“Like Me is a bombastic feature debut for Robert Mockler, benefitting heavily from visual artistry and Addison Timlin’s strong performance.” – We Got This Covered
March 20, 2017
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Variety reviews MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND
From Variety: “Ana Asensio’s directorial debut reveals a surprising, strong-willed side to her undocumented New York immigrant character.”
March 20, 2017
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SXSW Photo Round-Up!
SXSW comes to a close! We’ve gathered pics from throughout the festival, including the MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND and LIKE ME premieres and the GEP / Dogfish Pictures / Palomo Films party.
March 17, 2017
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Cut Print Film: LIKE ME “likely to be the most exciting debut you’ll see this year. Or maybe any.”
“What If There’s More To Tell?”
Film synopses are often misleading. To the point that I try not to read them. But when you’re sorting through festival screenings, synopses are usually ground zero. I gave the blurb for Robert Mockler’s Like Me little more than a casual glance and wrote it off as a tween ‘social media obsessed’ drama. Then I found a different movie to see in that time slot. But serendipity is beautiful thing. That other film’s screening was completely booked up. I Continue Reading »
March 17, 2017
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DIG TWO GRAVES Premiere in NYC 24 March 2017 at Cinema Village
Dread Central will be hosting the NYC premiere of director Hunter Adams’ supernatural shocker Dig Two Graves, and you can win a pair of tickets to the star-studded premiere and after party! This special event will take place on Friday, March 24, at 7 pm at the Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street, off University Place), where the movie will begin a week-long run. Dig Two Graves marks the latest genre production from local horrormeister Larry Fessenden (Habit, The Last Winter, Stake Land, Late Phases, I Sell the Dead, The Innkeepers, etc.)
“A stylish, haunting thriller…dark, original and chilling…Ted Levine gives one of the most memorable performances of his career.” — Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
“An inky dose of the supernatural.” — New Orleans Film Society
“Part moody Stephen King-style thriller, part brooding family drama.” — Culture Crypt
“A haunting and darkly beautiful tale of revenge.” — Horrornews.net
March 17, 2017
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Gravitas picks up NO WAY TO LIVE featuring Fessenden
GEP pal and co-producer of THE RANGER Andrew van den Houten inks deal with Gravitas for film noir No Way To Live featuring Fessenden…
Gravitas Ventures also has landed U.S. and international rights (excluding Canada) to No Way To Live, a crime thriller, with plans for a July release.
Starring Freya Tingley and Tom Williamson, the film noir follows an interracial teenage couple in the 1950’s south, during the Jim Crow laws, who rob and steal to escape their town and find themselves in a downward spiral as violence erupts and dark secrets come to light. Larry Fessenden and Timothy V. Murphy also star. No Way To Live was written and directed by David Guglielmo and Nick Chakwin, and produced through Moderncine.
Andrew van den Houten of 79th and Broadway handled the sale on behalf of the filmmakers.
March 16, 2017
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The Iris: LIKE ME “one of the most refreshing indie debuts in a long time”
SXSW FILM REVIEW: LIKE ME (USA, 2017) IS DISORIENTATING AND BEAUTIFUL
When I was nineteen I spent three straight days without sleeping. I had just moved to Tokyo and couldn’t cope with the light pollution or the sounds from the trains that ran behind my flat. I would spend the nights listening to relaxing music and watch films during the day. On the third morning at around 4AM I made an instant coffee and decided to put on Enter the Void.
The first thing I heard after listening to a recording of Enya’s Paint The Sky With Stars on repeat for some three hours, and not having slept through two slow nights, was the Thomas Bangalter scored opening credits. I’d never again feel as disorientated as I was in those two and a half minutes; but watching Robert Mockler’s Like Me, I came close.
Like Me marks the first time Robert Mockler has been credited as a director and writer of a feature length film. The film, which premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival in Austin Texas, is eighty minutes of visual portraits pieced together by tactile transitions, lucid VFX and a millennial journey.
Addison Timlin plays Kiya, a young girl who amasses a huge social following after posting a video of herself holding up a convenience store with a replica weapon. She takes her newfound popularity on the road and begins to film her encounters with a string of unusual characters, eventually taking a paedophile, ‘Marshall’ (Larry Fessenden), hostage, to mixed reactions from the online community. An antagonistic vlogger, Burt (Ian Nelson), begins to take Kiya’s videos apart, and her journey becomes visceral as Burt begins to impact both her content and her psyche.
Kiya guides us through her journey. She tests the humanity of the characters she meets, finding that a vagabond doesn’t want much more than pancakes from a diner, or that a painter who believes there is no age of consent had lost his own daughter at a young age. Kiya studies these characters and presents them to us; but often she seems to be neither a part of the film nor the viewership. She’s more like the kid holding a magnifying glass over an anthill.
Addison Timlin is perfect as Kiya, even if the character is not a strictly formed one with laborious dialogue. She has again shown her ability to completely comprehend the characters she’s becoming. Like her performance in Little Sister, she brings a sense of palpability to the role and becomes so natural as Kiya that the film, in moments, feels kind of like an Addison Timlin vlog, like she’s simply playing herself (with exception of the scenes where she’s forcing food into Marshall’s throat and telling him, “you’re going to eat or you’re going to bleed”).
What makes Like Me so mystifying to the senses is the intense cinematography and editing. Every shot is beautiful. Every background, shadow and light setting progresses the film like a series of paintings, ushering the narrative from frame to frame as if it were an exhibition across a gallery wall. The lighting and colours filter the film in two schemes, the afternoon pink skies and radiant neon signs to moments of moonlight blue and shadow. Both ethereal and at every shot, meticulously thought out.
The experimentation behind the lens continues through to the cutting room floor with disorientating and innovative shots that mess with the audience and remove any limits to the camera’s function. Shots will revolve around rooms and bury through the floor, while actors become stuck in a glitch-like trance, moving in two-second motions, back and forth on loop.
It’s these scenes that make Like Me feel like one long hallucinogenic journey. Although not directing the film, drugs play a part in Kiya’s internal narrative and are managed in a tacitly accurate sense. Ketamine is blue and calm, and doesn’t make a lot of sense, MDMA is sense-altering and intense, where mushrooms give the film its ‘baby on the ceiling’ moment, as a snake slides from Marshall’s bullet wound and into the alternate dimension that has surrounded Kiya.
At times the film does get lost in its own eccentricity, sacrificing the plot beneath the layers of art. The balance between progressing the narrative while constantly combing it to assure its uniform in style throughout, tips slightly through the second half of the film. Scenes like Kiya chasing Burt through the streets of a sunny city before inexplicably arriving at a foggy beachfront leave viewers with a decision to make about the symbolism of each moment, and what’s been done just because it looked good.
The film is still one of the most refreshing indie debuts in a long time. It is an experiment in style and as well shot as any box office film released this decade. While the plot at times fades into its own aestheticism, the acting and the unique style excel the film into rare territory for contemporary cinema.
Review Score: FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
March 16, 2017
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PSYCHOPATHS at Tribeca. Premiere dates announced!
Mickey Keating’s PSYCHOPATHS will premiere at Tribeca Film Festival 2017, dates have been announced!
Over the course of one excessively blood-soaked night, multiple serial killers’ paths cross, leaving a trail of bodies and begging the question: Which psychopath will live to see morning? One of the most exciting and unclassifiable new voices in indie horror, Mickey Keating delivers his wildest ride yet with this ultra-stylish and uber-violent descent into madness.
THU 4/20
10:00 PM
FRI 4/21
10:45 PM
SAT 4/22
11:30 PM
TUE 4/25
10:00 PM
March 15, 2017
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MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND wins Grand Jury Prize at SXSW
At a packed Paramount Theater this evening, the SXSW Film Festival, now at the halfway mark, handed out their big film awards. The fest’s two big competition jury prizes went to director Ana Asensio’s “Most Beautiful Island” …
Shot in super 16mm, it tells the story of undocumented female immigrants struggling to start a life in New York. It is a feature film debut for Asensio, who also stars and wrote the screenplay. “Island” is being billed as a dramatic thriller and was produced by the New York horror master Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix.
March 15, 2017
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Nightmarish Conjurings: LIKE ME a “visually stunning journey of self-discovery”
Writer/Director Robert Mockler’s feature LIKE ME calls for a bit of a different review. After all, this film is all about a girl who buys into social media so much that she completely forgets how to connect with people. Given that this causes her to kidnap someone and go on a weird spree, I think anyone watching this would agree that a traditional review just will not do this justice.
As such, let us go a different route. First of all, do me one favor, DO NOT CLICK LIKE ON THIS REVIEW. Let’s not perpetuate this reliance on social media. I will very quickly know who actually bothered to read this just by whether or not they clicked like (ooh, social experiment!).
I know, this is weird, but it is very much in the spirit of this movie.
How, one might ask?
Well, you see, this piece is all about obsessing over social media. The thrust of our action is an artist who posts a video online and suddenly has a lot of people reacting to the footage. When someone calls her out, in a way that hits too close to home, she decides she must somehow connect with an actual person.
While this may seem like the stuff of a cerebral, introspective drama, they never quite take events in that direction. Instead, we are offered a kidnap movie where she slowly befriends the older man she has ensnared. Their time together is a highlight of this piece as their relationship is constantly switching from touching to combative. The performance given by Larry Fessenden is one of the best I have ever seen him give and fans of his should run to check this out.
Addison Timlin is no slouch herself as she perfectly embodies a young, obsessive woman who is trying to figure out her place in life. The first portion of the feature has her trying to listen more than talk, making her facial expressions our only window into her thought process. As she begins to come out of her shell more, her range reveals itself through her vulnerability and uncertainty with human connection.
All the while, she continues her artistic and online endeavors which allows for some truly stunning visuals. In all honesty, the look of this alone makes it worth a watch as there are so many amazing lighting features, camera shots, and color schemes at work that it really feels like a moving work of art in and of itself. From the crazy paintings in the room to the psychedelic drugged up sequences later in the film, this is a visual feast for the eyes that is sure to captivate.
In a few recent reviews I have commented upon music, so I feel I must give just a moment’s notice to the score. This was an odd and engrossing soundtrack that drew me in right from the get-go. Like walking through an art museum, the score tried on many different styles to varying degrees of success. Some I am still hearing one day later, others, though, I don’t recall as clearly, but either way I respect the approach taken as doing something wholly different is in short supply these days.
Listen, this is a movie that has a little something for everyone so I recommend all to give it a view. It is beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time with equal measures given to style and character development. The performers are also at the top of their game bringing a lot of weight to this visually stunning journey of self-discovery.
Once again, I want to stress, please DO NOT CLICK LIKE. Instead see this movie and talk with someone about what it meant to you. Create a connection, get out there, be with people and experience art at the same time.
Nighty Nightmares,
The Creeping Craig
