SXSW Review: "Starry Eyes"

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 15 March 2014 00:51

Written by Matt Oakes

"Starry Eyes"
Directed by Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Starring Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan, Fabianne Therese, Shane Coffey, Natalie Castillo, Pat Healy, Nick Simmons, Maria Olsen, Louis Dezseran
Horror
United States

At the risk of emasculating myself, I'll admit that Starry Eyes was so scary that it made me cry. Not ooey, gooey gobs of terror tears so much as the lone, solitary drop leaking down my face as my jaw was busy sagging half-way to the floor. Still, a tear's a tear and a tear did floweth. So if this film doesn't at least creep you out, check your pulse because you're probably not human or may have already sold your soul to the devil. It's more likely though that you'll be sitting in a pile of your own yuck after the screening, tired, sweaty, fearful and all the more afraid of the dark.

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SXSW Review: "Ping Pong Summer"

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 14 March 2014 00:50

Written by Matt Oakes

"Ping Pong Summer"
Directed by Michael Tully 
Starring Marcello Conte, Myles Massey, Emmi Shockley, Lea Thompson, Susan Sarandon, Amy Sedaris, John Hannah, Robert Longstreet
Comedy
United States

The opening scene to Ping Pong Summer sees Rad - our very uncool, ironically named protagonist - trying to make a hardboiled egg. After getting a pot of water boiling, he eyes the microwave, opting for the easier route, hoping to satisfy his need for eggy goodness as quickly as possible. As that white egg spins in the hollows of a 1980s microwave, you could hear the audience groan with unease. "Is it gonna explode?" you could almost hear them fret. When Rad pops the now piping hot egg out thirty seconds later, peels it and chomps down, the yolk - now essentially a yellow sun of melty goo - explodes onto his face like yolked magma. Half of the hapless audience explodes with laughter. After digesting the contents of the remainder of this helplessly uncool flick though, one ought to see this dismal cold open as the perfect analogy for the film at large - an easy route to the finish line that just ends up exploding in its own face.

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SXSW Review: "Among the Living"

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 13 March 2014 01:00

Written by Matt Oakes

"Among the Living"
Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury
Starring Beatrice Dalle, Anne Marivin, Nicolas Giraud, Francis, Renaud, Xacharie Chasseriaud, Damien Ferdel
Horror, Thriller
France

Pitched as a crossroads between Stand By Me and Friday the 13th, Among the Living builds a beautifully unsettling landscape only to take a sledge hammer to it in its run-of-the-mill, slasher-standard third act. It's a roller coaster of quality, ticking upwards in fitful bumps, building mood and anxiety in the gorgeously photographed, kaleidoscopic backwoods of rural France. Strapped in and nervous, we're primed for the fall, ready to rocket around unexpected twists and turns, thrown for 360s, tossed into loops and amped to arrive at the end wide-eyed and breathless. When we do reach the precipice and look unto the other side though, the sinking feeling in our stomach is one born of disappointment, not terror. Instead of a winding track, heinous turns and caveats into foggy caves, it's a one-track rail cruising straight to the end. On this straight and narrow pathway, there's nothing new, little remarkable and hardly anything exceedingly effective. And while the build up may be right on the money, the climax feels more like a bag of change.

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