Though Hollywood’s newfound obsession with making horror movies revolving around killer consumer tech is getting a little tired, Cold Wallet — director Cutter Hodierne’s new thriller about a group of armed Redditors looking for revenge after losing everything in a crypto scam — looks pretty legit. The movie hits theaters and digital platforms of February 28th.
Between its dearth of new features and a couple of movies actually being pulled down, this year’s Sundance seemed a little feeble this past weekend, and Yahoo reports that those feelings are shared by producers who came away from the festival feeling that “independent film does not currently have a viable business model.“
Ahead of Fantastic Four: First Steps’ new trailer debuting tomorrow, Marvel has dropped a kitschy teaser hyping up the team’s launch into space.
Though Lucas (Tom Blyth) is good at his job as a plainclothes police officer tasked with arresting men for public indecency, he lives in fear of his own queerness being exposed. Work is the only place he ever “meets” guys like Andrew (Russell Tovey) who make him wonder what his life might be like gay people weren’t forced to hide their identities. The more Lucas thinks about his future, the darker his anxieties become. A grim snapshot of the past, Plainclothes powerfully explores how normalized bigotry and state surveillance go hand-in-hand.
Twinless, writer / director / star James Sweeney’s dark comedy about two men (Sweeney, Dylan O’Brien) who bond after the death of their twins, was screening at in-person and online as part this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But Variety reports that the film has been yanked from the festival’s digital portal because people couldn’t stop recording clips and posting them to social media.
With cicadas swarming Baltimore in the summer of 1987, ASCII artist Connor (Albert Birney) is even more inclined to stay home playing games on his Macintosh. At first, Obex doesn’t seem like much compared to any of the other floppy disk games he has ordered through the mail. But when his dog Sandy vanishes one day, the game’s fantasy world of monsters and magic starts to consume his mind. The film’s experimental, lo-fi depiction of pre-internet screen addiction is imaginative and artful. The story’s a bit thin, but its visuals are strong.
Aimless twentysomething Becca (Katarina Zhu) doesn’t know what she wants out of life, but everyone wants a piece of her. Her sickly gambling addict father William (Perry Wang), her best friend (Rachel Sennott), and men like John (Austin Amelio) she does camshows for all see her time and attention as things they should be able to demand without question. It’s hard for her to say no, but when she unexpectedly receives a pet rabbit, the responsibility pushes her to start pushing back. Writer / director / star Zhu delivers a tremendous, but quiet performance that mirrors the film’s nuanced ideas about intimacy.
