I kind of love that this movie takes a page out of Driller Killer and demands that “This movie should be played loud.”

The spiraling narrative is all about Sonja, a college student who somehow has found a movie that is five hundred years old that contains the spirit of the demonic sorcerer Var, after which all hell breaks loose.

This was written and directed by Nicholas Kleban, who made several shorts before this movie. I kind of want to talk to Nicholas, because he somehow made a movie that has everything I hate about streaming movies and everything I love about low budget weirdness all in the same film.

I hate scenes that go nowhere. I love when drugs are done in every scene of a movie. I hate when people take scenes from old movies. Yet I kind of love that this film’s Bloodsucking Freaks/Blood Feast theater was basically located in a two or three-seat dinner theater. I hate found footage movies. I love that this movie has found footage from a half-millennium old VHS player.

I mean, it has a reference to Inferno and this astounding explanation for a plot: “After doing some research, she discovers it is allegedly a film from the year 1594, made by the time-traveling sorcerer Var who harvested film equipment from the future and imprinted his spirit onto a roll of celluloid, and watching the film will release him. After dismissing this as nonsense, the seemingly invincible Var appears before Sonja and begins relentlessly attacking her.” Who would come up with this?

I don’t think I can be relied upon to rate this movie on any scale other than to say that you should watch it and try to make sense of the plot along with me. Any movie that leaves you with this many questions has to be doing something right on some level.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

If you saw this and thought, “Didn’t Academy Award winner Roberto Benigni already make a Pinocchio movie back in 2002?*” Well, yes, you would be correct. That version, written, directed and starring Benigni was nominated for six Razzies, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Actor (Benigni, who was dubbed by Breckin Meyer, Worst Remake or Sequel and Worst Screen Couple (Benigni and his wife Nicoletta Braschi, who played the Blue Fairy).

Seventeen years later, Benigni is in another adaption of Carlo Collodi’s book The Adventures of Pinocchio, but now he’s playing the wooden boy’s father Geppetto. Is the second time the charm for this timeless tale?

When a magical piece of wood falls into his hands, Geppetto does what he does best, carves it. What emerges is his greatest creation, Pinocchio, a puppet wondrously bestowed with life. However, Pinocchio dreams of becoming a real boy and that quest takes him into a series of misadventures with a fox and a cat, as well as a hundred-year-old cricket that continually attempts to be the conscience that our hero needs.

This film looks gorgeous, as it has a practical effects heart instead of trying to be a CGI film. It looks darker and scarier than the Disney approach that we know in this country, but don’t let that put you off. There’s something great here.

That said, it’s still pretty dark in places. After several adaptations to make the story more family-friendly, director Matteo Garrone took this movie back to its origins, the grim atmosphere and satirical tone of Collodi’s original novel. Garrone claimed that “much of the criticisms of the film’s violent content came from adults, while children in the test audience were quite relaxed about that aspect.”

Garrone is known for films like Dogman and Gomorrah, which are more adult fare. This is his first film that families can watch. He also believed in the project so much that he put his own money into the dubbing, using Italian actors who would know the emotions and would be able to convey it to a worldwide audience.

Pinocchio is now available on demand from Lionsgate, who were kind enough to send us a review copy.

*Rocco Papaleo (who plays the Cat) was the voice of Mangiafoco in the 2012 animated adaption.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally reviewed this movie on December 31 of last year, but it’s finally coming out on streaming, so we wanted to remind you to check it out. It’s pretty awesome.

Mickey Reece — who co-wrote this film with John Selvidge, has made two movies a year since 2008 and I haven’t seen a single one of them. After watching Climate of the Hunter, that will definitely change. It’s all about two older sisters awaiting the return of a childhood friend named Wes, one they both have romantic feelings for. He’s definitely a writer, but he may also be a vampire.

Alma (Ginger Gilmartin) and Elizabeth (Mary Buss) can barely be in the same room with one another, but now they’re staying at their family’s cabin together, right next to the aforementioned — and very mysterious — Wesley (Ben Hall). His strange behavior has led one of the locals — the wonderfully named BJ Beavers (Jacob Snovel) — to determine that this man of letters is really a count of blood, so to speak. And as for Alma, well, she can barely stay attuned to this reality, much less be able to deal with a bloodsucker.

Of course, even vampires have families today, which include a son (Sheridan McMichael) who spikes dinner with garlic and a wife (Laurie Cummings) who must rely upon facelifts to appear as youthful as her vampiric paramour when she isn’t in an institution.

Further complicating matters is the short visit from Alma’s daughter Rose (Danielle Evon Ploeger), whose youth and beauty take Wesley’s attention away from our protagonists.

This is a film that sparkles with modern dialogue while calling to mind the cinema of the 70’s,  particularly ones that set up dark spaces where female characters slowly lose their minds. Most strikingly, one scene borrows liberally from Daughters of Darkness.

You can learn more about this film on its official Twitter page.

I spent the majority of my grade school years getting beat up every single day.

I would dread lunch or any break in the day, because I knew that I’d be getting punched repeatedly, kicked in the head and dragged all over a parking lot until I bled.

Then those very same kids told me that if I ever told anyone what they did, they’d kill my parents.

I’m not telling you this for sympathy. It’s just that if it wasn’t for bullying, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I wouldn’t have been a pro wrestler, traveled the world and pushed myself to learn so much.

That’s why I found Thomas Keith’s movie so interesting, which features intimate interviews with victims of bullying, including their family members who have dealt with losing kids to suicide.

Bullied is about more than that, though. It’s also about how bullying can be stopped, even though basically we’ve just emerged from four years of dealing with a bully, whose every utterance triggered the way I felt when it was time to get beat down on the playground again.

This film is available exclusively on Tubi.

As he was trying to break into Hollywood after playing Johnny in The Toxic Avenger, Ryan Sexton discovered El Duce, the leader of The Mentors, passed out in the bushes outside his apartment. That led to him videotaping the life of the shock rock performer for some period.

For a quarter of a century, these tapes went unused. But now, David Lawrence (the editor of Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist) and Rodney Ascher (Room 237) have taken the footage and recombined it to tell the story of who El Duce was and how The Mentors were prophets or a shocking culture that they themselves would have both fit right into and railed against.

This is by no means an easy watch, but I have no idea why you’d be here if you weren’t already a fan of the days when rock and roll could be stupid, dangerous and both in equal measure.

You can come out of this thinking El Duce was a complete moron. Or perhaps he was a tortured soul who never really had a chance, who took fighting authority figures in high school to the next logical degree. Perhaps he was a victim of abuse who at times was so drunk that he couldn’t articulate how that made him feel, but would rather go for the shock of casual racism or German salutes. Was he in on the joke until he became the joke? Or was that the joke?

The Mentors: Kings of Sleaze Rockumentary came out a year before this and while that may tell a more complete picture, this is the more polished and ultimately heartbreaking movie. There’s a moment where Jerry Springer asks El Duce to take his hood off and then immediately asks him to put it back on. But I kind of think that the mask that he was compelled to wear was way more than just an executioner hood.

You can get this Arrow Video release from MVD.

Baltimore’s underground film scene of the 1960s. The Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge during the early ’70s. Baltimore’s celebrated Charles Theatre in the ’80s and the Orpheum Cinema during the ’90s.

All of these theaters had one thing — and one man, really — in common. That would be George Figgs. From appearing in multiple John Waters films to his work curating and projecting so many films, you won’t find many that have such a true love of film and a commitment to sharing it.

In just 25 short minutes, you’ll learn so much about how revival cinemas started, where they are and where they’re going. Honestly, this could have been 25 hours long and I would have soaked up every moment. I strongly advise you to check this out.

You can learn more at Kino Lorber and on the official Facebook page. To watch this, just head to Kino Now.

Mickey Reece — who co-wrote this film with John Selvidge, has made two movies a year since 2008 and I haven’t seen a single one of them. After watching Climate of the Hunter, that will definitely change. It’s all about two older sisters awaiting the return of a childhood friend named Wes, one they both have romantic feelings for. He’s definitely a writer, but he may also be a vampire.

Alma (Ginger Gilmartin) and Elizabeth (Mary Buss) can barely be in the same room with one another, but now they’re staying at their family’s cabin together, right next to the aforementioned — and very mysterious — Wesley (Ben Hall). His strange behavior has led one of the locals — the wonderfully named BJ Beavers (Jacob Snovel) — to determine that this man of letters is really a count of blood, so to speak. And as for Alma, well, she can barely stay attuned to this reality, much less be able to deal with a bloodsucker.

Of course, even vampires have families today, which include a son (Sheridan McMichael) who spikes dinner with garlic and a wife (Laurie Cummings) who must rely upon facelifts to appear as youthful as her vampiric paramour when she isn’t in an institution.

Further complicating matters is the short visit from Alma’s daughter Rose (Danielle Evon Ploeger), whose youth and beauty take Wesley’s attention away from our protagonists.

This is a film that sparkles with modern dialogue while calling to mind the cinema of the 70’s,  particularly ones that set up dark spaces where female characters slowly lose their minds. Most strikingly, one scene borrows liberally from Daughters of Darkness.

You can learn more about this film on its official Twitter page.