★★★ Directed by: Erik Bloomquist Written by: Erik Bloomquist, Carson Bloomquist Starring: Caroline Williams, Nicole Kang, Nicholas Tucci, William Youmans, Adam Weppler Grimmfest Film Review by: Darren Tilby It is a surprisingly perceptive little vampire flick, Ten Minutes to Midnight. A contemplation on age, specifically as it affects women, that deals, also, with sexual harassment…
The village of Ose, tucked among Norway’s western fjords, is what one might call prime Scandinavian real estate, if you’re into the misty essence of storybooks and sagas. It’s not surprising then that there’s a market for new housing in the area, or that it once hosted temples to leading figures of the Norse pantheon….
Detention is a ghost story that’s pretty much atmosphere all the way down, more haunted house than horror film. It excels at presenting a ghoulish ambiance and creepy scenery, but when it has to make anything of its characters or plot, the film runs out of tricks. Appropriately, Detention — which I saw at Nightstream’s…
October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article about…
A new drug can really take you places in Synchronic, the latest from the directing duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Dennis and Steve are among the first to see the drug Synchronic creeping into their community. As paramedics, they begin getting strange calls linked to the drug, and when Steve finds out he only…
Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for October 13th, 2020 and our…
Winner of the Golden Shell for Best Film at this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival, and chosen as Georgia’s entry for the Academy Award for Best International Film, Beginning signals the arrival of a bold new cinematic voice in the form of writer-director Déa Kulumbegashvili — though, as you watch it, it’s hard to…
There are arguably three different kinds of Pixar movies. There are the Exclusively-For-Kids movies (think Cars, The Good Dinosaur, A Bug’s Life), then there are the For-All-Ages movies (The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, recently released Onward), and finally, there are the ones that transcend age entirely and manage to break out of the traditional structures of…
Edward James Olmos has been in the business for over 45 years, establishing himself as one of the go-to Latin talents of his generation. From Blade Runner to Miami Vice, Battlestar Galactica to the recent Sons of Anarchy spin off, The Mayans, Olmos has cropped up in a variety of different roles – each one…
October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article about…
“The Simpsons” is officially part of the Hollywood Resistance. The term refers to any show, or performer, dedicated to removing President Donald Trump from office by any means necessary. In the case of Matt Groening’s iconic show, it often requires weaponing gags and storylines to promote progressive causes. We saw a depressing example last year…
In the No Time To Die Countdown, Jake Tropila takes a look back at every Bond film – official and unofficial – in anticipation of the release of the latest entry. At ten years and six films, Roger Moore had officially become the longest-tenured Bond at this point in the series’ time. He had matched…
On the beloved space Western series Firefly, there are creatures called reavers, introduced as the worst beings alive. These homicidal cannibal pirates rape and pillage their way through the universe Joss Whedon created, striking fear in the hearts of all who encounter them. However, when Serenity, the movie based on the series, came out, it…
This is my ranking of the best Netflix Original Movies. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I say that both as a statement of fact and as a preface to a list that you — yes, you — most likely won’t agree with. All quality-based lists are subjective, and that’s okay!…
Ted Sarandos oversees the most consequential media company of the streaming age. Sarandos is the CEO of Netflix, the platform which redefined how we consume content. From the phrase “Netflix and Chill” to Hollywood’s biggest directors planting a flag on Netflix soil, the streamer is as big as any content company not associated with a…
Science fiction is not a safe space! It can’t be. For if it is, it betrays its reason for existing: the unfettered extrapolation of technological and social change. Hordes of “woke zombies” have invaded science fiction. They inhibit free extrapolation and free speech through aggressive gatekeeping and social and professional ostracism, inspiring fearful writers to…
“Unfortunate you if you cannot understand the mysteries of the jungle.” It’s hard to imagine a more fitting opening line for Tragic Jungle, the fifth feature from Mexican filmmaker Yulene Olaizola. Set in the early 1920s on the border between Mexico and Belize (then known as British Honduras), the mysterious, myth-laden film chronicles the encounter…
A horror feature, an animated family short, an Arab-American short film, and more are on the docket for October 2020. Our friends at Seed&Spark have all sorts of projects you can support; what we feature here is merely dipping your toe into the indie filmmaker ocean. REMISSION Remission (2020) – source: Greg Ivan Smith A…
“It is always darkest before the dawn.” The words of Harvey Dent are ones that go beyond the pages of graphic novels and superheroes, encapsulating reality at its worst, all while focusing on the prospects of the future. For many, we need to push ourselves out of our comfort zones, placing ourselves in unfamiliar territory,…
Remember all the outraged headlines over “Saturday Night Live” mocking a sitting president’s medical diagnosis? What about the Twitter accounts featuring preferred pronouns attacking the show for its ghoulish humor? No? That’s because neither woke progressives nor the mainstream media shared an ounce of anger over it. “SNL” repeatedly mocked President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 infection,…
October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article looking…
The coven reforms in The Craft: Legacy, the latest from writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones. You all remember The Craft, right? That ’90s movie with goth high school witches who took things way too far? Well, we’re finally getting a sequel, although given how similar this feels to the original, it seems to be some mix of sequel, reboot,…
Joe Chappelle’s “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers” had the kind of deeply troubled production that made the behind-the-scenes drama more legendary than the film itself. If John Carpenter’s game-changing 1978 original put a genre blueprint firmly in place, it also proved a class-act few have been able to match. Following the independently made smash…
October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article, about…
Welcome to The Prime Sublime, a weekly column dedicated to the underseen and underloved films buried beneath page after page of far more popular fare on Amazon’s Prime Video collection. We’re not just cherry-picking obscure titles, though, as these are movies that we find beautiful in their own, often unique ways. You might even say we…
Author Dinesh D’Souza is the Rodney Dangerfield of documentary filmmakers. He doesn’t get no respect from critics. D’Souza’s last two docudramas, “Hillary’s America” and “Death of a Nation,” scored 4 percent and 0 percent “rotten,” respectively, at RottenTomatoes.com. The general public, or at least right-leaning America, defiantly disagrees. The latter films both scored 80 percent…
October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article about…
Sometimes, a movie is released and the hype/controversy surrounding it is too much for the movie to get out from underneath. Sometimes this means we sit down in the cinema with expectations and preconceived notions that we can’t escape. Away from the Hype is an ongoing series looking at some of these movies years away from…
Isabella (dir. Matías Piñeiro) Isabella (2020)- source: Cinema Guild Isabella has all of the makings of a movie I would, could, and should enjoy. From the beginning, it confidently declares itself as a theoretical dive into the ideas of ‘performance’, ‘narrative structure’, and the ways that visual elements play into moods. Shades of blue, green,…
The white Alba truffle is one of the most desired and rare mushrooms in the world. And, to make it all the more rare and desire-able, to this day it can not be cultivated. It can only be hunted by those who have become masters of their trade. Yet, truffle hunting is not a one-man…
October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This online article…
Few directorial debuts this year will be as impressionable and as impressive as Radha Blank’s The Forty-Year-Old Version. The semi-autobiographical film, which follows a thinly-veiled version of the director as she balances her theater career and her new hip-hop gig, won Blank a directing award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. And now, over half a…
There’s something oddly refreshing about a new Woody Allen movie in 2020. That recognizable credit font. The old timey music setting the stage for Neurosis Theater. The now youthful stand in for Allen himself, having long since aged out of the gig, cracking wise for our amusement. It’s nostalgic, no doubt, until you realize the…
Any film would kill to have a cast like “The War with Grandpa” boasts. Robert De Niro. Uma Thurman. Christopher Walken. Comic scene stealer Rob Riggle. The film itself doesn’t tax any of the above. It’s a frothy, paint-by-numbers comedy that cant even commit to its central thesis. Still, the old pros hit their marks…
Released with little fanfare, Kubo and The Two Strings was a confirmation that the underrated animation studio, LAIKA, were putting the obvious contenders to shame. But while being praised by critics and, on average, earning well at the box office, LAIKA has still not breached film culture in the same way that DreamWorks, Disney, and…
It’s not easy covering an industry weaponizing art to a degree we’ve never seen before. This reporter leans to the right, as does Hollywood in Toto. No mystery there. It’s as transparent as the site’s tag line. Some days, though, it seems like every other pitch in my inbox is designed to counter my core…