Man, this quarantine is killing me. If my wife wants to watch something, now we watch it. I’ve seen more than a few Tiffany Haddish movies now. Let me share my pain with you.
I put on a strong front in these posts, but trust me, I always get roped in to these movies.
Haddish and Rose Byrne play childhood best friends who are more like sisters. Their makeup company is on the verge of bankruptcy when their get an offer from Salma Hayak’s character, who is obviously going to screw them at the end and try to ruin their friendship.
As basic as this film is, I enjoyed the casting of Jennifer Coolidge and Pittsburgh native Billy Porter. I also really liked another movie by director Miguel Arteta, 2009’s Youth In Revolt, which played with the expectations of teen movies pretty nicely.
The Hunt has often been a punchline in the emails between this site’s R. D Francis and myself, as we’ve discussed many times how bad the film appeared from trailers and whether or not the controversy was just made up to get rid of a movie that did not appear ready for theaters.
When the COVID-19 epidemic finally pushed this out — anything that is in the can and could be released is being shown — I finally got my chance to see just how bad — or good — this movie was.
Directed by Craig Zobel — who helped created Homestar Runner — from a script by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, this movie reimagines The Most Dangerous Game for the nightmare hellworld that we find ourselves navigating every day.
The movie was originally called Red State Vs. Blue Stateand so upset President Trump that he referred to it as “”Liberal Hollywood” being “[r]acist at the highest level” and stating, “The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos”, and “They create their own violence, and then try to blame others.”
Nobody cared.
I mean, this is a movie that has Sturgill Simpson play a character named Vanilla Nice. That’s the extent of its humor. And the idea that perhaps there’s no right side in this war is pretty much wasted so that Betty Gilpin and Hilary Swank can have a fifteen-minute fistfight.
The whole beginning of this movie feels less like a film and more like watching someone else play PUBG, with numerous deaths happening with no consequences or emotions.
It’s closer to a slasher, some would say, but most slashers are entertaining.
Imagine if The Purge, but remove all the over-the-top ridiculousness and square up reel moralizing — as well as most of the fun — and you have this movie.
Look, Hard Target, Turkey Shoot and Surviving the Game are already much better cover versions than this. They just didn’t have a ton of money behind them and all manner of hype that they didn’t deserve.
You know, I liked this movie more than I ever would have thought. I’ve disliked nearly everything Pete Davidson has done on Saturday Night Live, seeing him as, at best, a one-note stand-up jammed into a show where the best he can do is look sleepy and break in nearly every sketch.
Yet this movie, a semi-autobiography as Davidson’s father was also a firefighter who died on 9/11, was moving and well-done.
It’s not without its problems. Like every Judd Apatow movie, there’s no reason for it to be two hours and sixteen minutes. The guy has no idea how to end a movie on time.
Marisa Tomei again shows why she really did deserve that Oscar and wow, Bill Burr was a revelation. The guy is so natural and perfect here, as is Bel Powley as Davidson’s love interest.
Pamela Adlon, who plays Burr’s ex-wife, is actually the voice of Bobby Hill on King of the Hill, which is a shock. And Steve Buscemi, who was a firefighter while beginning his acting career, is great as usual.
I was expecting a self-indulgent mess and got a thoughtful film. I promise not to judge Davidson so harshly in the future.
Here’s the official description of this film from the fine folks at October Coast: “Weekend campers, an escaped convict, young lovers and a police officer experience a night of terror when a hostile visitor from another world descends on a small Arizona town.”
As for the title of this film, it doesn’t make sense until the end, which comes out of nowhere for a movie that up until then has felt like Without Warning 2020.
We covered director Joseph Mbah’s film Expo on the site and as I was looking back on it, I remember that I called out that that film had more than ten minutes of credits. This one started with nearly three and ends with eleven minutes or more. So, if you love credits, good news!
I really liked the design of the alien monster in this, which felt very 1950’s science fiction. I was expecting to not see any creatures in this, so I was pleasantly surprised to have so many creature effects.
Battlefield 2025 is available on demand from Uncork’d Entertainment, who was nice enough to send us a copy to review.
When David Roberts (Craig Lindquist), a successful man suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s wanders away from home a day before Thanksgiving, his already dysfunctional family, headed by his son Matthew (Kyler Steven Fisher), splintering under the financial and spiritual strain in caring for their patriarch, snaps.
Out on the streets alone, David comes to develop a spiritually-mending friendship with Christine (Shayla McCaffrey), a fatherless, thirteen-year-old homeless girl who saved him after a street beating. Through the faith and selflessness of their “father’s keeper,” the Roberts family comes to restore their own family and faith.
Our Father’s Keeper is admittedly different from the genres of films in the indie marketplace that we normally review here at B&S About Movies. And we know that faith-based films are not palpable subject matter for everyone. And in these current hard times, as we deal with a global pandemic, the last thing anyone wants to watch is a movie about a family struggling with a disease.
But it also the exact time that we need a movie like Our Father’s Keeper in the marketplace to affirm that there is a light at the end of even the darkest tunnels.
This intelligently-written feature film debut by screenwriter Chris Dallimore is directed by Rob Diamond. An award-winning writer and director in his own right, Diamond’s been behind the keyboard and lens since the late ’90s and amassed twenty-plus credits in both disciplines.
Fans of character actor Danny Trejo may already be familiar with Diamond’s work, as Trejo starred in two of his previous films: Justin Time, a 2010 family-adventure, and Propensity, a 2006 dramatic-thriller. Diamond’s forte is, of course, faith-based films and his works in that genre, The Last Straw, starring Corbin Bernsen, and Wayward: The Prodigal Son, won Utah Awards in 2013 and 2015.
Hopefully, based on that production pedigree and the fact that Diamond can bring familiar, quality actors such as Trejo and Bernsen onto his projects, it will encourage one to watch Our Father’s Keeper. Putting the faith-based subject matter aside, Our Father’s Keeper is a well-made film that features stellar performances from its unknown, new-to-the-streaming-screen cast. Craig Lindquist and Shayla McCaffrey, in particular, will each quickly expand their now slight resumes with larger, more mainstream projects. Thread reviewers name drop “Hallmark” in their comments on the film. I feel the subject matter of Our Father’s Keeper is a bit too heavy for that channel’s warm n’ fuzzy rom-com catalog. It is, however, deserving of wider exposure on the family-friendly Up cable channel (which began its broadcast life as Gospel Music Channel and GMC-TV).
Streaming in the online marketplace for several months on Amazon Prime and the You Tube channel of the faith and family-based Encourage TV (which also streams on Roku and Android TV), Our Father’s Keeper made its premiere as a free-with-ads stream this month on TubiTv.
Disclaimer: We weren’t provided an advanced screener or a review request by the film’s PR company, distributor, or director. We discovered this film all on our own via social media and genuinely enjoyed the movie.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Everyone dreams of second chances as they fight their demons of regret over past decisions and time wasted.
This is the quandary facing Nick (Mason Heidger, the upcoming psychological short, Tomorrow Is Yesterday), a loveable “mad scientist” obsessed with the concept of time travel. Now, seven years after his first experiments, his career and finances are in a shambles, his family and friends have abandoned him, and his marriage with Jess (Tori Titmas) has ended in divorce — which exacerbates his resolve to make the hypothetical a scientific reality. If he can make his machine work so he can get a government contract, he can get his life back. . . .
Nick’s fortunes change when a consortium realizes Nick is closer to success than Dr. Kent (Steve Berglund), their own frazzled, chief time travel physicist. Nick will receive the funding needed to finish the project and have a permanent job, provided he travels with Dr. Kent into the past. And it works . . . and the machine blows the home’s fuse box and leaves them stranded seven years in the past, as they wait several hours for the machine to recharge its mainframe.
The temptation to “break the rules of time travel,” i.e., not tampering with the past and altering the present, complicate the trip when Nick discovers he’s surrounded by the friends and family that once shunned him — on the night of his engagement party when he first proposed to Jess, the woman he just divorced.
As the tagline on the theatrical one-sheet states: Making Time was shot in two days. . . .
And the genesis of the film was . . . a home renovation.
Writer-director Grant Pichla and his wife, Lyndsay, were in the process of remodeling their suburban home, so Pichla “seized the day” by using the real life “set” as an opportunity to illustrate time travel. Principal photography of first half of the film — the past, with the house in a shambles — was filmed in “real time” over the course of one day. The second half of the film — the present, with the remodel completed — was film seven months later.
If you’re familiar with the intelligence of Shane Carruth’s low-budget time travel drama Primer and Charlie Kaufman’s (Adaptation) sci-fi romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (both 2004), then you’ll enjoy the character-driven premise of Grant Pichla’s sophomore feature film (his first was 2014’s Niner). If you connected with the scientific wanderlust of the recently released Red Rover, Shane Belcourt’s indie rom-com centered around the Mars One Project, you’ll enjoy this inventive time travel romance.
Making Time is, in fact, the second low-budget time travel movie I’ve watched this year: the other was the sci-fi rom-com Same Boat. And as with that utterly brilliant Chris Roberti-directed film, Making Time is the type of film that inspires mainstream A-List producers to take notice. And as with my prediction that we’ll be seeing more from Chris Roberti: we’ll be seeing more from Grant Pichla. It’s just a matter of time. And the clock will strike sooner, than later.
The same holds true for Michigan-based lead actor Mason Heidger, who’s appeared in an array of shorts and indie features (along with a dayplayer role as Officer Rucka in the Detroit-shot scenes of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice). His co-star, Tori Titmas, recently made her feature film screenwriting debut with the comedy The Girls of Summer.
As I watched Heidger’s performance unfold, I was reminded of the acting brilliance of Jim Parsons in his portrayal of Sheldon Cooper in CBS-TV’s The Big Bang Theory. Heidger’s thespian skills in rattling off scientific expositional dialogue are on equal. Is the “science” of time accurately based in theoretical physics and quantum mechanics? Is it all just a screenwriting trick-of-the-keyboard? No matter. It is written and acted with such conviction by team Pichla-Heidger, that they convinced me — as I ponder what reading materials, besides filmmaking texts, sits on the shelves of Pichla’s remodeled house.
My only quibble (and it’s not a deal breaker) with the film is the time machine itself. In the lo-fi lands of indie film, we’re certainly not expecting a Robert Zemeckis-inspired DeLorean to appear . . . but what “sold” Shane Carruth’s Primer to indie-fans was the inventive construction of his lab and its related props on-a-budget. In Making Time, the time machine does appear, as one thread reviewer pointed out, to be a (black) sheet draped over a cone strung with Christmas lights (and a short stack of DVD decks/cable boxes “hooked” up to an iPad). But hey, actor Peter Fonda rigged up 8-Track players to send (nude) people through time in an underground desert bunker in Idaho Transfer — and Sam and I like that Mill Creek public domain ditty. And I enjoyed Making Time.
After a successful festival run — where it won awards for Best Acting Performance of the Year and Best Supporting Actress at the 2019 LA Actors Awards, and Best Indie Feature at the 2020 Vegas Movie Awards — Making Time began streaming in the online marketplace via Amazon Prime and premiered this month as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTV through Indie Rights Movies. You can learn more about the film at its official Facebook page.
You can learn more about IRM’s roster of films on their official website, along with their Facebook and You Tube pages. Back in March and April, we reviewed two of Indie Rights’ most recent releases: M.O.M: Mother of Monsters (starring Ed Asner of TV’s Lou Grant fame) and the equally intelligent and inventive sci-fi thriller Double Riddle. You can also watch Tori Titmas in The Girls of Summer — directed by . . . wait for it . . . only at B&S About Movies . . . John D. Hancock, the writer-director of the 1971 Drive-In psychological-horror classicLet’s Scare Jessica to Death — via IRM on TubiTV.
Update: April 2022: Persistence and time pays off for Mason Heidger. He booked his first network television gig on NBC-TVs Chicago P.D. with the Season 9: Episode 19 “Fool’s Gold.” You can now stream it online at NBC.com.
Disclaimer: We weren’t provided an advanced screener or a review request by the film’s PR company, distributor, or director. We discovered Making Time on our own via social media and genuinely enjoyed the movie.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
A reporter finds her life in danger when the story she has published results in several murders that come closer to her. That seems like a simple start, but the truth is, I was continually surprised by this horror film, as every time that I thought it would be a typical direct to streaming affair, it showed some aspiration or threw in a winking nod to the past.
Director Gregory Hatanaka has worked on several films that you can find streaming. Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance would probably be the best known.
I thought that this was going to be a straight-up slasher, but was shocked to see plenty of giallo influence in the kills, the lighting and even in the push in pauses that the film uses to dramatic editing effect. There’s even a scene where two of the characters watch a Hong Kong movie — I think it’s Master of the Flying Guillotine — that made me smile.
While most direct to streaming affairs feel filmed on an iPhone, this movie aspires to be much more. Plus, Lisa London is in this, who you may recognize as Rocky from Savage Beach. I always like to point out an Andy Sidaris reference.
Every day for decades, Walter Mercado — the iconic, gender non-conforming astrologer — mesmerized 120 million Latino viewers with his extravagance and positivity. And then he was gone.
In the film, Mercado defines himself as androgynous and insists that the primary relationship of his life is with his fans; he also jokes about being a virgin even in his advanced age. But man — what a magical world he created. His intros and his voice and his beyond Liberace outfits stand out in the macho world of Mexican television, a Puerto Rican performer just seamless fitting in while standing out at the same time.
For as big a star as Lin-Manuel Miranda is, you can tell how humbled he is upon meeting Mercado. That human moment made this entire movie for me. It’s exclusively on Netflix and well worth checking out.
Man, I keep watching these Blumhouse movies and I keep getting depressed by figuring out their plots minutes into them and I keep doing it to myself.
This would be a giallo, except it doesn’t have any great fashion, good music, cool camera work, leather-gloved killers, trippy colors, weird plot movements or…actually it’s not anything near a giallo. Because it kinda sucks.
Also, I realized part of the way through that I was watching House of Leaves, but a really bad version of it. I wasn’t alone. Author Mark Z. Danielewski said, “Thanks everyone for bringing to our attention this measuring scene in YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT. If it isn’t theft, can anyone point to a scene of a man measuring the inside of his house against the outside of his house in any work other than HOUSE OF LEAVES?”
Yeah.
David Koepp is the ninth-highest ranked — money-wise — screenwriter of all time. He wrote I Come In Peace, so I’ll give him a pass. Then again, he also wrote The Shadow, Secret Window, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and directed Mortdecai. Some people just keep getting chances in Hollywood. He also wrote Stir of Echoes, so maybe his work is just all over the place. He based the movie on the book You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann.
This would have been in theaters for a weekend if it wasn’t for COVID-19. Man, I’ve been a downer on this one. Sorry. I just can’t quit these glossy and disappointing films.
We’ve often discussed the line between arthouse and grindhouse. There’s a similar division between glamour and smut. As one of the great masters of photography, Helmut Newton found fame exploring the female form. But were the women in his pieces empowered or exploited? These provocative, sensual and at times subversive images are the real stars of this film, which also features Newton’s home movies and archival footage of the artist in the media.
Grace Jones, his muse Charlotte Rampling, Isabella Rossellini, Anna Wintour, Claudia Schiffer, Marianne Faithfull, Hanna Schygulla, Nadja Auermann, and Newton’s wife June (photographer Alice Springs) all make appearances here, discussing how Newton’s photography impacted their lives and how they saw themselves as attractive beings.
Directed by German filmmaker Gero von Boehm, this documentary is packed with the very images that it discusses. Of course, Grace Jones steals the show. But did you expect any less?
No matter where you stand on the divide between treasure or trash, you’ll find plenty of intriguing material here. Despite his death in 2004, his work has stood the test of time. His work is such a part of our psyche, particularly with Playboy, which published an entire book of his work for the magazine. There is also an incredible shot of Jerry Hall that he shot from Adam, his giant nudes and even the portrait of Thatcher that Vanity Fair assigned to him.
Time referred to Newton as The King of Kink. But was he? Or just someone unafraid to shock, to play with gender roles and a man that encouraged women to own their fantasies — provided he could take the photos of the evidence? Make up your mind for yourself.
You can watch this film online on Kino Marquee as of July 24. Thanks to Kino Lorber, who was kind enough to send us a review copy.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.