Authors: Cody Kirkland
Sundance Film Review: Big Sur
Punching thru death clouds suffocating the New Zion, foot glued to accelerator with guitar chord change feedback shrieks into high-altitude circle jerk of starfuckers and art cannibals and humble unseen angels to stash auto in strip mall, take pre-noon flask pulls in tribute in anticipation of a dead reluctant god’s silver screen flashback, Jean-Marc Barr is Kerouac incarnate and Polish… … read more
Sundance Film Review: Soldate Jeannette
Fanni tries on an expensive dress at an upscale fashion boutique. After much deliberation, she buys the dress. She dumps it into a mailbox just outside the boutique. Fanni’s landlord and his lawyer walk into her posh apartment. She offers them matcha tea, and they tell her she’s being evicted that afternoon because three years’ rent is past due. … read more
Sundance Film Review: Wajma (An Afghan Love Story)
What begins as a series of secret flirtations in a society that prohibits contact between the sexes before marriage turns into the worst scenario imaginable: Mustafa, professing his love for Wajma (Wajma Bahar), pressures her into a forbidden romance despite her reserved protests. … read more
Sundance Film Review: Toy’s House
I knew this movie was going to be painful to watch as soon as the ‘70s or ‘80s power-pop intro song started. It seemed out of place, forced—As did most of the dialogue in the film. A couple of high school friends, Joe Toy (Nick Robinson) and Patrick Keenan (Gabriel Basso) decide that their parents are such a drag that the only option is to build their own house in the forest and live there. … read more
Sundance Film Review: Upstream Color
It’s going to take me a few more viewings of this film to full grasp what the hell is going on and what it all means, but let’s try this: Larvae infect a plant, kids harvest and process the blue dust on the infected plant and they make a drink out of it which gives them mental, physical and spiritual connection. … read more
Sundance Film Review: Hell Baby
From the creators of Reno 911! comes a wickedly funny horror-comedy that explores horror film conventions in such an over-the-top and self-aware way that I’ll never be able to take a haunted house, exorcism or demonic baby films seriously again. … read more
Sundance Film Review: Magic Magic
Everybody around Alicia (Juno Temple) is acting weird. Nobody is making any sense and there is an undercurrent of maliciousness behind everyone’s smiles. Alicia, an American girl travelling in Chile, is driving with her cousin Sarah (Emily Browning) and Sarah’s friends to a cabin in remote southern Chile. … read more
OCTOBER, The Circulars, Jason Dickerson, Amy Childress @ Bar Deluxe...
A dollhouse set ablaze, the fumes of burning paint and polyester choking my lungs until the flames are smothered with shot glasses of tears and piles of broken vanity mirror glass and skittles until a smoldering mass remains, the ashes blown away with a faint sound of wind chimes. This is how it feels to hear Amy Childress read from her photocopied zine on the Bar Deluxe stage on Wednesday night, April 17. … read more
Everything Is Terrible! @ Brewvies 09.14
As part of the Two Head Cleaners and a Microphone Tour, the guys from EIT stopped by Brewvies Cinema Pub to show their two video collections: Comic Relief Zero and Everything Is Terrible! Does the Hip-Hop! It’s like getting really stoned and hating it, but you end up looking back on it fondly the next day—you value the “experience,” man. … read more
Sundance Film Review: Locke
I can’t believe I watched 85 minutes of a man driving a car, at night, by himself, without getting bored. Ivan Locke, played by Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises)—the sole visible actor in the film—begins driving home from a construction site the night before the biggest job of his career as a successful construction foreman. If I had known this film was just a guy in a car, I wouldn’t have seen it. The writing, directing and acting were all spot-on. I could have ridden around with Hardy and listened to him talk for another half-hour, at least. … read more