Festivals Reviews

SXSW 2022: Hypochondriac

Destroyed as a child through the violent fits, paranoia and hallucinations of a mother unable to care of herself or her family Will does everything in his power to forget and move forward with a normal life. He’s managed to find a loving partner, a decent career (even if he is bullied by an overprivileged white woman with no talent other than berating her employees) and a calm happy life. Things start to go sideways when his mother makes contact, first through odd boxes of cult-related reading materials followed by unwelcome and traumatizing visits. Soon his life is thrown into chaos and we start to wonder if it’s his mind playing tricks on him or has the world gone completely mad?

Festivals Reviews

SXSW 2022: Pirates

Three kids on the fringe of adulthood from North London at the turn of the millenium have their sights set on fame and fortune. Ready to kick off the new century and rest of their lives with a crazy New Years Eve together, they’ll do anything to get tickets to the best party in town. As aspiring djs with a pirate radio station at their fingertips and a growing fanbase (or at least they hope) this party is their ticket to making it out of their hometown and into the limelight, but their friend and manager drops a bomb on them that threatens the future they’ve planned.

Festivals Reviews

SXSW 2022: The Kids In The Hall: Comedy Punks

When I was young, The Kids In The Hall sketch comedy show felt like some kind of underground secret. Something that none of my friends or schoolmates knew about whose ridiculousness I could quote on queue like some big shot. Little did I know they’d been around in the Canadian comedy scene creating weird wonderful sketches for years before landing on my little television set. The Kids In The Hall: Comedy Punks brought all of that sassy schoolyard fun back but adds in the back stage frustrations, heartbreaks and growing pains of that amazing quintet of goons.

This Much I Know To Be True
Festivals Reviews

SXSW 2022: This Much I Know To Be True

“Thank you for the words, the music, the grounding sanity that your words bring to me in times of strife. I’m curious, behind it all: the music, the words, the suits, the grief, the tenderness, and shame, and guilt, and joy, who are you?”

This quote is from just one of a dozen fan letters, notes and emails that Nick Cave is sifting through on a given day in his new documentary/music video/love fest This Much I Know To Be True. It attempts to answer just that, even if only a small portion of what makes up this mystical creature. We’re taken for a stroll through the life and times of Cave during the pandemic and treated to an extended concert of sorts from his upcoming release with Warren Ellis, CARNAGE.

Festivals Reviews

SXSW 2022: 32 Sounds

It can be a cruel smack in the face or a gentle reminder not to take these wonderful bodies of ours for granted. 32 Sounds brings that into sharp focus tantalizing and teasing every aspect of the most wonderful of senses: hearing.

Festivals Reviews

SXSW 2022: Linoleum

Lingering in his subconscious, he does his best to deal with a partner ready to check out completely, a job that’s going nowhere and kids that love him but may not like him all that much. That delicate balance is on the brink as a satellite crashes in the back yard of his suburban home throwing their world out of wack and giving them all some much needed perspective. Time starts to stretch and bend as the story takes an unexpected turn that crushes your heart and gives you hope all at the same time.

Festivals

SXSW 2022 goes hybrid

Just as the world is starting to open back up (for what… the fifth time now?) Josh, Jenn and Morgen are “headed” to SXSW but only as far as their living room. This year the film festival is both in person and at a distance. Luckily for us there are a ton of options to take advantage of virtually so we can avoid those skyrocketing airline tickets and gas prices.

Cyrano A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film Photo credit: Peter Mountain © 2021
Reviews

Cyrano should be better, but the attempt is beautiful

Whether you’ve seen Edmond Rostand’s original Cyrano de Bergerac on the boards or not, it’s been told, retold again and again more ways than I’m sure Rostand would ever have imagined. Cyrano’s long-time friend and beloved Roxanne falls instantly in love with Christian, a new soldier in the army, in which Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) is highly regarded and ranked. Roxanne (Haley Bennett) asks her old friend if he will watch over Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and encourage him to romance her through letters.

Festivals Reviews

Sundance 2022: Neptune Frost

A futuristic look at life and death that still deals with the same struggles Black people suffer through today whether they’re American, Australian or African. Neptune Frost follows one person’s journey through life, the afterlife, and beyond in this strange tale of what it means to survive through the lens of social justice and technology.

Festivals Reviews

Sundance 2022: My Old School

What if you found out you were going to school, and even best friends with, a complete stranger? That’s the oddly intriguing premise of this strange, winding documentary. A young man named Brandon Lee enrolled at Bearsden Academy, a secondary school in a ritzy suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. Over the course of the next year or so, he went from a nobody to the lead in the school play, everyone’s pal and the life of the party. Little did they know, he had a secret that would throw everyone he’d met there for a loop.