TOO LATE
This cozy horror comedy set in the Los Angeles indie comedy scene features Violet Fields who works a thankless job as the assistant to Bob Devore, famed comedian and host of the live variety show, Too Late. But what only Violet knows is that Bob is a monster both literally and figuratively. Resigned to her fate, Violet is caught by surprise when she meets aspiring comedian Jimmy Rhodes and sparks fly. But as her feelings for Jimmy grow and Bob starts to doubt her loyalty, she and Jimmy could end up as Bob’s next meal.
Violet toils away curating her smaller comedy show all while taking the abuse of her boss, Bob. Taking back control is the name of the game, but things get a bit messy along the way. Bob Devore, whose name (I’m assuming) is intentionally close to the word “devour,” is the accomplished late-night figurehead on the comedy scene in L.A. He’s a real monster of a boss. No, like, he’s an actual monster. Under his thumb and in the shadow of his longstanding career, Violet longs to cut ties and make her own way. When love unexpectedly arrives, she must navigate everyone’s appetite for success and take matters into her own hands.
Too Late really digs into the idea that Hollywood is an all-consuming industry. Alyssa Limperis as Violet has that “seasoned pilot actress just waiting to hit it big” kind of energy. She’s a damn natural and I want to see much more of her in the future. Her chemistry with Ron Lynch is sheer perfection. His smarmy, oftentimes flat-out gross, glad-handing demeanor catapults this entire narrative. One of the funniest things about Too Late is the fact that it could be a franchise based on Devore’s origin story. He cannot be the only monster lurking. You could do an entire riff on agents and vampires. That’s comedy gold. The possibilities are endless. On the condition that you bring Limperis back into the fray, of course. With stand-up not only as a major plot point but using actual sets to keep the laughs going, Too Late is a breezy, sometimes gross, definitely unique film. Also, anything with Fred Armisen gets my eyes on it.
OPENING IN SELECT THEATERS & ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS ON JUNE 25
STARRING ALYSSA LIMPERIS, RON LYNCH, WILL WELDON, MARY LYNN RAJSKUB, & FRED ARMISEN
TOO LATE is the debut feature film from director D.W. Thomas and writer Tom Becker. It stars Alyssa Limperis (Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun), Ron Lynch (Bob’s Burgers, Adventure Time), Will Weldon (Comedy Central’s This Isn’t Happening), Mary Lynn Rajskub (24, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Fred Armisen (SNL, Portlandia), Jenny Zigrino (Bad Santa 2, 50 Shades of Black), Jack De Sena (Avatar: The Last Airbender), and Brooks Wheelan (SNL).
TOO LATE has a running time of 80 minutes and will not be rated by the MPAA. Gravitas Ventures will release TOO LATE in select theaters and on digital platforms including iTunes, Google Play, Fandango Now, and all major cable/satellite platforms on June 25.
Isolation, survival, depression, organized chaos. These are heavy-hitting words to describe a film with a blunt force trauma of an opening. My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To is a film that’s been on everyone’s lips for a year now. It’s been killing it on the festival circuit, and rightly so. This slow-burn horror puts three siblings at odds due to one’s unique affliction. Jesse has become the taskmaster Mamabird, driving the survival of her family. Dwight is stuck between resentment and loyalty as his patience is running out. Youngest brother Thomas just wants to break free of his physical and emotional prison. Stunted in every way possible, what would life look like without his elder siblings? Is blood thicker than water? My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To begs that very question, quite literally.
Patrick Fugit as Dwight is heartbreaking. The cracks are evident from the very beginning. His conscience weighs on him as his desire for normalcy and peace are all-consuming. Ingrid Sophie Schram as Jesse is everything we need her to be. Focused and utterly exhausted. The survival of this family unit is driven by her sense of duty and not necessarily by love this many years in. She and Fugit are brilliant scene partners. Owen Campbell as Thomas is a nuanced mix of childlike and monster. You simultaneously sympathize and loathe him. These are striking performances.
It took 8 months to get pregnant with my son. In the grand scheme for a lot of women, that isn’t long at all. Since I turned 35 in the first month of my pregnancy, it was deemed a “geriatric pregnancy.” That felt about as awesome as you might imagine. Growing a human being is stressful enough without the constant barrage of opinions. People telling you what you can and cannot eat, how you should parent, and what you should be feeling. It’s super fun. And by that, I mean it sucks, just in case you didn’t catch the heavy-handed sarcasm. Tribeca Festival 21 film FALSE POSITIVE takes all of that anxiety and cranks it to 11. Ilana Glazer and Justin Theroux play Lucy and Adrian, a couple that has a personal connection with a famed fertility doctor. From the moment Lucy gets a glimpse of her baby on the sonogram, she knows something is very, very wrong.
The script does a solid job setting the stage with the misogyny and gaslighting thrust upon pregnant women. While the internet can be their worst enemy (for the love of God, stay away from WebMD) a mother has instincts that she should never ignore. False Positive smartly plays upon those anxieties and adds highly macabre stakes. You’re not quite sure what is real. It’s intensely dark. Ilana Glazer is pitch-perfect at every turn. Cast her in every genre, right now. Justin Theroux is a fantastic foil. You feel the skin-crawling vibe he unleashes once the audience is placed in Lucy’s shoes. His straight man act makes him all the more unsettling. Dr. Hindle is played brilliantly by Pierce Brosnan. His charm and calmness are grossly offputting even through his perfect smile.
“You’re not the only one raising these girls,” Coach Jean Bell says to Tonia Handy, mother of the Sheppard sisters Tai, Rainn, and Brooke in a heartfelt moment that perfectly articulates the thesis of this story. Although the sisters have faced the kind of adversity that makes their success all the more inspiring, the magic of the film is in watching a village pull together to prepare these young ladies for bright futures of their choosing. 
The documentary picks up in the aftermath of these exceptional events as the girls navigate the demands of high-level competitive sport and more universal trials like coming-of-age. In the hands of a different group of filmmakers, the documentary may have focused gratuitously on the tragedy and hardship of the girl’s early lives or the precariousness of what they have now. Sisters On Track, however, is a joy to watch. Although the reality of the girls’ home lives is apparent, it is not exploited for pathos. Instead, the bulk of the film is watching a group of talented young women train and compete at the highest levels amid a continuous stream of motivational pep talks from Coach Jean Bell who is an inspiration in her own right (I could write an entire piece on the Jeuness Track Club where they train). 
Everyone in the city seems to know Gio’s name. He hears it from every street corner as he walks about Brooklyn, from virtually every kind of person imaginable – hipster bar owners and priests, mentors and murderers. If Gio (Shiloh Fernandez) always seems surprised to hear his name, it’s because the objective of his walk is pretty intense: bringing a birthday cake to a party thrown by his mob boss uncle (Val Kilmer) to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Gio’s father.
Shiloh’s Gio is friendly, but reserved – an earnest blank canvas. Robbed of his father at an early age, he relies on his cousin Leo (Emory Cohen) and the kindly priest Father Kelly (Ewan McGregor). On paper, it’s hard to find two more polarizing father figures than a priest and a mobster, but just wait – the film doesn’t take the easy way out.
If The Birthday Cake has one major weakness, it is its inability to fully leverage its broad, talented cast. Aldis Hodge flits on and off the screen so fast you wonder if he stumbled onto the set by accident. Though they seem to represent Gio’s moral compass, Leo and Father Kelly barely cobble together 15 minutes of combined screen time. Only Luis Guzman truly capitalizes on his short cameo, driving a spark of pure comedy into an otherwise dark narrative.
About two minutes into watching this documentary, it occurs to me that I may be its exact target audience. As a lifelong fan of Unsolved Mysteries (the old school 90s version with Robert Stack, naturally), the opening montage with talking heads spouting their pet theories had me instantly hooked. For the next two hours, I was engrossed in Director 
With a team of journalists, eyewitnesses, and researchers, the documentary sorts through many common theories about what may have happened to the hikers ranging from the scientific and rational (avalanche) to the more whimsical and outrageous (alien abduction/ Russian yeti), and intriguing geopolitical angles (Cold War military experiment gone wrong). The documentary adds color to the historical narrative by bringing a crew into the Ural Mountains to complete the same trek as the doomed hikers, which adds striking visuals into the bleak and unforgiving landscape. 
La Dosis is a dark psychological thriller that from the very first scene pushes viewers to consider the harsh and subjective balance between life and death. At its center is Marcos, the lead overnight nurse of the ICU unit in a private hospital. By now, audiences are accustomed to anti-hero protagonists, so it is not hard to find compassion for Marcos even as he makes the ethically murky decision to euthanize critically ill patients that are suffering in their final days. In a nuanced and complex performance, Carlos Portaluppi excels in infusing Marcos’ actions with compassion. Through the many moody silent stretches of the film, the audience watches Marcos alone in shadowed rooms and backlit hallways as the weight of his actions plays across his face. 
Take Me Somewhere Nice
TRIBECA 2021
Romania’s hit film Two Lottery Tickets is the most enjoyable buffoonery you can think of. In his second feature, writer/director Paul Negoescu takes a story from writer Ion Luca Caragiale and sends us on a €6 million fool’s errand. Local pushover Dinel’s wife fled to Italy with her boss two years ago. He is depressed and going broke trying to raise enough money to bring her back home. Drinking buddy Sile, a womanizing gambler, convinces him to spend his last few euros on a lotto ticket. Against all logic, Dinel’s idiotic chosen numbers end up being the winner. After two thugs steal his bum bag with the ticket inside, Dinel, Sile, and local conspiracy theorist Pompiliu must follow the clues by annoying neighbors, evading the police, and generally being ridiculous. It’s the sincerity of these three men simply being themselves that makes Two Lottery Tickets both loveable and hilarious. Actors Dorian Boguță, Dragoș Bucur, and Alexandru Papadopol all deliver lines in a way that makes you smirk and cringe. This is a film that has such comic ease to it. Once in a while, you come across a film that is like a cinematic hygge (because that’s a thing I just made up but you totally know what I mean, so whatever). Two Lottery Tickets has all the makings of that film you want to tell your friends about. Negoescu and cast have given viewers such relatable characters. In fact, if you watch it in a group setting, someone in the room is probably a Dinel, a Sile, or a Pompiliu. It is truly that delightful.
Wendell is an ex-con whose parole officer enjoys berating him over the phone. When a new handyman job brings him to the door of Suzanne, a quirky woman with dementia, he’s in for more than unclogging her pipes. The set-up gets weirder and weirder. Secrets and lies live in this house, but not for long. Wendell’s path to freedom is dean on arrival. Do not get comfortable for a single minute of Dementia Part II.
Graham Skipper plays such an asshole. It’s incredible to watch. Najarra Townsend, who was phenomenal in 
Shout out to Matt Mercer and Mike Testin for normalizing a runtime of 1 hour and 5 minutes. Good storytelling doesn’t need to be overstuffed with unnecessary nonsense. The dark comedy of Dementia Part II mixed with the very serious underlying mental health issues makes this film ripe for midnight screenings. I can already hear the audience yelling out Wendell’s many alternative names, making lewd gestures with pipes, and throwing $100 bills at the screen. You cannot go wrong with its vomit-inducing practical fx and outstanding performances from the entire cast.
Transitioning from your college bubble to adulthood is hard enough. Add a breakup and no sense of direction and you’ve got yourself a basic outline for a film. Based on a story by screenwriter Chris Molinaro and directors Brandon LaGanke and John Carlucci, DRUNK BUS gives us a coming-of-age buddy comedy that you won’t see coming. This film is unexpectedly guffaw-inducing. I was knocked off my feet watching the chemistry of this cast. This film is about overcoming fear, anxiety, latent rage, guilt, you name it. DRUNK BUS has it all without ever getting too heavy.
The score immediately reminded me of The Goonies. It is a perfect mix of ominous and whimsical. Dylan’s reading voice is costar Rob Brownstein’s voice. As a mute boy, Dylan’s internal vocal reference would most certainly be that of his father. This moment of specificity from Charbonier and Powell is magic. The entire film’s sound design is award-worthy. Dylan’s hearing is likely acutely sharp due to developmental adaptation. The audio is jarring in a way that places the viewer in his constant state of hyper-awareness. His panic is our panic and it is palpable.
It’s a fresh take on the legend and more shudder-inducing than you’d expect. The pacing is perfection. All the tropes are there but with a hell of a twist. The Djinn‘s main conflict plays out within an hour, making the stakes feel higher as we count down the minutes alongside Dylan. Speaking of our leading young man, Ezra Dewey is a star. His chemistry with Rob Brownstein is charming and genuine. Dewey’s ability to own this entire film sans dialogue is the stuff of dreams. Mark my words, he will be everywhere. The Djinn is a very scary bedtime story warning us all to be careful what we wish for.
The mockumentary style is unbelievably hilarious. Every single cast member is a damn laugh riot. I don’t know how much of this film is improvised and how much is scripted, either way, you will be entertained from start to finish. Handheld camera work and snarky voiceovers push 15 Things to some next-level hilarity, but also a legit gorgeous looking movie. The editing and cinematography are ridiculously stunning. If you put it on mute, you’d never know the difference between this and Vice. It’s scary good. Is this the first of a franchise for these guys? I would not be mad at that. 15 You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot is now available In Theaters + on VOD. 
While the action revolves around the accident, these characters are fully fleshed-out people we recognize. The remarkable performances in SILO might even suggest that this film was a documentary and not a narrative. The cast has a chemistry that genuine. It’s astounding. You won’t have a moment to breathe once things go awry. Even within a 76-minute runtime, the writing is so great that we have enough backstory for every person on the scene to feel the emotional pull. We understand why they’re there and how they’re connected. SILO doesn’t simply address farming safety but gives us a compelling drama about small-town dynamics. It is impossible to watch this and not be consumed by the relationships in this film. That’s what happens when you have the perfect storm of acting, writing, and directing. This is a film that will resonate with a massive audience, regardless of their background. It sheds a light on a culture that is often taken for granted and the very real dangers of farming. SILO is a harrowing film about safety and an undeniably important watch.
You must be logged in to post a comment.