ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Twenty-four may seem a bit older than the average age of a protagonist in a coming-of-age drama — and Italian/French coproduction Amanda is an offbeat drama at that, peppered with whimsical humor — but that is precisely where Amanda (Benedetta Parcoroli) is, both chronologically and emotionally. Having grown up in a monied family, she has no need to work, and she has never had a real friend other than the housekeeper who saved her from drowning as a child.

Amanda has reached a point where she wants to do some of the things she has always rejected, such as making new friends and meeting a boyfriend. Her stubborn and unusual personality doesn’t make things easy, though, especially when she is asked by her mother to meet with the mother’s friend’s daughter Viola (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), who isn’t exactly the most sociable person either, to put it quite mildly.

A kidnapped horse, the coveting of an electric fan, and an abundance of disaffected characters await viewers in writer/director Carolina Cavalli’s unconventional feature. It isn’t easy creating a bad-tempered protagonist that viewers care about, but Cavalli manages to do so, both because of her sharp screenplay and assured direction, and also thanks to a mesmerizing performance by Parcoroli. The titular character of Amanda could easily be off-putting with the wrong approach, but Cavalli and Parcoroli have worked a bit of mischievous magic.

Amanda screened as part of Calgary Underground Film Festival, which took place in Calgary, Canada from April 20–30.

Director and writer Lagueria Davis has created an amazing movie that asks so many questions about Barbie and what she means to the world of race. Yes, there were once no black Barbies, then there was only Julia, Barbie’s black friend who had no African-American features, just the same doll with black skin. And today, we have come pretty far, but still not far enough, as this movie shows.

Davis’ aunt Beulah Mae Mitchell worked at Mattel for 45 years and was only the second black person to work at their headquarters. She became friends with the woman who created Barbie, Ruth Handler, as well as Kitty Black Perkins, who made the first black-featured Barbie.

At one point, girls had to ask, “Why not make a Barbie that looks like me?” I was thinking about this today at a toy show, as when I was a kid, the only choices black kids had when buying Star Wars toys were Lando and one of his Bespin guards. That’s it. Two black dolls and hundreds of other aliens and all white people.

I liked how this film showed how people interacted with the doll as kids, what it means to them today and how the brand still needs to do better. That said, the fact that representation has increased does mean something. As a purchaser of boy toys growing up, G.I. Joe always had a diverse team of ethnicities and outlooks, even having multiple African-Americans: Roadblock, the heavy machine gun soldier who joined the army to learn how to be a chef; Doc, a military chaplain and medic who despite being on an anti-terrorism task force is a pacifist; Stalker, who escaped the ghettos of Detroit to be a leader and Alpine, who was an accountant and a mountaineer. On the cartoons, the Cobras even had black characters, such as Cobra officer Lieutenant Clay Moore and Raven, a Strato-Viper pilot. As for He-Man, an all-white line, they have added the Sun Man characters to their characters, providing some much-needed addition of other races.

The “Barbie and Nikki Discuss Racism” moment in this in pretty weird, though. I think it’s important to speak on these issues, but even G.I. Joe mainly handled problems like downed power lines. It’s a big topic for kids to get into and are Barbie and Nikki the right people to be discussing these heavy issues?

Pink Floyd, Def Leppard, T. Rex, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Scorpions, Paul McCartney & Wings, the Alan Parsons Project, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Electric Light Orchestra, Rainbow, Styx and more. All of these artists used Hipgnosis, the English design group made up of Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, and Peter Christopherson. They became nearly as big of rock stars as the bands they did art for.

Directed by Anton Corbijn (whose work in music videos has similarities in becoming a rock star to rock stars just like Hipgnosis) and written by Trish D Chetty, Squaring the Circle gets into the artists’ best-known work, such as Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon while hearing about the influence — and what it was like to be part of that art — thanks to interviews with McCartney, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason. Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and Peter Gabriel.

Corbijin told The Hollywood Reporter, ““At 17, I started taking photos of musicians who created the soundtrack of my youth, first for magazines and later for record covers, and then trying out moving images as a director for music videos from the early ’80s onwards. It was a long road, but I eventually made feature films: my first one, Control, dealt with music I loved, and now my first documentary deals with record covers and their beauty and power, and the craziness to get there. It has been an honour to tell Hipgnosis’, Storm’s, and Po’s, story in Squaring the Circle, which, thanks to the great team at Utopia, will be a cinema release in the first half of 2023.”

This is a gorgeous film that tells me so much of what I want to know about a time and place that I want to know more about. As such, it’s nearly perfect, getting across the emotions and real people behind the art that has been made nearly mythical today.

This movie is part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.

It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Practically Shakesperean in its sizable cast of characters and many subplots and twists, director Kensuke Sonomura’s Bad City is an absolute blast. Hitoshi Ozawa toplines as Torada, a detective who was set up by powerfully placed people with yakuza ties to be the suspect in the murder of a Korean gangster boss’s son. He is released temporarily to head up a secret, off-the-books trio of detectives from the Violent Crimes Unit to go after Gojo (Lily Franky), a criminal with political aspirations.

There’s intrigue galore between the cops, the yakuza, and the Korean gangsters, too much to list here and that would be spoiling things, anyway. Go in cold, knowing that you will be treated to some of the more realistic looking fight scenes in recent memory. They are choreographed, of course, but in such a manner that some fights have a real-life, somewhat deliberately sloppy look to them as opposed to looking like a well-rehearsed dance routine. And you shouldn’t get too attached to any of the protagonists.

Bad City boasts an engaging story, captivating performances, crackerjack direction, and all sorts of action, including fisticuffs, martial arts, knife fights, and gunplay. Aficionados of Asian crime cinema should consider this one required viewing.

Bad City screens as part of Calgary Underground Film Festival, which takes place in Calgary, Canada from April 20–30.

It’s easy to hate influencers. It’s simple to say social media has ruined everything. And yet, to look into oneself and the world and realize that these things just magnify how bad things are and therefore, it’s easy to blame the shiny and pretty people, because no society functions without a scapegoat.

Kurtis David Harder directed Spiral and this is worlds better than that film. Along with co-writer Tesh Gutti, he tells the story of Madison (Emily Tennant), a social influencer in Thailand who meets up with CW (Cassandra Naud), a woman with a huge birthmark on her face and creeping darkness in her soul. She brings Madison into her world, at first showing her how it’s more real than her reality to taking photos of every meal and every outfit. As Madison lies about how much she’s experiencing and pines for the end of her relationship to Ryan (Rory J. Saper), the man who got her into influencing in the first place, she’s kidnapped to CW’s special place on the island, a space that is as gorgeous as it is potentially deadly.

So yes, by all means, hate on influencers, but do not miss this film, which just plain works.

This movie is part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.

It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.

Based on the true story of Roger Sharpe, a man with an incredible mustache who overturned New York City’s 35 year-old ban on pinball machines, Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is an astounding achievement. I’m interested in a movie about pinball but I bet not too many would be. A knowledge or even caring about the game in unnecessary. This film has a universal message and a true heart inside it.

Roger (Dennis Boutsikaris in the interview segments and Mike Faist in the main plot) has no idea what the wants to do or be. He just feels good when he plays pinball. Yet when a raid destroys the machines in the only place that has them in 1970s New York City — an adult book store — he is informed that the game he loves so much is illegal.

Along the way, he gets a purpose — making pinball legal, writing books on it, even designing his own games — but also finds something even more important: another chance at love with Ellen (Crystal Reed, Abby Arcane from the Swamp Thing series and Sofia Falcone from Gotham), a single mother with a young son named Seth (Christopher Convery). They’ve both been divorced and are unsure about their romantic lives; the way the movie brings them together and shows how essential their love is feels like something missing from so many films. I felt utterly charmed for both of them and wished I knew them beyond the time I spent with them in this film.

That said, if you love pinball, the scenes of Roger in Chicago meeting with the different companies and creators of pinball — names like Williams, Stern and Gottleib, if they mean anything to you, will make you very happy — and deep cut explanations of how the game is played will please you.

My favorite moment is when Roger decides to share pinball with Ellen for the first time and takes her into the adult book store where he’s on a first name basis with the guy behind the counter. She thinks he’s confessing a fetish. Yet he’s innocent and so excited to share the most important thing in his life with the most important person in his life. When she enjoys the game, he enjoys her more. It’s a very real moment in a movie filled with them.

Consider this a recommendation.

This movie is part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.

It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.

I just discovered Becky, a movie that shocked me with its depth and ferocity. I had no clue how you could make a sequel to that film, but after watching this, I feel satisfied.

Filmmakers Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote were approached to write and direct this sequel by producer J.D. Lifshitz with only three weeks to write the script. Luckily, star Lulu Wilson had thought a lot about her character and wanted it to be more mature. I was worried that the previous team who made the first movie wasn’t involved, but co-writer Nick Morris and directors Jonathan Milot and Cary Murnion were the executive producers.

Years later from the first movie, Becky is working at a diner and living with an older black woman named Elena after living with different foster families. Her only constant is her beloved dog Diego. One day, while waiting on three Noble Men in town to meet with their cell leader (a nearly unrecognizable Sean William Scott) as they plan on an uprising during an appearance of Senator Hernandez (Gabriella Piazza). They act like you’d expect them to act and treat her as you’d expect them to treat her. She pours hot coffee in one’s lap and he decides to get revenge by finding out where she lives, killing Elena ad stealing Diego.

As you can imagine, Becky continues to be as efficient as a slasher maniac in her intensity, except this time the film takes breaks where she explains things, much like an Edgar Wright film. Woe be to the men — and one woman — of this racist terrorist cell, including Twig (Courtney Gains), DJ (Aaron Dalla Villa) and Sean (writer Angel).

Does that magic key from the first film get explained? Kind of. Are the bad guys so dumb that they explain their entire plans to her after tying her up? Of course. But is it also incredibly cathartic to have a female heroine chop an ultra MAGA guy to bits after he tells her his son’s name is Adolph? Most definitely.

Honestly, this sets up a sequel that I can’t wait to see. They could make a hundred of these movies and I’ll watch every single one.

This movie is part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.

It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.

Kaiko City is plagued with poverty and crime. When a mass murder at a bathhouse occurs and yet local businessman Wataru Gojo (Lily Franky) is acquitted, the cops realize that traditional methods no longer apply.

Three members of the Violent Crimes Unit join a disgraced former police captain in jail for murder named Torada (Hitoshi Ozawa), to get evidence on Gojo, his dealings with the yakuza and even worse — his connection to South Korean organized crime and a yearning for a career in politics.

Hitoshi Ozawa is sixty years old but has made a career of playing roles just like this: hard men willing to do hard jobs no matter the cost. You may know him from Takeshi Miike’s Dead or Alive or may even go deep and know Japanese V-cinema. He’s the best part of this very good movie. And Tak Sakiguchi (Versus) is in this as a silent killer gunning for the police.

Directed by Kensuke Sonomura and written by Ozawa, this is a film filled with twists and turns but most importantly action. It also has so much of what works in Japanese crime cinema, that being the ever-twisted connection between cops and crime, with characters that have a foot in part of each world and yet pushed and pulled by concepts like duty and honor.

But this is all about the stunts and fights, too. Sonomura has made a career in stunts, from directing the action in movies like Baby Assassins, Black Rat and The Machine Girl as well as directing Hydra. He’s also lent his fight choreography to video games including Devil May Cry 3, Devil May Cry 4, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Resident Evil 3. He’s also choreographed the action scenes for some world-class directors including Mamoru Oshii, Yudai Yamaguchi, John Woo and Donnie Yen.

This movie is deliriously exciting. Make sure you catch it.

I saw this as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.

It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.

Two decades after a tragedy with her sister, Šarlota — pronounced Charlotta — comes back to her remote mountain hometown in Slovakia to claim an inheritance left by her dead mother. Yet when she gets there, her mother’s house has burned to the ground. Staying in her former neighbor’s abandoned cabin — rumored to have been a witch’s house — Šarlota remembers the misogyny, patriarchy and superstition that she had left. As she approaches a herbalist named Mira, the locals believe Šarlota must also be a witch.

A deserved winner of the Best Picture in the Cineasti del Presente Competition at the Locarno Film Festival, director Tereza Nvotová has made a movie that looks absolutely gorgeous and from another world. The witch sabbath scene in this is incredibly evocative and blew me away.

We live in a world that fears what it does not understand and seeks to hold back things of beauty and passion. These issues exist from big cities to small towns and everywhere in between; things are sliding back into a world where women no longer even have autonomy over their own bodies. Nightsiren presents a place where the power within women is challenged by old beliefs and an even older guard.

I saw this as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.

It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

A battle of wills, a cat-and-mouse game, a potentially dangerous deep dive into the inner workings of a revenge-minded miscreant — New Zealand journalist/filmmaker David Farrier’s latest documentary Mister Organ is all of this and much more.

Farrier catches wind of a highly suspicious parking boot operation at an antiques store, where the film’s titular centerpiece, Michael Organ, is demanding exorbitant amounts of cash for people to get their cars back. Matters escalate from there as Farrier initially exposes Organ’s racket and then makes the mistake many people — several of them interviewed for this film — have made: getting involved with Organ, who seemingly leaves a great deal of emotionally and psychologically damaged acquaintances in his wake. Former roommates, judges, and even his own family members want nothing to do with him, and Farrier learns why — the hard way.

Mister Organ is a fascinating look at a person who takes anyone who crosses him to task, be it in a courtroom, with veiled threats, and sometimes worse. Farrier has crafted a gripping cautionary piece about the perils of trying to play one upmanship with someone highly skilled at the activity.

This movie is part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.

It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.