By: Al B.
THE PEOPLE’S JOKER
Altered Innocence
Available to Stream on MUBI
In this absurdist autobiographically-inspired dark comedy, a painfully unfunny aspiring clown (Vera Drew as Joker the Harlequin) grapples with her gender identity while unsuccessfully attempting to join the ranks of Gotham City’s sole comedy program in a world where comedy has been outlawed. Uniting with a ragtag team of rejects and misfits, Joker the Harlequin forms an illegal anti-comedy troupe that puts her on a collision course with the devious caped crusader controlling the city.
AFLOAT
IndiePix Films
Available on DVD/Digital Now
Seeking to reunite with her estranged family, Western educated Zeynep and her American husband Stephen travel from New York City to a small coastal town in Turkey. Together, along with her divorced parents and younger sister, free-spirited Yasemin, they embark on a week-long sailing trip meant to be a last chance for Zeynep’s father, Yusuf, a dissident journalist being prosecuted by the government, to reconnect with his daughters before prison. Once on open water, with blue skies and wind in their sails, hope springs eternal — yet things may not be as they seem. As they await the result of Yusuf’s appeal, tensions begin to rise, and when a young local man further disrupts the delicate family dynamics the trip takes a very unexpected turn.
EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT
IndiePix Films
Available on DVD/Digital Now
EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT welcomes viewers into the everyday life of the filmmaker’s immediate family who are members of the Russian-speaking community of Purvciems, a suburb outside Riga. Ninety-nine year-old Nina is the clan’s matriarch, a World War II veteran who came to Latvia in 1955. Her offspring, Irina, is a university lecturer torn between her husband’s tirades, her mother’s needs, and her 18-year-old daughters’s desires as an aspiring artist. Together, with cinematographer and co-writer Valdis Celmins, Tokalovs presents an intimate look at the various internal and external conflicts affecting these individuals. Without promising “everything will be alright,” the film unravels vital questions about integration, collective memory, propaganda, and the war of identities that affects many – both in Latvia and around the world.
REINAS
Outsider Pictures
Available In Select Theaters
Lucía y Aurora están a punto de abandonar su país para siempre con su madre y necesitan que su padre ausente firme los documentos de salida. A Carlos le ha convenido no ser papá, pero ahora si quiere el amor de sus hijas, tiene que recuperar su lugar antes de que se vayan.
MEMORIES OF A BURNING BODY
Paramount Pictures
In theaters now
Ana, Patricia and Mayela grow up when sexuality is taboo. Now channeled as one 65-year-old, the protagonist revisits intertwined memories, secrets and desires, giving voice to unspoken past experiences.
SATURN RETURN
Outsider Pictures
Available in Select Theaters
Late 1990s. Art and culture are in full swing in Granada Spain. Against that background, an indie band is about to change the music scene. Just before creating their new album, the band is going through its worst possible moment. The bass player and the drummer have abandoned the band. Only the singer and the guitarist remain and the latter has ventured into a dangerous spiral of self-destruction from which it seems he cannot escape. The responsibility for the band’s survival is now in the hands of the singer, who must also face the reticence about the discography, confronting the complex writing and recording processes of a third album that might result in the consolidation of the band, or its destruction, forever.
GHOST OF RED RIDGE
@WellGoUSA
Available on Digital now
After foiling a good ol’ fashioned stickup in the gold bust town of Red Ridge, Texas, the town sheriff jails a mysterious stranger suspected of ties to the gang of outlaws terrorizing residents. But as the sheriff draws closer to unraveling the bandits’ identities, ghosts of murdered townspeople begin appearing at his door, leaving him to question whether the spirits are warning him…or seeking vengeance for his own failure to protect them.
F.L.Y.
Breaking Glass Pictures
Available on DVD/VOD now
F.L.Y. is a slice-of-life comedy about two exes, Max and Rafael, who get stuck quarantined together at the onset of the covid pandemic. Having not seen each other in five years and with a new boyfriend in tow, things get off to a rocky start as Max navigates the situation with Raf, who just moved to LA with the dream of becoming the next drag superstar.
VIXENS
Severin Films
VIXENS: Will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and UHD January 28, 2025 at SeverinFilms.com.
The nine hours of Severin-curated bonus materials shine a spotlight on each film’s historic critical and commercial success, nationwide censorship battles and notoriety as landmark American independent films. Hailed by The San Francisco Chronicle as “a pop visionary,” Meyer’s legendary trilogy – each making their Worldwide UHD/Blu-ray Premiere – is being released in collaboration with The Russ Meyer Charitable Trust from negatives restored by Severin Films (SUPERVIXENS and BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRAVIXENS) and The Museum of Modern Art (VIXEN).
Amid the cultural chaos of 1968 and armed with a budget of only $70,000, producer/director/cinematographer Russ Meyer transcended sexploitation by crafting this “bosomacious melodrama” (Time Magazine) about racism, communism, bush pilots, draft dodgers and a ferociously free-spirited wife named Vixen (the incredible Erica Gavin of BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and CAGED HEAT). Despite attempts at censorship that included one of the first-ever X ratings and 23 separate U.S. prosecutions for obscenity, it became one of the year’s top-grossing movies, forever transformed independent film and remains the creative template for Meyer’s unapologetic vision of American cinema.
2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS
Severin Films
Available on DVD now
The most elusive, requested and unapologetically unhinged Penne Post-Apocalypse epic of all is finally available, uncut and uncensored on disc for the first time ever: From ItaloSleaze Maestro Joe D’Amato comes this “insane and very entertaining” (Rare Cult Cinema) saga of graphic violence, rampant nudity, unholy mutants, big exsplosions, fascist rhetoric, motorcycle mayhem, saloon brawls, Indian attacks and plenty of lawless Lone Star depravity, written by George Eastman (ANTHROPOPHAGOUS) and assistant directed by Michele Soavi (CEMETERY MAN). Al Cliver (ENDGAME), Peter Hooten (NIGHT KILLER), Sabrina Siani (WHITE CANNIBAL QUEEN), Geretta Geretta (RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR) and Donald O’Brien (DR. BUTCHER, M.D.) star in this “very definition of a guilty pleasure” (The Spinning Image), now scanned in 4K from the original negative with new and archival Special Features, plus the soundtrack by SHOCKING DARK composer Carlo Maria Cordio.