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Substream Magazine •

'Leviticus' Applies Blunt, Supernatural Allegory To Depict The Regressive Persecution of Queer Romance - Substream Magazine

We gravitate to the “star-crossed lovers” trope because love seems to be one of the only things that can get through the muck of conventional life. It often transcends death itself.  The stories of people who fully embrace it often etch their names into time. But not everybody gets to experience those moments equally. For marginalized groups, it’s not as simple as overcoming two warring families and professions from a balcony. What Adrian Chiarella’s first feature, “Leviticus,” shows is that som...
Substream Magazine •

'Apex' Should Be A Survival Guilty Pleasure, But Never Gets There - Substream Magazine

Robert Frost once said, “The only way out is through,” and that is the core of Baltasar Kormákur’s survival thriller “Apex” – a 90-minute film that is simplistic by design and not formulated for staying power. Within it are two major obstacles the protagonist has to overcome: grief and a maniac hellbent on ensuring Australian vacationers have the opposite experience to that painted by Men At Work’s 1980s hit, “Down Under.” Sasha (Charlize Theron) and Tommy (Eric Bana) are a thrillseeking couple...
Substream Magazine •

The Beauty Of 'Blue Heron' Shows The Imperfect Dance of Memory and Documentation - Substream Magazine

Memories can either be a Polaroid picture that yellows and fades over time or feel as real as the day you experienced it. One of the most painful feelings is growing older and discovering that the stories you grew up with are incomplete – perhaps colored by a lack of understanding in that present moment. In Sophy Romvari’s beautifully moving film, “Blue Heron,” she uses the power of storytelling to unearth parts of her past about a family member she had not been able to grasp as a younger person...
Substream Magazine •

'Over Your Dead Body' Has Two Tonal Lanes and Coasts In The Middle - Substream Magazine

Dan (Jason Segel) and Lisa (Samara Weaving) are married. Hold your applause because that’s where the celebrations end. Professionally, they are not in the best position. Dan is a director who had modest success with his film years ago, but that’s all in the past. He’s mostly resigned to working on TV commercials, wanting to be anywhere else in the world. Lisa, well, she’s an actress, and Hollywood hasn’t exactly broken down her door as of late. They have both amassed quite a large amount of debt...
Substream Magazine •

‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ Is 'Evil Dead' With Tethered Bandages - Substream Magazine

If it walks like “Evil Dead” and talks like “Evil Dead,” it’s “Evil Dead,” right? Well, no. It’s “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.” As the marketing leading up to the film’s release will tell you, no, this is not the comedic, action-adventure tone of the 1999 film (or even the 1932 original film). It’s something different, yet extremely familiar. Kudos to Cronin for not giving the audience the tightly bandaged, slow-walking classic monster film people have come to expect from this character. But the spir...
Substream Magazine •

Are We Actually Ready To Grapple With 'Michael's Knotty Legacy? - Substream Magazine

How do you chronicle the life of a legendary artist whose aura almost transcends the confines of a two-hour film? And most of all, are you ready to do it honestly? 
The parallel roads of biopics that prefer to codify all that’s good and spaces of fandom that are not ready to grapple with nuance were always meant to collide at Michael Jackson — whose stature in pop culture resonates just as strongly as it did 17 years after his untimely death in 2009.  Antoine Fuqua’s biopic  “Michael” knows “Thr...
Substream Magazine •

'Faces of Death' Uses The Infamous Film As A Metatextual Compass To Examine Our Unruly Social Media Hellscape - Substream Magazine

Even discussing the infamous 1978 mondo horror film “Faces of Death” now feels like an electric current running through both morbid curiosity and apprehension. The enticement of director John Alan Schwartz’s faux shockumentary is that it was something you couldn’t see easily, and the mere existence of it was whispered like a foreboding legend – contained to a grainy VHS tape in the “adult section” of the video store. But the heart of this film’s enduring legacy is a magic trick and the scarcity,...
Substream Magazine •

'Wishful Thinking' Takes A Fantastical Twin Flame Premise And Grounds It With Hard Revelations - Substream Magazine

In 1986, Bryan Ferry once asked, “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” for the “Legend” soundtrack. But really, think about it. Is love truly strong enough to move mountains and resourceful enough to build a bridge over oceans? The right relationship may make it feel that anything is possible. It could also mean that strife and conflict could be a natural disaster. Are you able to stand inside the constant repetition of destruction and rebuilding? 
Writer/director Graham Parkes’ debut “Wishful Thinking”...
Substream Magazine •

'Slanted' Peters Out When Having To Anchor It's American Assimilation Critiques Beyond Worn Satire - Substream Magazine

Amy Wang’s “Slanted” exists within the realms of patriotic satire and draws on elements from films such as “Get Out,” “The Substance,” and “Mean Girls” to convey its message. On one level, the overtly hyperstylized billboards featuring guns, blondes, and “All American Burgers” work to some degree. But the film almost loses confidence in the rather smart observations it has to say about cultural assimilation and the difficulties of trying to check the boxes of what a “conventional” American exper...
Substream Magazine •

Storybook Love? 'Obsession' Will Make You Think Twice About It - Substream Magazine

Baron, otherwise known as Bear (Michael Johnston), is trying to muster the nerve to tell his childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) that he has feelings for her. The opening moments of Curry Barker’s second feature, “Obsession,” show him practicing (and flubbing) his speech, much to the annoyance of his best friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson). Bear can tell her, just not at the weekly trivia night (for some reason). Don’t intrude on trivia night! Things don’t exactly go to plan. Bear doesn’t exactl...
Substream Magazine •

'The Moment' Is 'Brat,' But It's Sad, And The Party Is Over - Substream Magazine

What is the worst outcome for an artist? Is it to never achieve success or to create something so massive that it crashes into you like a tidal wave — disorienting you to the point where you forget why you made it? The screen flashed, “brat summer…is FINALLY over…idk? Maybe?” at the end of Charli XCX’s 2025 headline Coachella set — nodding to the fact that the year-long cultural celebration of her sixth studio album may have hit last call. But as the pop star walked off the stage, the last words...
Substream Magazine •

'Whistle' Is A Play On Previous Reaper Curses With Little Beyond That - Substream Magazine

The million-dollar question is: if you had a chance to know when and the manner in which you would die, would you take a peek? A tempting proposition, but admittedly a bit anxiety-inducing. If one were to refer to the “Final Destination” series principle, avoiding that log-carrying truck on the highway will only work for so long. Death will eventually get you, and that fear is an easy theme for horror films to bank on. Who isn’t afraid of death, right?  
In Corin Hardy’s “Whistle,” the horror fi...
Substream Magazine •

'28 Days Later: The Bone Temple' Depicts Idolatry As The Real Monster - Substream Magazine

It’s easy to see why the zombie sub-genre has endured for as long as it has  — frankly, because the animalistic impulses serve as a mirror. The irony of “The Rage Virus” is that scientific conquest only exacerbated humankind’s walk backward into a simplistic order of react, kill, and eat. In 2002’s “28 Days Later” and 2007’s “28 Weeks Later,” the virus is without an established order, consuming until there is nothing left. As I watch more of these stories of the undead (or, in this case, infecte...
Substream Magazine •

"Five Nights at Freddy's 2" Review: Malfunctioning Machinery

Just a bit of housekeeping, I didn’t find the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese characters all that frightening when I was younger. However, I get why the Five Nights at Freddy’s survivor horror franchise would be an enduring hit. Who doesn’t love to get scared by possessed, homicidal robots with the faces of various animals? It’s also why the 2023 film adaptation was a $297 million success – “Five Nights At Freddy’s” gave nods to the game lore as well as acting as a dialed-down Goosebumps-like fright...
Substream Magazine •

"The Housemaid" Review: Twists, Turns, and A Small Attic Room

Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) needs a job. Not only is it a condition of her probation (the details of which are revealed much later), but she’s tired of sleeping in her car. As luck would have it, a wealthy homemaker named Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) needs someone to attend to the massive Long Island mini-mansion while she’s toiling away at her important speech for the PTA. There’s no background check, room and board (although nested in a small, quaint attic) are provided, and hey, it...
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'Rosemead' Displays A Sad True Story With Understanding

Complexities are at work in Erin Lin’s tragic and sorrowful debut, “Rosemead.” The biggest of all of them, thematically driving this depiction of the 2017 true story, is perception and protection. Perception, in terms of how immigrant societies view and handle mental illness, and the pressure of always having to appear in a certain stature. Whether it be a parent or a child, there’s a natural inclination to protect – the roles may flip as we age.
A Taiwanese-American woman named Irene (a terrifi...
Substream Magazine •

'It Ends' Is A Nihilistic Metaphor On Post-College Uncertainty - Substream Magazine

There’s a portal in the transition between the end of high school and the end of college years. Friends promise each other that little will change. They try to keep in touch and immerse themselves in particular customs before the split happens. But nothing really ever stays the same. The needs of life and the ambitions it requires make most of us strangers. Alexander Ullom’s debut, “It Ends,” serves as both a ubiquitous metaphor and a blunt realization of how scary the phrase “what do you want t...
Substream Magazine •

'The Running Man' Fights A Dystopian Vision With Dated Tools - Substream Magazine

We live in an era where privacy is a luxury and surveillance is accepted as a necessary evil to perceived safety. If you walk down a random street in a suburban neighborhood, there’s a very good chance that a Ring camera is recording you. Take a nice stroll into the city, and if it isn’t the massive amount of law enforcement tech that identifies you, a random stranger will gleefully take up that mantle. 
Stephen King’s 1982 novel, “The Running Man,” written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, c...
Substream Magazine •

'Rebuilding' Makes A Bet On Community After A Natural Disaster - Substream Magazine

In a nonstop, anxiety-inducing newscycle, it’s hard to focus on a particular catastrophe. My mind always manages to revisit the Southern California wildfires in January. We often elevate the beauty of nature, but try to ignore the fury, forgetting our complicity in the many ways in which we exacerbate it. 57,529 acres of lives, memories, and traces of family lineage were all gone in the span of 20+ days.  Warmth is the sun’s first rays, awakening the day and a flame with an uncontrollable appeti...
Multipotentiality •

'Tron: Ares' Doesn't Know Whether To Denounce AI or Crown It As A Savior

Go on any of the various social media platforms and send out a random public message that you are not a fan of the current AI modern society incursion. There's a pretty high chance that you will be bombarded with replies ranging from “get with the times” to “AI is inevitable, so we'd better learn to live with it.” “Tron: Ares,” the second legacy sequel to the 1982 original, makes these points at two distinct junctures. It coincides with a rash of recent sci-fi films that are either trying to rat...
Multipotentiality •

'Good Boy' Will Make You Want To Give Your Pup An Extra Treat

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, but pets are great to have. Not only from the standpoints of love, companionship, and affection, but they also serve as protectors from things that escape the naked eye. How many times have you watched a horror film and wished a particular character didn’t walk down a dark hallway? If they had a dog, they would have warned them in advance. Ben Leonberg’s “Good Boy” takes the anxiousness we feel when going through a haunted house and amplifies it by placing an...
Substream Magazine •

'California Schemin' Provides Just Enough Sincerity To Elevate This Underdog Hip-Hop Story - Substream Magazine

Who here has heard the story of rap duo Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain, otherwise known as Silibil N’ Brains? It’s not quite on the level of Milli Vanilli, which included a Best New Artist Grammy giveth, then taken away. Everything was real, from their passion and Rhymesayers-like cadence. Well, except for a couple of things. The duo from Scotland was able to capitalize on a faux Californian identity and secure a record deal. In an early 2000s landscape where every label was looking for the next Emin...
Multipotentiality •

"If I Had Legs I’d Kick You" Is A Gut-Punch of a Drama With A Career Best Performance From Rose Byrne

In the opening scene of writer/director Mary Bronstein’s exquisitely executed second feature, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Linda (Rose Byrne) sits in a family doctor’s office as her daughter (Delaney Quinn) says she’s “stretchable.” Before she goes into her sadness, Linda tears up and changes the subject - instead electing to focus on how to cure her daughter’s illness (if there’s any cure at all). A voiceover from Linda proclaims in the next scene that “time is a series of things to get throug...
Substream Magazine •

'The Smashing Machine' Pulls Back When It Should Have Landed A Knockout Blow - Substream Magazine

Benny Safdie knows exactly the cadence you’re expecting when walking into a sports biopic. To his credit, he at least tries to disrupt the formula and compose something fresh in “The Smashing Machine,” based on the life of former mixed martial arts titan Mark Kerr. Even with the unconventional storytelling method and the quadrants it looks to place its hallmarks in, there are still benchmarks you’d recognize. There’s the rise of the superstar and soon after, the dizzying fall. After the taste of...
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