Category: Festivals

By Jan Hamilton This is a sci-fi thriller with a dad named Damon (Jay Duplass) and Cee (Sophie Thatcher), his young teen daughter, working on a distant planet, looking for a strange sort of gem.  It seems to be found in a living plant/animal and must be carefully harvested or else it gets ruined by… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: PROSPECT

By Jan Hamilton Four college kids, from upper middle class families in Lexington, Kentucky, decide to steal some of the world’s most valuable books from Transylvania University.  The books include an Audubon’s first edition of Birds of America, Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, and the Bible.  Warren (Evan Peters), the defacto leader of the… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: AMERICAN ANIMALS

By Jan Hamilton Kate (Taylor Schilling) is a seemingly successful VP of finance at a large firm.  However, no one seems to like her and she doesn’t understand why.   She is unable to see how truly awfully she treats her underlings at work.  She never fails to insult people in completely thoughtless ways, as… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: FAMILY

By Jan Hamilton It’s difficult to have patience with a loved one who keeps going back to hard drugs, but that is the position in which Kate (Abbi Jacobson) is.  Although he has a two year-old daughter, her brother Seth (Dave Franco)  can’t stay off of heroin for long.  Separated from his wife, Seth often… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: 6 BALLOONS

By Jan Hamilton A nice looking teen (Garrett Wareing) awakens to find that he has apparently killed his girlfriend in an alcohol or drug-induced haze.  His rich beautiful mother (Abbie Cornish) takes him to the same rehab clinic where she was sent as a youth.  It does not seem to be a typical clinic, as… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: PERFECT

By Jan Hamilton This Australian film starts off slowly with two middle-aged, bearded brothers biking down country roads in the pre-dawn hours toward their childhood home.  They are disguised and make sure no one sees them.  Their plan, which soon becomes apparent, is to murder their step-father, so that he doesn’t inherit the family farm… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: BROTHERS’ NEST

By Jan Hamilton In an enjoyable, but somewhat predictable thriller, a hit man, Roy Cady (Ben Foster), is sent by his boss (Beau Bridges) to dispatch an attorney.  However, Roy and his partner are jumped by a second hit squad at the attorney’s home.  Roy is able to escape with a teen prostitute named Rocky… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: GALVESTON

By Jan Hamilton When the audience first meets Richie Wincott (Tye Sheridan), he has just turned eighteen and has aged out of his residence with Child Protective Services.  His is not interested in any further education and doesn’t even have a GED.  When one first sees him, the first thought is, “This is where the… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: FRIDAY’S CHILD

By Jan Hamilton The audience first sees Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as she awakes from a nightmare.  In her dream, she is in the middle of an earthquake, with water rising around her bed.  Awake, she realizes it was no dream and she is the one causing the earthquake.  Now on the run, the only place… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: FAST COLOR

By Jan Hamilton In a slow-moving, but satisfying film, Armie Hammer plays James Lord, an American who visits Paris in 1964.  He is friends with artist Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush) and agrees to sit for a portrait, although due to leave for the States within days.  Alberto has told him the painting will only take… Continue reading SXSW 2018 Review: FINAL PORTRAIT