Hey everyone! This is my third and final article about the movies I saw this year at the Boston Independent Film Festival. There were a whole lot of great indie movies there this year, and I could only see a small fraction of them, but they're all really good. So do yourself a favor and make sure to see some of them, whether at the festival or when they are released in theatres or online. The final film I saw was an anthology film titled Collective: Unconscious. 

Collective: Unconscious begins with a fourth wall-breaking monologue concerning the nature of hypnosis and trances. Specifically about how, in many ways, watching a film is a type of self-induced hypnosis, how we let the shapes and colors and sounds emanating from the screen block out everything else from our sense until all that’s left in our world is the story being told on the screen. This is an incredibly appropriate way to start one of the most surreal films I’ve seen in quite some time.

Collective: Unconscious is an anthology made up of five short films, each by a different director. In order to create them, each of the quintet of filmmakers was asked to adapt one of the others’ dreams. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech- the anthology’s producer gave each of them a prompt describing a dream one of the others had had. Beyond that, they were given complete creative freedom to make whatever they want. The results are, as you would probably expect, both incredibly varied and stunningly bizarre.

​For example, First Day Out (directed by Josephine Decker) consists of a series of enchanting dance performances with dubbed-over audio of former prisoners describing their first day after being released from prison. Swallowed, directed by Lily Baldwin, is about the anxieties that accompany a new mother and has a lot of classical body horror, since it was adapted from a dream about parasites. Possibly most bizarre of all is Frances Bodomos’ short, which parodies those low-budget ‘edutainment’ shows which were popular on public television in the 80s. This particular show, however, is called Everybody Dies!, is hosted by the Grim Reaper, and consists of a whole lot of dark comedy about how likely African-American kids are to die violent deaths in our society.

Whether or not any particular short appeals to you will largely be a matter of personal taste considering the wide variety of genres, formats, and tones on display. Plus, I feel that incredibly surreal movies such as this are something that you either have a taste for or don’t. But between the five shorts, there’s probably at least one that appeals to your sensibilities. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, partly because they appeal to my love of surrealism, but also because it made me think about the nature of film and dreams, and the intersection between the two.
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Grade: A

Hey everyone! I'm back for another day of coverage of the Boston Independent Film Festival 2016! Today, I bring you coverage of two films I saw last night: Transpecos and The Alchemist Cookbook!

In the far west of Texas is a region known as Trans-Pecos. Out there, there’s nothing but sand and dust and the occasional dust devil. Which, of course, makes it the perfect place for Mexican drug cartels to smuggle contraband over the border. Somewhere in this desolation, there’s a small outpost manned by three border patrol officers: expert tracker Lance Flores (Gabriel Luna), inexperienced rookie Benjamin Davis (Johnny Simmons), and veteran enforcer Lou Hobbs (Clifton Collins, Jr.). But what they think is going to be just another day quickly goes awry because of the contents of a single car, and the betrayal of one of their own.

Directed by rookie filmmaker Greg Kwedar, Transpecos is a classic crime thriller grappling with a subject increasingly common in film: the war on drugs. And despite recent fare concerning the same topic, such as Cartel Land and Sicario, Transpecos manages to find its own niche. At its core, this is a film about the relationships between three colleagues and friends, and how they react when those bonds are shattered by violence and treachery. This is greatly enhanced by the incredibly strong performances given by the three starring actors, which gives the movie an intensely personal feel. In fact, they gave the strongest performances out of all the films I’ve seen at BIFF so far. Plus, the landscapes of the Southwest are gorgeous and the film has excellent cinematography, reminding me of the sweeping vistas of Days of Heaven and other early Terrence Malick films.

Although it’s certainly not the only film dealings with its chosen subject, Transpecos is an expertly crafted and superbly acted film. It’s well-written, directed, acted, and shot. You really can’t go wrong with this one, so make sure to check it out once it gets to theatres later this year.
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Grade: A

Somewhere deep in the forests of Michigan, there is a little trailer miles away from any other dwelling. In that trailer lives a young man named Sean (Ty Hickson). He is an outcast and a loner, and possibly on the run from the law. He has sworn off all human contact, delighting in his solitude, excepting only his beloved cat Kaspar. While in his isolation, he has begun to experiment with chemistry, cooking up all sorts of unusual and possibly hazardous cocktails. But this experimentation soon proves too mundane for Sean, and he begins to dabble in the forbidden arts of black magic. 

I’m not sure exactly what genre to classify The Alchemist Cookbook as. It has elements of a horror film, but it’s not quite a horror film. At times it seems to be a subtle homage to the exploitation films of the 70s, but in general it seems too subdued to be in that category either. In fact, the main problem with The Alchemist Cookbook is that it doesn’t seem sure of exactly what it wants to be. It has a little horror, some character development of Sean, and a smattering of subtle social commentary, but none of it is enough to add up to a completely coherent film. It’s not that the movie is confusing, per se, as much as it feels incomplete, in a way.

If the movie had been a bit longer, delved deeper into character development (there is only one other actor in the film beside Hickson), or embraced the conventions of the horror genre further, than The Alchemist Cookbook would have been a very interesting film. But as of now it stands incomplete, neither one thing nor another, and is worse off for it.

Grade: C-