NBFF

ENTERTAINMENT, Film, Issue No. 6, TV | FILM

‘Cas and Dylan’ Film Review 2014

By

An exercise in the futility that comes with trying to dissect what it is that makes life worth living, Priestley’s film is largely successful on the backs of the mesmerizing Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) and veteran actor Richard Dreyfuss. Cas & Dylan follows one terminally ill Dr. Cas Pepper (Dreyfuss) on his way home one day from work at the hospital, when he is approached by the charming Dylan Morgan (Maslany), a 22-year-old quick-witted, smooth-talking social misfit, and talked into giving her a road home.

Read More
ENTERTAINMENT, Film, Issue No. 6, TV | FILM

‘Follow Friday the Film’ REVIEW

By

Technology is a funny thing. In the 21st century, we’ve come to a point in society where we decry the notion of having to live without it; children get their first iPhone in kindergarten and first grade, debates are no longer over ‘phone versus no phone’ but ‘Android versus Apple’, and sightings of anything resembling a flip phone are met with an awe usually reserved for historical museums (and yes, I’m speaking from personal experience).

Read More
Issue No. 5, TV | FILM

“The One I Love” Film Review

By

If you could be with the ideal version of your partner would you be happier? Is embracing them for their flaws part of the accepted insanity that is love? The One I Love aims to answer that by reinventing a familiar premise with excellent performances and a quirky, clever script fusing relatable human drama with science fiction.

Read More
Issue No. 5, TV | FILM

REFUGE Film Review

By

REFUGE. Amy Behr (Krysten Ritter) becomes a mother out of unexpected circumstances. She tries to raise her two younger siblings who struggle with day-to-day life: her younger brother, Nat (Logan Huffman), writes to-do lists concerning mundane tasks, like attempting to converse with other people, after he has a brain tumor removed that mildly disables him . Amy’s teenage sister, Lucy (Madeleine Martin), has a hatred of high school and experiments with drugs and shoplifting as her grades slip.

Read More
California, Culture, Film, Limited Edition, OCMA Film, TV | FILM

Tom Cawley’s “Something” is Anything but “Nothing”

By

While higher-budgeted docs filled with even bigger names might elicit the awe of that Hollywood intangibility, Cawley’s down-to-earth subject matter, and even the subjects themselves, bring us into the story of our own lives. We don’t want to be the people on-screen, these celebrities of sight and sound and tactile surfaces, but rather we wish to paint the stars of our respective destinies with the footnotes of these men and women’s successes, failures, moments of elation, and of suffocating despair. They are, in a word, human.

Read More
COLUMNS, Culture, Film, Lifestyle, Limited Edition, Los Angeles, OCMA Film, TV | FILM

Smiling Through the Apocalypse

By

Smiling Through the Apocalypse, if you haven’t already Googled it yourself already, is a documentary that focuses on Esquire magazine during the sixties. Specifically, during the sixties under the helm of editor Harold T.P. Hayes. The story goes something like this: during one of the most turbulent decades unseen since the Civil War era, editor and provocateur Howard Hayes is remembered as having stepped up to take the falling star that was Esquire, and put it back in the sky. The film’s summary goes on to describe a man who not only led a team behind some of the most varied polemical writing styles and iconoclastic subtleties, but did so under the caveat that each and every day could easily lead to (and oftentimes did) disaster riddle in controversy.

Read More