I was able to catch the film as part of the Fantasia Film Festival in August. Recently, for my podcast The Filmcraziest Show, I was able to speak with the film's director, writer, editor, cinematographer and more Perry Blackshear, as I was also joined on the podcast by a friend and guest co-host, Arpit Nayak. You can find When I Consume You playing as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on Monday, Oct. 18 for an in-person screening and you can find that info right here.
When Chun-hee is struck by lightning, she wakes up, stunned; and soon discovers that she is being visited by herself from when she was a kid, the same age as when she first lost her parents. In one of the film's tenderest aspects, this version of the character is called Chun-hee's Childhood (played by Park Hye Jin). Moments of flashbacks are shown throughout the script, as we get further insight to the character of Chun-hee.l
Here's a review and interview for the film BABY, DON'T CRY, which just premiered at Fantasia last night. We speak about some of the themes in the film and how everyone got on board this fantastical coming-of-age story. Read and watch here:
Director, writer and editor Jane Schoenbrun has a knack for making comfortable things uncomfortable. For instance, an ASMR video that Casey watches on a projector screen. I’m a headphones user and this scene triggered my fight or flight response. The woman in the video tells us we’re safe and pets the screen, and all I could think was, “Stop petting me.” It’s chilling because of Schoenbrun’s creepy atmosphere in the film. Of course, if you go to the real ASMR video, there’s nothing in the comments but positivity about how much the video helped them. It’s a safe place. There’s no such thing as a safe place in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.
In this episode of The Filmcraziest Show, I spoke with Daniel Edelstyn, one of the directors and producers of the new documentary Bank Job, which is premiering as a part of the Hot Docs Film Festival. The film was filmed over five years and is about a filmmaking duo – a husband-and-wife team of Edelstyn and Hilary Powell – who educate themselves and their community in financial literacy as they build their own bank with a goal of helping alleviate some debt in the U.K. In the episode we chat about some of the inspirations for the film (like The Italian Job), the original thought of wanting to have a superhero saving debt instead of building a bank, how the pair of filmmakers explained certain concepts, designing the money and getting community support and bringing them into the film, as well as vodka empires and the Ukrainian mafia, potential sequels and much more in between.
Icon is a coming-of-age drama about skateboarder Sam (Parker Padgett), who is struggling with potentially becoming a father with girlfriend Ana (Devon Hales), and he takes a look into himself and his icons that have defined his life. I was able to chat with the writer, director, producer and editor of the film, Tony Ahedo, about his feature debut ICON, where we chat about how personal this story is to him, the visuals in the flashback scenes, and much more.
With the first edition of the Nightstream Virtual Film Festival winding down, many of the events are still available on-demand until tomorrow, Oct. 14, and the same can be said for many of the festival’s on-demand titles, too! You can find those tickets and films still available here. I wanted to do a link round-up post for the films I was able to watch at this year’s Nightstream that are still available on demand, as well as some of the same films that are playing at Nightstream that I caught at Fantasia in August, and some of the short films that are playing at this year’s festival, as well, and the ones I’m highlighting will have played at Fantasia.
This is another tale in the “what would you do for your family?” horror cannon, which has seen some good features, even at this year’s Nightstream with Anything for Jackson and My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell it To. Here, An Unquiet Grave is carried by two great performances by Jacob A. Ware and Christine Nyland, who also co-writes this film with director Terence Krey. And when I say the film's carried by these two performances, they're virtually the only ones in the film and are there in every scene. With that said, it's great that these performances are so compelling. Ware captures the grief of his character well, as does Nyland, and Nyland’s performance is the standout here as it’s unpredictable, and I would give kudos to a unique aspect of her performance but that would border on spoilers. But with what happens in the film and what results from the ritual is fascinating and creates such a cool dynamic, and makes for such an interesting concept.
If you’ve ever wanted a movie with the abrasive punk rock attitude of Green Room, or the quirky comedy of films like Napoleon Dynamite, you need to look no further than Dinner in America. Simon as a character is in-your-face, abrasive and offensive, and just everything that’s cool about punk rock. Patty is everything sweet and nice but gets bullied for not being the smartest person. She doesn’t even get bullied at school – she’s a 20-year-old who gets picked on by high schoolers because they’re on the same bus route. She totally seems like a character that could fit in that Napoleon Dynamite world, but she’s totally her own person.
Sometimes watching a film, it’s easy to forget just how much craft goes into creating it. With the super unique gorefest Frank and Zed, though, it’s also easy to appreciate the effort that writer/director Jesse Blanchard – and the whole team, really – put into this nutty puppet spectacle that took seven years to make. Two reanimated corpses – the titular Frank and Zed but known more commonly as Frankenstein and Zombie – have lived a peaceful life for the past 200 years in a castle by a nearby village. In that village, 200 years ago, they were attacked by a monster, and to save the people, the King made a pact with a demon to protect them. In exchange, when the royal bloodline ended, the villagers would have to fulfill an ancient prophecy called The Orgy of Blood. Nudging this into action are two power-hungry villagers who trick the others into attacking the castle where Frank and Zed live.
Filmcraziest 