carol (Barbara Crampton) excitedly says, “Tell her about your podcast!”
Director and writer Don Swaynos (who edited Chop and Steele) has put together a really intriguing film here, as Anne goes full Serial to tell the story of the Business Class Killer. It even has a Stamps.com ad.
As always, I love seeing Barbara Crampton in a movie and she’s great at the comedy in this. This is a total blast! Rest in peace to Reeb, who was also so good in this.
You can watch so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
June 21: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 200s Action! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
“Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically-predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defender clear of the statistically-traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120 percent. The difference of a 63 percent increased lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.”
If a movie has dialogue like this, I’m going to love it.
After World War III, the survivors founded the totalitarian nation of Libria, a place that outlaws all emotion, forces the population to take the emotion-suppressing drug called Prozium II and hunts down anyone who goes against this, labeling them Sense Offenders, who are soon hunted by the Grammaton Clerics. When they show up, you’re dead, and they’re also going to destroy any art, music or books you have before shooting you a thousand times.
Yet Libria, the its leader, Father (Sean Pertwee) and the Tetragrammaton Council are being challenged by the Underground.
John Preston (Christian Bale) is one of the clerics and he’s a single father after his wife was killed for being a Sense Offender. When his partner Errol Partridge (Sean Bean) saves a book of poems and takes them to the Nether — you know, the Cursed Earth or the Forbidden Zone — to read, he tells Preston that now that he has felt emotion, he can die. So Preston kills him.
The poem that he reads is “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats. Here’s the poem: “Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
His new partner, Andrew Brandt (Taye Diggs), looks up to him. Yet since killing his partner, Preston has stopped taking the drugs and spares a Sense Offender, Mary O’Brien (Emily Watson). He soon meets the leader of the Underground, Jurgen (William Fichter), who convinces him that he must kill Father. At the same time, he’s also been charged with finding a conspiracy within the clerics by Vice-Counsel DuPont (Angus Macfadyen).
When O’Brien is terminated, he has an emotional breakdown and is arrested by his partner. He soon learns that DuPont is the new Father, having started a new group within the Tetragrammaton Council of those who don’t take the drugs either. As you can imagine, this leads our hero to killing everyone he can with a sword and guns. It’s why you came and saw this movie. I mean, the hero kills 118 people in this movie.
Equilibrium was produced by Jan de Bont’s production company, Blue Tulip Productions. The budget was covered by tax incentives thanks to de Bont’s Dutch citizenship and the international sales paid for this movie’s budget. So when critics didn’t like it and it only had a limited release, it didn’t matter.
When he was told about those reviews, director Kurt Wimmer said, “Why would I make a movie for someone I wouldn’t want to hang out with? Have you ever met a critic who you wanted to party with? I haven’t.”
This movie has been forgotten but I’d love if more people watched it. Sure, it takes a lot of inspiration from other literature, but it also has warrior monks who have guns that form the logo of their country when they fire them and it takes place in some side future that looks like a gothic world.
June 22: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 2000s Action! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
Kurt Wimmer directed the Brian Bosworth movie One Tough Bastard and wrote the remake of The Thomas Crowne Affair and Sphere before he directed Equilibrium, the first movie of his I took notice of. He created a style of fighting, Gun Kata, for the film and it just stands out from so many of the 2000s science fiction action movies. I was beyond excited for Ultraviolet, but wow it had so many problems that I was sure I’d never see it.
Shot digitally on high-definition video, this movie was Wimmer’s attempt at making a comic book movie. There are even tons of Ultraviolet comic covers to give the idea that we’re in the middle of a much longer story. The basic idea is sometime in the near-future, a super soldier experiment leads to the creation of hemophages, vampiric humans that are stronger and smarter than normal humans. Like mutants…keep that in mind.
The war between humans and vampires leads to the end of civilization. There is now only the ArchMinistry, a powerful corporation and joint world government. There’s a resistance that is fighting back and one of their soldiers is Violet Song Jat Shariff (Milla Jovovich). Her latest mission is to break into a blood bank and steal a weapon that can kill her kind. It ends up being a child named Six (Cameron Bright) who is a clone of Vice-Cardinal Ferdinand Daxus (Nick Chinlund) and filled with a virus that can destroy the hemophages. Despite this, Violet is sentimental and allows him to live despite hating all of humanity.
By the end of the movie, it’s revealed that Daxus and the hemophages are working together to create a new virus that will allow them to control even more of the world. William Fichtner also shows up and if I ever make a movie, that guy has to be in it.
Not a lot of it makes sense, but really, we’re here to watch large battles and gun fights. In the post Matrix world, everyone was making movies like this. I just happen to like this one because, well, it’s fun. Who cares that Six spends most of the movie living in a briefcase? Do I need to know motivations? Rotten Tomatoes said, “An incomprehensible and forgettable sci-fi thriller, Ultraviolet is inept in every regard.”
Um…this is a movie where you watch Milla Jovovich in various cool outfits, she has color changing hair and she shoots a whole bunch of religious zealots when she isn’t racing around on a motorcycle. I mean, you tell me that’s what I’m going to see and I’m going to see it.
Anyways…
Wimmer and Jovovich were locked out of the edit by Sony, who said that the movie was too emotional and it needed to be PG-13. They cut it from 120 minutes to 88 minutes. Because of this, the visual effects are visibly unfinished and use incomplete temp-renders that were never meant to be seen outside of the editing room.
Everywhere in the world, this didn’t do well. Well, Japan loved it. They even made an anime sequel, Ultraviolet: Code 044.
In the very same year, Cameron Bright played Leech in X-Men: The Last Stand. His role is to cure mutants, which is just like this movie. He would play a vampire again once he got older. He’s Volturi vampire Alec in Twilight New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Part 2.
An aside: Gun Kata was taken from Gun Fu. Wikipedia refers to it as a “style of sophisticated close-quarters gunfight resembling a martial arts combat that combines firearms with hand-to-hand combat and traditional melee weapons in an approximately 50/50 ratio.” This martial art first shows up in A Better Tomorrow, directed by John Woo, and gives guns the same style that open hand combat and wuxia movies had within Hong Kong cinema. In the 1990s, it came to America in movies like Desperado, The Replacement Killers (which had Woo’s star Chow Yun-fat in it) and The Matrix. Today, John Wick has taken Gun Fu as far as it can go, but in 2002, Wimmer would use it in Equilibrium.
After the failure of this movie, Wimmer didn’t direct for years until he made Children of the Corn. While he was recovering from this, he wrote Street Kings, Law Abiding Citizen, Salt, the remakes of Total Recall and Point Break, Spell, The Misfits, Expend4bles and The Beekeeper. I hope he gets the opportunity to make another movie and prove his talent to his detractors.
Wild Zero is not a movie. It is an experience, an in your face, melt your brain piece of pure crazy. The kind that makes my wife say, “Do we really own this?”
Yes. We do. I’m going to buy it again just to have it twice.
Ace is our hero, Guitar Wolf’s biggest fan. After he saves the band from a tense standoff with The Captain, an evil music executive, he becomes blood brothers with Guitar Wolf himself (the other members are Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf) and receives a signal whistle for whenever he is in trouble.
Guitar Wolf is so great that flames come out of their mic stands and they blast the crowd with lightning when they play. They sound like fuzz and noise and menace. They are everything perfect about rock and roll.
On his journey to the next Guitar Wolf show, Ace meets Tobio, a Thai stranger on the run. He saves her from a robbery then leaves, but on the road he encounters zombies. Realizing that he’s in love — and inspired by the spirit of Guitar Wolf — he goes back to save her.
There’s a lot of other shit that happens. The Captain comes back to fight Guitar Wolf with a grenade launcher (which Guitar Wolf shrugs off, only pausing to tune his guitar). There are zombie fights galore. Many, many heads explode. A naked military girl kills zombies from her shower. Oh yeah — and Ace finds out that Tobio is really a guy, a fact that this movie celebrates. Yes — instead of making jokes, the spirit of Guitar Wolf tells Ace that “Love has no borders, nationalities or genders! DO IT!” Keep in mind this movie was made nearly twenty years ago, so this is pretty amazing.
Everyone finds love. Ace and Tobio find it. Two kids find it even after becoming zombies. Guitar Wolf and his bandmates find it for rock, roll and beer.
Oh yeah and Guitar Wolf plays Link Wray’s “Rumble,” then takes the headstock off his guitar and cuts a UFO in half.
I can’t say anything else. If that sentence doesn’t make you watch this movie, you are dead to me.
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I say it with every movie he releases, but Chris Stokes is the best creator of all of the Tubi Originals.
When I saw Rock the Boat last year, I wrote that it had “an ending that teases a sequel that knowing Stokes, Houston and Tubi that I feel sure that we will receive.”
He did not do me wrong.
After the end of the last movie — in which not only a boat blows up but there’s a car crash that gets replayed many times in this — Millie Barnes (Parker McKenna) has lost her memory and has nightmares of whatever happened in the past.
This doesn’t waste any time being a remix of I Know What You Did Last Summer, as Channel (Janina Gordillo) and Sommer (Iyana Halley) go over what happened in the first film, only to end with Sommer going to work at a dive bar — despite being a rich girl — and Channel opening a pizza with a sinister note before she’s murdered.
Millie works in marketing along with Halle (Katlynn Simone) who seems to take a sisterly interest in her. Keep that in mind. Millie is being constantly questioned by Detectives Jacobs (Jarell Houston) and Daniels (Judi Johnson), wondering what has happened to her boyfriend Kaleb (Marc John Jeffries) and how his father Mr. Weber may have be behind not just what happened on the boat but he also may have murdered Millie’s parents Eric and Tracy.
To get away from it all, Millie decides to go visit her grandmother Paula (Loretta Devine), who is probably the most important citizen in her beach town. Despite being told that this is party central, no one is here, the club is closed — other than a bartender, Captain Keller (Steven Littles) and Paula’s servant Greg (Dwight Boyce) — and things are dead. It’s like this movie skipped right to I Still Know What You Did Last Summer as Halle, Millie, Durell (Ozie Nzeribe), Sophia (Zonnique) and Todd (Justin Sweat) all get notes letting them know that someone knows what they’ve done.
Oh man, how can you even explain what happens next? There are multiple secret siblings, an aunt named Olga (Carnetta Jones) who can do the Get Out spoon hypnosis to people, a grandmother who goes completely mental and another ending that promises another movie as this ends with Detective Jacobs (Jarell Houston) saying he has people in Miami and Millie brainwashed yet again as Olga does the mental magic and her grandmother laughs for a full minute.
To Chris Stokes and his co-writer Marques Houston, please hurry with the next one. And if The Stepmother is in it too and you build to an Avengers: Endgame of your many Tubi Originals, you will make me more than overjoyed.
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