Brandon Streussnig On Film

"Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman's selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince to face an even greater enemy." Directed by: Zack Synder Written by:   Chris Terrio                       Joss Whedon  Starring: Ben Affleck                  Henry Cavill                   Gal Gadot                    Jason Momoa                   Ezra Miller                   Ray Fisher I've been a DC Comics fan for about as long as I can remember. Some of my favorite toys growing up were Plastic Man, Huntress and Black Lightning. The first comic I remember picking up was a Green Lantern starring Kyle Rayner. I'm about as entrenched in DC as you can get. That's why it constantly pains me to see DC struggle with having success in building a film universe. Aside from Wonder Woman , the results have been either mixed to putrid with the mean skewing pretty hard to the latter. After 2016 and t

"A former boxer-turned-drug runner lands in a prison battleground after a deal becomes deadly." Written & Directed by: S. Craig Zahler Starring: Vince Vaughn                   Jennifer Carpenter                  Dion Mucciacito                  Marc Blucas                   Udo Kier                   Don Johnson  Ten years ago Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to release their Grindhouse  double-feature. It was met with an excited response but a tepid box office return but many praised the two for creating something that resembled the "trash cinema" of their youth. I've always had a complicated relationship with the two films, especially Rodriguez's Planet Terror. In recent years, his effort has been lauded as the better and more accurate of the two films but it was Tarantino's Death Proof that's always stuck with me. People complain that it's too slow and filled with too much dialogue but if you'

"An estranged family gathers together in New York for an event celebrating the artistic work of their father." Written & Directed by: Noah Baumbach Starring: Adam Sandler                  Ben Stiller                  Dustin Hoffman                  Elizabeth Marvel                   Grace Van Patten                   Emma Thompson In the last two or three years, Netflix has tried to position itself as a bastion for cool, interesting indie films. In the cinematic landscape we live in right now, many of the bigger studios aren't willing to make a play at smaller, more adult films. Everything needs to be based on an IP or able to hit all four quadrants to be green lit. Aside from A24 and Neon, distributors just aren't picking these kinds of movies up. That's where streaming services like Netflix and Amazon come in. There has been a ton of talk about whether this is helping or harming the industry and I tend to fall somewhere in the middle

"A bank robber finds himself unable to evade his pursuers." Directed by: Benny Safdie                       Josh Safdie Written by:   Ronald Bronstein                        Josh Safdie Starring: Robert Pattinson                  Benny Safdie                  Taliah Webster                   Jennifer Jason Leigh                  Barkhad Abdi                  Necro                  Peter Verby Some films can give us joy because they're just that, joyful. Superhero films or the latest  Star Wars entry make us feel childlike wonder the way few things can. Rom-Coms, when done right, can make us grin ear to ear for simply the charm they exude. So that's why it was a little jarring to find myself midway through the Safdie Brothers mini crime epic, Good Time , slack jawed with a stupid grin on my face. It's a rare thing for a film to just be so exhilarating and well made that you can't help but feel rejuvenated walking out of the t

"An unhinged social media stalker moves to LA and insinuates herself into the life of an Instagram star." Directed by: Matt Spicer Written by:   Matt Spicer & David Branson Smith Starring:  Aubrey Plaza                  Elizabeth Olsen                   O'Shea Jackson Jr.                   Wyatt Russell                    Billy Magnussen                    Pom Klementieff It's rare that we get a film that reflects social media as it actually is. Sure, we've gotten a biopic about Mark Zuckerberg or some bad horror films centered around Skype or Facebook. We've even gotten looks into what the future of the medium could bring us in both great ( Her ) and awful ( The Circle ) films. It wasn't until this year, though, that I finally saw something that was not only a depiction of the world as it is right now but a brutally biting satire at that. Ingrid Goes West might come off as a pastiche at first glance, a painting of vapid Cali

"In a singular exploration of legacy, love, loss and the enormity of existence, a recently deceased, white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to try to reconnect with his bereft wife." Written & Directed by: David Lowery  Starring: Casey Affleck                  Rooney Mara What will your legacy be when you die? Will what you accomplished mean anything? Will you mean anything? These are the questions that David Lowery's latest asks. Answering them isn't much of a concern for Lowery as much as exploring them is. A Ghost Story is an odd, sometimes silly, sometimes breathtaking little film whose whole is greater than its parts. It isn't like anything you'll see all year (or any other year, really) and it's not concerned with narrative conventions or characters or plot. If you can separate your preconceived notions of conventional storytelling, I think you'll find that this film works itself over you effortlessly. The

"A love story set in a community of cannibals in a future dystopia. In a dessert wasteland in Texas, a muscled cannibal breaks one important rule: Don't play with your food." Written & Directed by: Ana Lily Amirpour Starring: Suki Waterhouse                  Jason Momoa                  Jayda Fink                  Keanu Reeves                  Giovanni Ribisi                  Jim Carrey A dazzlingly lurid wasteland washes over you as Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) descends into the dessert. In the darkness preceding it, you hear disembodied voices taking about "The Bad Batch" and reciting ominous rules. A tattoo is carved in to Arlen's neck, "BB5040." As the gate closes, you see a sign telling you you've entered the Bad Batch and that from here on out you're no longer a recognized citizen of the United States. You're in a beautiful nightmare and nothing will ever make sense again. At least that's what you

IT COMES AT NIGHT Written & Directed by: Trey Edwards Shults Starring:   Joel Edgerton                 Christopher Abbott                 Carmen Ejogo                Riley Keough                 Kelvin Harrison Jr.  "Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son. But this will soon be put to the test when a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge." Is it possible to recognize how well made and well acted a film is and still not like it? That's the question I had when leaving Trey Edwards Shults's sophomore film It Comes at Night . Coming off of his breakout debut, Krisha , Shults has immediately shot up the ranks of "Must Watch" directors for me. When I heard he was doing a horror film next my interest was piqued. Krisha is not a horror film but it's paced and shot like one and Shults ramps the tension up until you