DEATH CYCLE (2026) is now on VOD

In the wake of a car accident that killed one woman and injured another, a figure in black riding a motorcycle is killing anyone connected to the accident or the cover-up that followed.

this is a giallo influenced thriller that takes a by the number plot and turns it into something special. This is a small hidden gem with a great cast and wicked visual style that lifts the film up from any number of  by the numbers inde thrillers and makes it something you'll want to sit on the couch and watch.

I'm not going to lie and say there is anything new plot wise, because there isn't. Instead I'm going to say that the film builds suspense and mood by creating a visual style that actually works. It works so well that even the over used drone shots that now seem to be part of every film seem  new and deliught the eye. (Seriously there were a couple of shots that had me say out loud that they looked cool). This is a modern day giallo which does what the form frequently did which was take an okay narrtive and spice it up with the visuals.

I shouldn't be down plasying the plot, it isn't as messy as giallos from the 70's, but at the same time you'll know who is behind it all almost instantly.

Definitely worth a look on a night on the couch DEATH CYCLE is now on VOD

Brief thoughts on Writing Life – Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students (2025) Rendezvous with French Cinema 2026

Claire Simon travels across France and talks to high school kids about Annie Ernaux.

This is a verite styles documentary where we listen in to groups of students in classes talking about the Ernaux.  It is thrilling to listen to kids having passionate discussions about literature. It's so much better than most of the discourse  we see in the media concerning anything cultural. The discussion is passionate, well informed and compelling.

As good as the discussion is, how you react to the film and at what point you step away will be determined by how well you know Ernaux's work. I know nothing so once the thrill of watching empassionate discussion wore off I quickly realized I had no idea what they were talking about. What the works referenced were meant nothing to me  and while I could enjoy the thematic discussions I was lost in the details. 

Simply put this is going to work best if you know Ernaux.

Three festivals start this week and a fourth concludes: Thoughts on CPH:DOX, SXSW, CINEQUEST and the final weekend of NYICFF

 Over the last week I have been swimming in way too many films. I originally thought they were all for SXSW (because every one I know was focused on that) but the truth is there are other festivals happening this up coming weekend and I have been getting tons of films for those as well. 

Because I don't have it in me to do several different curtain raisers I'm going to do one ginormous one talking about each.

SXSW
Ths is like the spring version of Sundance. Its the place in America where a lot of American filmmakers go to get first word out on their films. What amuses me about SXSW is that despite becoming a major launching pad for American cinema the festival almost always treats it as an after thought. They want to focus on music, education and othe non-cinema things. Still the festival still gets some winners every year.

The first of two absolute MUST see films at the festival is Marq Evans CAPTURING BIGFOOT. A look at the Patterson/Gimlin film that  breaks the myth, via a recently unearthed second reel of film. Evan's film is going to rewrite what we thought we knew about the mysterious cryptid. At the same time the film is incredibly bittersweet as we watch the few feet of film destroy the lives of many it touched. Just see it and be moved in both your head and heart.

The other MUST see is BEYOND THE DUPLEX PLANET, which is a portrait of David Greenberger who started the zine Duplex Planet which revealed the lives and thoughts of the people who lived in the nursing home where he worked. Expanding out to records, performances and books Duplex Planet changed lives. The film about it is a staggering achievement on a scale that few films ever reach. It will leave you full of feelings and thoughts and it will not leave you for weeks after seeing it. Trust me I can not shake the film.

EDIE ARNOLD IS A LOSER is a very good film. A visually glorious film, trust me what this film does with films will blow your mind, its the story of an outsider girl who ends up in a band and a battle of the bands. And that is all I can say. While I  was sent the film in the hope of doing an interview or getting it into the curtain raiser I was asked not to review it.  That's the filmmakers choice, they want people to see it in a theater with an audience, but the truth is having spoken to a couple of other writers who saw it and loved it, its a mistake. This is a wonderful film and everyone who has seen it is itching to sing its praises. Don't believe me- buy a ticket and go to Catholic school with Edie.

CPH: DOX
This is a documentary fest in Denmark. Its a fest that shows a lot of great docs that don't always make to the US. I was only sent a couple of films to review such as MARINIIKA about a city in Ukraine divided by the war, where brothers fight on opposite sides and DAUGHTERS OF THE FOREST a great film about mushrooms.(Trust me its really good).

However I have already covered a good number of films they are playing:

Aanikoobijigan [ancestor / great-grandparent / great-grandchild]

BELOW THE CLOUDS

BOY GEORGE AND CULTURE CLUB

Radur Jude's DRACULA

DRY LEAF

EVERYONE TO KENMURE STREET

GHOST ELEPHANTS

HAIR,PAPER, WATER...

HOLDING LIAT

LANDMARKS

OUR LAND

PHENOMENA

UNDERLAND

If you do a search you'll find reviews for all of them

CINEQUEST
Every year I am flooded with requests for coverage for films from this west coast festival- and who am I to say no?

They always have a bunch of great off the radar films that end up on my year end list. This year some of the choice films include:

MERMAID- the story a young trans girl who tries to walk into the ocean with a bakpack full of rocks and is saved by a drag queen. This is not what Hollywood give us and instead it has a real and lived in feel where people are truly damaged and not fixed at the end. You will be moved.

TETHER is a deeply moving film about the aftermath of a school shooting that asks when will the madness truly end when the shooting takes out more than just the kids in the school. Highly recommended.

IN SPITE OF OURSELVES is an expectedly wonderful romance with real people. This is not a cute Hollywood film but something more real. The cast is great and the writing is even better. It's a must see.

NYICFF
The New Yorl International Children's Film Festival is going into in its last weekend. Hopefully you already got to some screenngs this past weekend. I know a bunch sold out. 

I will be back in the trenches both Saturday and Sunday completeing the one thing that I always wanted to do- which was see every film playing at the festival. I am six features away from doing that. 

There will be more reviews this week including the just added MAGNIFICENT LIFE from Sylvain Chomet who did Triplets of Belleville. I will also have reviews of all the films in the STUDENT SHOWCASE. I can't tell you how good those films are, many are playing in other collections or as the opening film before a feature. 

I need to say something to all of you because even after talking to filmmakers people don't understand how good and important NYICFF is. I had a discussion with a filmmaker who was feeling a bit like an imposter, that his film didn't belong in the festival. What I told him was a less flowery version of this:

If you have gotten your film into thge festival you have achieved something amazing. I have been going to the festival every year since the second year and the programmers only pick the absolute best films. If your film has been chosen it means that it is a top tier film and worth seeing just for being chosen. That is the reason I try and see every film that plays, because the programmers are simply that good.  NYICFF is an Oscar qualifying festival for a reason- many films they choose end up getting Oscars or nominations. If you need to know how highly they are held in the world film community consider that it is the only place Studio Ghibli has ever let play Ghibli Museum shorts for a non-fund raising reason. 

I am telling you this because you need to buy tickets and go to the festival this weekend because you will see something wondrous.

Maigret and the Dead Lover (2025) Rendez-vous With French Cinema 2026

When a former diplomat is found dead in his study Maigret is called into discreetly see if he can find out who killed him.

I  am a fan of the Maigret character. I enjoy the various versions of the mysteries. I particularly love watching how French filmmakers have brought the character to the screen.  At the same time I don't know what to say about this film. 

Playing like an extended TV episode, the film doesn't really go anywhere. While you want to see where this is going the film has zero character development. There is no real sense about any of the people on the screen. Its as if we are are coming to an episode of season five of TV series where eveyone is established and the writers are using a short hand. I honestly can't believe that this is based on a novel because eveything that makes the novels work is stripped away to the bare minimal plot. 

To be honest the film mostly works because the cast sells it. I enjoyed it watching for the most part, though I would hate to pay current movie prices to see it. Slightness of the plot aside, my real problem with the film comes at the end when after the mystery is solved there is a three month later addendum which causes the plotting to come crashing down- since there is no way, as the plot is revealed that the final revelation would have taken 3 months to be revealed.  It feels added on and a betrayal of the character.

While the film is worth seeing beyond the flaws, I would wait until it streams.

undertone (2025) opens Friday

Before we start be aware my reaction to this film is based on seeing it on a screener on TV with no surround sound. I mention this up front because this is film that an aggresive sound design that is a huge part of the film and if you don't have that your viewing will be affected.

A woman, the skeptic on a mysterious event podcast, is home waiting for her mother to die. As she does so she listens to some strange audio sent in by a listener and the sound recorded in the house she is in.

A film of sounds and silences, this is a film you are ether going to add to your list of films as one of the scariest ever made or on your list of films slightly more exciting than paint drying. I'm in the paint drying camp.

I should take a step back right here and say the final moments of the film scared the shit out of me, but it wasn't an earned scare. While it most definitely NOT a jump scare, as such, the frission it creates is just for those moments and not the 85 previous minutes.

The problem with this film its incredibly static. The mother is catatonic in the bed and never moves. The only other person physically in the film is the main character. That's it.  Visually its shots of the quiet house, some flashes of images and implications of other things, but mostly is just our heroine sitting with headphones on. Not much happens -until it does-hence the ending working- so the film feels inert.

Actually, this might have worked better as an audio play. So much of this film is geared toward the ears that I kind of wished I had headphones on (ADDENDUM: Liz Whittemore who did watch this with headphones loved it and said they are an absolute must). The audio is better than the visuals, though some of the sounds we hear sound wrong. For example, the voice of the woman singing in her sleep backwards has a metalic tinge to it as if played back on a recorder and not if they were actually making backward sounds. (I mention this because I knew someone who could mimic the sound of reversed audio and while it wasn't perfect it was freaky).

While I don't hate this film, I am not in love with it. This should have been told in another form.

Then again it may click with you, I have a couple of friends who will eat this up because slow or not they love a deliberately told horror film.

The House Wasn't Hungry Then (2025)

Low key and experimental, this is the story of a house that eats people and the young woman who breaks in and kind of forms a bond with it.

Told in a very deliberate style, with each image a wide shot inside of a room in the house, this is a film that is very much about the spaces we see on screen. If you have a fear of liminal spaces, then this film may very well before you. Its a film that sticks to its conciet from start to finish which is something that may or may not work for you, especially once the house begins talking (via subtitles).

To be honest I can't really explain what this film is like Steven Soderbergh's PRESENCE which I haven't seen.  For me it's kind of like David Lowrey's A GHOST STORY, which I was very mixed on. This isn't like some recent Asian films which are a series of one shot scenes where everything is told in a tableaux, because the POV shifts as we move through the house- but each room is always seen from one point of views.  Its a conceit that both works in giving us a sense of place, but also slows the pace down.

I was pointed toward this film by Unseen writer Eden Miller. Eden saw the film a short time before I did and connected with it's off the beaten path style and musings on life and death. Since eden and I have been trading atypical films for decades I instantly had to see it.

While Eden really liked the film, I was a bit less anamored with it. That isn't a knock on the film, rather it's simply to say that I liked more for what it was trying to do and how it tried to do it more than what it achieved. I think I would have liked it more if I felt more tension and suspense. As it stands now, for me, its an interesting attempt at trying to alter the haunted house genre, something it actually manages to do in its own way.

I'm going to be completely honest here and warn those looking for something conventional, this film may not work for you. This is something experimental so it may not play for you. On the other hand fans of the off and beaten path- which is the vast majority of the readers of Unseen Films- this is a film to give a shot to.  You may not love it but if nothing else you will be reassured that the future of horror is not going to be all knife weilding maniacs.

Recommended for the adventurous.

Nightcap 3/8/26 : Catching up with random movies, why I don't get credentials for SXSW, and watching but not reviewing at a festival

Just marking some random films, I saw, but didn't feel like writing up

QUEEN OF CHESS on Netflix is a good documentary. Far from meaty but entertaining.

DEAD OF WINTER with Emma Thompson is good. I clearly missed something because I never fully understood what was going on or why, but it wasn't bad

Nate Hood insisted I watch RAP WORLD which is on You Tube. Its documentary about some guys trying to make a rap record over the course of a night. It looks like a home movie...but somehow manages to be so much more. It's a drug fueled fever dream that is unlike anything you've seen before. 
I fear people trying to copy it's style.
At the same time its a must see movie for cinema fans who want something that isn't typical, and ultimately really good.

THE BLUFF on Amazon has some great action sequences, but the plot is MIA and it is so artificial  it all feels fake. I gave up an hour in because I had no idea what I was watching.

CASINO is better than GOODFELLAS

WAR MACHINE on Netflix is essentially Preadtor meets Indepenence Day. Its entertaining but way too familiar so that its  not anything other than a something to watch and then forget. I hope to hell they don't do the implied sequel

Got whiplash going between NUREMBERG and JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG as I was writing this afternoon.

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I'm getting questioned about how much I am covering SXSW. When I say I am only covering what is sent to me I get further questions. In order to set the record straight I will explain.

I am not a fan of SXSW. They are a festival that wants you to go there to cover it, and by all accounts it's a pain in the ass to do so. The festival's remote viewing choices when I did cover officially were minimal and it didn't really pay to be official when I got just as many if not more from the PR people I know.

Additionally, I have vowed never to cover the festival as official press ever again because of something that happened a couple years back.

The short version is that one PR person, who I will no longer work with, told multiple writers that if they did not take down their negative and mixed reviews of the dog he was repping, he would have their SXSW credentials pulled. When the writers, their outlets and friends wrote to the SXSW offices they were told, that it was within the PR reps rights to have the credentials pulled and that they would pull the credentials if asked. And lest you think it didn't happen, it did because I had several writers ask me how to handle the whole matter and they sent me the email chains. I also got an email from the SXSW PR office saying they would pull the credentials.

As a result, SXSW can go take a flying leap into whatever will kill it most painfully.

That said, and something that is wonderfully in keeping with our weird world- I will probably have a curtain raiser in a few days- because I am pissed at the fest and not the filmmakers.

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And look for possible curtain raisers for Cinequest and CPH: DOX because they are this week as well,  and I have been him deep into their slates as well.

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For the first time in all the years of covering festivals I watched and did not review twice the number of films I reviewed. (Actually, other than watching and not reviewing more than two films never happens).

This year it happened for Slamdance and I'm kind of bothered by it.

It was not my intention, but to be honest two things happened with the films this year, first a lot of them, particularly with animated films and the really super short films, they were not easy to write up.  Either the films were too experimental or surreal or artistic that I couldn't find the words to accurately describe the films, or in some cases to properly write them up meant that I would have to give away the sting in the tail or twist. I don't want to ruin a film that changes if you know the outcome. 

And then there were a large number of films that really didn't work for me. Normally I don't mind writing a piece that explains why something didn't work for me, but this year, with all the Slamdance films ending up with short pieces, I didn't want to just write something that seems mean without explaining why... and I would have done so but the films didn't thrill me enough to explain.

It really bothers me that I couldn't muster enough to note the films I saw at Unseen, but sometimes it happens.

What bothers me even more is that as good as some of the film s this year were, few outside of MURPHY'S RANCH, ZUMECA and SILVER will be carried by me after the fact. They just aren't memorable enough

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THE OPTIMIST (formerly AVENUE OF GIANTS) opens Wednesday

This is a repost of the review I ran when the film played the Hamptons International Film Festival and was called Avenue of Giants.

Stephen Lang gives an arresting performance as Herbert Heller who was a Holocaust survivor who refused to talk about his past. Opening up to Abbey, a teen dealing with her own demons he finds he can finally tell his story. Heller would go on to tell his story to thousands of people, connecting them to the darkness we must never forget.

While not particularly remarkable on the face of it, THE AVENUE OF THE GIANTS  soars because of the cast. First and foremost is Stephen Lang who is so good playing the 70 something Heller. Lang is so good that despite his being the reason I wanted to see the film I  didn’t connect him to the role. Here was a little old man shuffling through his life nuke David Blumm who plays Herbert as a kid is equally good, making it believable that he grew up to be lang.

Elsie Fisher as Abbey is very good too. Taking a role that in other hands could have just come off as a deus ex machina she infuses it with humanity and as such is vital to the film.

This is a really good film and definitely worth your time.

The Ugly (2026) hits VOD Tuesday

This is the story of a man whose blind father is the subject of a documentary. His is dad is an engraver of note. As the film is being made, word is recieved that the body of his mother has been found. His mother had disappeared 40 years earlier. As the authorities tries to sort things out, so does the son and the filmmaker. Where it leads is into some dark places.

I'm mixed on THE UGLY.  Part of it is that the film is a catalog of cruelty, and in today's world I don't want to see that, partly it crushed me because in the mother I saw my mom, but mostly it didn't work because this didn't need to be a flashback film.

The film is essentially a look at how society views beauty. The woman at the film's center is someone who is deemed ugly. She marries a blind man because suppsedly only a blind man could love her.  Because she is ugly is the focus of incredible cruelty and brutality.  She is tormented for no good reason and it becomes incredibly tough to take. The film is a damning portrait of Korean society and the human condition. However it is not a film that you want to watch for fun. The cruelty is crushing. Even allowing that the world is now a cruel place thanks to certain leaders normalizing it, this is hard to take.

The real problem with the film is the structure.  Told as a series of interviews and flashbacks,  There isn't really a reason for how ts done since the interviews often overlap the flashbacks and it feels reptative. We don't need to be told and shown. The other key problem is that the film jumps through hoops so that until the finale we never see the supposedly ugly woman. The filmmakers make it laughable that we are not seeing the face. Of course the reveal  isn't surprising since while she may be a tad plain, she wasn't ugly, more so of she had access to makeup. I wish they had just told the story without the the tricks.

This leads me to something personal, which is that there was a point where my mother got sick and the illness changed her appearance. She felt she had become ugly. She had not, but she thought she had. In the mother on screen I saw my mom. It bothered me deeply and made me not want to relive that.

I don't want to make you think the film is a total, mess, it's not it's well made and beautifully acted.  I can understand why some people love the film.  At the same time it didn't work for me.

Brief thoughts on Who Moves America (2026) True False 2026

This is a look at the contract negotiations between UPS and the workers union in 2022 and 2023 as well as a look back to 1997 when the driver went on strike for better wages and hours.

This is a bracing look at the state of big business today. As the big companies try to screw their worker and to make increased profits by cutting wages and benfits the little man is getting screwed and forced to make hard choices. This film is a look at those making those choices.

This is good little film that will oprn your eyes to what is happening in the world around us. Its a wake up call and warning about the things we all may face in the future.

Worth a look.

Phenomena (2026) True False 2026 CPH:DOX 2026

I have no words, nor no notes for Josef Gatti who made PHENOMENA other than your film is 50 years too late to be the ultimate head trip midnight movie. I say that as a non-recretional drug user who can only imagine what this film would have been like back in the late 60's and 70's when people went to the movies late of Friday and Saturday nights and get high on various substances  and rode them where ever the films took them. I suspect that this film needs to be reformated for IMAX so that it can play around the world and blow the minds of everyone with images bigger than life.

What the film is is what happened when Gatti became intrigued by a light experiment and asked his physics teacher father how to do it. His dad showed him. This spun off as father showed his son a wide variety of other experiments that allow us to see the unseen forces that shape and connect our world. Its stuff we may have seen in science glass in school, or not, but presented in ways both visually and aurally that make it clear just how damn cool it all is.

How cool is it? I was torn watching the film on my tiny computer screen as I tried to decide whether to continue or to wait until I can see it on a big screen. I did not wait because I can look forward to when this plays at a theater near me and see it on a big screen.

As I said above, I have no notes. There is nothing I can say about the film at all other than its one of the most viscerally moving films I've ever seen. Gatti's marriage of image with music from Nils Frahm and a score from Rival Consoles is one of the best things I've seen in years, maybe ever. It's a film that makes you fall in love with science and nature.

And every thing you see is real. There are no camera tricks only science experiments.

I have nothing more to say oiher than this is one of the best films of 2026 and an absolute must see on a big screen.

GHOST SCHOOL(2025) NYICFF 2026

A young girl in Pakistan finds that her school is closed. Rumor is that it is haunted and the ghosts have scared away the adminstrators. Knowing that isn't the case she goes to investigate.

This is a good little drama that is going to work better for some people than others. I say this because the film is mostly the girl going from person to person in her village asking them what is really going on. It's an eye opening portrait of life in a small village in Pakistan where officials take advantage of their constituants by either stealing money or forcing them to pay bribes. While not a cynical as this could have been had this been aimed squarely at adults, the film still paints a portrait that shows life isn't always a bowl of cherries.

I liked it but at the same time I know it isn't for everyone.

At Work (2025) Rendezvous with French Cinema 2026

"This is your fourth book, I'm waiting for your great novel"
"This isn't it?"
"No" 
An exchange between a writer and his editor (Or a make believe exchange between a critic and the director of this film)

A former photographer turned writer works a variety of jobs to make ends meet while trying to write the next great novel. In the mean time he can't understand while everyone thinks he's crazy.

Bastien Bouillon gives a solid performance as a man who is similar to several of my friends who are struggling to create their art which the rest of the world isn't fully connecting to. Its a good performance in a well made film.

Sadly it isn't a compelling film. Frankly their isn't much going on here. Too far removed in styule to be a slice of life, the film never builds to any sort of resolution of conclusion. The film never gives us a reason to know why it was telling us this story.

More simply put the film is kind of dull. 

Meteors (2025) Rendezvous With French Cinema 2026

Two slackers end a night by trying to steal a Maine Coon and up arrested in trouble. They end up working at a nuclear waste facility with one of their friends.

This off beat and off kilter dramedy doesn't do what you expect. This is a film that doesn't have characters we've see a dozen times before, nor does it do what we think it will.  Yes, it begins in a kind of stereotypical way but once the guys get in trouble the film begins to take it's own trajectory.  It's a move that ends up being very affecting.

I really liked this film. I liked that it mirrors it's characters and changes over the course of the film. If you told me as I was starting the film that some of the final images would make me misty I would have told you you were crazy.

 If you want off the beaten path film, and since you are reading Unseen Films I assume you do, METEORS is worth tracking down. While you may not find it to be your next great thing, you will like it and love that people are still making films that exceed expectations.

Landscapes of Memory (2026) True False 2026

if memories don't change us-what is the point of remembering?

Filmmaker Leah Galant moves to Germany to study how the Holocaust is remembered and ends up pondering notions of memory both personal and shared.

This is a film you will need to see multiple times because if you are like me, the journey through the film is going to kick up things you need to re-experience.

The film begins as a family portrait as Galant is talking to her dad with ALS. She is talking about her family which survived the Holocaust and how they remembered. She then goes to Germany to see how the Germans remember the tragedy. Things then become complicated when Pro-Palestine protests erupt and the specter of the war and what done is raised in a new and seemingly unexpected context.

You will forgive me if I don't do a deep discussion on the film. I only received the film few days ago and I need a second or third viewing to do it justice. There is way too much information and way too many questions for me to hope to properly pull a piece together. Seriously this film raises enough issues that it could have companion volumes.

That is a rave ladies and gentlemen. Seriously, this is certainly one of the great finds of 2026. I'm working on where it belongs on the best of the year list as well.

The reason the film works is that it goes its own way. Galant is reporting on what is in front of her and isn't trying to shape things. It's a great move because I've seen way too many films recently that feel like the filmmakers are moving pieces around.

This film is going to make you sit in silence for a long time when it ends.

Chase this film down

Hola Cine! only plays this Sunday at NYICFF 2026

THE APRICOT
A boy works on his families apricot farm for the summer.
This is a lovely little film. While I never picked peaches I did try to work with my family and I could relate to the issue of trying to get up to speed. It's a film that made me laugh and brought a tear to my eye in the end

FAMILY HARMONY
The story of how a man ended up with a trombone instead of the sax.
This is a brief story taken from Story Corps which collects people's stories. Its a nice little tale

THE GREAT FEAT
A boy needs to rescue his friend, a hen, kidnapped by a shop owner.
This a great and unexpected film. Its a tale that has way more tension then we nbormally get in a NYICFF short. Credit the filmmakers who have made a complete film instead of a film that works from start to finish. It's a great film you need to track down.

JUANA PELOS
Juana wants to shave her legs so the girls don't pick on her.
This is quite wonderful and funny, and I absolutely love that it contains the admonishment that even if you do shave your legs people are going to be jerks. Its something that needs to be said to anyone who desperately want to fit in.
See this.

¡Que Suene La Banda!
A classical musician has to contend with his musical Mexican roots.
It took me a a little bit to connect with this film, I thought it was going to be run of the mill, but it's far from the that. The mix of great characters  and great music pulled me in and resulted in being deeply moved at the soul performance that ends the film.

For give me but this film kicks ass.
Another one you will want to see.

Nino (2025) Rendez-Vous With French Cinema 2026

 

A young man discovers he has cancer on his brithday.

Theodore Pellerin is the reason to see this sweet little film. Taking the frequently stereotypical story of someone discovering they have an illness and cutting away all of the false drama, NINO shines because Pellerin gives us a real central character we instantly fall in love with. Behaving more like the people in our lives,  Pellerin makes us feel as though we  are going thrugh with a friend.

This is a lovely little film and is worth your time.

Whitest Guys U Know Go to MARS (2024) hits VOD Tuesday

 

Final project from The Whitest Kids You Know is a crowd funded animated film that ended up stalled for several years when Trevor Moore, the driving force to do the film, died not long after they recorded a radio show version of the story.  The film was to be the group's final project and a tribute to their fallen friend. 

The film is the story of a Richard Branson like billionaire who runs a Willie Wonka like contest to pick the people who are to go with him to Mars. Things don't go as planned and the group ends up trapped on the red planet.

This is a mixed bag film. While the basic plot is excellent the film frequently rambles into low brow humor that while funny, distracts from the main story. Not that the Whitest Kids care, they don't, this was a gift for their fans and they aren't looking to do more than please them. At the press screening I attended some of the audience was convulsed with laughter all the way through, while the rest of us smiled and wished it was tighter.

While it doesn't work completely there is still enough here that non-fans who aren't easily offended  may want to try the film.

How To Clean A House in Ten Easy Steps, (2026) True False 2026

This is a portrait of Beatriz Valencia, a Colombian-born domestic worker as profiled by her daughter Carolina. Merging fact and fiction the film looks to reveal the the life of an immigrant in America who works in blue collar jobs.

This is a film I like more than I love. I admire what its doing more than anything else. The problem is not the story, rather there is an artificility to the presentation that is distancing. I never full trusted what I was being told. The result was I was never fully engaed.

This isn't to say that the film is bad, it's not. It's more that I think the great things this film has to say isn't presented as well as it could have been. 

And yet despite my reservations this film is worth a look. Its a film that looks at what its really like to be an immigrant and in today's world its something we need to hear.

HEEBIE JEEBIES at NYICFF 2026

This year the programmers have make a truly disturbing collection that left me feeling uneasy for days. That’s a rave.

TURBULANCE
the story of a man frightened by flying hits the expected notes but still manages to make us laugh.

MINE!
Dark black and white tale of miners who find something down there and what happens. This is like a dark dream.

DORMILON
Dream logic is in full force in the tale of a man who records his dreams and plays them back…and what happens when the film comes to life. Another dream to keep you up at night.

MURMURATION
Not sure how this kids will take this but as an adult this story of a senior turning into a bird made me want to leave the theater. Rarely has a tale of aging and approaching death been so deeply troubling.

REST
Black and white stream of consciousness nightmare.

9MILLION EYES
One of the blackest films I’ve seen in nears , nermind at the festival. This is the story of a serial killer sea creature who hacks everyone up who falls for a blind  fish who he gives eyes… Oh this is f-ed up. I love that NYICFF trusts its audience but this is the sort of thing that will have a long life in horror festival. This is the heebie jeebie champion

BREAD WILL WALK
I’ve seen this for other fests. (My review is here) but it was even more disturbing seeing it on a big screen in the dark.

INKWO FOR WHEN THE STARVING RETURN
A warrior  must protect their community from starving creatures. It’s a grand adventure with a Darkside that was a mice way to end the collection