Every legend has it’s beginnings, and some are more explosive than others. Packed with gorgeous, extremely animated puppetry work, effects that call to mind classic tokusatsu shows such as Super Sentai in the best ways possible, and an awesome score that heightened the feeling in each scene, DEMIGOD – The Legend Begins is a film not to miss.
Virginia Madsen plays coach to a team of cheerleaders who perform a jubilating screed against the patriarchy, inaugurating the brutalist, vividly gruesome, horrific and satirical multi-angular stories among the fifteen shorts told in Give Me An A, the latest feature-length call to action shepherded by writer/director Natasha Halevi.
Tetteh Quarshie remains a celebrated figure in Ghanian history for bringing cocoa crops to his region. The “how,” of course, was tentatively subject to scruitiny when local filmmaker Frank Fiifi Gharbin set out to adapt the late 19th century agriculturalist and blacksmith’s tale for his third feature film only to hit a legal snag with Quarshie’s family earlier this year ahead of a planned screening. That his film, Heroes Of Africa: Tetteh Quarshie, is circulating at festivals otherwise indicates that the film now checks all required boxes to satisfy the Quarshie estate, and with none other than Bernard Adusi-Poku starring in the title role from a script also by Gharbin.
October 3, 2022: Film duo Ryland Brickson Cole Tews and Mike Cheslik have already made strides in recent years with the harrowing 2018 adventure comedy Lake Michigan Monster, and judging by the looks of their latest endeavor, they’re clearly sticking to what works. For this, we turn to their dialogue-free Hundreds Of Beavers, marking Cheslik’s feature debut with Tews in a starring capacity for a rousing contemporary approach to a classic style of cinema, blending a little bit of everything you could enjoy while rooting for the underdog.
Trigger Warning: This review discusses topics pertaining to suicide and depression.
Deaf Crocodile Films has been on a roll this year with its slate of restored and remastered classics. One such title is the 1974 indie classic, Solomon King, directed by Jack Bomay alongside leading man Sal Watts in the title role, taking the mantle for an opportune move toward the zeitgeist of Blaxploitation cinema at the time titles like Hammer, Black Caesar and Black Belt Jones were the talk of the town.
As far as she’s concerned, Eliza (Jana San Antonio) is no ordinary girl. Point, in fact, she is thoroughly convinced that she is a superhero and that the only thing that sets her apart from her favorite comic book superhero is that she herself doesn’t have a dog…
The seventeenth installment of Fantastic Fest is currently underway and we’re already getting our reviews together as we speak. In the meantime, the festival announced its award-winning titles for 2022 and you can now check them out below, including The Five Devils, Holy Spider, Piggy and more. Read on, and visit the official website for more info!
Tuesday night, I got the update I’d actually been waiting a few months for, so be sure to tune in this month for some review coverage out of this year’s 17th installment of Fantastic Fest. It’s a festival I’ve had my eye on for a long while, reading coverage primarily from Screen Anarchy since its Twitchfilm heyday, and so while I won’t be there in-person for the festivities (a setback that will maybe one day change), it does thrill me to know that there will be some virtual coverage, and with some truly wicked titles in the line-up which you can read here.
Stunt and action multi-hyphenate and filmmaker, Kensuke Sonomura, came down the straightaway and into global festival circuitry earlier this summer, lending first eyes to audiences at Neuchâtel earlier this year for his newest crime pic, Bad City. Signing off on Sonomura’s second feature action film following 2019’s pulsating assassin thriller, Hydra, is renowned actor Hitoshi Ozawa, whose favor with moviegoers extends as far back as the early 1990s with the birth of the V-Cinema era. Ozawa (credited as OZAWA accordingly) also gets top billing here as writer and executive producer on the new film, which also weighs heavily with a cast of notable actors, including a few fan favorites. To that end, Sonomura smartly foregoes some of the visual martial arts stylings as seen in Hydra, constructing action sequences that are much more grittier to suit Ozawa’s screen caliber, albeit peppered with equally impressive stunt coordination and fight choreography throughout from select cast.
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