2021 Slamdance Festival Preview
by Benjamin Leonard, Managing Editor, Zine, Best Boy
Like just about every other film festival, the 2021 Slamdance Film Festival is available virtually making it available to a larger audience.
MJ's Top Ten of 2020
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
A couple weeks before the end of the year (and what a year it’s been), I asked everybody to list their top five movies that they’d seen so far. This is always a tough chore because people are trying to cram in the films they’d heard about but missed throughout the year and then there’s the Christmas Day releases that only a few people have seen by that point. This means that people will always look back at their list in a year or two and find things that they wish they would've included, but just hadn’t seen yet. I feel like this year has exacerbated that situation because everyone has had to settle into finding films through different avenues.
Here, I’ve compiled everyone’s rankings and responses to give the MovieJawn Top Ten for 2020.
Read MoreJimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President
Written by Bill Flanagan
Directed by Mary Wharton
Featuring Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, Roseanne Cash, Madeleine Albright and Trisha Yearwood
Running time: 1 hour and 38 minutes
Unrated: contains discussions of drug and alcohol use
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
I was born in the first year of the Carter Presidency. I don’t really have many memories until Reagan took office. Once that happened, Jimmy was kinda a laughing stock. Reagan won the popular vote by nearly 10% and the electoral college was 489 for Reagan and 49 for Carter. The country had decided that they were not better off, did not have less unemployment, weren’t as strong and were not as respected around the world as they were before Jimmy Carter became president. I remember the joke being that his solution to the oil crisis was to wear a sweater. People exclaimed, “What a joke!” America decided that we wanted to fight to gain access to that oil. Why waste your time conserving non-renewable resources when we can just start wars and topple governments in an effort to gobble up every last drop?
Read MoreThe Five Rules of Success
Written and directed by Orson Oblowitz
Starring Santiago Segura, Jon Sklaroff, Isidora Goreshter, Jonathan Howard and Roger Guenveur Smith
Running time: 1 hour and 23 minutes
Unrated-contains strobing lights, violence, sex, nudity, language and depictions of rape
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
The synopsis of this one had me kinda interested, but then my schedule was getting jammed up and I was gonna pass...until I saw that this was written and directed by Orson Oblowitz. He’d written and directed The Queen of Hollywood Blvd a couple years back, which I enjoyed, and I covered it in my wrap up for the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Fest here. It had a good look and an interesting concept. So, I figured I should probably check this one out too.
Read MoreLabyrinth of Cinema
Written and directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Starring Tadanobu Asano, Takuro Atsuki, Yoshihiko Hosoda and Takahito Hosoyamada
Language: Japanese
Running time: 2 hours and 59 minutes
Unrated-contains some love scenes and suggested nudity and some war scenes with some light violence
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
I’ll admit my ignorance going into this one. I was pouring over the big ole list of films being offered at Fantasia International Film Fest this year and something about this one just called out to me. The brief synopsis that it was the history of Japanese wars as told through the movies had me intrigued. Seeing that it was three hours long had me a bit concerned, but a super fast IMDb check told me that Nobuhiko Ôbayashi had been making films for 60 years
Read MoreMr. Soul!
Written by Melissa Haizlip
Directed by Melissa Haizlip and Sam Pollard
Featuring Ellis Haizlip, Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin and just about everybody else that mattered in the Black Arts Movement in the early 70s
Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes
Unrated-contains discussion of sexuality and racial violence as well as strong language in relation to those topics
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
Mr. Soul! has been on my radar for a couple years now. Melissa Haizlip has been working to bring this documentary about her uncle’s life and his ground-breaking and influential television program, Soul!, to the public for a while. I’d missed it back in January of 2019 when there was a small screening in Philadelphia, but had kept my eye out to see when it got larger distribution. Well, now’s the time!
Read MoreTime of Moulting
Written and directed by Sabrina Mertens
Starring Zelda Espenschied, Miriam Schiweck, Freya Kreutzkam and Bernd Wolf
Language: German
Running time: 1 hour and 21 minutes
Unrated-contains some nudity, disturbing images and light body horror
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
IMDb lists Time of Moulting’s genres as “drama, history and horror” and the brief synopsis makes it seem like it’s more of an art film than a straight narrative. Further investigation showed that this is Sabrina Mertens’s feature debut and was made at the Baden-Württemberg Filmakademie. So I was prepared, going in, for this to be a lot more subtle than many of the other things I’ve watched for Fantasia Film Festival.
Read MoreCut Throat City
Directed by RZA
Written by P.G. Cuschieri
Starring Shameik Moore, Demetrius Shipp Jr. and T.I.
Running time: 2 hours and 3 minutes
MPAA rating: R for violence, pervasive language, drug content, some sexual material and nudity
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
I’m a fan of RZA, not just his music, but his aesthetic and overall worldview. So, I had fairly high hopes for this movie. I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, but I was looking to have an enjoyable time, a romp, if you will. But I’ll let you know right off, it just didn’t do it for me.
Read MoreFree Country (Freies Land)
Written by Siegfried Kammi and Christian Alvart (adapted from Alberto Rodríguez’s and Rafael Cobo’s script for 2014’s Marshland)
Directed by Christian Alvart
Starring Trystan Pütter, Felix Kramer and Nurit Hirschfeld
Running time: 2 hours and 9 minutes
Language: German (and some French)
Unrated-Contains nudity, language, sex, violence, sexual violence, smoking and drinking
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
This is another one where, going in, I knew very little about it. There’s missing teens, dead bodies, gritty detectives all set in a newly reunified East German small town. The trailer is in German with no subtitles. So there’s very little to be gathered there other than the overall aesthetic which, honestly, was almost good enough for me. The thing that pushed it over the edge to make me want to watch it was that it’s a recent remake of the Spanish film Marshland by Alberto Rodríguez. Now, I’d never seen that either, but a new language remake within 6 years is often a sign of a compelling story. From there, it’s all what the director (Christian Alvart) does with it. And, like I’d said, the look of the thing was to my tastes.
Read MoreFantasia Festival 2020 Preview
Compliments of your friendly cinematic pals at Moviejawn
Heading into its 24th year, the Fantasia Festival is known for the celebration of up and coming filmmakers within genre cinema. The Moviejawn crew is ecstatic to be covering this diverse and eclectic fest. With such a wide range of flick options, Fantasia is the type of event that has something for any movie lover.
Read MoreMorgana
Written and directed by Josie Hess and Isabel Peppard
Featuring Morgana Muses, Scarlet Blissand, Anna Brownfield and Kim Cums
Running time: 1 hour and 11 minutes
Unrated-Contains some swears, full nudity, sex and sexual situations
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
The synopsis of Morgana reads like an inspirational, whacked-out farce that was possibly made (or at least inspired) by John Waters. In actuality, this is the debut feature-length documentary from co-directors Josie Hess and Isabel Peppard.
Read MoreLapsis
Written and directed by Noah Hutton
Starring Dean Imperial, Madeline Wise and Babe Howard
Running time: 1hour and 44 Minutes
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
When I sat down to watch this film, I knew very little about the plot and nothing about anyone involved in the making of it. I’d seen a couple stills, and that was it. It looked like maybe it was a near-future dystopia that somehow involved a lot of camping? This is rather common with films on the festival circuit. You get some rough idea of what it is and make your decision whether to watch it based on that. And yet, somehow, from those tiny scraps, Lapsis managed to meet all of my expectations, and then some.
Read MoreNow Presenting: Moviejawn's Summer 2020 Issue
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
Greetings movie friends! As I’m sure most of you know, in addition to our website which mostly covers new movie reviews, we also make a quarterly print zine. I thought it’d be fun to give everyone a quick glance at all the films that are covered in our most recent issue (which focuses on circuses, carnivals and fairs) and where you can find them. Step right up! to follow the links for the titles and it’ll take you to a listing of where it can be found (mostly powered by JustWatch.com).
Read MoreYou Never Had It
An Evening with Charles Bukowski
Written and directed by Matteo Borgardt
Featuring Charles Bukowski, Linda Lee Beighle and Silvia Bizio
Running time: 52 minutes
Unrated-Contains smoking, drinking, general potty-mouth and discussions of sex
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
I was introduced to Charles Bukowski’s work in the mid-to-late nineties. It was just shortly after his death. I’d heard plenty about his foul language and dirty sex stories, but I’d also heard he was a soulful poet. I’d been reading a lot of Kerouac and Burroughs in those years and he sounded like a good fit. The first thing I ever read of his was his last completed novel, Pulp. As I was walking through my local bookstore, it was on the endcap as a staff pick. Twenty-five years and the majority of his bibliography later, I think it was a great place to start. With Buk in his later years looking back at his life, it contextualized a lot of the rough-and-rowdy iconography that precedes most people’s actual introduction to his work.
Read MoreStockton on My Mind
Directed by Marc Levin
Featuring Michael Tubbs and Common
Running time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
Look. Things can seem pretty miserable at times. Somedays when I wake up, the world feels like we are all just a bunch of turds circling the drain. It’s hard to feel inspired to make changes, make the world better and help your neighbors. Sometimes you just wanna slump over on your couch and watch a movie to escape the misery. Guess what gang? You’re in luck! HBO just released Mark Levin’s Stockton on My Mind. Now you can plop down on your couch to watch a movie and actually feel energized to help make a difference.
Read MoreYear of the Rabbit
Written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley
Directed by Ben Taylor
Starring Matt Berry, Freddie Fox and Susan Wokoma
Running time: Six episodes totaling about 2 hours and 20 minutes
Content warning: swears and occasional gory, gross imagery
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy and Rosalie Kicks!, Old Sport
Best Boy (BB): When asked if I wanted to review Year of the Rabbit, one of Matt Berry’s many, recent vehicles, my answer was “Of course!” Some of you will know Matt as Lasszlo from the recent TV series What We Do in the Shadows, but I’ve been a fan since I stumbled across videos of him online from the show Snuffbox (with Rich Fulcher) in 2006. Matt has quite a bit of skill at playing a loud-mouth, know-it-all, misogynistic douchebag that manages to get more laughs than outrage. While his characters (and occasionally many other elements from the shows he is in) can be problematic, the viewer feels comfortable to laugh at how terrible it is because they are constantly being proven wrong and knocked down a peg.
Read MoreYou Don't Nomi
Directed by Jeffrey McHale
Featuring Peaches Christ, Haley Mlotek, Adam Nayman, David Schmader and April Kidwell
Running time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
You may have seen our article last week, where Nikk Nelson, The Old Sport and I discussed watching the Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls. It was Nikk’s first time, Rosalie’s seen it a few and I’ve watched it MANY times. So we all have our own relationship with it. Funnily enough, that’s exactly what Jeffrey McHale’s documentary You Don’t Nomi is about.
Read MoreThe Day (De Dag)
Written by Jonas Geirnaert and Julie Mahieu
Directed by Gilles Coulier and Dries Vos
Starring Jeroen Perceval, Liesa Van der Aa and Sophie Decleir
Not Rated: Some swearing and graphic violence, a flaccid penis is briefly shown as a man takes a bath
Language: Flemish with English subtitles
Running time: 12 episodes averaging 45 minute=9 hours
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
I enjoy visiting Belgium. The Old Sport and I both enjoy their beers and we’ve been to visit a couple times. We spent some time in the cities as well as the countryside and enjoyed both quite a bit for what they had to offer. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to go back in the last few years and I was starting to miss it. Then, all of a sudden, I saw that The Day was going to be available in the US and Canada to stream on Topic. Now, I also enjoy an interesting heist premise. And what I’d read about The Day was that you were seeing a bank heist from the police’s perspective and then the crooks’, alternating each episode. Of course, it’s all taking place within one day- hence the title. Well, I was sold. Why not give it a shot? And it paid off!
Read MoreShowgirls Shakedown
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy, Nikk Nelson and Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport
With You Don't Nomi (a documentary discussing Showgirls and its impact on the world) about to be released, there is no better time than now to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with Showgirls. MJ’s Best Boy introduced Old Sport to Showgirls a few years back and it seemed only fitting to continue this tradition with fellow MJers. Late one Saturday night, Nikk Nelson’s world was rocked when he agreed to watch the flick with Best Boy and Old Sport. Fortunately for you, our dear MJ readers we documented our experience to share with you our thoughts of varying perspectives on the notorious (yet acclaimed in our opinion) Paul Verhoeven (master)piece in this special article we have deemed… SHOWGIRLS SHAKEDOWN.
Read MoreBad Education
Written by Mike Makowsky
Directed by Cory Finley
Starring Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney and Ray Romano
Rated: TV-MA
Running time: 1 hour and 43 minutes
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
Admittedly, I watched this movie back in September when it premiered at TIFF and haven’t seen it since. So, I’m not gonna be able to give you a comprehensive list of all the reasons why you should check this out this weekend. (It premieres on HBO 4/25/20 at 8PM.) But I CAN tell you that it made enough of a lasting impression that I’m still excited that people are finally gonna get to watch it after all these months.
Read More