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Reviews
Sundance Review || "The Overnight"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 29 January 2015 01:07
- Written by Matt Oakes
Last year, Patrick Brice showed up to SXSW with Creep. Devilishly crafty and expertly focused, it fell in with the usual suspects of found footage horror, even though it was so much more than just another point and shoot, "gotcha!" scare effort. The natural tension that Brice was able to tease out of a scene - the inherent discomfort and overarching ambiguity of character relations - made for a plucky and generously bewitching offering of horror comedy.
Sundance Review || "Reversal"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 29 January 2015 01:06
- Written by Matt Oakes
There's a flicker of hope early on in Reversal. A scuzzy captive batters her captor, gaining the upper hand and chaining him in the very binds she was kept in for who knows how long. She scours the house for car keys, stumbling upon a folder filled with Polaroids of similarly imprisoned females. She rages downstairs, pistol cocked, face splattered with blood from their recent altercation. Tensions run high and the stage for a decent horror flick is set. And then she opens her mouth.
Sundance Review || "James White"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 29 January 2015 01:05
- Written by Matt Oakes
James White is a revealing ailment drama fastened by excellent performances and as smothered in bathos as cafeteria nachos are in fluorescent cheese. Marking the writing/directing debut for longtime Borderline Films producer Josh Mond, this nuclear family implosion bespeaks a turning point for the genre-leaning studio. In the wake of such cerebral thriller vibes of Martha Marcy May Marlene and Simon Killer, James White is the product of hawkish realism - an blemished, brave story that squares its audience in the midst of an emotional tornado.
Sundance Review || "The Strongest Man"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 29 January 2015 01:04
- Written by Matt Oakes
Socially awkward black comedy with occasionally explosive moments of understated humor, The Strongest Man is Kenny Riches' follow-up to Must Come Down and his first big festival debut. His surgically shrewd examination of two nobodies stewing in the melting pot of Miami presents a deep and thoughtful metaphysical exploration of life as alien experience with the stonerish tendencies of Jared Hess and the outlandish atmospheres of a dedicated daydreamer.
