July 2018
FLIX PREMIERE Close-Up
this month’s UPCOMING PREMIERES
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Welcome Readers: The purpose of this magazine is to share with our movie-goers, the industry and our partners updates about what is happening at Flix Premiere each month. We aim to highlight and explore the upcoming month’s film premieres in each market, and occasionally announce new developments on our platform. Happy reading!
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IN THIS ISSUE:
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July Premieres Snapshot Learn about our exclusive new premieres showing each week.
Jimmy The Saint
US July Premieres Snapshot - pg. 3 UK July Premieres Snapshot - pg. 4
Close Up: Premieres Feature Reviews A chance to immerse yourself in the wonderful stories premiering each week.
Forgo tten Man
Changeover - Estes Tarver, Madeline Taylor, Carter Godwin, Tara Polhemus, Carrie Moore Marshall - pg. 5 Jimmy The Saint - Zach Hursh, Anne Solenne, Brandon Breault, Jeff Murray, Christine Lakin - pg. 6 Sugar - Shenae Grimes Beech, Marshall Allman, Corbin Bleu, Austin Williams, Will Peltz, Wes Studi, Nastassja Kinski - pg. 7 This is Us - Raymond Creamer, Jessica Parsons, Becca Scott, Amelia Brantley, Kayli Tran, Tracey Fairaway - pg. 8 Prism - Christian Madsen, Marcos de la Cruz, Christy Carlson Romano, Amy Hargreaves, Maya Kazan, Lorraine Farris - pg. 9 Love Land - Monica Gaseor, Maddy Davidson, Memphis DiAngelis, Skyy Moore, Angelica Briones, April Hartman - pg. 10 Sink - Anel Alexander, Shoki Mokgapa, Jacques Bessenger, Amalia Uys, Asante Mabuza - pg. 11 Forgotten Man - Obi Abili, Eleanor McLoughlin, Toby Wharton, Errol McGlashan, Jerry Hall - pg. 12
HOME OF AWARD-WINNING CINEMA AND MORE
“ Prism combines elements of a plausible, realistic family drama that warp into a mind-bending paradox.”
US PREMIERE July 20, 2018 - 7pm EST A troubled young man's father resurfaces 15 yrs after disappearing, forcing the son to rebuild a past that could destroy his fragile sanity.
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“ Sink is a triumph of a film that explores love and loss so fearlessly that it will leave you breathless and shake you to your core.” Herman Eloff, Channel 24
US PREMIERE July 27, 2018 - 7pm EST
Sink is a powerful story about loss, and an incredible metaphor for the difficulties and the possible rewards of reconciliation.
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US PREMIERES SNAPSHOT
Starring: Estes Tarver, Madeline Taylor, Carter Godwin, Tara Polhemus, Carrie Moore Marshall
JULY 6, 2018 - 7pm EST
Starring: Shenae Grimes Beech, Marshall Allman, Corbin Bleu, Austin Williams, Will Peltz
July 13, 2018 - 7pm EST
Starring: Christian Madsen, Marcos de la Cruz, Christy Carlson Romano, Amy Hargreaves, Maya Kazan
July 20, 2018 - 7pm EST
Starring: Anel Alexander, Shoki Mokgapa, Jacques Bessenger, Amalia Uys, Asante Mabuza
July 27, 2018 - 7pm EST
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UK PREMIERES SNAPSHOT
Starring: Zach Hursh, Anne Solenne, Brandon Breault, Jeff Murray, Christine Lakin
July 7, 2018 - 7pm BST
Starring: Raymond Creamer, Jessica Parsons, Becca Scott, Amelia Brantley, Kayli Tran
July 14, 2018 - 7pm BST
Starring: Monica Gaseor, Maddy Davidson, Memphis DiAngelis, Skyy Moore, Angelica Briones, April Hartman
July 21, 2018 - 7pm BST
Starring: Obi Abili, Eleanor McLoughlin, Toby Wharton, Errol McGlashan, Jerry Hall
July 28, 2018 - 7pm BST
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Changeover
Close Up: Premiere Feature Review US Premiere JULY 6 - 7PM EST
Changeover is a film puissant, one that pulls the drapes on parent-child issues that are even more tectonic in real life. D.F Whipple, New Hope Film Festival
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hangeover artfully brings the extremely important subjects of mental health and family trauma to light, creating a film that is at once intense, compassionate and deeply rewarding. Showstopper Estes Tarver, the writer, director and co-star of the film, truly shines here, as he has managed to beautifully parlay his sensitive, character-driven script into a gorgeous, visceral film. One of the most striking aspects of Changeover is that so much is communicated silently, through gazes and glances imbued with meaning. The film follows Haley (Madeline Taylor), who has just tragically lost her parents in a car accident while she herself was in the backseat. She gets sent to live with her uncle Chad (Estes Tarver) and his son. Overwhelmed with grief, Haley attempts to take her own life, but is saved by her uncle, who gets her to the hospital just in time. Haley begins to process her trauma, comforted by her uncle and cousin, and by a piano that her uncle has bought for her.
An important piece of social commentary that ranks with the best of independent drama. John Higgins, Cinema Jam Director Estes Tarver excels at illustrating complex psychological interiorities, and in using visual means, rather than relying on just dialogue, to communicate meaning. His film is heartwarming and nuanced, capturing characters as they are thrown into unimaginable circumstances. Tarver gives the individuals the space they need to grow and breathe, letting them work through grief at their own pace. As such, the pacing of the film is beautifully languorous, which lets the viewer connect more deeply with the characters.
Changeover is a heart-wrenching drama, but is also at times deeply funny, providing comic relief in staccato bursts. It is a film about the difficulties of mental health and trauma; however, scenes of hope and possibility follow moments of sadness and intensity in turn. In many ways, the film is about helping one another, just as it is about recovery: as Chad helps Haley navigate her new life, Haley also helps inspire Chad in ways that he may not have been able to foresee. In this way, the film opens up a dialogue about mental health, working to de-stigmatize it, but also making the film a vessel for conversation and social change. Changeover is a joy to watch, refreshing because it is not a film where one must suffer alone. Rather, it tells the story about growth and leaning on (and learning from) one another.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
Jimmy The Saint
UK Premiere JULY 7 - 7PM BST
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t’s not easy being a saint when you’re forced into the mob. Branden R. Morgan’s Jimmy The Saint is an intensely gripping film that shows humanity at its most cruel and depraved, while also illustrating the outliers in that dark world: the courageous individuals who help free others forced into inhumane conditions. With echoes to a Bruce Springsteen sensibility, the film follows “saint” Jimmy Delfino (Rob Norton), a well-meaning man with a gambling problem and an insurmountable debt with the Italian mafia in New York, who eventually sell his debt to the Russian mob in Los Angeles. There he works as a bagman for Anton (Brandon Breault) and his father Viktor (Jeff Murray), desperately waiting to pay his due and move back to New York. Meeting Kira (Anne-Solenne Hatte), the daughter of a prominent politician in Moscow forced into Anton and Victor’s sex- trafficking ring, strengthens his resolve to find a way out.
The terrific performances by the lead actors, Jeff Murray and Anne-Solenne Hatte, underscore the high emotional stakes of the film.
With its fast-paced editing, Branden R. Morgan has created a rhythmic, electrifying work.
With its evocative cinematography, Jimmy The Saint explores the possibility of survival within an oppressive system that has seemingly no end. The cinematography is striking particularly because Jimmy The Saint is shot mainly at night, outside seedy strip clubs and inside houses that feel like prisons to their occupants. Branden R. Morgan has cultivated an aesthetic centered on the artifice of neon lights and dangerous encounters, at once eerily beautiful and replete with moral decrepitude. With its fast-paced editing, Branden R. Morgan has created a rhythmic, electrifying work.
However, he succeeds equally with the quieter, more intimate moments. The relationships among the women allow for a space of real tenderness and camaraderie that help give the film a strong emotional core. The terrific performances by the lead actors, Jeff Murray and Anne-Solenne Hatte, underscore the high emotional stakes of the film. The tagline for Jimmy The Saint is, “it’s hard to be a saint in the city.” Jimmy is your average Joe, but he must venture into murky moral territory if he wants to clear his name. He must lose his innocence, so to speak, in the city of angels. Perhaps it is a cliché, but the city of Los Angeles does seem to become a character in its own right. The viewer sees a greasy, seedy underbelly that belies the glamour typically associated with Hollywood. Jimmy The Saint is a gritty and powerful film deeply entrenched with a classic Americana spirit of individualism.
Sugar
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review US Premiere JULY 13 - 7PM EST
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udiences are familiar with Los Angeles as the “city of stars,” the place made of dreams. Hollywood is associated with celebrity, wealth, and glamour in the popular imagination. It takes a bold film to challenge and disturb that vision of LA. Sugar, by Rotimi Rainwater, is such a picture, unafraid to push audiences beyond the status quo and into the life of a group of homeless adolescents. Sugar (Shenae Grimes) is a young woman with a traumatic and mysterious past, whose present is consumed by the preoccupations of daily survival on the streets of Los Angeles. But she does not have to face life entirely on her own. Marshall (Marshall Allman), her boyfriend, and the young Ronnie (Austin Williams) are the members of her new chosen family. When they are not panhandling, hustling for food, or avoiding the state authorities that would send Ronnie back into the foster system, the group enjoys genuine moments of leisure.
Sugar is a great film about homeless youth in Venice, California. Sharon Abella, Indiewire
...the heart of the film stems from its honest, unblinking observations of its characters and the dialogue they share, which likely underlines the bonds real-life homeless people form. Matthew Huntley, Box Office Prophets
The beaches and skateboard parks of Venice are their domain. A pizza is a feast and an empty shopping cart a source of entertainment. Through their eyes we learn about the ebb and flow, the rough rhythm of life on the streets. People come and go with such volatility there. The sudden reappearance of a member of Sugar’s family – a ghost from her past–troubles the delicate balance of their mutual codependence to that point that it is unclear if the makeshift family will survive.
A touching drama that challenges our ideas about family and our sense of what constitutes a home, Sugar’s greatest achievement might be that it takes the familiar streets of Hollywood and beaches of Venice and estranges them to the viewer. We suddenly see the underbelly of LA’s sparkle – including the murky waters of the Los Angeles River – and are forced to consider the life of a population that the majority constantly overlooks, pretending that they simply do not exist.
Grimes, Allman, and Williams offer poignant performances, providing depth to characters damaged by their past lives and doing what they can to make the best of today. Angus Macfadyen presents an affable, loving, and well-intentioned Uncle Gene. The overall effect is a portrait of the ways in which family can be forged by affinity, and social life can persist even in the most unfavorable conditions. Sugar is a courageous film that is not to be missed.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
This is Us
UK Premiere JULY 14 - 7PM BST
Tender, funny, and above all, true, This is Us is a heartfelt romantic drama that cannot be missed.
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he cinema is an incomparable medium for the telling of love stories. Filmmaking is a constant exchange and interweaving of moments from the past, present and future. It inhabits a liminal space in time and can create such tender and powerful intimacies. Jerry J. White III’s This is Us is a perfect example of cinema’s incredible capacity to capture moments of love and loss. The film is about Daniela (Jessica Lynn Parsons), as she attempts to break up with her boyfriend, Brendan (Raymond Creamer), but the world seems to have other plans for the couple. They are inextricably made to teleport, and Daniela must relive her memories with Brendan. With slight echoes of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, except, perhaps, in reverse, Daniela must reenact and reexamine the seminal moments of her relationship.
...a uniquely realized story that lingers in the psyche even after the closing credits have rolled by. Richard Propes, The Independent Critic The cinematography is particularly exceptional, and it perfectly captures the nostalgia of lost love, the all-encompassing nature of their romance and the gravitas of this juncture in their lives. The film is marked by cool temperatures and long shots that emphasize the emotional distance between Daniela and Brendan. The writing is equally strong, and successfully creates a distinctive world for the characters to inhabit. The time jumps always feel natural, fruitful and meaningful, and they perfectly create a sealed-off world for the couple. There are no distractions, seemingly no side characters. Every interaction is urgent. Nothing extraneous inhabits the frame.
The actors deliver stellar performances that will not be forgotten, as the chemistry between them is electric and undeniable. Supported by witty and nuanced dialogue, Jessica Lynn Parsons and Raymond Creamer will feel both strangely familiar and foreign to the viewer, who might see aspects of their own relationships reflected in this epic love story. One of the most inventive and compelling storytelling devices in this film is Jerry J. White III’s playful relationship with time. The characters have a highly complicated relationship with temporality. The more anxious of the future they become, the greater the strain on their relationship. And yet, a dance through time is exactly what provides a possible reexamination of their coupling. Time is not a concept in the abstract here, but is instead the catalyst that reminds them of what is most important, and forces them to be worthy of it. Tender, funny, and above all, true, This Is Us is a heartfelt romantic drama that cannot be missed.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review US Premiere JULY 20 - 7PM EST
Prism A
young boy goes on a hike with his father into the woods, where they discover a dark cave. The father enters the cave, alone, and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, Bryan has transformed from a boy into a disturbed young man. Unable to commit to a relationship, or even a half-hearted attempt at becoming an actor to star in a production of Hamlet, he has been left permanently scarred by the unexplained disappearance of his dad. In a moment of desperation, he tries to drown himself. Only, when he regains consciousness, he is lying in a hospital bed next to a man with amnesia who strongly resembles his father.
A thrilling mystery that leaves you on the edge of your seat and keeps you guessing until the very end.
Prism combines elements of a plausible, realistic family drama that warp into a mind-bending paradox.
What follows is a thrilling mystery that leaves you on the edge of your seat and keeps you guessing until the very end. Prism combines elements of a plausible, realistic family drama that warp into a mind-bending paradox. What happened to Bryan’s father? Who exactly is Bryan’s father? And what kind of threat are they both facing now that they’ve been reunited? Prism follows the clues and pieces together the fragments of his past, until it arrives at a shocking conclusion.
Christian Madsen, known for his work in Divergent, plays the brooding Bryan, fixated on recovering his dad. It is clear that the film’s creators meant for his attempt at playing Hamlet to draw a strong association with the famous prince’s character. But Bryan is decided from the beginning that he wants to recover his father, ignoring calls to the contrary and the obstacles ahead. Christy Romano plays an enigmatic nurse, who coaxes the distraught Bryan closer to something nearing emotional and mental health and wellness. The chemistry between Madsen and Romano offers a touching interruption of the suspense-driven story.
Director Cal Roberton and cinematographer Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi frame key points of the action in what appears to be an enchanted forest, even as we have the impression that the setting is merely a reflection of Bryan’s mythical and outlandish memory of his hike in the woods. Are family bonds eternal, will they inevitably win in the end? The strange and the inexplicable events of Prism are sure to make it a film that you do not forget.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
Love Land
UK Premiere JULY 21 - 7PM BST
Josh Tate’s Love Land is not only a gorgeous work of cinema, but it is also a film with an important social mission. Its superb writing gives the viewer highly nuanced characters, a strong narrative arc and an empowering message on the significance of representation of individuals with disabilities. The film follows Ivy (Monica Gaseor) a headstrong woman who has suffered a brain injury from a traumatic car accident, as she navigates her recent placement in Love Land Ranch, a private institution that supports individuals with disabilities. She begins to resent the ranch, and eventually finds herself at a crossroads, where she must decide whether she will stay and accept her identity and community, or if she will try to make a life for herself outside of the system.
There is something truly unexpected and almost magical about Love Land. That such direction, story, and characters can make for an all-encompassing feature film. Highly recommended. Sandy Hoffman, Aidy Reviews
A must-see movie. ...The cast... give both inspiring and award-worthy performances. The Kenner Times
Love Land is empowering particularly because of the emphasis it places on depicting real people in the disabled community, and for its reliance on subjectivity: all of the characters in the film have rich and complicated interior lives, and are not just symbols of a greater cause. Ivy is constantly reflecting on her relationships with others in the community and with friends and family members outside of it. In so doing, she is constantly thinking about her placement in a society that doesn’t quite know what to make of her.
It asks us to think about what makes up a community-be it a religious or familial one, or comprised of people with shared experiences and identities -- especially when labels are sometimes forced upon a particular community. Josh Tate makes the viewer grapple with the consequences of being ostracized from mainstream society, and above all else the humanness of disability. Ivy is always calculating and making decisions, and those decisions are sometimes selfish, and a little hasty. Tate gives her the freedom to make mistakes, as any coming of age film does, but he also gives her a platform to be able to communicate stories that are often left untold.
Josh Tate combines stunning cinematography with compelling writing, and directs tremendous performances. Ivy is at once heroine and anti-hero and the complexity of her role is refreshing and a joy to watch. Love Land is a film that really sits with you. Or, perhaps, wrestles with you. It makes the viewer question the political and social systems that seek to neatly categorize and blanketly ostracize individuals. It is a film of great performance and rare beauty.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
Sink
US Premiere JULY 27 - 7PM EST
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eated at a dining room table, a white couple stricken with anxiety and a grave tone invites their black domestic servant to seek employment elsewhere, if she so chooses. The latter’s face is one of absolute dejection. She reluctantly asks to stay, and so in heavy breaths, followed by silence, it is decided that she will resume her duties as their maid on Monday. Sink is a South African film about one mother’s tragic loss, and another’s struggle with insurmountable guilt due to an unpardonable episode of neglect. As a Mozambican immigrant in Johannesburg, Rachel faces the choice of staying in the employ of a family that has grievously wronged her, or being exiled back to her impoverished homeland. While making conscious decisions about how to navigate this new treacherous landscape, she must tend to the haunting, painful memories that gradually reveal the full contents of her story to the film’s viewers.
Chris Letcher’s beautifully spare core elegantly supports the emotional tone rather than telling you what you are supposed to feel, just as the film gives you a scenario and makes you question how you would deal with it. Theresa Smith, Independent Online
Sink is a triumph of a film that explores love and loss so fearlessly that it will leave you breathless and shake you to your core. Herman Eloff, Channel 24
In Rachel’s plight, it is impossible not to feel the weight of the legacy of Apartheid, and not to be disturbed by the social imbalances perpetuated by systemic racism. Director Brett Michael Innes’s composition of the world the Jordaan family inhabits throws these inequities into stark relief. The sleek modernist home that Rachel cleans is made up of sterile, muted tones. Only in the clever use of the reverse-shot to signal a flashback do we pick up a sense of vibrancy, color, and life in the home. These recollections interrupt the deafening emptiness of the present.
Shoki Mokgapa delivers a powerful performance through subtlety as Rachel. Delicately balancing the pathos of her loss and the pragmatics of her circumstances, she plays both the noble victim and an active agent in deciding her future.
Innes also makes clever use of aerial shots to shift perspective on the drama and heighten the play of contrasts in color. Such a move, along with fantastic acoustic choices, turns a backyard swimming pool into an ominous living character in the plot. We see Rachel contemplating her situation from above, as if we were the very character evaluating her life from the outside.
Anel Alexander and Jacques Bessenger deliver as the neurotic high-bourgeois Jordaans. They convince us that the tragedy unfolding about them is just a symptom, or a hazard of everything that makes up their way of life. Sink is a powerful story about loss, and an incredible metaphor for the difficulties and the possible rewards of reconciliation. It is absolutely not to be missed.
Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
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Forgotten Man
UK Premiere JULY 28 - 7PM BST
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endered in hues of classic black and white, Forgotten Man is a gorgeously conceived dark comedy, visceral, and deeply impactful. The film marks Arran Shearing’s triumphant directorial debut, following Carl, a young theatre actor with a troubled past in East London, as he becomes involved with Meredith, a beautiful and wealthy out-of-towner, hoping to kindle a romance with her while also preventing her from watching a sold-out play that he happens to star in: A play that he wrote, and whose cast is made up of homeless actors with histories of incarceration. Carl yearns for a better life, caught between possibility and obligation.
Forgotten Man is a multi-layered treasure, beautifully shot, and darkly funny that hints at the gap between entertainment and exploitation in the world of theatre and beyond.
There is so much talent on display here. Edward Havens, Film Jerk
Forgotten Man delightfully plays with the boundaries of genre, incorporating healthy bursts of breaking the fourth wall, intermingling aspects of spoken word poetry into the film, and dividing the text into parts, as one might organize the acts of a play. In so doing, Shearing makes the film itself doubly performative: a performative and highly mutable movie, just as much as it illustrates the high-stakes drama of the narrative as it unfolds before the viewer’s eyes. The intrigue of Forgotten Man is made even more impactful because the theatre company in the film is based on a real-life troupe that featured formerly incarcerated homeless actors.
The leading actors deliver richly nuanced performances that pull the audience into the world of the film. The scope of the story, and the people who inhabit it, add so much character and life to the movie: They are not archetypes, but rather are thrilling, fully fleshed out personalities, who each bring a different dimension to Forgotten Man. One could not discuss this film without also talking about its often-playful social critiques. In Forgotten Man, the wealthy vie for sold-out tickets to a show about homelessness, played by current or formerly homeless actors, only to complain that the performers “don’t look” homeless enough.
Shearing exposes the fissures between representation and the exploitative demands of the wealthy class here, who consume the struggles of the homeless population as a form of entertainment, while also refusing to actually talk to members of that community. Forgotten Man is a multi-layered treasure, beautifully shot, and darkly funny that hints at the gap between entertainment and exploitation in the world of theatre and beyond. It is a film that grabs hold of the viewer, as it inspires reflection and careful self-examination.
HOME OF AWARD-WINNING CINEMA AND MORE
“ Jimmy The Saint is a gritty and powerful film deeply entrenched with a classic Americana spirit of individualism. ”
UK PREMIERE July 7, 2018 - 7pm BST A bagman for the Russian mob finds himself in over his head when he falls for a young prostitute.
WATCH ON
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Amazon Fire
iOS, Android, Web
ChromeCast
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“...a uniquely realized story that lingers in the psyche even after the closing credits have rolled by. ” Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
UK PREMIERE July 14, 2018 - 7pm BST A young woman breaks things off with her boyfriend but finds out the universe has other plans.
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