Tag: Indie Film

Movies, Reviews, Streaming

‘The Hater’ Has an Earnest Heart

Bray Lawrence

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 showed that real life had become more like a season of television than ever before. Two years into Joe Biden’s presidency — and in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection — our identity as citizens in this country has become increasingly fragmented from each other. What is best for our communities has fallen to the wayside as it has become harder to find common ground. So when The Hater — written, directed and acted by the multi-talented Joey Ally — finally ended and credits began to roll, I finally realized what had been missing in so many other pieces of media about politics in the world of Fake News and political team sports. 

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Movies, Streaming1 Comment

Highlights from the 42nd Hawai’i International Film Festival’s Virtual Program

Lauren Lola

For the third consecutive year of its 42-year run, the Hawai’i International Film Festival has a large selection of films available to view virtually. With titles ranging from Hawaii, the mainland, the overall Asia-Pacific region, and other parts of the world, there are so many for viewers to watch from the comfort of home, each of which expressing voices and stories of all kinds.

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Movies, Reviews

NOC Review: ‘I Love My Dad’ is Endearingly Funny and Real

Bray Lawrence

Having a falling out with a family member you are close with can be difficult and the same can be said when you fall in love with a person you’ve never met online. Both experiences can leave you with the empty feeling of realizing you don’t really know them as well as you thought. In I Love My Dad, writer-director James Morosini crafts an endearingly funny and real film that displays that feeling honestly and cathartically.

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Fandom, Movies

I Assure You, the ‘Clerks III’ Trailer is Open

Keith Chow

Forget Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or The Dark Knight. After nearly three decades, filmmaker Kevin Smith finally concludes his epic trilogy with the Clerks III trailer that just debuted — even if Dante and Randall weren’t supposed to be here today.

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Movies, Reviews

‘Inbetween Girl’ Shows How Maturity Sometimes Means Accepting Your Mess

Elvie Mae Parian

The road to adulthood is messy, imperfect, and unkind. Media depictions of adolescence tend to rule these realities out, or otherwise forgoes depicting representation of this demographic at all. But the truth is, sanitizing the experience does not hide the mistakes and many questions that will inevitably be made along the way. 

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Movies, Reviews

The Healing Magic of ‘Marvelous and the Black Hole’

Elvie Mae Parian

The “face” of the coming-of-age story has been changing: It is not that teenagers have changed — far from it in fact, when the woes of adolescence remain one of the most universal parts of the human experience — but it is apparent in recent years that the default notions of what a “teenager” should look like has changed to be better reflective of what the viewing world needs today. 

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Horror, Movies, Reviews

‘The Midnight Swim’ Dives Deep into Grief and Depression

Bray Lawrence

The journey through grief, loss, and depression can often be a solitary one. A moment in time where a world full of the diversity of life, people, animals, and color, is swept to the sea and you are left with an isolating void of muted memories and half remembered thoughts. The Midnight Swim — a 2015 film recently made available on home video and streaming — written and directed by Sarah Adina Smith, dives deep into the nuance of these feelings through poetic and graceful filmmaking.

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Movies, Podcasts

The Middle Geeks: Shayan Sobhian and Max Mooney on ‘Does Bigfoot Dream of Flowers?’

Swara Salih

We are delighted to speak with Legends of Tomorrow cast member Shayan Sobhian and his writing partner and director Max Mooney on their new film Does Bigfoot Dream of Flowers?. What inspired them to do this project? How is this depiction of Bigfoot similar and different from those we’ve seen before? We also hear from Shayan on his role as Behrad on Legends of Tomorrow, and where the show might go from their recent Season 7 finale.

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Movies, Sci Fi

See the Haunting Trailer for Kogonada’s New Film, ‘After Yang’

Keith Chow

After making a splash at the Cannes Film Festival last summer, After Yang is finally being released to mass audiences next month. The film — starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Justin H. Min, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, and Haley Lu Richardson — is director Kogonada’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Columbus.

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Cosplay, Fandom

‘Shades of Cosplay’ Makes Me Want to Cosplay

Bray Lawrence

Cosplay is an enigma to me. The act of dressing up as one’s favorite character to an almost identical degree shows a mastery of craft-making, make-up, and acting that is rarely discussed in other mediums. Being a fan of a show or a character is no longer a passive experience when you cosplay, it becomes an active response to the work that inspires you.

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Martial Arts, Movies, Reviews

‘Nightshooters’ is One of the Best Action Films This Year

Bray Lawrence

The trials and tribulations of indie filmmaking are taken to their absurd, action-y, lengths in Marc Price’s Nightshooter, a story about a film crew finding themselves at the scene of a harrowing gang (mob?) execution at an abandoned and soon to be demolished business center on the last night of shooting a zombie film.

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Horror, Movies, Reviews

‘Ouija Japan’ Summons Greatness but is Cursed with Being Decent

Bray Lawrence

Something that has always fascinated me in horror movies is that through the sheer bombastic embrace of all things repulsive in society, it can often be the best mirror image society has of itself. Whether it be through nightmare dream logic, campy visual stylization, or an over abundance of gore, when you strip the horror genre to its core there is a meaning behind the madness.

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Horror, Interview, Streaming

The Haunting History of Vampires and Blackness is Captured in ‘Black as Night’

Bray Lawrence

In the film Black as Night, screenwriter Sherman Payne pens a haunting and alluring tale of vampires and their victims through a lens not much often looked through. Crafting a story that centers Shawna, a 15-year-old African American woman, as she battles vampires in a modern day New Orleans against a backdrop of not only the history of Hurricane Katrina but also the generational and systemic trauma of being Black in America. 

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Movies, Reviews

‘When I’m A Moth’ is Beautiful but Doesn’t Say Anything

Bray Lawrence

Waking from a dream never felt so unfinished as it did when I reached the end credits of When I’m A Moth, an independent film directed by Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak, written by Cotler. It’s a film that on paper has all the markings of being an arthouse darling — a small cast, eerie poetic dream visuals, pontifications on choice and fate with a going nowhere protagonist and yet, as I rose from my seat afterwards, it felt as if I was remembering a half dream. Unable to finish the thought of what it wanted to be but fascinated by the parts I could remember.

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Movies, Reviews

‘Language Lessons’ Is A Lesson To Behold

Bray Lawrence

Two people from across different continents use webcams to build a beautiful friendship rooted in understanding each other, both linguistically and emotionally in Language Lessons. Natalie Morales directs, co-writes, and stars alongside Mark Duplass in a film that is both incredibly simple in production execution and completely captivating through its narrative and strong performances.

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Movies, Reviews

‘Americanish’ Shines a Heartwarming Light on its Community

Bray Lawrence

Iman Zahawry provides a refreshing and heartwarming romantic comedy centered in a community that is so often ignored in media. What might feel like a run of the mill indie film straight from the early 2010s, the films sets itself apart and elevates itself with its likable characters and message of trying to find one’s independence and what it means to be Americanish.

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Movies, Reviews, Sci Fi

‘Nebulous Dark’ Can’t Time Travel Enough to Be a Strong Movie

Bray Lawrence

A nightmare-fueled time-traveling plot unravels in Shahin Sean Solimon’s new film, Nebulous Dark, a sci-fi movie about the world’s last human man as he wakes from deep sleep to find the Earth has been conquered by aliens. This sounds pretty straight forward for a plot, but this is only how I could fully understand the film after watching it and reading the synopsis again. If you were to watch Nebulous Dark after only seeing the trailer, as I did, you would find an almost surreal, nihilist nightmare of a film that I can’t tell if it’s poorly edited and poorly written, or if it’s actively trying to attack the viewer on a subconscious level. What I was left with was an art piece that genuinely intrigues me and is unintentionally funny, by a film that takes itself incredibly seriously.

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Martial Arts, Movies, Streaming

‘The Paper Tigers’ to Stream on Netflix

Keith Chow

The Paper Tigers, the indie martial arts film starring Alain Uy, Ron Yuan, and Mykel Shannon Jenkins that went from Kickstarter to Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes will culminate its improbable journey on the biggest streaming platform in the world when it debuts on Netflix this Saturday, August 7.

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Interview, Martial Arts, Movies

NOC Exclusive Interview: ‘The Paper Tigers’ Stars, Alain Uy and Mykel Shannon Jenkins

Patrick Strange

Heyyy! It’s Kuya P back again with another NOC EXCLUSIVE! I recently sat down for a conversation with the stars of The Paper Tigers: Alain Uy & Mykel Shannon Jenkins! The Paper Tigers hits Theaters and On Demand May 7th!

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