One cannot watch Deathgasm without thinking that writer/director Jason Lei Howden isn’t just a big time lover of old school, 1980s-style heavy metal, but also a passionate devotee of filmmakers like Tobe Hooper, Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon, Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright. Not only is his debut a deft, dare I say joyous homage to the music he undoubtedly adores, but it’s a deliciously energetic and gory romp through monster, zombie and demon tropes so rambunctious it’s as if the whole thing was engineered from the start to be a rollicking love letter to the entire genre.
Brie and Sudeikis shine, and as for laughs they are undeniably plentiful. Sleeping with Other People might be too familiar for its own good, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining, and as romantic comedies go it’s one of the more enjoyable ones I’ve seen this year.
For Apple junkies, this is likely to come across as a hit piece. Gibney chooses to take off the rose-colored glasses, show the flaws and the brilliance, attempting to find the wizard behind the curtain, giving a broader insight into a human being so many have tended to look at in awe and with reverence but seldom with understanding.
Not that I’m dismissing Mistress America. As much as the stagy pitter-patter of the dialogue didn’t sit as well with me as I’d have liked, that doesn’t make the structural, character-driven cohesion of the plot Baumbach and Gerwig have constructed any less attention grabbing.
In the end, it’s hard not to find plenty to like about Cop Car, and as minor as this little thriller might be Watts directorial talent is still undeniable, and as such for those who tend to like this type of thing the movie offers up a ride potentially worthy of the taking.
The Look of Silence is director Joshua Oppenheimer’s powerful companion piece to his Academy Award-nominated stunner The Act of Killing. If that latter film was a detached, clinical analysis of unimaginable evil put under the most devastatingly perceptive of microscopes, this latest endeavor is the cry to hold those killers responsible.
Shot on the fly using an iPhone 5S, featuring a pair of loose, energetically bouncy performances from newcomers Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, [Tangerine (2015)] is an exuberantly original shot of comedic adrenaline, building to a cathartically touching coda that’s as distinctive as it is genuine.
Cartel Land is Traffic but for real. Documentarian Matthew Heineman’s prize-winning Sundance sensation is unlike anything else we’ll see this year, non-fiction filmmaking as visceral, edge-of-your-seat thriller utilizing the medium in ways seldom done before.
He finds corners and angles to Holmes other current portraits of the character haven’t discovered, and as impressive as Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Lee Miller have been, McKellen surpasses them with ease. I felt each beat of the journey, took every step, and by the time final decisions are made I was so caught up inside of the great detective’s headspace it was almost as if we were making them together in some sort of symbiotic tandem.