The Dark End Of The Street (2020)

Hitting VOD Tuesday is a small micro-budgeted gem that you really need to take a look at. Despite running a brief 70 minutes THE DARK END OF THE STREET packs a visceral punch larger than most films  coming out of Hollywood or the inde scene.

Set on one night in a small community the film focuses on the various interactions between residents many of whom are on edge since the police have revealed that someone seems to be breaking into their home and killing their pets. While that is the catalyst, of sorts, the real stories or stories revolve around life just happening and people talking about their lives.

Moving like the wind and possessing great insight Kevin Tran has fashioned a film for our time. Despite the film not being set in these Covid swampd times the films thematic thrust of people trying to find a human connection is more relevant today than when the film was made. We are all looking for sense of belonging to something greater. The question as to whether Tran's character's find what they are looking for is something you are going to have to watch the movie  to discover.

I really liked this film. Frankly I didn't really want to see the film because it didn't hit all the ticky boxes but I agreed to look at the film simply because of who offered it to me. His recommendations always tend to be worth the time even if I don't like the film itself. This time it as dead on and as a result I found a small gem I can recommend without reservation. It is exactly the sort of film that I started Unseen FIlms to highlight.

Hitting VOD on Tuesday I suggest you give THE DARK END OF THE STREET a shot. Its a beautifully acted ensemble piece with something to say and make you think.

Stay At Home Festival Bonus Film: Racing tragedies and farces

Compound Fracture (2013) hits VOD on Tuesday

The first film released by Mane Entertainment, Tyler Mane's production company is finally getting a digital release starting Tuesday.

Tyler Mane plays a man returning to his family home with his fiance and nephew in order to help take care of his father. Mane had left years before because of the tension in the family unit. Things begin to heat up again not long after thy arrive, but then thins take a darker turn as it is revealed that something is trying to get into the house and kill the family.

Surprisingly good horror film is nice character driven film. This is a film where the people on screen matter and not the blood and guts. What a wonderful change of pace from the vast majority of  modern horror films.  Even better is the fact that the cast Tyler Mane,Derek Mears, Muse Watson, Renae Geerlings, and Leslie Easterbrook  not only capable of selling the material, but that they decide to do so.  They make it clear why this film has been kicking around for the better part of a decade and is now getting a VOD release.

If you want a good character driven horror film COMPOUND FRACTURE fits the bill.

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Films; Abandoned theme parks

Psychomagic: A Healing Art (2019)

I am going to be completely honest right up front and say I have no idea what to think of the latest film from Alejandro Jodorowsky. The film is a documentary on his psychomagic which he uses to heal people of their traumas so they can go on and lead healthy lives. It is a film where Jodorowsky talks about his process, which comes out of the theater, and which he has been refining for the last half century. The film is essentially an illustrated lecture by the director explains what he is doing and then showing us examples.

This film is kind of impossible to review. It is somewhere beyond a conventional film, it is not even a conventional documentary, running closer to a position paper on Jodorowsky's ideas. There is nothing counter to them, simply a discussion with illustrations. It isn't a movie, so much as an infomercial, except that there is no website or phone number to call in the next ten minutes.

As a writer on film I really don't know what I am supposed to do with this film. I cant really critique it as a piece of cinema because it isn't really a film as such. The film is simply one man and his followers talking about their process for healing themselves and others with examples. Does it work? I honestly don't know.

I do know that I find listening to Jodorowsky talk is interesting. I intellectually like the ideas he is putting forth. I have no ability to know if he is right, or would be right for everyone. I do know some of the demonstration sequences are almost embarrassingly intimate. Several times I felt like I was intruding. I also found several pieces a bit silly.

I have no idea who this is aimed at. As a long term Jodorowsky fan I was interested in his showing how his magic informs his films, but at the same time this really isn't a film I would watch a again, which is not something I would ever say about any of his other films.  To be frank I think this is going to confuse the hell out of a lot of people- I know it confused me.

I suspect that unless you are either extremely interested in mental health and emotional care or are the sort of Jodorowsky fan who wants to really know where his ideas come from  this is not going to be for you.

For me, I came I saw I'm going to go watch Magic Mountain again.

Stay At Home Festival Bonus Film: Legacy of Arrow Development

THis is a doc on the make of some of the world's best rollercoasters and amusement park rides

A brief piece on BEAST NO MORE (2019) Hitting VOD tomorrow

This piece is going to be short out of necessity. It's not that the film is bad, it isn't, rather it's that the film takes some twists and turns that make talking about the plot nigh impossible without spoiling things.

The plot, or as much as I can say, has a young woman fleeing into the Australian Outback and her work studying moths and butterflies to get away from the loss of her child. She hopes the solitude will do her good, but she isn't alone and complications soon arise.

This is a good little film that holds our attention thanks to some carefully placed twists and turns. Motoring along at a good clip the film keeps flipping just as we think we are getting a handle on things, the result is a film that won't let us look away. This is exactly the sort of film we need during the Covid crisis, something good that isn't like everything else.

Recommended.

The deeply moving HOWARD (2019 )hits Disney + today

This is the review we ran at last years Tribeca where it wowed everyone. Below is the Q&A that followed the World Premiere

Loving and deeply deeply moving portrait of Howard Ashman who  along with Alan Menken wrote the musical LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS went on to help revitalize Disney animation in films such as ALADDIN, THE LITTLE MERMAID and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Telling the story of Ashman's life from childhood to his death. The film pretty much covers it all making up shows for his little sister on through college, his starting his own theater company, the meeting with Menken, Broadway and eventually Disney. It is not only a portrait of the man but a very clear explanation a to why and how he changed popular culture forever.

This is a film that literally brought tears to many of the critics covering the Tribeca film festival. sitting in a crowded theater I could hear the sniffling and nose blowing around me during the more poignant moments. i'm not ashamed to say I cried at times, and amazingly I had several normally stoic critics admit to me that, yes they cried too. Apparently there is now a small secret society of people who cried during HOWARD. Having worked on some of our favorite films,Ashman's  work meant the world o us and his loss means something.

This is a great film and I can't believe that the film hasn't been snapped up by Disney because it is so good on so many levels.

Highly recommended

Stay At Home Festival Bonus Film: Order of the Black Eagle

Black Water Abyss hits VOD and select theater Friday

A group of friends go into exploring in a cave system in the Outback. As they get deep into the system a storm hits and the water in the tunnels begin to rise. Things wouldn’t be bad but with the water comes a some hungry crocodiles.

Yea we’ve been here before. Yea Black Water: Abyss hits some expected points, but it doesn’t matter since it still manages to ramp up the tension. Thank director Andrew Traucki and writer’s John Ridley and Sarah Smith who use the setting in such away that what should have been a familiar story seems to be bright and new. This is the perfect sort of film for a low key night on the covid couch.

Personally I couldn’t wait to see how it all came out. I was watching it during a lunch break at the day job and I had to sneak finishing it up.

Worth a look when it hits VOD on Friday

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Film: Punk in Africa

JULIA SCOTTI: FUNNY THAT WAY (2020)

Incredibly lovely and loving portrait of comedian Julia Scotti, who was born as Rick. Rick had successful career as a stand up comic  but realized he still wasn't happy. Then  in her later 40's she realized what  was wrong with her life and decided to change from being Rick and become her true self, Julia.

JULIA SCOTTI: FUNNY THAT WAY came across my desk at exactly the wrong time. My father had passed a short time before, I was declining covering films left and right and really wasn't in the mood to see anything. For some reason I clicked on the link for the trailer and it made me smile. There was something warm and sweet about the film and about Julia which perked me up so I agreed to take a look at the film.

What an absolute joy. What an absolutely magnificent portrait of one woman trying to find her happiness and bringing everyone along with her. To be honest the road was hard, marriages broke up, Scotti was estranged from her children for years and things happened, but in the end it seems, that she has found a place  where she can be happy.

The  film opens with Julia talking about how her story doesn't really matter, but it really does. Julia's story matters because in watching her go from Rick to Julia we see a beautiful story of how, if we are lucky, we too can change ourselves and our worlds for the better by following our hearts. Watching the old video and film of Rick you can see how he was shlumphy and self deprecating. You can see the sadness behind his eyes. On the other hand watching Julia now, interacting with people and performing you can see how much better she is being herself. The sadness is gone, as is the self-eviscerating  humor and it is replaced with smiles and jokes that have a warmth to them. Say what you will Julia is so much funnier.

What I love about the film is it leaves me wanting more. Not just more of the story, but it makes me want to track Julia down and just hang out with her. I want some of her joy of life to come my way. I want to go to a diner and shoot the breeze and catch up on old times- despite never having met her before. That the film does this is a testament to not only Julia but director Susan Sandler who has made not so much a film  but a personal introduction via bear hug. It's as if she has invited us over for lunch with someone one we "just had to meet" because she knew we'd be great friends. She was right and after watching the film I feel as though I now have a great friend whom I've never met.

I absolutely love this film and it's subject to pieces.

Highly recommended on the level of this is going to be "one of your most cherished films of the year" level, JULIA SCOTTI is going to be continuing on the festival circuit with the film being an official selection at Austin’s AGLIFF 2020 (All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival) Aug. 6-16 and will play at the Bentonville Film Festival Aug.10-16.

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Films: Theme Park Docs

A Thousand Cuts (2020) hits virtual theaters Friday

A THOUSAND CUTS is a portrait of the current political and social situation in the Philippines through the trials and tribulations of journalist Maria Ressa and the organization she works for Rappler, the leading investigative news site in the country. Wanting to do more than tow the party line for demagogue Rodrigo Duterte, they have ended up in a never ending battle to report the high crimes against humanity that the the government's war on drugs  are committing.

I am going to be brief in regard to A THOUSAND CUTS. My brevity is not because there is anything wrong with it, but rather because the film is over stuffed with information regarding what is going on in the Philippines. Frankly I need to see this film another time or two to catch everything that is being thrown at us and to process it. There is a great deal to ponder here and I am not going to toss off a long review pretending that I have fully digested it.

Kudos to director Ramona S. Diaz who has turned in yet another excellent film. Refusing to tell the story simply she instead drops us into the middle of the battle for the soul of a nation.  While she primarily is tracking Maria Ressa's story we also get to see General Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa the strong man who is holding public executions of addicts, Mocha Uson the pop star turned social media influencer for the dictator and numerous journalists who are struggling to cover the madness. Diaz is covering all the bases and by the time the film ends we feel like we have had a ten course meal.

This is both a heartbreaking and hopeful tale. It is heartbreaking in that we witness a country going slowly insane as respect for life and basic human dignity begin to ebb away under the control of a man who simply wants to remain and power by playing to human baseness. He really couldn't care less about stories such as the woman who had to crawl down an alley to get to he son who was killed by police violence. At the same time it is hopeful in that it is a tale that shows us that there are some good people in the world, like Ressa, who refuse to go down the dark path.

(I don't want to state the obvious echoes to the current American leadership, but I do have to mention that there is a sequence early on in the film where Maria Ressa explains the divide in how her country gets its news and how that split the country- which exactly parallels the split in the US groups.)

A THOUSAND CUTS is a great film.   It is a film you must see if you care about humanity and human rights. Highly recommended.

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Films: Rollercoaster troubles

Coma (2020)

Hitting digital and Blu-Ray Tuesday is the Russian science fiction film COMA and if you love wicked visuals you must see this film.

The film has a young architect waking up in a weird world after an accident. It seems that he is in a coma and his consciousness is waiting is strange world made up of memories both fully remembered and party remembered. He quickly encounters other people who live in the world as well as the dark beings, reapers which feed on the inhabitants. Will he be able to learn to survive and more importantly will he find a way out?

The visuals are the thing here. The bent and twisted world where every which way is up and anything is possible is just wickedly cool. It is so cool that I am disappointed that I couldn't see this on a big screen.

The plot is nothing special. Suffering from being too close to any number of films like THE MATRIX or RE-CYCLE or any of their children COMA is something we've kind of seen before. That's not bad, after all this has wicked special effects and any number of cool sequences, but it keeps it from becoming great. As good as the bits are the whole just never stops reminding us of something we've already seen.

But before you slink off and think that there is no reason to watch this film consider that the visuals and the set pieces are strong enough on their own that they make the film worth seeing. Yea the plot is been their and done that, but at the same time the filmmakers spice it all up with some mind blowing pieces.

Definitely worth a look see for any one who likes science fiction, great visuals and mind blowing action set pieces, COMA hits Blu-ray and digital Tuesday and worth you time and money.

Senior Love Triangle(2020) starts August 4

Tom Bower give a great performance as a WW2 vet who begins affairs with two women in  retirement homes. He's struggling to find a place to live and to remain connected to the world (he keeps getting booted out of the places he calls home)

 This is a wonderful grand surprise of a film. To be honest I didn't expect to be moved as much as I was. I simply thought this was going to be a by the numbers film and surprisingly it never really went that way. Based on a true story, the real people were the subject of a photo documentary spread that we see during the end credits, this film feels real. Bower and the ladies, Anne Gee Byrd and Marlyn Manson create three of the most alive characters you'll see in any film all year. They are so good that you'll swear you are watching real life. This all feels messy and real. The scenes between the leads have a lived in quality most other films never seem to muster. 

To be honest the leads are so good that they seem to be in a completely different film than many of the supporting cast. While the rest of the cast would be fine in any other movie, putting them against Bower, Byrd and Manson they are sadly at sea.

If you want an atypical film that isn't regula Hollywood I highly recommend SENIOR LOVE TRIANGLE, a small gem of a film of the sort that Unseen Films was created to highlight.

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Film: The Cinemascope Story

Bundini (2020)

Patrick Green’s short bio BUNDINI was made to tie into the new book Bundini: Don’t Believe The Hype by Todd D Snyder about Drew Bundini Brown. The film  is so good that not only will you want to run out to buy the book you’ll want to track down director Green and plead with him to expand the film into a feature.

If you want to know who Drew "Bundini" Brown  just know that he was the man who coined the phrase "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." He was a man who could motivate anyone to do the best they were capable of. He was introduced to Muhammad Ali by Sugar Ray Robinson as the only man who could out talk Ali. Bundini became a fixture in the corner of Ali as a trainer and living embodiment of will. On more than one occasion he he talked Ali into continuing a fight when he wanted to quit. . Bundini pushed Ali to be all he could be and when he passed away Ali said that Bundini was the man who made him The Greatest. (Green's film makes it clear that was the case)

Green’s film is a stunner. Giving the man his due the film finally puts the spotlight on a man who helped shape the Muhammad Ali we saw on TV and in the ring.  By making Ali all he could be he effectively changed the world. It reveals the life of the man from birth to death and makes you realize what an amazing  and influential life he lead. Is there anyone he didn't know at one time? Maybe not.

The only problem I have with the film is that there simply is too much to Bundini’s story to leave it at just over 20 minutes.This needs to be turned into a feature documentary. I understand that some may say hand the film over to Hollywood, but Hollywood would chop Bundini's life down to just his time with Ali, but his life was more than that, with a stint in the military at 13, love affairs with legendary singers, rubbing elbows with celebrities, making movies and plus his time by in the corner of two world champions there is too much for any one narrative feature to contain.

In all seriousness I really want a feature expansion of this film. I want to see the whole story. Mostly I want to hear more from all the voices that Green has marshalled to talk about Bundini. Mixing various contemporary interviews with new interviews with members of Bundini's family, people who knew him, as well as writer Todd Snyder Green gives us a well rounded portrait of one of the great unsung people of the last half century. Best of all the mix of voices, speaking with love, drive the film forward and makes you want to lean in close and hear all the stories.

Whether you like boxing or not.BUNDINI is a great film.  Its the story of a great man who did great things and and probably didn't get the attention he should have.

Certain to be on my best of the year list the film is very recommended.

For information on Todd D Snyder's book Bundini: Don't Believe The Hype go here.

Stay at Home Fest Bonus Films: Abandoned F1 race tracks

and