FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Nixon’s Coming’

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“Nixon’s Coming” is a 9-minute short film about a weird meeting between President Richard Nixon and a small group of drugged up student protesters in the early morning hours on night in 1970. Based on photographs from student activist (at the time of course) Bob Moustakas and recordings made by Nixon which were declassified in recent years, this little movie paints an interesting portrait of a strange visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

Due to Nixon’s weird penchant for recordings, he decided to record his own recounting of the spontaneous meeting at the Lincoln Memorial, and as a result of the declassification of this tape in 2011, we have a short film with a voice over from Nixon himself. Now do we want to believe him? It’s not like this was some momentous event or that historians would even care about such a small little thing, so why would he feel the need to lie about what happened there? So we can rest assured that what Nixon says happened, he at least BELIEVED it happened.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Spearhunter’

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“Spearhunter” is a 14-minute short film about a man’s obsession with not only a particular form of hunting, but with the idea of securing his own legacy, one that would live on well after he would be dead.

Welcome to Alabama, where Gene Morris has honed his hunting skills to such a degree that he became bored with normal hunting techniques. Guns, bow and arrows, he was done with all of that. Instead he wanted more of a challenge, and hence set about to be the world’s great spear hunter. And he loved spear hunting so much that he constantly filmed and videotaped himself doing it and also talking into the camera and cutting promos like a professional wrestler, declaring himself to the greatest in the world. Whom he was addressing or expected to ever view these proclamations is never made clear, and maybe it never was to begin with.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Welcome to Leith’

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“Welcome to Leith” is a fascinating documentary about a small town in North Dakota and how they reacted when a well-known white supremacist moved in with the intention of turning it into a safe haven for his fellow racists.

This old fella named Craig Cobb found this tiny town in North Dakota with only 24 residents, which includes the children, and yet this town named Leith still has a functioning government, in that there is a mayor and a town council and all that good stuff. And Cobb saw this little rundown town in the middle of nowhere and saw an opportunity to take it over. What he didn’t see was a small group of people who didn’t want anything to do with their brand of foolishness. What ensued was a six-month stand off, with Cobb and his hate-filled compatriots on one side and some honest people who just wanted to live their lives without having to worry about any of this bullshit on the other.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘The Desk’

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So what is “The Desk?” Apparently submitted to the festival as a narrative feature despite clearly being a documentary (a meta-documentary, but a documentary nonetheless), “The Desk” is part biography and part exposé, while also getting into the role of social media in journalism and in our culture as a whole, which brings with it a bit of an indictment on many peoples’ need to be outraged about…well, about anything. Combining footage from a failed short film about a failed television late night talk show with interviews, recreations from actors, cell phone footage and some audio from previous celebrity interviews, this movie is a hell of a ride as it documents a man’s fall from grace, a time during which just about everything goes wrong for the apparently very well-intentioned guy.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘The Double’

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“The Double” is a bleak, angst-ridden surreal psychological thriller dark comedy about a man, in the midst of an existential crisis, who meets his physical double and at first they appear to be allies but things quickly go from bad to what the fuck. From writer/director Richard Ayoade and loosely based on the 19th century Russian lit classic of the same name, “The Double” is one of the most original and interesting movies I’ve seen in quite awhile, bursting with ideas and a deliberate energy that just makes this whole thing hum along very loudly and distinctly.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Crimes Against Humanity’

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Boy let me tell you. Film festivals are tricky to program. Well over 100 movies in a ten day span, including both short films and features? That’s a lot of movies. And there really is no way possible for each movie to be a winner. Some of them aren’t going to be so hot, for various reasons. But they’ll have redeeming qualities about them, variables that make them worthwhile in one way, shape or form. Unfortunately I don’t think “Crimes Against Humanity” meets even that criteria.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Levitated Mass’

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“Levitated Mass” is a documentary about the conceptualization, actualization and meaning of the Michael Heizer art piece known as Levitated Mass, which is really just a 340-ton boulder suspended over a carved out walkway in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This is a pretty great movie that raises all sorts of questions such as “what does this mean?” and  “what is art?” and “how the hell do you move a 340-ton boulder anyway?” Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Dom Hemingway’

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“Dom Hemingway” is mostly a showcase of Jude Law, who gets to put on some weight and play an over the top character with a penchant for cussing and long monologues, and while he knocks his portion of the movie pretty much out of the park, the rest of the movie around him is merely good, with some flash and style to go along with a little bit of substance, but ultimately not really saying anything new or unique with the story and characters.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘The Front Man’

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I don’t know if this is the type of person that we all know or have met before, but I have a feeling it is. I think we can all relate to the universal truth of coming across a person who cares about one thing above all others, and that is the attainment of worldwide fame and adulation, with all the perks and fortune that comes with such popularity. In other words, we all know someone who just wants to be a rock star. The music is secondary. It’s all about the fame.

That’s “The Front Man,” a documentary, getting it’s East Coast premiere, about the lead singer of a New Jersey band called Loaded Poets, a band that has stuck together for decades, playing local establishments and recording material and plugging away at it since 1980, which is a damned long time for a band to be spinning their wheels in the mud (professionally speaking, anyway). And according the to the press notes for this documentary, “The Front Man” covers 27 years in the life of lead singer Jim Wood, and while part of the fun of this movie for me was the realization that it was covering a very large expanse of time in this person’s like, I have to say that it did not seem like we were documenting 27 years worth of this guy’s life. Maybe 27 years when you throw in some old home videos, but this definitely seemed like it documents at least 12 to 15 years of Jim Wood’s existence as a musician and as a average joe who wishes so badly to no longer be average.Continue Reading …