Brandon Streussnig On Film

"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