What’s worse than dealing with a shark attack? Dealing with a giant shark attack. And what’s worse than dealing with a giant shark attack? Dealing with a giant demon-shark attack. And this isn’t your average giant demon-shark, no, this is a giant demon-shark, called forth by a vengeful Aztec deity, that makes people hallucinate and have horrific visions. In addition to all the usual destructive giant shark shenanigans.
Young martial artist Ria (Priya Kansara) wants to be a professional stunt performer. Her older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), has dreams of being an artist, though she’s dropped out of art school. Problem is, their Pakistani immigrant parents, while indulgent of the whims of their children, have aims of their own. When the directionless Lena agrees to an arranged marriage to too-good-to-be-true doctor Salim (Akshay Khanna) and his family who may or may not have a nefarious endgame—Ria has an overactive imagination and is prone to flights of wild fancy, so who’s to say what’s real—it’s up to the younger sister to save the day. Or maybe just ruin the Big Day.
If John Wick was a sparse Finnish spaghetti western, one full of brutal, graphic carnage and a grizzled, silent protagonist absolutely eviscerating Nazis, it might look quite a bit like writer/director Jalmari Helander’s Sisu. The Rare Exports helmer delivers a wild, head-stabbing, fascist-exploding good time and the feel-good movie of 2023. Unless you’re a Nazi. But if you are a Nazi, you should feel bad about yourself and the choices you made.
Even in the best of circumstances, weddings are stressful as hell. Sure, they’re lovely, joyous occasions, but you’ve got a monumental logistical task, simmering family drama, travel, accommodations, drunk relatives. It’s a lot. And then you have to worry about a crew of vengeance-minded mercenaries showing up on the day to wreck up the joint. Oh, that didn’t happen to you? Cool, cool. Though that is the basic premise of Shane Dax Taylor’s The Best Man.
This is the place where I was going to make a crack about how it’s spring and of course what we really want to do is spend a beautiful weekend day sitting in the dark watching horror movies with a bunch of like-minded weirdos. But the weather in Seattle has been utter trash, so you don’t have anything better to do than attend the BoneBat Comedy of Horrors Film Festival.
When a filmmaker sets out to make a movie with a specific political message, all too often the result plays didactic, blunt, and heavy handed, practically screaming, “This is our movie, this is our message!” from the rooftops. It can be off-putting, even if you share the same viewpoint—most people don’t watch movies to be lectured one way or another. Cam director Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline is certainly a movie with something to say.
