Guti and Sig wake up naked and handcuffed to one another on a riverbank near Ljubljana. Sig suffers from memory loss, after a fight with skinheads that Guti tried peacefully to intervene. Sig has no passport or any clue about his identity, the skinheads have taken everything he owned. Guti is trying to build a new home for himself and introduces Sig to his friends, a group of suburban misfits, who remind Sig of a legend of the hidden people.
It’s the most loving tribute to cinema and to Ingmar Bergman, set in world that feels so habitable that I felt like only re-watching this for eternity, because of how inviting it looks and feels.
Dramatic Horror!!! Wait, what?? Did you say "dramatic horror"?? IS there such a thing?? I mean, TRULY. Well, if San Francisco-based, Pakistani-born independent filmmaker Dr. Hassan Zee and this film critic have anything to say about it, there IS such a beast as experienced through the director's newest feature film set to officially debut October 4th in the City by the Bay. Folks, indie film will always be a bastion of experimentation and originality, and this film for me fits that bill.
While prioritizing production value over substance, Flood depicts an emotionally taut family drama set during the farmland flooding of the Franco-Dutch war.
Birds of Prey has some of the best stunt work and choreography of 2020, and was the most fun I’d had in an action film since John Wick 3.
Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus is a beautiful, poignant, enraging, gut-wrenching, and heartbreaking film about the trauma and harm conversion therapy inflicts on young queer people. Even though its classification as horror holds, the emotional bond between the two main characters, Naim and Ryan, elevates the story into a realistic romantic drama on par with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
One of THE most frustrating trends in the mainstream film industry over the last several decades has been the onset of comedy efforts that seem SO focused on being crude and/or gross-out in all ways possible. That, at least for me, makes them no longer funny.
