The film Robin’s Wish is a 77-minute documentary about Robin Williams, who died tragically by suicide in 2014 at the age of 63 as a result of the brutal disease called Lewy Body Dementia. The catalyst for producing the film was Susan Schneider Williams, Robin’s widow, who wished to explain the anguish Robin experienced and…
In filmmaker Erik Nelson’s unfiltered new World War II documentary, Apocalypse ’45, viewers are thrust into the final days of merciless war in the Pacific Theater, a small-gain, island-by-island approach against a dogged Japanese enemy that viewed surrender as weakness. As an often overlooked facet of World War II, the Pacific killed or wounded some…
Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity from American Popular Culture might be the most grotesque and nauseating films you see this year. It might also be one of the most relevant and important. Following the story of (fictional) teen pop music sensation Junie Spoons, Dollhouse is a mockumentary in the style of a tabloid news…
If Charlie Steeds’ The Barge People had been released in the 1980s or 1990s, it would have been released by Full Moon or Troma. That’s certainly no slight on those two companies, but rather a nod to two true-blue schlock producers of recent times. The plot is uncomplicated, the performances not overly nuanced, and the…
“My mother died when I was seven years old — car accident. I saw it two months before it happened.” — Jimmy, “Volition” Writer/director Tony Dean Smith introduces us to Jimmy (Adrian Glynn McMorran, “Warcraft”), a small-time criminal blessed with supernatural clairvoyance. Jimmy foresees fragments of his future as a series of acid flashbacks —…
The Rental is a film that offers many generic elements. It combines aspects of horror and thriller, and within those we find features of the surveillance and home invasion sub-genres, and also the well-worn slasher. The characters are combinations of private, professional and political concepts, and the clashes between these form much of the drama…
Certain films are remembered by their opening sequences. Three “classics” that come to mind are “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” and of course “Citizen Kane.” Rebuilding Paradise, the 95-minute documentary produced and directed by Ron Howard (distributed by National Geographic Films) that chronicles the destruction of Paradise, a town in…
