Turns out award shows can have a positive result on my movie watching. I wouldn’t have known anything about this film if Awkwafina hadn’t won the Best Actress – Musical or Comedy Golden Globe for her work here.
Luckily, the movie lived up to my expectations and then some.
Based on director Lulu Wang’s real life — which she first publicly discussed on an episode of This American Life — The Farewell proves that the foreign may not be so foreign. Billi (Awkwafina) learns that her grandmother Nai Nai (played by Chinese theatrical actress Shuzhen Zhao) is dying from cancer, yet her family refuses to tell their matriarch. Instead, an elaborate wedding ruse is invented so that they may all see her one more time.
The truth is, six years after the real life diagnosis, Wang’s grandmother remains alive. She still didn’t know that she even had the disease until this movie. Incredibly, Wang kept the secret from her during and after the making of this movie. She would only discover the true story when she discussed the movie with her sister Lu Hong, who plays herself in the movie. The fact that the movie was released in China as Don’t Tell Her was not lost on the real life Nai Nai, who remarked, “…that’s why you didn’t tell me, because I am the “her” of the Don’t Tell Her.”
The way that families deal with aging is strange. My father had a stroke last year and often worries so much about the shaking in his hands — which he can’t understand and needs an explanation daily — that the rest of my family told him that it was all because one of the knives he uses isn’t balanced properly and that the shaking isn’t really his fault. Much like the lies in this movie, that simple explanation makes things easier for him. Is it right? I’m not entirely sure.
The lesson here comes from Nai Nai’s farewell. She warns Billi of being “the bull endlessly ramming its horns into the corner of the room” and tells her that “life isn’t just about what you do, it’s more about how you do it.” Certainly this seems like no great revelation, but this movie is all about the way the story and the advice and the emotion are told.
I enjoyed it. Perhaps you will. You can watch The Farewell on Amazon Prime.
In the same way that I’m dispositioned to despise anyone from Upper St. Clair or Mt. Lebanon — Pittsburgh-centric content, yinz guys — I’m also usually on high alert to dislike Oscar bait like this film. So let me get all my vitriol out of my system before it begins: for a movie that people are proclaiming as a human experience of war, all I could see were the technological advancements and filmmaking tricks that allowed for the continuous shot style of the first half of this movie.
It’s fine. It was up for the biggest prizes in movie making and yep. It’s a fine movie. It has no real soul or reason for you to watch it more than once, but this may be more of an indictment of this reviewer than this film.
It left me cold and I felt like I was begging it for warmth. Just a casual outline of the events of the movie seem like they could be moments worth viewing, such as the choice to save or murder the downed German pilot. Instead, they are just moments.
Sam Mendes has had a wonderful run so far, between his highly regarded James Bond films, Jarhead, Road to Perdition and American Beauty. He has an eye for huge visuals and the ability to tell a great story. This isn’t a small movie, despite really only centering on one character’s experience in the war.
I probably enjoyed the scenes with the drunken soldiers blessing Schofield and Blake before they ventured into No Man’s Land more than anything else in the movie. Although I wonder what the narrative point is of the film, which informs us at the end that everything that the leads have endured was truly for nothing, as the orders will probably change in the next week. This is not the first movie I’ve watched recently that offered little to no hope. Or maybe that was just life itself.
Again — I felt like this movie was an awesome technical achievement. Perhaps the self-congratulatory nature of Hollywood and the press put me off, as I didn’t need to hear its creators sing its praises so much. Or perhaps a steady diet of Mexican, Phillipino, Hong Kong and Italian junk movies have eroded my movie watching abilities, only allowing me to savor movies where black-gloved madmen strangle women and gas-guzzling mutants rise from the grave.
There’s this party. And these kids. And this psychic reader that they invited. And then, something goes wrong and someone crosses over from the other side to haunt everyone. He or she or it is named Agramon and they cannot be stopped.
This movie comes to us from Harley Warren, who also sent Eternal Code our way.
Yeah, I don’t do Ouija boards or seances at parties. Horror films have taught me so much. No one in this movie learned those lessons.
Laurene Landon (Maniac Cop) is in this, as is Yan Birch (The Stairmaster from The People Under the Stairs). They play Richie’s parents, who we see in flashbacks, and Yan’s character comes back from the dead to get this whole mess going. Or maybe it’s that demon in the title. Just you know — follow my advice. Nobody should get their fortune read or reach out to the dead. Bad stuff always follows.
Agramon’s Gate is available on demand from Midnight Releasing. You can learn more at the official Facebook page.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR company.
8 Slices is all about a small-town pizza place named Patronies Pizza is about to go out of business, just as its employees begin to question their place in life and their part in the American Dream.
It get it — I’ve been feeling the same way, wondering that if all my hard work and energy is going nowhere, that nothingness and apathy are the new order of the day.
I’m also very hungry for pizza.
This is Nick Westfall’s second full-length film and it definitely has the feel of Empire Records, my go-to workplace ensemble movie. In case you’re wondering why this pizza place is going out of business, well, I’ve never seen so many people work in a pizzeria.
Also, I’ve never been to a pizza place where all of the employees pretend to be famous writers. Mostly, they’re gruff old Italian men or their children who are getting screamed at by their angry elders.
Speaking of frequently yelling parental figures, one of the customers looks and acts exactly like my father-in-law, a man who is obsessed by pizza like no one else I’ve ever met.
The title pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? Instead of reptiles, we have ants. Hey, don’t laugh this movie off and make with the bad Samuel L. Jackson imitations. Besides, this flick is more of the “Uh, excuse me. But I want these goshdarned ants off this goshdarned plane” variety.
And, as this 2019 New York Post article shows, it really happened on a United Airlines Italy-to-U.S flight. And there’s nothing like a real “nature run amok”* event to breathe new life into an old TV movie. And besides, this eco-terror romp is directed by George Mendeluk, he of my fondly remembered, pre-cable TV movies Stone Cold Dead (1979) and TheKidnapping of the President (1980).
It’s good to visit with you again, George, my friend.
When do the snakes show up?
Utterly annoying Caribbean vacationers and honeymooners from the Canadian Campus of the Ed Wood School of Thespian Arts—the type of “skilled actors” that leave you rooting for the little lost rain forest ants—are on a return trip from to Miami from Columbia. The cardboard cast soon discovers that a mutated, “super-organism parasite-hive” of deadly bullet ants burrowed its way into a human host—who subsequently “Aliens” them up on the plane. And the ants swarm from his every orifice and make a run for the air vents. And they turn the plane’s electrical system into dinner. And they kill people in the bathrooms because, well, even in the throes of death, one still has to pinch a loaf—ants be damned.
Luckily an entomologist (Jessalyn Gilsig) with a whiny daughter (for the human relationship drama) and a hunky U.S sky marshal (Antonio Sabato, Jr. (for the romantic angle) just happen to be on the plane—that no country will allow to land for fear of spreading an ant plague. (Make a note: Mutant Columbian rain forest ants BAD: don’t fly them in under any circumstances. COVID-19 Coronavirus good: load ’em up, land ’em, stock pile ’em at an army base. Why? Because we think The Walking Dead really happening would be, like cool ‘n stuff.)
F’ the ants, Jessalyn. Cut the friggin’ limes and let’s party with the “good” Corona.
U.S TV fans will recognize Jessalyn Gilsig from her starring roles in the series Boston Public, NYPD Blue, Friday Night Lights, Nip/Tuck, Heroes, Glee, and, most recently, ABC-TV’s Scandal.
While ex-daytime TV actor and former Playgirl-Calvin Klein model Antonio Sabato, Jr. has done a commendable job making his bones on TV series such as Earth 2 and Melrose Place, and his excellent portrayal of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas in 2009’s Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas, we, the staff at B&S About Movies, always go back to the fact that his dad is our beloved Italian exploitation actor Antonio Sabato, Sr. from Seven Blood Stained Orchids and Escape from the Bronx. (Sabato, Jr. recently made the news regarding his industry-wide blacklisting for his Republican political beliefs and not being able to find work, having to sell off his possessions and take work in the construction field to make ends meet. You can read more about it at The Blaze and The Washington Times.)
Since this Canadian TV movie has a strong female lead, it became quick programming fodder for the female-centric cable channel Lifetime in 2007—and having a “hot” Italian-born Sabato as a leading man doesn’t hurt its female fan base. This eco-terror flick eventually rolled out as a TV movie and direct-to-DVD feature in the overseas markets from 2008 to 2015 under the titles Swarm, Deadly Swarm, and its original title, Destination: Infestation. Of course, courtesy of the United 2019 incident, it was reimaged once again with a new exploitive-marketing title, so as to align it with Samuel L. Jackson’s Snakes on a Plane for its free-online streaming debut on TubiTv.
Eh, but still, Mendeluk is a long ways down the road on his extensive, 70-plus Canadian and U.S. resume that began with the highly-rated TV flicks Stone Cold Dead (starring the awesome Richard Crenna and Paul Williams from Phantom of the Paradise, Smokey and the Bandit) and (the aforementioned-linked) The Kidnapping of the President (starring the always welcomed Hal Holbrook and William Shatner). Mendeluk’s most recent work—with, yet again cable-dumb criminals and annoying heroine-damsels—was the 2017 Lifetime damsel-in-distress flick The Wrong Babysitter (that’s appearing on various streaming services and Smart TV platforms in late 2022).
You can rent Stone Cold Dead on Vudu/trailer. The Kidnapping of the President is available for rent on Amazon Prime, but there’s a pretty clean VHS rip for free on You Tube. You can watch Ants on a Plane for free—with commercial breaks—on TubiTv, or pretty clean DVD-rip without commercials on You Tube.
* Back in January 2020, we went crazy reviewing nature-strikes-back films with our “Nature Run Amok” week. Here’s the full list of those reviews so you can catch up.
And there’s even more “nature run amok” films with our December 2018 shark tribute week, “Bastard Pups of Jaws,” which features everything imaginable—from 1976’s Grizzlyto 1977’s Orca, from 1979’s The Great Alligator all the way out to Renny Harlin’s 1999 shark romp, Deep Blue Sea.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.
Here’s the IMDB description: “A collection of paintings unleash horror on an unsuspecting family corrupted by the seven deadly sins of greed, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, pride, and wrath.”
Here’s the B&S About Movies description: The movie starts with a near-insane looking Richard Grieco screaming at his family about a painting, yelling “No respect for art!” and throwing his suit jacket about the room.
Oh yeah — they kind of made this movie for me.
Rolfe Kanefsky may sound like the name of a Paul Naschy character, but the writer and director is the son of Victor, who edited Ganja & Hess and Bloodsucking Freaks. His first movie was There’s Nothing Out There and he’s continued his career with all manner of movies that speak directly to me, like adaptions of Milo Manara comic books like Click and Butterscotch, as well as an entire series of Emmanuelle films that take her into space and into battle versus Dracula. He’s also found the time to write kids’ movies like Space Dogs: Adventure to the Moon and family features such as Puppy Swap Love Unleashed.
Behold! What is that scratchy voice and who does it belong to? It’s Tara Reid! Man, if the Italian horror machine was still in full swing, she’d be getting menaced by leather-gloved maniacs and her legs groped by the undead. Such a shame!
Jessica Morris, who was once on One Life to Live, also shows up. She’s appeared in a bunch of streaming horror films as of late. Hey — don’t knock paying work.
This is a fine slab of complete ridiculousness and reaffirms my faith in the world. All movies should start out with Detective Dennis Booker blowing himself away.
In the year 2073 the solar system is in a political divide between the hydrogen-rich outer planets beyond the asteroid belt and the hydrogen-dependent inner planets. The military surveillance vessel Ares 11 is part of the Terrestrial Alliance Fleet that patrols the 200 million kilometer-wide neutral zone of the Asteroid Belt and keeps the peace.
After their ship is attacked by a planet-to-air missile, the crippled craft slowly leaks its oxygen supply. Now the Ares’ four crew members fight for survival as they discover there’s only enough air for two of them to return to base—alive.
South Florida writer-director Robert Goodrich’s ultra-low budget feature film debut reminds of the 1985 Canadian post-apocalypse flick Def Con 4—if it stayed inside the ship and never made planetfall—and of the inventive production design of its Pacific Northwest shot-against-the-budget brethren, Space Trucker Bruce. If you ever wondered what happens aboard a spaceship orbiting the Io mining colonies of Jupiter in Peter Hyams’s Outland, Ares 11—with its “limited setting” flavor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat—is that movie.
As with the charmingly quaint Space Trucker Bruce, Ares 11 overflows with commitment across all the film disciplines—with its truly impressive set and costume design—that’s devoid from most of the minor-studio direct-to-DVD features clogging up today’s online streaming marketplace. For the astute sci-fi connoisseur, after a spending a few minutes with the four-actor cast working inside three cramped sets, they’ll find themselves watching a dramatic, psychological version of John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon’s 1974 University of Southern California student film, the science fiction comedy, Dark Star. Another film reference—in terms of the cramped, budget-conscious set design and costuming—is Trimark Pictures’ 1990 television/home video-distributed TheDark Side of the Moon (its plot pinched for the failures 1997’s Event Horizon and 2000’s Supernova)—and that film was backed by a major studio (absorbed by Lionsgate and now a Roku channel) with a 1.2 million dollar budget.
It’s not a CGI effect: The Ares 11 is a ’70s-styled in-camera effect comprised of a plastic pressure cleaning water tank with kit-bashed model tank and old computer parts. You can watch the behind-the-scenes production video of the assembly on Vimeo.
As many of the Amazon Prime reviews on Ares 11 prove, low-budget science fiction—for those more accustomed to Matt Damon’s The Martian and McConaughey’s Interstellar—isn’t for everyone. As someone who worked as an actor on three experimental sci-fi indie shorts myself, I wish my writer-directors had Robert Goodrich’s talents (and Anton Doiron’s of Space Trucker Bruce) and lived up to their lofty pre-production (broken) promises. Ares 11 is immensely better that the “professional,” larger-budget MST3K honoree Space Mutiny (1988) and all of the suggested watches listed on the Ares 11 online streaming pages.
First released in 2013, Ares 11 won “Best Feature” at the 2013 Palm Beach International Film Festival and the 2014 Action on Film Int’l Film Festival, as well as earning “Official Selection” status at the 2014 Roswell Film Festival and Austin Indie Flix Showcase. You can learn more about Ares 11 at Continuum Motion Pictures and check out the film’s production stills at HighTechScience.org and Hunu Films Facebook. You can watch behind-the-scenes clips—and stream the film as a PPV—at Vimeo. While Ares 11 has been in the marketplace on PPV and DVD platforms since 2015, it has recently made its free 2019 streaming debut—with limited commercials—on TubiTv. You can also rent/purchase its stream on Amazon Prime and purchase DVDs from Walmart.
By the way: we love our sci-if here at B&S About Movies. Be sure to check out our “Star Wars Droppings” week of reviews in commemoration of the December 2019 release of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. Back in September we had a post-apocalypse blowout of all manner of films from the ‘60s to ’80s—and you can catch up with our “The Atomic Dust Bin: 10 Post-Apocalyptic Films You Never Heard Of” round-ups Part 1 and Part 2 that lists those 60-plus film reviews.
Oh, and speaking of great sci-fi films on a budget: Be sure to visit our three-in-one review for the Dust Channel-hosted Pink Plastic Flamingos, Skyborn, and Cockpit: The Rules of Engagement. All three sci-fi shorts are highly recommended watches.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.
Since she was a child, Anna has been abused, misused, manipulated and exploited. This has led her to be disconnected from humanity. But now she’s taking control and turning things on her abusers and enablers. Now, her inner demons will be used to hurt other people instead of just damaging her from within.
This is the first full-length movie from director Pasquale Marco Veltri and it’s really powerful. It’s an incredibly dark film, helped by a brave performance by its lead, Laura Tremblay, who has an IMDB page full of talent with everything from crew member roles to producing, directing, doing visual effects and even being part of the wardrobe department.
This isn’t a light watch. But it’s a good film.
Drowning is available on demand.
DISCLAIMER: This movie came to us from its PR team.
Guns Akimbo is about Miles Harris (Daniel Radcliffe), a loser coder who spends his off time trolling comment sections and being an asshole. He learns his lesson when he sets his sights on Skizm, an online video stream that showcases deathmatches in real-time. The people behind the channel break into his house, beat the shit out of him and bolt guns to his hands and tell him to kill Nix (Samara Weaving), a female Skizm competitor with the longest killstreak in the history of the program.
This movie doesn’t give you much time to get your bearings, much like it’s lead character, before it plunges you into total insanity. This movie is pretty much non stop violence for almost an entire hour and a half. You’re going to have fun if you seek this out because you watch these types of films for that very reason, it’s pure pornography, the gunfights and murderous killing sprees culminating in the ultimate money shot; death twitches, and superbly photographed bloodshed. I live for these types of movies that are frenetic blurs of bullets and bodies, peppered with crazy plots, foul language, and music video quality stylishness.
I’d like to imagine the creator of this film outta his fucking skull on crank, viciously gritting his teeth, and sweating profusely in front of a typewriter while writing this script. This is the work of a madman. Jason Lei Howden created a publicity nightmare by attacking minorities and women on twitter and it’s a damn shame he couldn’t keep his hateful rhetoric to himself. If he had I think this would have massive levels of hype, this could have been the next great action franchise, or at least led to a sequel. I can’t imagine that happens now but let’s face it Hollywood is synonymous with scum rising to the top.
Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving breathe life into their roles that have no parallels in the acting world. I can’t imagine any one else playing Miles and Nix. It’s oddly satisfying and terrifying to see the man who was made famous by Harry Potter films, running around in his boxers and fuzzy oversized paw slippers, waving around pistols to flag down cops for help. Miles goes from a lackadaisical nondescript male, into an internet sensation, within the runtime of the movie, and it’s invigorating to watch. Equally impressive is Samara as Nix, a cocaine addled killer with a mysterious past and serious fear of fire and explosions. Seeing her wield a number of different weapons in the film is a treat, and she is a total brilliant mess of a character.
If you enjoy mayhem in your movies, you will not be disappointed by this film. It’s crass, it’s loud (it has a crazy soundtrack), it’s lit like a red-light district on the night of the purge and it will make you want to load up a first-person shooter video game and go on a rampage. You’ll want to do this because you can’t legally have an actual deathmatch in your city. This film is a pure adrenaline rush and there wasn’t a second that I thought was dull. There are few lulls in the film though, serving to further the plot and they pass by just as fast as Nix killing her opponents and anyone else dumb enough to stand her in way, and they are as nutty as the rest of the movie. Guns Akimbo is a hard-hitting no bullshit actioner and I am totally here for this level of crazy. You can see this in select theaters currently or rent it through video on demand services which is what I had to do because no theater around me from here to Cleveland seems to be playing this film which is a total shame, this begs to be seen on a large screen with Dolby sound pounding throughout the room.
A covert desert base manned by an elite group of commandos and weaponized dinosaurs are all that stand between us and World War III. You have no idea how much I loved every single second of this ridiculous movie. If I was 7, I would be driving my family insane talking about it incessantly. As it is, I’m 47 and plan on doing the same.
Between an opening joke that refers to their audio as ZHX — Zombie instead of the T in THX — and a comic book opening that makes fun of probably everyone that’s watching this movie, this is a down and dirty blast of fun. Go Team Milko!
Jurassic Thunder is available on demand and on DVD March 10, 2020 from High Octane Pictures. Since its VOD debut on Amazon, you can now watch it as a free-with-ads stream on Tubi.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team, which has no bearing on our review.
Update: Do you want to be a part of a Milko flick? In November 2021, Team Milko launched a Kickstarter campaign for the production and release of his next film, Phantom Patrol.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.