film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Category: REVIEWS

Here is where you would find our film reviews on BRWC.  We look at on trailers, shorts, indies and mainstream.  We love movies!

  • Monochrome: The Chromism – Review

    Monochrome: The Chromism – Review

    Isaac Ward (Josh Bangle) lives in a world of black and white, he goes about his days just like everybody else not expecting anything bad to happen and generally hoping for the best. Then one day Isaac is shot in the street and he starts bleeding red. Rushed to hospital, the doctor says he’s never seen anything like this before and Isaac is quarantined.

    His wife, Victoria (Cat Merritt) is understandably worried about him, but she knows he can pull through and overcome the virus of colour that is spreading throughout his body. However, Isaac doesn’t feel any different and once he recovers for his wounds, he escapes the hospital finding that there are others like him that are being hunted down.

    Monochrome: The Chromism is a science fiction drama shot in black and white, written and directed by Kodi Zene. Cleverly using colour to get its points across, Monochrome feels like a dystopian sequel to 1998’s Pleasantville and one that speaks to a modern audience who feels the tightening grip of hatred and intolerance coming from all sides.

    What could have been a rather heavy-handed analogy though, comes across as much more balanced because of the way the world feels today. It seems that today no matter what gender, sexuality, race or political standpoint may be, there is always somebody passionately opposing your view so Monochrome never tells its audience what to believe.

    Instead it lets the characters experiences be an imprint of the audience’s own. No matter how you feel, Monochrome’s message of communication over hatred and prejudice is something we all share.

    Josh Bangle and Ryan Barnes play their parts well as brothers forced onto different sides with the latter chasing down the former. Although they don’t physically resemble brothers all that well, their performances shed light on their characters’ points of view, keeping the audience watching as their conflict escalates.

    However, there are parts that feel a little out of place, such as the villain and his masked henchmen which certainly have different connotations today as to when the movie was shot. Also, the monologues from Isaac that bookend the movie make it feel more like an extended pilot for a television show rather than an insightful and clever science fiction movie which it is for the most part.

  • Don’t Look Back: Review

    Don’t Look Back: Review

    Caitlin Kramer (Kourtney Bell) has a good life, a great relationship with her father, (Orlando Eric Street) and Josh (Skyler Hart), a wonderful man who loves her. Then one day as her father is visiting, Caitlin opens the door and has her home invaded by a group of masked thugs. In a matter of seconds, they have knocked her down and killed her father.

    Sometime later after Caitlin has recovered and is going to grief counselling, she takes a stroll through the park and sees a handsome man and she smiles and turns away to go about her day. However, as soon as she does the man is brutally attacked and beaten to death. There are many onlookers, but nobody seems to want to get involved to stop the attack with some even filming the attack, but Caitlin starts to feel guilty about what she witnessed and did nothing.

    She then decides to go to an open-air vigil held by Lucas (Will Stout), the brother of the man who died and from that point Caitlin starts experiencing supernatural visions. Not to mention she starts fearing for her life when the other witnesses that were in the park that day are being killed one by one by what she thinks is a supernatural force.

    Don’t Look Back is a horror movie with a made for television quality and an incredibly predictable plot. Whereas some horror movies try to do something different, Don’t Look Back is a horror movie that anybody could happily watch with their grandparents on a Sunday afternoon.

    There are attempts at jump scares, but they just seem to be inspired by other horror movies and are somewhat inconsistent. So, if you are looking for a good horror movie which will at least unnerve you, Don’t Look Back may not be for you.

    However, if you are looking for a horror movie that’s incredibly cheesy, predictable and easy to watch then Don’t Look Back is perfectly fine.

    You may know exactly where it’s going by about the first ten minutes, but sometimes there’s something comforting about something so familiar.  

  • J.R. “Bob” Dobbs & The Church Of The SubGenius: Review

    J.R. “Bob” Dobbs & The Church Of The SubGenius: Review

    J.R. “Bob” Dobbs & The Church Of The SubGenius: Review – Sometime in 1978, Ivan Stang (Douglass Smith) and Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox) decided to write a pamphlet satirising religious gatherings and cults that had become widespread across America.

    Their ethos was to gather all the people that felt that they didn’t fit in, they wanted to find the weirdos who thought that the ‘normal’ people were the crazy ones and that they and their followers, the SubGeniuses should have their voices heard. Little did they realise, but over 40 years later their idea would gain such a gathering that they may have even become a cult themselves. Whether they liked it or not.

    J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and The Cult of The SubGenius is a documentary that tells the story of a joke between two friends that kind of got out of hand and in many ways (both of which they’d deny and confirm) would become a religion.

    Their main belief being that ‘f*ck ‘em if they can’t take a joke’ has run right through their religion and the documentary tells how their initial idea came to rise in popularity (something that they were against), with celebrity fans such as Nick Offerman, Richard Linklater and Penn Gillette. However, it also tells of the repercussions that they had not considered when the joke kept rolling.

    Going through the 80’s, 90’s and into the 21st Century, their core group belief in fun and not taking themselves too seriously stayed the same, but the documentary doesn’t shy away from those people who took it more seriously.

    Talking frankly and honestly about its ‘members’, J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and The Church of The SubGenius shows that although they never intended it, that view of ‘not everybody getting the joke’ could be harmful, particularly going into the changing climate of the 21st Century.

    However, the documentary gives them a chance to tell their side of the story and admit to having to adapt as the world changes. J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and The Church of The SubGenius is an insightful look at the world today and the madness that engulfs us on a daily basis, and if you don’t get the joke then that’s ok. As for me, sign me up.

  • The Debt Of Maximilian: Review

    The Debt Of Maximilian: Review

    The Debt of Maximilian

    “The Debt of Maximilian” is a low-budget dramatic thriller that follows the life of Max (Travis Lee Eller.) Max is a pretty unlikeable lead character from the start; he suffers from a gambling addiction that he keeps his family in the dark about and has insurmountable amounts of debt to repay. At home Max has a pregnant, stressed out wife and a small child. As the couple is facing foreclosure on their home Max becomes desperate for cash, so much so that he is willing to do almost anything to get it.

    Throughout the film Max strolls around town looking for money, trying to place gambling bets, and just being all around desperate. When he runs into his younger brother, Kyle, played by Mark Valeriano, who, in my opinion was the strongest actor in the entire movie, is where he gets into real trouble. Kyle has been selling drugs for cash, and asks Max to hide his money for a while. Max, who is unable to control himself around said wads of cash, of course runs himself into a mess again. There’s violence, threats, chase scenes, and some poorly choreographed fighting. 

    Which leads me to my next observation; let’s talk about the general quality of this film. Well, the editing is not good, the cinematography is not good, and the acting varies from passable to just bad where I can’t recommend this to a general audience. That being said, when I read the budget for this film, a mere 10,000 dollars I understood its shortcomings much more. It is very hard to make a film on that kind of money, a herculean effort by the director that should not be ignored.

    That being said, there is potential here. Does the film fall into the “so bad it’s good” category? Yes, yes it does. Maybe that would make some of you reading this want to see it even, and, in theory, that’s not really such a bad place to be in for an unknown director. I think the filmmaker, Saxon Moen, could be a legitimate B-movie director on Lifetime or something similar. Heck, I could actually see this film being purchased by Lifetime in the edited state that it is in right now.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o95TwoiWlMo

    Is this a film that would be a critical darling? No, but, I’ve seen other ultra low budget indies that have absolutely no potential to capture any sort of underground audience. The difference here is that this one does have something to the point where I think this director could gain a kind of cult following, and potentially even make a living off his efforts; and that is a feat in and of itself.

    For Moen, I do hope that happens and he finds his way with an underground audience. If he made another film, I would be more than willing to watch it, this film did hold my attention as well. I got through the entire thing without feeling the endless need to skip forward, it had entertaining action bits and some fun sequences. If you do watch this though, take it for what it is, a bit of fun in a so bad it’s good way. I don’t think this film takes itself too seriously and it could serve as a guilty pleasure, or a bit of fun for a Friday or Saturday night.

  • Time: BRWC LFF Review

    Time: BRWC LFF Review

    Fox Richardson’s husband, Rob, has been in prison for over twenty years for attempted armed robbery (which Fox was also involved in). Nobody has ever denied his guilt, least of all Rob, who pleaded guilty at the time, but Fox believes his sentence (sixty years without the possibility of parole) to be drastically disproportionate for a crime in which nobody was hurt. 

    The couple carried out the robbery after an investor pulled out of a plan to support their new business in 1997. As Fox says, ‘desperate people do desperate things.’ They made a big mistake. They’re well aware of that, but Fox believes that Rob has more than served his time, and she’s spent every year since arguing that he was poorly represented and campaigning for his release. Time, the new documentary from director Garrett Bradley, brings that story to the screen.

    In many ways, Time feels almost like a spiritual successor to Ava DuVernay’s 2016 Oscar nominee 13th, dealing with America’s mass incarceration problem, albeit in a more personal manner. Time opts to approach this issue through the eyes of one family, delivering its message in a relatable yet equally successful way. Richardson and Bradley’s argument clearly is that the problem lies in incarcerating people for far longer than they need to be; that the system is utterly broken. 

    At the heart of this film is the abundance of archive footage provided by Fox; a combination of family home videos and personal diaries from Fox herself. It tells its own story, and it brings the audience on the journey with them. We feel the ‘time’ that’s passed and, in turn, understand the sheer anguish that the family have experienced. It articulates emotions in a way that no amount of talking heads could achieve, and also creates some form of character arc for the film’s protagonist, Fox, showcasing her evolution from a scared young mother to a brave and impressive woman, capable of achieving the impossible. 

    Fox has managed to raise six delightful sons mostly on her own, all the while running a busy car dealership and constantly trying to get her husband out of prison. She is intelligent and articulate, persistent and patient. A frankly remarkable person, Fox brings so much energy to the story; impassioned in her speech, determined in her journey and endlessly watchable.

    Time, which boasts a hauntingly beautiful score from Jamieson Shaw and Edwin Montgomery, is also brilliantly presented in black-and-white, adding some consistency in tone and evoking the feeling of the film as a family memory; the past, not the future. An excellent choice on Bradley’s part. 

    Perhaps the only criticism that could be labelled at the film is that it is simply too short. At just 81 minutes, many details are brushed over, with the viewer offered little information with regards to Rob’s appeal or in fact the initial crime itself. Of course, the family is the heart of this story, but a little more context would’ve certainly been welcome. 

    Overall, Time is extremely effective; a personal and melancholic look at an ongoing problem. Thematically rich, it focuses on all the negative effects of the topic at hand, while never losing sight of the heart of its story; Fox, Rob and their sons. It gives us a family worth reuniting, and two people worthy of a second chance.