Screen Anarchy

Two Americans wake up in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, with bombs strapped to their chests. The timers on the vests tell them they have less than nine hours to find out why. Calling them #1 and #2 a mysterious voice gives them instructions via headsets, a series of tasks that when completed will result in their release. It is a race against time as temperatures rise around Dakar, in the air and throughout its people.    Congolese film director and screenwriter Jean Luc Herbulot is back with the action thriller Zero. Together with producer, co-writer and star Hus Miller (who also produced Herbulot’s international breakout hit Saloum) the pair have made a bit of a scathing attack on global powers and their influence in…

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Whether she’s loved the character since she was a child or is making a calculated attempt at winning an acting Oscar, Lady Gaga’s performance as the Joker universe’s Harley Quinn is by far the best thing to come out of the two movies. She sometimes literally brings light into the dark grays and sickly yellow greens of the second Joker film, adding much needed contrast to the miserablism of Joker/Arthur Fleck’s (Joaquin Phoenix) world. To be fair, Joker: Folie à Deux’s miserablism does look at least a bit different than the first film’s. Fleck is confined to Arkham State Hospital (get it? it’s like Arkham Asylum, but not, cool!) where he awaits trial before the film transforms into a courtroom drama once the trial begins….

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It’s no wonder that Look Back is highly anticipated by anime fans. The film is based on the manga of the same name by Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto and is directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, whose resume includes working with anime legends Miyazaki and Anno, as well as directing an episode of Devilman Crybaby. But while the creators’ past projects may pique interest, Look Back is very different from Chainsaw Man and Devilman Crybaby. The story centers on two young amateur mangaka with dreams of making it big, following the ups and downs of their careers and relationship. Amuyu Fujino (Yumi Kawai) is a “successful” mangaka at her middle school; she writes and draws the four-panel comic that appears regularly in the school paper and…

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With a tagline of “Imagination is not always perfect,” Darío Autrán’s Entelequias, if judged by its desaturated, asymmetrical, vertically distorted key art, looks to be playing in the narrow liminal space between Solaris and eXistenZ.  This poster eschews a standard credit block, instead placing actor, director and writer in one corner, its tagline blocked in the middle, and varying width bands off to the right, where the characters are repeated, but all seem to be glancing at a burning book, the only source of real colour here. Perhaps a text by Aristotle? The film’s title, Entelequias, was coined by Aristotle back in the day, and can be translated as “having the end in itself,” but in Spanish it has come to colloquially mean, “an unreal thing.” Argentinian designer…

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If it’s October, it’s practically Halloween and if it’s Halloween, then it’s time for Shudder’s horror-themed found footage anthology, V/H/S, to make its yearly return to the streaming service.  V/H/S Beyond, the fourth entry in as many years, its seventh entry across two decades, and ninth overall (including spin-offs), once again doesn’t disappoint, delivering enough splatter, gore, and grue to fill several entries, let alone a single standalone entry running under two hours. Across six entries, including the obligatory wraparound segment, V/H/S Beyond retains its emphasis on horror but leans more heavily into science fiction than previous entries, bringing extra-terrestrials to Earth for decidedly unfriendly contact in half the segments, technology gone awry in another, a Doctor Moreau-inspired taxidermist with an unhealthy canine fixation in…

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People and places can leave an impression on us. In absence of one thing, we might find ourselves returning to the other for traces. Sano (Hiroki Sano) sits in his minimally adorned hotel room, staring blankly towards the light from the window. He’s come with his friend Miyata to a seaside resort in Izu, where they first met Sano’s late wife, Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto), five years ago. Some things have changed, some things refuse to. What follows is a structurally ingenious, profoundly romantic film, a crisp sea breeze ode to the moments that we share and the sentimental significance that they carry in our lives. Super Happy Forever is a special film, to my mind the most exciting feature out of Japan so far this…

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Iman (Misagh Zare) has just gotten the much-desired promotion, but asks his family to keep quiet about his new job: he is now an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. So, while the very real protests against the state-enforced strict hijab laws roar on the streets, Iman’s new position requires him to sign off on death sentences in bulk, day after day. He’s got full support from his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), who at first is quick to impose a regimen of obedience on their teenage daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki). But the girls grow more and more sympathetic towards the protesters, and even Najmeh’s loyalty slowly turns away from her husband as he becomes increasingly paranoid and ruthless. Oh,…

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Like waves that come crashing on the seashore, except they keep crashing. New Wave The film enjoyed its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival. The film opens Friday, October 4, at DCTV in New York, and October 25 at Laemmle Glendale in Los Angeles. Visit the official site for more information. During the late 1970s and early 80s, New Wave music that I heard in Los Angeles swept me into its post-punk, synth-heavy currents. As explained in director Elizabeth Ai’s documentary New Wave, though, it was much more meaningful for the Vietnamese-American community than a passing musical fad. The younger generation, brought to or born in the U.S., considered their New Wave music, featuring cover songs of popular tunes translated into and sung in Vietnamese,…

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Quentin Dupieux directed. Anaïs Demoustier, Edouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, Didier Flamand, and Romain Duris star.

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A painfully bland office worker gets his world turned upside down by a trio of tiny cosmic weirdos in Steven Kostanski’s latest gonzo comedy, Frankie Freako. After he hit cult comedy gold with 2021’s Psycho Goreman, Kostanski and his usual bunch of misfit miscreant co-conspirators are back with their version of an 80s puppet adventure movie. He lovingly borrows from the greats in this long-thought extinct subgenre to create a gooey, chaotic, freaky family film with a twist. It’s everything you miss if you – like me – list Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College in your personal top ten of all time. Conor (Conor Sweeney) is the most boring, milquetoast man who ever lived. He spends his days at the office trying not to…

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