Lillian (Brianne Solis) comes back to an abandoned and fog-filled cemetery that has haunted her since childhood in an attempt to come to terms with the recent loss of her sister in this quick but gorgeous short film.
The directors The Barber Brothers (Matthew and Nathan, who also made Go Back and No One Is Coming with Solis) said that they saw this film being about “dealing with grief and the lengths at which it can take someone. The story of the titular Specter is inspired by a traditional theme in paranormal hauntings in which a ghost searches for a loved one that has long passed.”
Naming Glory — which had horror master Freddie Francis as its cinematographer — as well as The Changeling, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and the visual style/ editing of 70s horror films as inspirations let me know that I need to be on the lookout for anything they make. The fact that this looked amazing and was imbued with true emotion made it all that much the better.
Director and writer Alexandra Magistro has had some high profile behind the scenes jobs, working as an assistant to Mike Flanagan on Doctor Sleep and Midnight Mass. This is his first directing and writing credit and he tackles a tale filled with darkness, as a woman tries to get past the death of her father. Trust me, this is a subject we’ve dealt with over the past year as my dad is day to day post-stroke, dealing with dementia and becoming less like my father by the day while my wife lost hers to COVID-19 right before the holidays. There are days when you feel like you want to tell them something and they will never be there again. The grief is always there, it just changes with time.
Magistro also got a great cast for this: Samantha Sloyan and Matt Biedel from Midnight Mass and Madeleine Arthur. This is not a simple story to tell, but for a first effort, it’s quite well told.
You can watch the films of the Chattanooga Film Festiva for half price now until Wednesday. Get your badge right here.
Director and writer Jean Grant is enjoying a first directing credit after previously writing A Short Film By Shauna Lee and Birth of a Pomegranate. With help from story consultant Tom Bissell (writer of The Disaster Artist), this is the story of Rowan (Marnee Carpenter), who is searching for her missing girlfriend, who very well may be not missing, as well as dealing with a UFO that seems to be interrupting every one of her calls.
It’s short, sweet and strange, which are three perfect words for what it should be. Bonus points for a banana flask that I would drink out of every five minutes.
You can watch the films of the Chattanooga Film Festiva for half price now until Wednesday. Get your badge right here.
Inspired by David Boone’s 1980 movie Invasion of the Aluminum People, this shot on Super 8 concerns two would-be astronauts getting ready to be part of the space race as two illuminated glasses-wearing secret men watch on as they sit before the earnest gaze of Bonzo and Reagan.
At one point, getting off Earth seemed like a good idea. Hell, it still seems like a good idea right now. And yet fifty-plus years past landing on the moon, we don’t really go back, like a theme park we saw enough of. I mean, you landed on it, planted a flag, hit a golf ball, what else can you do?
Nathaniel Hendricks also wrote a movie called Butt Fiesta, a movie in which a magic hat allows a man to have a very special episode-style flashback to the good and bad times his rear end has had. I think knowing that is reason enough for you to try this short.
You can watch the films of the Chattanooga Film Festiva for half price now until Wednesday. Get your badge right here.
Cass (Liza Scholtz) is the sole survivor of a ship that has crashed on a much darker version of her Earth. She has no memory of who she is and how she got there, only that she has a device constantly counting down to zero as she’s chased by miscreants, scavengers and something…else.
Exo Sapien looks gorgeous and has quite the pedigree, as director and writer James C. Williamson was also the co-producer of another bonkers movie from South Africa, Fried Barry. His production company, The Department of Special Projects, is a film development and production company that specializes in auteur-driven genre films. You can learn more about them here.
This is just the first part of this story, as there’s a full-length feature being planned. I can’t wait.
You can watch the films of the Chattanooga Film Festiva for half price now until Wednesday. Get your badge right here.
Pablo (Juan Cano) dreams of being an actor but until that happens, he’s paying the bills doing the only acting role he can find, playing a patient that medical school students can practice on, as well as taking part as a paid member of alternative therapy sessions.
Much of this movie — well, maybe not the ghost but who knows — comes from the life of Chilean filmmaker and screenwriter Roberto Doveri, whose friends make up much of the cast.
Pablo had been just surviving when his roommate leaves, which leaves behind back rent, some clothes, lots of plants, a dog and, yes, that ghost that we see entangle itself in everyone’s life by way of incredibly effective animation.
Your mileage may vary on this as it’s talky and meandering, but then again, a ghost has sex with a guy and you don’t see that all that often, so it is something.
Remember — this weekend, you can buy a back half half price badge to watch all of the awesome movies at the Chattanooga Film Festival and see them until 6/29! Get yours right here!
Originally a web series, each segment of this tool two months to make, created by Canadian YouTuber and animator u m a m i, whose real name is Justin Tomchuk. You can see a collected version of the first part of the series here and the second part here.
I guess the thing to realize is that The Philadelphia Experimentis a real event and it caused a phenomenon called Cerebral Energy to be revealed, changing the color of the sky and unleashing ghosts and giving the blue guy named Henryk immortality. He’s joined by a character called Mischief, who is kind of a trickster god who likes to go on about man’s nature and then transform himself into something silly.
There’s also something about ghost stories and myths becoming reality, all while numerous pieces of famous art form the cartoon that you are downloading through your eyes. You’ll get to see everything from René Magritte’s “The Son of Man,” Dali’s “Birth of The Geopoliticus Child” and Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks at the Diner” and dialogue like “If what you want is to live with the memories you cherish most, live here within the Interface” is read in monotone.
It’s not for everybody. I mean, your chance of loving it is just as high as hating it. But you should at least check it out.
Remember — this weekend, you can buy a back half half price badge to watch all of the awesome movies at the Chattanooga Film Festival and see them until 6/29! Get yours right here!
Leader (Destini Stewart), Willow (Sophie Bawks-Smith), Jules (Jillian Frank), Vicky (Mari Geraghty) and Millie (Rowan Wales) have gone all Lord of the Flies Canada edition and leave behind parents and boyfriends to live in the woods all on their own with their own rules and things go about exactly as well as you’d expect when five teenage girls lose their minds.
The girls live under a rule of suitable revenge, which means if someone upsets you, you get to go after them with all the force and madness that an 18-year-old girl who has never left home before can muster which is a metric ton if you were worried about the conversion.
First-time director Avalon Fast and co-writer Emmett Roiko have put together an interesting script, but the performances are stilted and near-student level — I love reading reviews that claim this is intended and makes it a better movie, film people will forgive anything — while the editing is not the best and the sound quality is borderline static at best in some scenes. That said, there are moments that look gorgeous, which stand out and make you wish the same care was delivered throughout the movie.
That said, I do love parts of this, like the letters the girls write to loved ones before they leave, like Leader telling her boyfriend, “When I want you, I’ll come get you.” This feels like a trial run — like your teen years — for something better, remembering the rough edges yet knowing how to imbue them with the honey of experience.
Can’t wait to see what happens next.
Remember — this weekend, you can buy a back half half price badge to watch all of the awesome movies at the Chattanooga Film Festival and see them until 6/29! Get yours right here!
Metal and horror are the two things that got me out of a small-minded high school during the height of the Satanic Panic and have been part of my life every single day.
So why did I just finish a two and a half hour plus documentary about both and feel let down? Is it the absolute waste of time framing story that I disliked despite Michael Berryman being in it? Or the fact that just like every other one of these talking head endless runtime docs, it devolves into “that’s really the best of the sequels” babble? How many times do we have to hear so many people discuss the same movie and add nothing new to the conversation?
That said, there are a few folks in here who I could listen to at length, like Alice Cooper, Corey Taylor, Phil Anselmo and a few others who genuinely have a lot to say about films and intriguing bands — as much as I dislike his politics, Phil at least name drops Australian maniacs Portal and Ghoul is in it for a second — and that’s what I want to get more of.
This movie takes more than an hour before it glosses over a very important point: horror movies begat heavy metal which has repaid horror movies. Earth was a blues band that kept walking past a marquee for a packed theater playing Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath. A name change later, some lost fingers and a detuned lead guitar line and you have the reason why metal was born.
So yes, some lip service gets paid to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Arthur Brown or Screaming Lord Sutch, who were true shock rockers before we knew there was such a thing. And in the seven years it took to make this, I can only assume how much was taken out about Marilyn Manson. But true gems like Corpsegrinder mentioning Baltimore’s Ghost Host get lost amongst chest puffery, metal brodom and “this is my family” inanity.
Perhaps the best line is reserved for Gunnar Hansen, who reminds us all that no one should like horror or metal and we should celebrate being outsiders instead of continually feeling that we’re put upon. We choose to have long hair, to wear this vest, to love bands with logos that no one can ever read. Put up the horns and be proud of being something no one is proud of.
If you check out the official page, there are a ton of stars in this movie. I just wish it built to a better story. There’s a glimmer of connecting the two worlds, comparing the video nasty era with the PMRC, but that intriguing notion is quickly dashed. There’s so much to get to, so many people to hear from, but most of this is sadly sound and fury signifying nothing.
Remember — this weekend, you can buy a back half half price badge to watch all of the awesome movies at the Chattanooga Film Festival and see them until 6/29! Get yours right here!
Jennifer Pan’s parents left Vietnam for Canada where they toiled at Magna International, an auto parts manufacturer in Ontario, working hard at car part manufacturing so that their children would have a much better life than they did.
They were also incredibly strict and had extremely high expectations. Jennifer was already training to be an Olympic-level figure skater and concert pianist by the age of 4. Jennifer was dropped off at school and picked up, monitored even when not home and not allowed to date boys or go to school dances. By the time she was 22, she had never been drunk, never gone on vacation without her family and never even been to a club.
All along, her parents thought that she had good grades. The truth was, other than music, she was a C-average student. To get around that, she continually forged her report cards and she even secretly taught piano and worked in a restaurant to earn money that she told them was a scholarship for her to study in the pharmacology program at the University of Toronto. She even bought textbooks and faked notes from YouTube classes to further allow her parents to think she was in school.
The truth? She was living with her mixed heritage — a big issue with her family — marijuana dealing and Boston Pizza-employee boyfriend. Her parents eventually found out when the deceptions grew too big to explain and it was discovered that she never even graduated high school. She was forced to break up with the guy, who got a new and younger girlfriend, and she went off the deep end, claiming that he had hired a gang of men to assault her and she was mailed one bullet by her lover’s new girlfriend.
After trying to pay a goth kid to kill her parents, she got back with the old boyfriend and they spent $10,000 to hire real hitmen to kill mom and dad, knowing that she’d get $500,000 in the will. That’s what we call business sense. Well, the killers did get her mother, but her father survived and when the case fell apart, she was convicted for 25 years in jail, never permitted to contact her family or lover again.
That story inspired Munkie, in which Stephen Chow directs the tale of Rose (Xana Tang), a young woman rebelling against her tiger parents. And by that, I mean paying to get them killed. Yet in the way that the film is made, you feel for her and understand perhaps what drove her to this point. You still understand that she’s not a good person, but again, she didn’t get to this point by herself.
You can watch the film here:
You can also watch this at the Chattanooga Film Festival. This weekend, you can buy a back half half price badge to watch all of the awesome movies and see them until 6/29! Get yours right here!
B&S About Movies 