celluloid consommé

The indie comedy arrives in theaters for a limited engagement starting 2/3 at select Alamo Drafthouse locations. Press enter or click to view image in full size Poster image courtesy of Utopia Films. The Civil Dead  is an irreverent comedy from writer, director, and actor Clay Tatum. It follows Clay, an out-of-work photographer with quite a bit of free time on his hands. When his partner leaves home for a couple days on a business trip, Clay is tasked with relatively mundane duties like making some money here and there to cover rent, try to reach out to his gambling-addicted friend for support, and maybe think about getting some real photography work done instead of just hanging out in the living room and drinking beer all day. Clay runs into an old friend when he decides to be productive but realizes almost too late that his buddy is no longer alive and only Clay can see and talk to him. Press enter or click to view image in full size The film is the first narrative debut from Tat...

The hyper-violent action horror/thriller has been anticipated for some time from Well Go USA’s home video line. Box art image courtesy of Well Go USA. Ultra-violent genre fare has always come in waves, and judging from what films like  Project Wolf Hunting  has to offer there seems to be an attitude of wanting to usher in another one. The moviegoing climate has warmed up to movies like this today which is much beyond what cold receptions earlier films have faced. Those pioneering films introduced and developed concepts of providing sardonic commentary with the reliance of practical effects displaying something very extreme & real happening in the world of its characters, to whatever dramatic or tragic effect. Video Press enter or click to view image in full size Image courtesy of Well Go USA. Project Wolf Hunting  is presented in the film’s original aspect ratio, 2.39:1. Coming from what is no doubt a digital source, the picture quality is quite crisp and clean. The f...

  Poster image courtesy of Cinedigm. Found footage horror is, as some say, outdated in today’s advent of technology. Camera lenses are more prominent than ever before, and you’re guaranteed to be filmed by a number of sources just walking down the street of any city. Robbie Banfitch purposefully places a single source of documentation into the hands of his own character, also named Robbie, to record the behind-the-scenes activities of a musician prepping for a music video shoot in the Mojave Desert. The Outwaters  is set mainly in this sun-baked desolate location. But it focuses on the absolute darkness of the area just a little more, and the film’s characters become thrust into a series of unforeseen and unexplainable situations, showing just how vulnerable they are in the middle of nowhere. The film is split into three different memory cards taken from the camera Robbie operates, documenting the meeting of these four characters and their trip out and subsequent demise. That’...

Gaspar Noé releases his Straight Cut of 2002’s  Irreversible  theatrically on February 10th, 2023. Monica Bellucci in ‘Irreversible.’ Image courtesy of Altered Innocence. You don’t have to have seen any of Gaspar Noé’s films to recognize him as one of the most transgressive voices in modern film working today.  Irreversible,  his second feature, opened to some controversy at Cannes when approximately 250 audience members walked out as it played. Critics could parse that the film wasn’t made solely for exploitation’s sake, and that there was indeed an artistry on display behind the then-reductive painting of it as a rape-revenge plot played backwards in the edit. But in a  recent interview  Noé highlights how a previously unseen thread reveals itself in the most recent remix of the movie: the Straight Cut. But something else comes to the forefront, it’s male characters’ fears of the spectrum of sexuality outside of which they feel firmly planted. Irreversibl...