4 Best Releases From Why Not Productions Studio

There’s something to be said for a ramshackle film that delights in itself and doesn’t take anything especially seriously. Unfortunately, what a filmmaker and their fans find fun may read as piffle or drudgery to less dialed-in audiences. Case in point: Kaboom. Continue Reading →

“A heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki,” The Doom Generation’s opening credits read. It’s the first of many jokes for Araki’s first film with a crew, shot for $1 million in January of 1994. None of the humor is apathetic, though. It’s like its characters in that way: caustic, yes, even to a fault at points. But the kids at the center of The Doom Generation aren’t apathetic, at least not at the beginning. They’re a conceptual trio of id, ego, and superego filtered through Araki’s lens to serve the narrative, an anti-American mind due to their identities and personal lives. But as they realize their selves individually and as a whole, their heterosexual, monogamous environment relegates them to sameness.  Continue Reading →

When The Purge film series began, it attempted to create a heightened, ultraviolent version of the future that was both laughably over-the-top and an accurate reflection of the current political climes. They created a dystopia that was vaguely familiar but could still leave you rolling your eyes at its implausibility. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the concept is as follows: On one night each year, the US government legalizes all crime, including murder, in the hopes of providing an outlet for Americans’ rage. It ultimately leads to an overall decrease in crime and an (ostensibly) utopian society. Continue Reading →

Highly lauded Romanian director Cristian Mungiu is back from a six-year hiatus with the curious R.M.N., a look at a town slowly letting itself succumb to its worst fears. Like the famous Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” a town gears up to combat an imaginary menace they’ve created to demonize real people and problems, simply to feel better about their own misfortune and short-sightedness. After three films that failed to capture the attention of his sophomore feature, Cannes Top Honors recipient 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Mungiu has found an edifying middle ground between his wilder ambitions and the style in which he made his name. R.M.N. may suffer from heavy hands, but this is a film of deceptive heft from a director renewed by change. Continue Reading →