2024 New/Next Film Festival: Reviews and Reactions Part II
The final five reviews.
BALTIMORE - The second annual New/Next Film Festival has now come to a close after sharing excellent movies with an eager Baltimore arts community over the past four days. What follows is the second half of my weekend diary, chronicling the final five movies that I saw.
A special thanks to the folks at New/Next, including the staff and volunteers, everyone at the Charles Theatre, and all of the artists who shared their work to make this thing happen. I had a fantastic time, as you can see:
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (2024)
A rambunctious extended family descends upon their small Long Island hometown for the holidays where hijinks, generational squabbles, and family traditions ensue. (TMDB)
In what is now an annual tradition, New/Next presents a secret screening (it’s so under wraps that the program doesn’t even offer an accurate runtime) of a new film. I skipped last year’s in favor of something less transgressive and missed out on The Sweet East, which turned out to be a total bummer as that movie is excellent. I vowed not to miss this year’s screening, ready for whatever it may be.
“Does anyone need catching up with the Venom series so far?” quipped festival programmer Eric Allen Hatch in his intro for the film. Even that would have been fine with me, I trust New/Next’s taste enough. When filmmaker Tyler Taormina (Ham on Rye, Happer’s Comet) appeared in a pre-recorded video to introduce his film Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, I can say that I was ready for basically anything but a Christmas movie, especially in the thick of spooky season. Taormina expressed gratitude for Baltimore in that video, saying it was the first city that seemed to enjoy Ham on Rye after record walkouts in other cities at other festivals. Regardless of how abstract his other work may be (I haven’t seen any of it), a Christmas hangout movie isn’t particularly disagreeable enough to incite walkouts.
Holiday cinema, of the rom-dram-com ilks, often butters its bread with the hokey, the idealized, the sentimental, and while Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point does plenty of that, it also, at sometimes a pace that reminds one of being a child waiting and waiting and waiting forever for Santa to come, spends its time in the realistic. Sure, it’s nice to exchange presents and make biggest dinner plate you’ll have all year and go on the annual family stroll around the neighborhood, but so much of Christmas Eve involves telling your aunt about how school is going or sneaking out to the garage for a smoke break or seeing people you haven’t seen since high school at the local watering hole or debating about putting Mom in a home or being pissed off that you’re still not old enough to graduate from the kids' table. Starring a few recognizable faces, including Michael Cera (also a producer on the film), Ben Shenkman, Francesca Scorsese (the viral TikToker who made her father Marty vertical video famous), Gregg Turkington, and Elise Fisher, you’ll dig this one if you like other movies we’ve suggested, like The Fitzgerald Family Christmas or Happiest Season.
Homegrown (2024)
An unflinching chronicle of Americans at war with each other, offering an unprecedented look at right-wing activists as they search for purpose and power–with dire consequences
Growing up in Virginia, anytime you got cut off on the interstate or some jackass wouldn’t let you merge into traffic, it was a guarantee that, when you got a better look, you saw that he had a Don’t Tread on Me license plate. Every. single. time. In my neck of the woods, it became synonymous with a certain type of self-absorption.
That rattled around in my brain anytime I saw those yellow slivering snakes across the countless flags and t-shirts in Homegrown, a documentary about the rise of right-wing extremism that reached its crescendo on January 6th, 2021. Slogans like that and buzzwords like four more years! and liberal tears and stand back and stand by and bad apples and Make America Great Again and Keep America Great are in a constant rotation in the late 2020/early 2021-set film. And, in a bizarre way, it all seems so...quaint? We've had so much happen since then and as we approach another election, it somehow feels like the simpler good ole days. Hell, I even let out a few laughs when I realized a now-closed dive bar I used to frequent in D.C. was a Proud Boys hotspot. I had no idea! I just thought they had cold beer!
But when the film reaches the insurrection on the Capitol, where the filmmakers stood on the frontest of the front lines to follow their subjects, it's no longer a laughing matter. I've seen (and reviewed - here and here) more than a few documentaries about J6 and I'm sure I'll see more, but I haven't seen one so revealing about the extremist mindset. One insurrectionist they embed themselves with, Chris Quaglin, is a particularly fascinating subject. After attending countless protests pre- and post-election, Quaglin was one of the more eager attackers on that day. Dressed in full riot gear and talking a huge game, he pushed and shoved his way to the front in an attempt to get inside, which included assaulting many police officers (don't Google him, let the movie tell you what happens to him and his eight-and-a-half month pregnant wife.) But Quaglin appears more interested in pretending to fight than actually fighting. He spends half the time filming horizontal videos on his cellphone and pretending he's going to do something than actually do anything. The worst injury he sustains is a sore throat from all of his yelling and screaming. The guy who promises to take Nancy Pelosi out on a spit doesn't even have the balls to be the one to take a shit on her desk.
He didn't make it inside, but at the alleyway cookout later you'd have no idea. It's a portrait of how cowardly so many of these red-hat wearers turned out to be. The documentarians, on the other hand, are nothing but completely courageous. Outfitted in bulletproof vests, they run not away from the fight but right into it so we can see it all. And what a fantastic and priceless document they've made.
Gazer (2024)
Frankie, a young mother with dyschronometria, struggles to perceive time. Using cassette tapes for guidance, she takes a risky job from a mysterious woman to support her family, unaware of the dark consequences that await.
Regular readers of this website know that I'm a big fan and ongoing student of film noir, (in fact, I'll be covering Noir City D.C. again on this site starting next weekend!) Inspired by calling card elements of both classic and neo-noir, Gazer, directed and co-written by Ryan J. Sloan, tells an amateur detective story starring co-writer Ariella Mastroianni. She plays Frankie, a woman slowly deteriorating mentally due to Dyschronometria ("lost time syndrome") and still dealing with the fallout from her husband's suicide, a traumatic and bloody affair that she's still not sure if she played a part in because she pretty inconveniently experienced one of her blacking-out episodes right when it happened.
To stay focused and awake, she constantly listens to cassette tapes she's recorded where she narrates directions, meditations, memories - anything that will keep her present and alert. But as Gazer unfolds, mysterious (sorta) femme fatales, stolen cars, thousands of dollars in cash, and murderous conspiracies - all of noir's most notable ingredients - fill the spaces in her brain that she can't quite keep track of.
But as any noir aficionado knows, often the most important driving force of those classic pictures' plot mechanics is the economy of time. Many of those '40s and '50s films, especially the low-budget ones (Gazer could be called micro-budget, filmed during weekends over the course of two years), run anywhere from 60-80 minutes. At 114 minutes, Gazer takes its time solving the mystery while audiences are lost along with Frankie, an unreliable narrator who experiences cognitive episodes that leave her unsure of her world. Without a sliver of dramatic irony available, we have no choice but to just wait it out with her. The mystery, the stakes, and the given circumstances are all interesting (and on a technical level, the film is well shot on 16mm by cinematographer Matheus Bastos, particularly in an overdose sequence), but the film's decision to run at two hours instead of tightening up is the biggest question mark of them all.
The Hobby (2024)
From ancient Mesopotamia to the World Series of Board Games on the Vegas strip, "The Hobby" is an affectionate, character-driven portrait of the massive and diverse subculture of board games–exploring the value of leisure time, and uncovering the deep meaning found in “meaningless” pursuits. (IMDB)
This screening began with a short film called TR(ol)L, a screenlife film made to look like the days of dial-up and the height of MTV's TRL. Using IM and Ask Jeeves and a number of talking head interviews, it tells the unlikely story of a chain-letter crowd campaign to get a New Kids on the Block video on the countdown show. TR(ol)L is the best possible version of one of those quirky YouTube documentaries and seeing it on the big screen and not on a laptop or iPhone felt like a real treat.
This is the second documentary I’ve watched this year called The Hobby.
Earlier this year, I watched Morgan Jon Fox's movie, one that was then on its' VOD rollout and is currently playing on Amazon Prime, an interesting examination of an unlikely investment: trading cards. From the stock market of a card’s value to the bubble burst, Fox wasn’t just in the right place at the right time - he saw what was coming in the boom and bust of the industry. It's a nice film for anyone with a passing interest in cards, sports, or finances.
So when I saw that this film playing at New/Next was also called The Hobby, I wondered what makes director Simon Ennis's film about board games, any more worthy of being considered The capital-T capital-H Hobby. But when Ennis asked for a show of hands from dedicated board gamers before the movie began, I was one of the very few who didn't raise mine. Before this film's 95 minutes, I probably would've said that I liked board games as much as the next guy. But if the next guy or gal or person is anyone featured in his movie, that would be terribly wrong. A beautiful portrait of a dedicated and passionate fanbase, it also seems like a movie that's going to be very bad for me and my wallet.
Ex-Husbands (2023)
Peter Pearce’s parents divorced after 65 years, his wife left him after 35, and his two sons, Mickey and Nick, are off leading their own lives. When Peter flies to Tulum, crashing Nick’s bachelor party hosted by Mickey, he realizes he’s not the only Pearce man in crisis.
The final pre-feature short film was Sunday evening's Belay On, a silly comedy about a yappy couple so self-aware that they've completely lost their ability to be outwardly-aware, which may or may not have some pretty serious consequences. It earned plenty of laughs in its quick 12 minutes.
Ending on the highest of notes, the Closing Night film, writer/director Noah Pritzker's Ex-Husbands, turned out to be my favorite movie of the entire festival. Leading the film is Griffin Dunne who plays Peter, a sixty-something who sees his parent's marriage fall apart, which is followed by his own marriage falling apart, which is followed by his now-grown kids stumbling before they can even get to a marriage that falls apart.
Trying to find some sun-baked solace in Mexico, he and his boys have no choice but to keep going. "Not everything needs to inspire an existential panic," he shares with one of his sons while standing next to each other at an airport urinal. But for all intents and purposes, that's what they're all experiencing. Surrounded by a fantastic ensemble, from James Norton (how does this guy manage to mope around but still be so interesting?) to Miles Heizer to Richard Benjamin to a reunion with his After Hours co-star Rosanna Arquette, Dunne carries a movie that doesn't need any carrying. It's a tender, often quite sad, but also a darkly funny character study of the richest of characters. Pritzker's film is quick-witted, but also doesn't mind pausing for a beautiful image he's composed, while also eager to give itself away to a fantastic song. It's the kind of movie that killed at festivals in the '90s and now needs fests like New/Next to bring our attention to it. And here I am making sure you know about it - a theatrical release is tentatively planned for early 2025. If you forget, don't worry, I'll be sure to remind you on my Best of 2024 list.
And before the film even began, the crowd was treated to a fantastic announcement - New/Next will return for a third edition next year. You can keep your Torontos and your Venices - I'm happy right here in my beloved Baltimore. See you next year!
Each plot synopsis and all photos are from NewNextFilmFest.com unless noted otherwise.