SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN
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  Year Released: 2007 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 95 minutes |
Considering the abstract nature of its subject, “Scott Walker: 30 Century Man” is a surprisingly straightforward look at a man who’s been at the cutting edge of music’s avant garde for decades…
Posted on March 23, 2007 by Merle Bertrand
SCENIC HIGHWAY
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  Year Released: 2007 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 18 minutes |
2007 SXSW SHORT FILM! “Scenic Highway,” director Evan Mather’s not-quite loving travelogue to the Bayou State’s second largest city does what it can to raise the profile of “Red Stick”…
Posted on March 18, 2007 by Merle Bertrand
THE TOLL
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Year Released: 2007 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 7 minutes |
It must seem like a surefire way for an animation company to attract some attention. Create some memorable, charismatic character and just animate the hell out of it…
Posted on March 18, 2007 by Merle Bertrand
ILS (THEM)
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  Year Released: 2007 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 77 minutes |
2007 SXSW ‘ROUND MIDNIGHT FEATURE! “Ils” is not a typical horror flick. Instead, it’s the kind of creepy film that will stick in your mind…especially the next time you’re driving down that mundane, lonely country road you’ve driven down a hundred times before…
Posted on March 17, 2007 by Merle Bertrand
FISH KILL FLEA
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Year Released: 2007 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 50 minutes |
2007 SXSW EMERGING VISIONS FEATURE! The collaborative team of Brian Cassidy, Aaron Hillis, and Jennifer Loeber skillfully weave their candid, not always flattering interviews of the regulars with archival stills from happier times to make this wistful, thought-provoking rumination on the cost of progress…
Posted on March 16, 2007 by Merle Bertrand
SSI: SEX SQUAD INVESTIGATORS
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Year Released: 2005 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 90 minutes |
What do you get when you cross a testicle-less ex-soldier with a foxy recovering sex-aholic? You know, I really wish I had an answer that was as good as that set-up, but I don’t…
Posted on January 4, 2007 by Merle Bertrand
I HATE YOU
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  Year Released: 2004 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 75 minutes |
Enter “I Hate You,” which is only a movie because it runs some 75 excruciating minutes long, involves the most rudimentary of photographic and editing “skills,” and because, well, its director Nick Oddo has the audacity to pretend that it’s a real movie…
Posted on January 1, 2007 by Merle Bertrand
THE WHITE ROOM
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Year Released: 2003 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 34 minutes |
This is all creepy and unnerving stuff…
Posted on August 14, 2006 by Merle Bertrand
SINFUL (DVD)
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Year Released: 2006 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 90 minutes |
Up-and-coming writer/director Tony Marsiglia has crafted a truly twisted and disturbing tale of envy’s corrosive power…
Posted on August 14, 2006 by Merle Bertrand
THREE DAYS OF RAIN
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Year Released: 2005 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 94 minutes |
“Three Days of Rain” is another addition to the increasingly crowded field of interwoven ensemble pieces that seems to be all the rage in indie films these days…
Posted on June 9, 2006 by Merle Bertrand
JUMPING OFF BRIDGES
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Year Released: 2005 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 95 minutes |
Enter Kat Candler. Her debut feature “cicadas” caught the critics’ eyes with a look at adolescent life so authentic, it hurt. “Jumping Off Bridges,” her sophomore feature effort hot-on-the-heels of several short films, once again explores the adolescent lifestyle and all its ennui, warts and all…
Posted on June 2, 2006 by Merle Bertrand
RADIANT
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Year Released: 2005 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 107 minutes |
NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL 2006 REVIEW! Director Steve Mahone eases through this Spartan budgetary and narrative landscape with “Radiant,” teasing a mildly profound mediation out of a snail’s paced thriller…if the viewer can stay awake long enough to digest it all…
Posted on April 18, 2006 by Merle Bertrand
BLACKBALLED: THE BOBBY DUKE STORY
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  Year Released: 2004 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 91 minutes |
NOW PLAYING AT THE PIONEER THEATER IN NEW YORK! It’s not just that the mockumentary has become a tired, cheap, lazy man’s way of storytelling — which it has, except when deftly handled by a (very) select few. The problems here stem from many other things, starting with a so-what subject matter — who but paintballers care about paintball?
Posted on April 16, 2006 by Merle Bertrand
SHOCK-O-RAMA (DVD)
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Year Released: 2006 MPAA Rating: Unrated Running Time: 90 minutes |
The primary purpose of a genre film like “Shock-O-Rama” is to entertain us, whether that’s by scaring us, making us laugh or cringe in revulsion, giving us an action-packed thrill, or by turning us on. “Shock-O-Rama” does all of these things and more…
Posted on March 22, 2006 by Merle Bertrand
THE KEEPER: THE LEGEND OF OMAR KHAYYAM
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Year Released: 2005 MPAA Rating: PG Running Time: 95 minutes |
Lifting a page from “The Princess Bride”, “The Keeper…” employs contemporary protagonists as storytellers to introduce us to the 11th Century world of Omar Khayyam…
Posted on March 21, 2006 by Merle Bertrand