New/Next Film Fest 2024 — Eephus, Rap World, Gazer

At first, Eephus holds the potential to make one quite sad. For this writer, the effect did not seem intentional and was more about my response to the film. It’s a movie about men playing their last amateur baseball game on their local field before it gets torn down for a school development. It’s a confident debut, where director Carson Lund is enthusiastically staging his ensemble in a wide, intricate mise en scène, which is refreshing in a time when that art seems to be in crisis. But in some ways it also feels like it was for its own sake, as if every camera movement or snappy piece of editing is there because the people behind the images are just happy to be making them. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it does make one aware that they are watching a debut feature. The jokes don’t always land, and it can make the viewer feel like they have become one of the men sitting in the dugout, tired enough to just give up on the game when the umpires leave. In reality, this writer was sitting in a press screening for a dying industry in a declining medium watching men play a game of baseball for practically no audience and increasingly no point when the game isn’t even being officially sanctioned anymore.

In the twilight of their game, things start to get dark, literally and figuratively. There are no lights shining on the diamond, and the sun has gone down. The greens of the field turn to black, faces of the players sink into blue hues, and the sky is barely defined against the tips of trees. They can’t see anything, yet they’re still trying to play. The game becomes an apparent impossibility, but in that moment is an opportunity for creativity. What starts off as a banal game — if tinged with the particular sadness of knowing it’s the last one — becomes a revitalizing experience, where the men in their refusal to give up on their ostensibly pointless game find new ways to keep going, and Lund finds new images out of the entropic void of cinema.

Eephus is ultimately a success, then, though a qualified one in some ways, as its elevator pitch as a last-day-of-school-hangout-movie dressed in baseball uniforms ends up proving what a balancing act and how subtly driven a film like Dazed and Confused (1993) actually is — perhaps it’s not much of a criticism to say that Eephus comes up short in trying to match it. But it’s motivation to refuse to move on is thrilling, as are the ways Lund breaks out and creates a genuinely unexpected final two acts just by continuing the logic with which he opens the film. It may not rise to the hallowed ranks of debut masterpieces, but that’s okay — it’s a work that proves Lund’s considerable potential as a director, and that he’ll continue to keep on with cinema no matter how small, niche, or pushed-to-the-sidelines our beloved medium becomes. At the end, this writer felt less like the men on the field wondering why the hell they’re still trying to play this pointless game, and more like the old man on the sidelines, still keeping stats regardless, for the love of it all. — ALEX LEI

The increasingly ballooning runtimes of auteurist projects — specially made by those who belong to the ever-expanding School of Slow Cinema — inspire more anxiety than curiosity. In part, for our own sanity: there’s always the fear that we may not come out of one of these awake (or alive). But, in larger part, for subsequent critical pieces that champion the auteur for further increasing shot and film duration because it displays the cultural capital they’ve gained in the industry. It doesn’t matter that sitting with the most miserable characters, who have told us everything about the film’s (and the world’s) miseries 25 minutes into a 155-minute runtime, feels interminable… (Previously Published Full Review.) — DHRUV GOYAL

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Rap World, the longest film directed by Conner O’Malley to date (running just a smidge over 55 minutes), is somewhat contradictorily one of his more sparse. O’Malley’s humor is found in characters reflective of the current zeitgeist — manic, obsessive young men whose earnestness covers for an aching emptiness at their own respective disillusionment with the “American dream” of their day. The Mask’s Tyler Joseph (O’Malley) is a suburban improv artist who moves to Los Angeles to make it big, failing so spectacularly and publicly that he ends up becoming the face of a Q-Anon type group; Rebranded Mickey Mouse’s titular O’Malley character is intent on creating a new pop culture sensation in a dystopian corporatocracy ruled by Disney’s iron fist; Howard Schultz Tapes’ O’Malley character is a 17-year-old political fanatic who desperately wants to see Howard Schultz (or Beto O’Rourke) elected president, only to be kidnapped and tortured by the starbucks CEO. The American dream of success can only manifest itself as a tumor inside these characters, as reflections of the contradictions between capitalism’s promises and realities.

Rap World teases out a more low-key version of these ideas. There is the noted absence of fringe political theories, elaborate costumes, and manic violence. Instead, the music mockumentary follows three white guys in 2009 suburban Pennsylvania looking to make a radical disruption in rap music history with a debut cool-bop Pennsylvania rap album. O’Malley is less frantic than he is pitiful as Matt Lohan, an oafish, insecure 30-something who just wants to do something great. Casey Foy (Jack Bensinger), Matt’s co-worker and bandmate, invites Jason Rice (Eric Rahill) to produce, only to discover a confusing suburban rivalry built between the two. A tense initial recording session only breaks when Jason finally plays one of his beats, something indescribably of its era and context (the film’s distinctly 2009 feel is hardly understated — from mii creation to Viva la Vida to a prominently featured sideways-turned brimmed beanie).

More profoundly, Rap World sees three (four if you count Danny Scharar playing Ben Kupec’s cameraman) losers attempt to find beauty in their otherwise miserable lives. Most of the humor of the film is therefore attributable to the incongruity of the representation of objects and their reality (Schopenhauer must have been onto something). Matt and company are convinced they are destined to make a great album, and the film functions as a series of confrontations between their own self-conceptions as soon-to-be successes and the reality that they are ultimately a collection of hopeless dorks completely alienated from their communities. Matt believes himself to be a great dad, only to be revealed as emotionally severed from his child; Jason suffers enormous public embarrassment at the hands of a crush; and in a final glimpse into Matt’s life, it becomes evident that his delusions have done incredible damage to those around him. There’s an earnest, longing sincerity to be better that haunts them, but it’s their fantasies that ultimately control their fate. The American dream, as the desire to escape a meaningful life, is a death wish — and so, fittingly, the boys’ final grab at glory is to point a gun at each other. — JOSHUA PEINADO

Joel Potrykus offered viewers a kind of hell on earth in 2014 when he released Buzzard, a crusty cumrag of a movie about the drudgery and paranoia of contemporary lower class life. It’s utterly brilliant, with a clear-eyed point of view that never looks down on its abjectly miserable protagonists — Marty Jackitansky (Joshua Burge), a temp worker at a mortgage company who pulls small-time, seemingly innocuous scams for extra money, and his friend Derek (Potrykus) — while also never shying away from sincerely investigating their desperate motivations. In many ways it’s a very funny film, and has a brilliant comic cadence in its story and characterizations. But a sad refrain accompanies its comedy… (Previously Published Full Review.) — CHRIS CASSINGHAM

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If the new indie neo-noir Gazer feels familiar, riffing on any number of classic thrillers as well as newer models like Memento and Too Late, it’s also a testament to how far you can get with a compelling lead. Those honors here go to the singular Ariella Mastroianni; she plays Frankie, a young single mother who is afflicted with a rare, degenerative disease called dyschronometria — also known as lost-time disease — which affects her ability to accurately comprehend the passing of time. As the film begins, Frankie is lost in thought at her gas station job, gazing upon pedestrians and inhabitants of the apartment complex across the street. She imagines narratives for them, including (in a nod to Rear Window) a woman who appears to be getting abused by a man. Frankie also listens to cassette tapes of her own voice on which she has recorded messages and instructions to herself. Ostensibly meant to help her gauge the duration of her commute to work, or keep her focused on various daily tasks, they become a homage to the familiar hard-boiled narration of the genre. They also seem relatively ineffective, and Frankie is soon fired by a sympathetic but fed-up boss. 

From here, the film takes its time introducing us more fully to Frankie’s life; brief interstitial scenes — flashbacks? visions? — suggest a traumatic event in her past, while her combative mother-in-law has custody of Frankie’s young daughter. Director Ryan J. Sloan, making his feature debut, co-wrote the film with Mastroianni (they are partners in real life), and they parcel out information in dribs and drabs that mirror Frankie’s own fractured psyche. She is, fundamentally, her own unreliable narrator. But the filmmakers don’t play too coy; we learn in short time that Frankie’s husband committed suicide, but due to her condition both the police and the mother-in-law refuse to fully believe her version of events. Meanwhile, Frankie tries to find work, saves money to regain custody of her daughter, and attends a support group for suicide loss survivors. It’s here that Frankie meets Claire (Renee Gagner). The two have a conversation, and Frankie recognizes her as the woman who was being abused in the apartments. They seem sympathetic to each other’s plight, and it’s after their second meeting that Claire offers Frankie a job that seems too good to be true — Claire is trying to escape her controlling brother, and if Frankie can just retrieve Claire’s car from their apartment complex, Claire can make a clean getaway. For her trouble, Frankie will receive $3,000. It seems simple enough, but these things never are. Indeed, once Frankie has stolen the car, Claire doesn’t arrive at their designated meeting spot. The plot thickens, as they say, when police come knocking on Frankie’s door — Claire is missing, Frankie was the last person seen with her, and Frankie’s fingerprints are all over the now-abandoned car. Complicating matters is Frankie’s disorder, as she can’t piece together what happened when or in what order between her meeting with Claire and Claire’s disappearance. Knowing about the abusive brother, Frankie decides to play detective, partially out of genuine concern, but also because she’s desperate for the money that was promised her. 

To divulge more of the plot would be a disservice, but suffice to say that things are much more complicated than they initially appear, and Claire might not actually be who she has claimed to be. It’s a web of deceit made all the more confounding by Frankie’s disorder and increasing police scrutiny. The plot machinations are parceled out with purpose, but the real pleasures here are the lovely 16mm cinematography by Matheus Bastos and Mastroianni‘s livewire performance. With her gaunt features and angular physique, Mastroianni seems to have the rare ability to disappear into her surroundings or command the screen, depending on the needs of a scene. She has a quiet, steely resolve, but also a kind of perpetual nervousness. It’s an astounding embodiment of someone who feels out of place in their own life, an outsider to her own psyche. Her presence papers over some flaws; a dream sequence midway through the film allows Sloan to indulge in abstract imagery, including specific nods to Cronenberg’s Videodrome and EXistenZ, but feels functionally out of place within the realistic citywide milieu. Ultimately, the filmmakers must choose between narrative clarity surrounding the mystery plot or fully engaging with impressionistic editing that fully mirrors Frankie’s affliction. It makes sense that they would choose the former, although one wishes they took a chance on the more abstract option. Still, it’s a compelling film and an excellent low-budget calling card, one that announces two exciting new talents in Sloan and Mastroianni. — DANIEL GORMAN

Before making her feature film debut with 2019’s Atlantics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop produced a series of poetic short films, all of which explored a different oblique angle on the legacy of colonialism. Some, like A Thousand Suns (2013), consider the role of filmmaking in defining and communicating the anti-colonial struggle. That film focused on the actor Magaye Niang, star of Touki-Bouki, directed by Diop’s late uncle, Djibril Diop Mambéty. Others, like the short-film version of Atlantiques (2009), explore the false promises of immigration for poor men in Senegal, for whom Europe is a dream that, siren-like, lures them to their deaths… (Previously Published Full Review.) — ZACH LEWIS

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A young American wanders around Buenos Aires, looking for the grave of the famed pirate Hippolyte Bouchard, who once conquered the American’s hometown of Monterey, California, for a couple of days. The trip goes awry when the American gets robbed and loses his wallet, his passport, his money. With nowhere to go, he sleeps in Bouchard’s graveyard. He awakes to a surreal sight: a play, with a pair acting out a fight between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, while a third films on his phone. They notice the yankee lying in grass, and after a little deliberation, they invite him along with them. They’re a group of queer, radical anarchists, and they’re making a play to put Henry Kissinger on trial for his crimes against Argentina and humanity as a whole, and they finally found the perfect man for the role.

Yanqui (played by writer-director Michael Taylor Jackson) finds himself within the group of anarchists: not a coming-of-age, but a coming-of-identity. When he keeps calling himself an American, he’s quick to be corrected that America is a continent, not a country, and realizes that in English there is no word for a “United Statesian,” which is a form of colonization by language, as Jackson points out in an interview conducted by Blake Simons, recounting a time Jackson himself made that mistake while talking to a cab driver. Here, amongst the anarchists — the actors — Yanqui realizes what he thought were firmly established pieces of his identity were actually imposed concepts, and now he’s free to explore who he really is, finding freedom in a way similar to how actors can explore on the stage.

Simons points to Jacques Rivette as a reference point for Jackson’s film — and indeed there are some parallels to be drawn in how Rivette and Jackson use theater as a method both in the diegesis of a film and as a way of transforming the artifice of cinematic performance into a world of spontaneity. However — and this is perhaps a result of this writer’s Baltimore bias — a more apt comparison to make might be toward John Waters. Not in the sense of Waters’ inclinations toward direct taboo-bending or wondrous vulgarity; instead, Underground Orange feels at home with the radical communal aspects of Waters’ work, something that was usually obfuscated during Waters’ most successful times as a filmmaker. It became clearer and clearer as time went on that Waters’ films always were about his violently queer and beautifully anarchic friends at a very specific place in time, and it took until Waters’ nearly sentimental Baltimore return with Pecker (1998) for those sticking around and still watching his movies to realize that that was essentially what he been doing the whole time. The closest film to Underground Orange, though, is Waters’ maligned Cecil B. Demented (2000), wherein a diverse group of young people (diverse in every way — in race, in gender, in sexuality, in movie taste) go to war with bad movies, combining the act of terrorism with making art. It’s also a tribute to Waters’ friends from his younger Dreamlander days, where the ensemble is made up of thinly-veiled reflections of his old regulars. The ensemble is equally important to Jackson: the dynamic between his romance with Paty (Sofía Gala Castiglione), Goya’s (Bel Gatti) distrust of it, his more easy-going relationship with Dante (Gianluca Zonzini), and the stewardship of the group by Frida (Vera Spinetta) serves as the main dramatic tension of the film while the group is readying their play and more direct, confrontational politics.

Underground Orange similarly links radical political action to the art of living free, and the freedom of living to make art. Yanqui’s identity becomes decoupled from his “American” assumptions, and his sexuality is liberated from exploitation. Early in the film, when he is listlessly looking for a place to stay, he’s taken in by Mr. Schmidt (Heinz K. Krattiger), although it quickly becomes clear that Schmidt is using his position of power to get sexual access to Yanqui, so he grabs his bags and leaves in a hurry. When with the anarchists, however, Yanqui is free to explore amidst the fluid polyamory of the group. This is not without tension, though, as his outsider status in particular makes Goya uncomfortable, initially reading Yanqui as the man from the States who is there to take from the group, not contribute to it. Yet as the group transitions from performing activism on stage to taking action on the streets, Yanqui proves that he’s serious to their cause, their way of life.

The freedom that Yanqui finds within the group is reflected in the constantly bending and shifting form that Jackson’s direction takes — what starts as a film locked down on sticks, presented formally and with Yankee often filmed from a distance, starts to go handheld and film more up-close and intimately once he gets taken in with anarchists. The style keeps shifting, culminating in a beautifully surreal sequence where theatricality overtakes reality, where halls of an old hotel become a ball of people dressed in mid-century formal wear and gaudy makeup, like out something out of the more oneiric sides of Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Luchino Visconti. Jackson describes this shifting in style as “genre-fluid,” and it’s a demonstration of all the possibilities of cinema being open to a young filmmaker. In exploring the fluidity of his own identity, Jackson finds fluidity in film form, creating a personal, exuberant, and radical first feature. — ALEX LEI

If nothing else, Eugene Kotlyarenko is a filmmaker dedicated to understanding how we live with technology, and his greatest strength is a willingness to confront how uncinematic this can be and to push himself to invent something new. He takes the mundanity of staring at our phones as a challenge to experiment and innovate, and in his new film, The Code, this includes the use of over 70 cameras of varying quality and size, from iPhones to cheap consumer spycams purchased from AliExpress. Here, Kotlyarenko adds to the difficulty of capturing how we live now by also making this very explicitly a movie about the pandemic, a topic few are excited to revisit… (Previously Published Full Review.) — JAKE PITRE

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As attention spans dwindle to below-goldfish levels, researchers are looking for new therapeutic treatments to tackle the steadily growing mental health issues many are facing. And with Artificial Intelligence increasingly taking over, well, everything, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some are developing AI models to treat depression, anxiety, and other disorders. The gamification of mental health therapy is already on the rise, whether it be self-care and meditation apps like Finch or Headspace, neurofeedback treatments, or even chatbots for the lonely. Virtual and augmented-reality environments have already been shown to be successful at treating anxiety. All this is to say, the somewhat fictional world in Corey Hughes’ Your Final Meditation isn’t as far off as one might think.

And perhaps that’s the beginning of the beauty of Hughes’ work — it’s believability. In Your Final Meditation, Jodiiie is using a VR game, combined with “Transcend,” which functions like an Alexa or Siri, to calm her increasing anxiety. As described, the game is “powered by a next-generation AI algorithm that uses your personal data, biometrics, and memories to create a custom meditation experience.” The bulk of the film is spent inside this virtual world, following along as Jodiiie works her way through its various levels. Interspersed are clips of real-life Jodiiie in her apartment, using Transcend to invite friends to a party or read a text from her landlord. Periodically, these are self-triggered, and at other times it’s from low batteries or other technical difficulties. It’s in these segments that we begin to understand the underlying reasons for Jodiiie’s anxiety; her friends never respond, and her landlord tells her she needs to move out ASAP. 

But within the game, there’s a sense of calm — at least, at first. Clips of paths in the forest or crashing waves feature an ambiguous voiceover: “The ocean. It arrives. Be the ocean. Breathing.” Jodiiie progresses through the game’s 12 levels, the latter of which are more anxiety-inducing than distracting: a video game character with only 12 minutes to live, a plane without a pilot. After completing the twelfth level, Jodiiie has seemingly reached her goal; we see her attending the party she invited all her friends to, but still wearing the VR headset that puts her within the game. It’s in this blend of the real and real-adjacent realities that Jodiiie seems to finally “transcend” her mental health struggles. 

Anxiety is famously hard to depict on screen, but Hughes’ blend of reality and imaginary manages, to use his language, to transcend that difficulty. By keeping the bulk of the film fixed within the game, Hughes sidesteps the typical issues that come with portraying the feeling; we don’t see Jodiiie suffer from a panic attack or go through acute trauma, and this avoidance allows Your Final Meditation to fully embrace the complexities and particularities of her circumstance. At the same time, the shifts between the virtual and real worlds mirror the inconstancy and seesawing nature of anxiety itself. Just when things seem calm, a sudden shift — like a glitch or a transition to a more unsettling level — captures how anxiety can intrude without warning, and the result of this approach is a productively experiential work.

But the film doesn’t ignore the inherent tension in its premise. For some, digital treatments like Jodiiie’s might seem counterintuitive (especially those later levels) — after all, technology can be a profound source of anxiety, and retreating into virtual spaces can sometimes exacerbate feelings of isolation in its avoidance rather than alleviate them. Your Final Meditation leans into this contradiction with finesse, exploring how the very tools that offer comfort might keep us tethered to a sense of unreality, leaving viewers to question whether Jodiiie’s peace is genuine or another (temporary) illusion.

This approach makes the film more abstruse, but its opacity serves a purpose. By refusing to hold the viewer’s hand and follow a straightforward narrative, Hughes forces the audience to navigate the story in much the same way Jodiiie navigates her anxiety. It’s a puzzle that doesn’t offer easy answers, reflecting the way anxiety can feel both all-encompassing and hard to articulate. This ambiguity may frustrate those looking for clear resolution (though, if you watch closely, there is one), but it’s in this specific nuance that Your Final Meditation finds its strength. For those willing to engage with the film’s complexities, it offers a strikingly raw portrayal of the human mind’s struggles to find peace in the digital age. — EMILY DUGRANRUT

By now there’s little ground left to break within the Mockumentary genre, a fact only reinforced by Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight, a handsomely mounted biopic of former featherweight World Champion Willie Pep dressed in fussy, nonfiction clothing. Prolific cinematographer Kolodny takes on his first feature with enthusiasm and careful attention to period detail, though its paint-by-numbers plot and almost cartoonish reliance on calcified Italian-American stereotypes saps the life out of its fly-on-the-wall imagery… (Previously Published Full Review.) — CHRIS CASSINGHAM