In the Trout family kitchen in Redhook, Brooklyn on one day in 1948, father is seeking a new job and Junior returns home after being gone for twelve years. Seems normal, but things spiral out of control. I didn’t expect to watch an Americana play dealing with poverty and family regret but here we are. Director and writer Gavin Field has constructed a story of a family with nothing except debt, guilt, alcoholism and painful memories.
It’s intriguing that this is basically a stage performance being filmed, all set within one hot summer kitchen, a place where all the family can do is look out onto the harbor and just stew, ready to explode in rage or howl with sadness at any second…or just sit there, trapped in ennui and silence. It’s no summer blockbuster but in no way does it intend to be. This is a film with a mission of emotion, storytelling and showing how a story can be built within one setting and a singular family.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
This collection of strange and magical shorts are the final block that I’ve had the pleasure of watching at the Chattanooga Film Festival.
Content: The Lo-Fi Man (2023): Brian Lonano, who co-directed this short with Blake Myers and wrote it, just wants to tell you about Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Yet he’s been replaced by the new and improved Brian Lonano (Clarke Williams) who is now a streaming content aggregator and influencer, asking you to smash that like button and ring the bell so you get the updates. Breaking free from the mouse-eared androids that have him locked up, he battles the Content Seeker by, well, kind of becoming Tetsuo and joining up with film revolutionaries Kino, B-Roll and Wild Track.
We live in a strange place now, a reality where you can get almost every movie you want but may not have the time to watch it. Or maybe you do and when you want to break it down and discuss it, you get lost in the machine of likes and shares. I try to keep my mind open to both sides, as sure, it’s nice to have the most perfect quality home media ever, as well as streaming materials and everyone deserves the opportunity to find and appreciate pop culture in their own way. But man, if I see another listicle or YouTube video that posits theories like “maybe all the shot in the Eastern Bloc SyFy sequels in the 90s were high art” or ten slashers you never saw before and #3 is The Burning, well…
It’s a fine line between discourse and gatekeeping, I guess.
Everyone really seems like they were having fun with this and it made me think about how I present what I love about movies with more thought. So…mission accomplished.
Seatbelts (2022): In Michael Dunker’s short, a couple heads out on their second date and drives right into the middle of conflict when the guy refuses to put on his seatbelt. Everybody in this story did their own research and has notes for what they want each other to know, but they’re just like every conversation you’ve had outside your own bubble since 2016. Nobody is changing their mind and opinions are much like the football jersey that you live and die to be part of. Some shorts are mini-movies; some are sly jokes quickly told. This does the latter well.
Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down (2023): Directed by Joel Jay Blacker and written by Nick Logsdon, this starts when some friends gather around the campfire. Then, someone makes the mistake of saying, “Let’s throw on one more log,” which brings the beardless and burnt-up Kyle to the party.
When everyone is trying to have a moment of relaxation, count on Kyle to cry over the bus he lost or to pick up that acoustic guitar sure to ruin everyone’s moment of simple nothingness. Leave those logs in the pile, because Kyle is always watching. Always waiting.
This one is absurd fun with a concept that just plain works.
We Forgot About the Zombies (2022): Chris McInroy made GUTS, one of the few movies of the last few years to make me physically sick, which is some kind of standing ovation. This one isn’t as intestine churning, but it does have multiple neon-colored liquids inside syringes, formulas that transform people into cake, a zombie ripping off chunks of its arm to appear more pleasing to look at, a clone and, man, I forgot the zombies too. Four minutes, dude. This movie did more in four minutes than some films and their sequel do in four hours.
Variations On a Theme (2022): In Peter Collins Campbell’s short, there are quite literally Variations On a Theme, as a couple who has been physically splitting into many different versions of themselves soon discovers that a mutation has been created and that could threaten everything. The budget for this probably got spent in the first thirty seconds but with little more thought — and more cash — this could easily become an actual idea for a full-length.
Foot Trouble (2023): Directed by Vanessa Meyer, who co-wrote this short with Joshua Strauch, Foot Trouble is about Jade, who has a foot issue that no one wants to discuss. I mean, my biology teacher and his daughter both had webbed feet and I remember once he made her take her shoes and socks off and show all of us, so the world even outside of this movie is strange. So are parents.
Jade decides that instead of just getting past those feet. she covers them up with socks for swim class. I mean, you want that goth boy to notice you, I guess. When you’re young, you blow romance out of proportion, but I never had to come home to cold hot dogs and my mom’s next strange boyfriend. Just warm soda — my parents did not believe in ice, for some strange reason — and my dad sleeping through Married With Children.
This has a lot of style, even if it doesn’t hit many of its lofty targets. That said, it looks great and the talent shines through.
Gold and Mud (2023): Conor Dooley has taken on a real challenge here. Tell the life story of a female doctor in six minutes and still have us care for her, in spite of how absurd some of the moments can be. Ana Fabrega, as Dr. Ana Fabrega, is our one constant.
I’d say it’s episodic in nature, but some of those episodes last scant nanoseconds while others play out. Falling in love at a horse farm, a patient who spits all over the place, a balloon animal in bed and a remembrance at the end where it’s difficult to tell what was real and what was a dream. I wonder, in the last three years of dementia life that my dad had, how much did he remember and how much did he think was television? Was I any more real to him than Fred Sanford, Jessica Fletcher or Johnny Rose?
This is the kind of short that you can watch so many times and come away with something new each time. Incredibly made and just perfect.
Earthling (2023): Keith Lane and Molly Graham have made something pretty amazing here. It concerns the summer of 1976 and Jack and Jim Weiner, twin brothers who were abducted by aliens from Maine, along with two of their friends, Chuck Rak and Charlie Foltz.
It took a decade to remember what happened and even in 2023, Jack considers himself a representative of those space brothers and wants us to know that we’re killing our planet.
The animation in this is inspired by Jack’s artwork, which is bizarre and yet has the influence of no one else. After all, who has been to other realities and planets? Illustrator and animator Ameesha Lee translates that art for our human eyes and makes this story even more astounding.
Instead of the alien stories you’re used to seeing on basic cable, this film makes what happened to these four men feel authentic and possible.
The Promotion (2023): Directed by A.K. Espada and Phil Cheney, The Promotion starts with two office drones in a 1980s office that slowly reveals just where it really is and just who they truly are. With each insult, they reveal that they just want that promotion, not because they want to destroy one another, but when you’re trapped in the pushing the rock up the hill office life, you need anything you can find to get you through the eternity of ennui. Surprising effects and a song out of nowhere only improve this excellent mini-film.
Vertical Valor (2022): Directed and written by Alex Kavutskiy, Vertical Valor celebrates the lost heroes of World War 3: the skaters who stayed home and keep working on their ollie while delivering bad news to, well, the same dad over and over and over yet again. Man, I never knew I could have served in this unit, because I could rail grind and get some limited air even as a fat teenager. Perhaps my knowledge of sponsored riders and Misfits lyrics could have been put to service for my country. I could have read old issues of Thrasher to blind vets. Man, while I’m glad that we haven’t had a major world war — I mean, give 2022 time — I do know that I could have been part of the effort.
Foul (2022): John (Luigi Riscaldino) has a problem that so many men do. He just can’t stand a foul. Sports are tense, you know? And no matter how hard you play or your team is playing, that feeling that an authority can take it all from you is real. Just like an authority taking away your freedom, which John later finds out.
There are also those moments when in the heat of a match or inning or round you feel that you’re in a life-or-death situation. And all that adrenaline can make you feel so much bigger, stronger and tougher than you are. Consider this film a life lesson that you don’t have to experience yourself, but can walk away with the benefit. The next time you get fouled, just brush yourself off and get over it.
FIN. (2023): After witnessing their husbands blow up real good in a freak fishing accident, Edna and Bertha (Addie Doyle and Lee Hurst, who also directed and wrote this) are forced to carry on the family business. The problem? The Man (Blaine Miller) controls the water and claims that it’s for men only. Well, when you have a fake mustache, the world and everything in it can be yours, chica.
I loved every moment of this. A strange world that exists only in this film lives here, a place where despite all the traumas that they’ve dealt with, Edna and Bertha can still just sit in a boat and drink whiskey when they’re not robbing men for their bear coats.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
Directed by Didier Grousset, who co-wrote the script with Michèle Pétin and producer Luc Besson, Kamikaze is the story of a man named Albert (Michel Galabru). He’s a computer genius, but when he gets fired, he starts to murder television announcers without ever leaving his home. Only Inspector Romain Pascot (Richard Bohringer) can stop him.
This movie is pretty wild, because it’s a mix of so many ideas. A satire on media, a comedy, a detective story and plenty of science fiction along the way. Now Albert has a weapon — that seems like something from Phantasm — that he can point at the TV and kill anyone who upsets him. And it seems like nearly everyone upsets him.
There’s also a wonderful synth score from Eric Serra who has worked on many films with Besson.
I’d never have seen this movie if it didn’t get rereleased on blu ray and I’m so glad I found it. It’s really something special, a movie that’s a battle between two men who are both incredibly smart at their own unique specialties — Albert computers, Pascot finding criminals — and how the case is logically built to catch the criminal mastermind. And wow — that poster is absolutely gorgeous. Definitely check this out.
The Kino Lorber blu ray has commentary by Eddy Von Mueller, an interview with Grousset, a documentary on the film and a trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
This film is presented with a brand-new, CFF exclusive commentary — for hybrid VIP and virtual VIP pass holders only — by director Gil Adler and co-writer A L Katz!
After Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis graduated from USC, they wanted to break into movies and decided that an exploitation film was the easiest way in. They pitched this script to John Milius, yet ended up debuting with 1941.
When Tales from the Crypt — the TV series — started becoming a series of movies, instead of mining the old EC Comics, like the show and movies based on it, like Creepshow did, the idea was to make longer stand-alone films that were not adaptions. I could be cynical and say that it was just using the brand name to make movies that no one wanted otherwise, but Demon Knight was so good that I couldn’t think that way.
Bordello of Blood is exactly the kind of junk I figured they’d make. This script was picked instead of others considered, including Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk till Dawn.
At a budget of $2.5 million dollars, the film looks cheaper than the TV series that gave it life, which is quite backward. And while Joel Silver was the producer, that led to all manner of questionable decisions, like his idea that supermodel actresses were what would change Hollywood and hiring Dennis Miller, who did not want to be in the movie and said he’d only do it for a million dollars. The studios said no, so Silver played fast and loose with the books and took $750,000 out of the special effects budget. You can really tell. During the holy water gun fight with the evil sex workers, the effects go from really good to beyond horrible, often within the same shot.
Further problems came up when Erika Eleniak — who had left Baywatch because she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress — allegedly did not want to play the character of Catherine. What a movie! Two actors that had no interest in being in it, a sliced and diced special effects budget and a movie shot in Canada due to Silver’s past union issues, which further had a non-union crew angered by the fact that Miller would rarely show up, working around the schedule of his Dennis Miller Live TV show, keeping them from seeing their families on weekends. Oh yeah — the script supervisor who was Miller’s stand-in — lots of the movie was shot without him — couldn’t remember all of Miller’s dialogue, which he’d frequently ad-lib, so the movie is filled with continuity issues.
The film starts on a great note, as some treasure hunters find the grave of Lilith, the queen of all vampires. They’re all killed by her except for the one who has the key from Demon Knight. Speaking of that film, its hero William Sandler has a cameo as a mummy in the Crypt Keeper segment.
Then, Caleb (Corey Feldman) and his buddy Reggie get attacked by vampires in a house of ill repute, revealing Lilith as Angie Everhart — that supermodel idea — and Tallulah as Juliet Reagh, Penthouse Pet for April 1987. Caleb’s sister — Eleniak — hires Rafe Guttman (Miller) to find her brother, bringing him to the titular bordello of blood.
Hey, the movie at least is good for trivia, as you have two of the stars of the 80’s bigger vampire movies — Feldman from Lost Boys and Chris Sarandon from Fright Night — in the cast. It also has a completely non-sensical ending that ignores all traditions of vampirism. And oh yeah — Reggie is played by Matt Hill, who was the voice of Raphael to Feldman’s Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesmovies.
This is the only movie Gilbert Adler would direct, although he produced Constantine and wrote Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice.
As for this being a heavy metal movie, it does have a soundtrack with Anthrax doing the theme song, Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” — everyone used that in their movies at one point — and Redd Kross covering Kiss’ “Deuce.” Honestly, this movie could have an entire soundtrack by Black Sabbath and I’d still hate it.
Colonel Crawford (David Campbell, Killer Workout) is the sadistic commander of Scare Camp, which shows civilians the survivalist skills they need. He’s made it as rough as the real thing, which is the worst thing that can happen to veteran Jason McKenna (Fritz Matthews, Deadly Prey) who has a flashback and sees everything happening as if he were back in Vietnam.
And now he’s broken out of Scare Camp and started killing people in the neighboring town.
Directed by David A. Prior, who co-wrote the movie with Jack Marino, this film makes you wonder why a camp like this would exist and why it would push people into feeling like a POW. Now that his friend has lost his mind, can Mitchell (Ted Prior) get him back to sanity?
If you’ve seen Deadly Prey, you’ve seen a similar story. Yet this is worth watching as well, as the Priors were able to get so much out of their small budgets and make rental choices for when Rambowas out of stock. This is a movie from a universe where a shotgun can knock a helicopter out of the sky and isn’t that the kind of place where we all wish that we could be from time to time?
The MVD Rewind Collection release of Kill Zone has a high definition 1080p presentation of film, as well as commentary by producer and co-writer Jack Marino moderated by Cereal At Midnight host Heath Holland. There’s also a making of, a photo gallery, a trailer and best of all, the original Vestron VHS version. You also get a poster and a limited edition slipcover. Get yours now from MVD.
There’s nothing better than a portmanteau and there was no studio better at making them than Amicus. This is a monument to that studio, their main director Freddie Francis and British horror royalty Peter Cushing all in one film. And with one of the stories centered on Christmas, it’s perfect to watch right now.
Five people are part of a tour of old catacombs, yet get separated from everyone else. They find themselves in the company of the Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?), who looks nothing like the character from the E.C. Comics or the later HBO series. He begins to tell each of them how they came to be in his chambers.
…And All Through the House (based on Vault of Horror #35)
Joanne Clayton (Joan Collins, Empire of the Ants, I Don’t Want to Be Born) has murdered her husband on Christmas Eve. Yet even as she hides the body — scrubbing impossibly crimson blood from her immaculate white fur carpet — a killer dressed as Santa Claus is stalking her. If she calls the police, they’ll discover her crime. If she doesn’t, she’s dead.
Her daughter (Chloe Franks, who is wonderful in another Amicus anthology, The House That Dripped Blood, which we covered on one of our first podcasts) thinks that the killer is Santa and lets him in. Not the best of ideas, as he’s soon chasing Joanna all over the house.
Reflection of Death (based on Tales from the Crypt #23)
Carl Maitland (Ian Hendry, Theater of Blood) has left his family to be with his lover, Susan. That said, as they drive away, they are in an accident and no one will stop to help him after he awakens. His wife is already with another man. Susan is blind and claims he died two years ago. And by the time he figures out the truth, it’s too late.
Poetic Justice (The Haunt of Fear #12)
Edward and James Elliott hate their neighbor Arthur Grimsdyke (Peter Cushing is absolutely perfect in this role and if you don’t know who he is, I recommend that you shut down your computer and weep), who has plenty of dogs and loves to entertain the neighborhood’s children. They take his dogs from him, they get him fired from his job and finally convince the parents that he’s a child molester. A widower who speaks to his wife even after death, Grimsdyke can take no more after James sends his mean-spirited Valentines, signing the name of every neighbor. But one year later, Grimsdyke rises from the dead and sends Edward a very personal Valentine’s Day card with the help of his son’s still beating heart.
This part is perfect. From the scorn of the rich toward the poor to Cushing’s emotional pain (he was reeling from the death of his beloved wife Violet Helene Beck and had even tried to give himself a heart attack by repeatedly running stairs in his home, hoping to find a way back to her) and his rise from the earth, this is everything horror movies should be.
Wish You Were Here (The Haunt of Fear #22)
A retelling of The Monkey’s Paw, this story finds businessman Ralph Jason (near bankruptcy when his wife Enid finds a Chinese figure that will give three wishes. The first, for money, comes true when she gets Ralph’s insurance money after he dies in a car crash. Her second is to bring him back exactly as he was before the accident, but she learns that he had a heart attack upon seeing a skeletal motorcycle rider. Finally, she wishes for him to come back alive and to live forever, but as he’s already been embalmed, he awakens to horrifying pain. Even after she chops him up, he remains alive.
Blind Alleys (Tales from the Crypt #46)
Major William Rogers is the new director of the home for the blind, but he immediately cuts the budget. The men must now deal with the constant cold and a lack of food while he lives the high life with his German shepherd. The blind men rise up and turn the tables, putting Rogers in a maze where he is blinded, bloodied and finally murdered by his own dog.
The Crypt Keeper then reveals that this isn’t what may happen. It has already happened and he is there to send them all to Hell. He looks directly at the viewer, breaking the fourth wall and asks, “And now… who is next? Perhaps you?” This ending would be recycled for several Amicus films but gets me every single time.
The band CANT — that I sang for — recorded a song entitled “Tales from the Crypt” that was released on our 2015 demo. Its opening lyrics, “Like a stain you can’t erase, you left without a trace. Ruining lives, burning inside, left in the cold, going blind” echo the evil of each character in the stories, while the chorus, “Strangled, crushed, torn, burning, blind — you are gonna die” reveals the ending to each story.
Like I said — I really love this movie. The track was originally called “The Strange Bruises You Find on Joan Collins’ Throat,” but it seemed too long and it felt better to tip my hat toward the movie.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
It’s the hottest part of the summer, the time when your skin burns when you go outside. When the cicadas song is at its loudest, a tune carried by the boxes of the Cicada Man (Shinya Hankawa), a strange man who wanders the streets and remains a mystery to all.
He’s walked into an even odder place, the mind, dreams and body of this film’s heroine (Kaori Hoshino), who every evening has nightmares of the Cicada Man filling her body with his horrible insects. When she awakens, her body is strewn with rashes, but her doctor claims that that’s just a side effect of her new sleeping pills.
How do you get bugs out of your body? You cut them out, that’s how.
Directed by Guy, this movie starts as a nice little tale of a girl in a coffee shop, has the bug man invade matters and by the end, you’re being blasted by Microchip Terror’s music and assaulted by the effects of Susumu Nakatani, who worked on Versus. Never change, Japanese cinema, never stop making me look out to see bug faced men and women with gaping sores filled with their eggs.
This Unearthed Films blu ray has a behind the scenes clip, a talkshow with the creators, a video from the Japanese premiere and trailers. You can get it from MVD.
June 25: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Italian horror! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
Dino Buzzati’s I sette messaggeri (The Seven Messengers) is a collection of nineteen short stories in which a variety of protagonists interact with the unknown and death, often with the ending left up to the reader. One of the stories, Sette piani (The Seventh Floor) was made into a movie in 1967, while is based on Eppure bussano alla porta (Yet They Knock On the Door). In all, thirty-three movies and shows were made from the author’s work.
On a stormy night — is there a better evening for Italian horror? — the top of London’s high society of the 1920s gets stuck in the mud and forced to turn to a mansion in the darkness. Uriat (Luciano Pigozzi, a fixture in the films of director and writer Antonio Margheriti) explains to them that while they are in his home, they may use the powers of his mother (Marianne Leibl), a woman who can communicate with the dead. Yet she can do even more. She’s able to tell the dark secrets of every one of them, which includes violence, deception and — shudder, it’s 1969 in an Italian genre movie — a sapphic affair.
But they aren’t the only ones filled with sin, as Uriat and his mother were once charged with two murders, which conveniently may have been committed by one of the elite in their humble abode.
Shot on sets from other films, cinematographer Riccardo Pallottini achieved the look of the seance scene by being suspended upside down from the ceiling. With camera in hand, he was slowly dropped down as he bent over backward to raise the camera and capture each conspirator’s face.
Those characters include Archibald Barrett (Giuliano Raffaelli), a real estate baron who hasn’t exactly made his money ethically, aided by his lawyer Ben Taylor (Joachim Fuchsberger). Ben’s wife Vivian (Marianne Koch) has always come in second to her husband’s career, which is why she secretly shares a mistress — Elizabeth (Helga Anders) — with both Barrett and his business manager Alfred Sinclair (Claudio Camaso).
Set in a decades shuttered hunting lodged stuffed — pardon the pun — with taxidermied wild animals, the noose tightens around each person as this film goes from a dark night haunted house film to one of near-apocalyptic intensity. That’s what happens when a medium tells you, “An invincible monster will devour you all. That monster is your conscience.”
Thanks to Castle of Blood and The Long Hair of Death, Margheriti — known in the U.S. as Anthony Dawson — was a known gothic horror quality. This just works for me, as it has a wild look thanks to all the leftover sets the director found while shooting at Carlo Ponti’s studio. This is also the most that Pigozzi ever got to do in a movie, as he’s as close as this has to a hero instead of a henchman or the hero’s older friend. The score of Carlo Savina (Lisa and the Devil) helps this achieve more, as well.
If you thought that this movie wouldn’t involve Margheriti’s skill with shooting miniatures, have no fear. He’s saving it for the end.
Actors picked for success in the German market playing English people in an Italian horror film based on an English literary genre. Ah, I love movies.
The SSSP kaiju defense task force, led by Kimio Tamura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is dealing with tons of monsters that have made their way to Earth. Luckily, they are soon joined by Ultraman, perhaps the greatest enemy of giant monsters ever.
I spent much of my childhood making Ultraman’s beam hand motion and watching and rewatching every single episode of the show. Every time I met a Japanese person as a kid, I wanted to know more about Ultraman and imagine my surprise when I learned how many more shows there were that — in the pre-internet times — we never got here.
I got that same childhood wonder and joy from this movie, which was made by the same team that created Shin Godzilla — there will also be a Shin Evangelion Theatrical Edition and Shin Kamen Rider — director Shinji Higuchi and writer, editor and motion capture performer Hideaki Anno.
Shinji Kaminaga (Takumi Saitoh) is killed in the line of duty as Ultraman battles Neronga. The robot feels badly so he takes the man’s place and soon learns that he feels plenty of love for the human race, despite the fact that some of them don’t trust him. There are a lot of interplanetary political machinations in this story yet it never gets slow or boring. If anything, it feels like an entire season of Ultraman jammed into one movie.
There’s Zarab, the evil Ultraman, as well as Mefilias, the world-destroying Zetton, Gomess (a modified Godzilla from Shin Godzilla, just like how the original was a Godzilla suit when he was on Ultra Q), a Mammoth Flower, Larugeus, the Ultra Q monster Peguila, Kaigel, Pagos and Gabora (who along with Neronga were all made up of the Toho Baragon suit on the original Ultraman and Ultra Q), as well as cameo appearances from vehicles — often in the background or as models on desks — of Gohten from The War In Space, Alpha and Black Shark from Lattitude Zero; the Mole, FAB 1, Fireflash and the five Thunderbirds from Thunderbirds; and the Enterprise from Star Trek.
Despite having a rough time playing football in the past, Riley Brooks (Naomi Brooks) has decided to rejoin the team and help her team and Coach Peterson (Bo Yokely) to win their first state championship. But to get there, she’s going to have to fight the administration, sexist players, the sibling rivalry she has with her sister Tyler (Elshaday Aredo) and her inability to truly be herself.
Directed by Kevin Arbouet and written by Jade N. Richard-Craven, this film has plenty of heart. I really enjoyed how Riley’s father Ronald (Keith Arthur Bolden) encouraged her and how her mother Dr. Candace Brooks (Sharon Leal) came to respect her daughter’s choices and ability. Most of all, I liked Mirella Cardoso as Riley’s love interest, Paige Morales. The film does not shy away from the way players treat Riley nor does it absolve her from acting just like one of the guys.
That said, the relationship that she builds with Paige feels honest.
Gridiron Grind moves quick, tells a story that may just inspire you and has a lot to say about growing up, fitting in — or not — and trying to understand others. It does it in a way that doesn’t feel like preaching or stand in the way of an entertaining sports story, too.
Major William Rogers is the new director of the home for the blind, but he immediately cuts the budget. The men must now deal with the constant cold and a lack of food while he lives the high life with his German shepherd. The blind men rise up and turn the tables, putting Rogers in a maze where he is blinded, bloodied and finally murdered by his own dog.
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