The story opens on a raucous beach bar at night. Rick (Kenny Bee) is smitten with Lap (Joey Wong), the daughter of bar owner and retired gangster Uncle Cheung (Hoi-san Kwan). Rick plays bar top shuffleboard and uses the winnings from the game to buy Lap a gold bracelet, which she successfully pretends not to want until he pretends to throw it out onto the darkened beach. This whole scene is a little miracle....

While the film is like an advent calendar (except the doors hide bullying, betrayal, and murder rather than chocolates), the release date is a surprising choice. Is it condemning Christianity on one of its biggest holidays, or has it picked the date because of the examples of heroism and kindness found throughout the film? The format of the piece is simple. McQueen took a small crew out for months, recording the locations in historian Bianca Stigter’s book, Atlas of an Occupied City....

This is because THCA is non-intoxicating, and best of all, the OG Kush flower you see online is filled with this cannabinoid. However, once you decarboxylate it (expose it to heat), the THCA converts into the THC that causes a high. Of course, several states have decided to ban THCA, but if you’re interested in getting OG Kush flower legally, it’s worth checking out the laws in your state. So, what is OG Kush flower?...

His huge crowd-pleaser act was when he would act like a mechanical man, clicking and popping back at the dawn of the 70s. Yes, this is the Robert Shields who invented what break dancers call The Robot. While working a Sid and Marty Krofft Special (!), he meets his future partner and wife, Lorene Yarnell. She uses her extensive dance background to become a mechanical lady and street mine with him, together becoming the team Shields and Yarnell....

I think the act of creating this film will show its importance someday. I think seeing a young artist answer questions about their life and music in an honest manner will be fun to look back on. I think the value of all this footage has yet to truly reveal itself, and maybe will do so in unexpected ways, like home videos of our youth tend to do from time to time....

Panfilo Aranda is a Paraguayan immigrant who is one of the first people from his country to record digital videos. This is one of the few things that both the father and daughter can take pride in, besides the love they share that is so clear to see in her childhood footage. The audience gets to see some of his home video footage over a span of forty years, where we see familiar things such as Panfilo playing with his kids and trying to show off for the camera on vacations....

William Sloan (Ernest Martinez) is a hitman who wakes up after a hell of a drunken night out with a “Hottie” (yes, that’s her credited name; Amanda Nutting), whom he doesn’t remember taking home. Adding to his hungover confusion is the man tied up in his living room with a pillowcase over his head (co-writer Bradley Bates). William’s hitman friend, Ruby (DeMarcus Young), calls and asks him to keep the “pillowcase guy” (yes, that’s his credited name) safe until 10 p....

Antonio (Mauro Conte) and Martina (Dominika Moravkova) are musicians living in Prague when the Nazis invade. The loving husband and wife are soon pushed into Theresienstadt Ghetto with several other Jews. They are separated and put to hard labor to increase the size of the “city the Furher gave” to them. In a bid to prove to the world they aren’t that bad, the Nazis decide to allow a select few musicians to put on a concert....

Beth’s soft, professionally distant tone gives viewers the sense that Beth is on autopilot at this point in her years of volunteering. She is almost robotic, almost Siri-like, but there is a kindness and beauty in her voice that allows her to say so little and yet make such an impact on the people who seek her help. Tessa Thompson makes you feel the exhaustion, frustration, and despair that the character is subjected to during her shift....

Yang Fan (Yuan Tian) is a young housewife who spends her lockdown days cleaning and cooking while loudspeakers incessantly bark out quarantine restrictions. Bored to tears, she furiously masturbates while her husband, Fang (Weihao Xu), is at work furiously masturbating himself. When he falls asleep at night, she goes out in the streets to eat late bowls of soup. She notices the Bart Simpson patch on the sweatpants of her waiter, Yuan Yang (Ning Feng Song), and starts waiting around as he closes down every night....

Bill Plympton and Film Threat\’s own Mark Bell at Slamdance 2003 One year at Sundance, I and Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish snuck into a Sundance party where I got to meet Bill Plympton for the first time (I think he had films at Sundance and Slamdance that year). I’d love to tell you some awkward story of Bill being gruff or dismissive, of Bill being some eccentric genius with the social skills of a rattlesnake but… he was gracious....

Mandy Amano is the childish Ellen, a sorority sister who has ended up at the house alone with her thoughts while the other sisters are at a party. With her voiceover narrative, it’s obvious that when left alone she tends to let her imagination run away with her, so imagine her shock when she gets a stern knock at the door. Enter Detective Wiley (Guy Nardulli) who informs Ellen through a peephole that another girl from another sorority house has just been brutally murdered....

Monk is under financial pressure from his literary agent, Arthur (John Ortiz), to produce a hit. Still, unlike the latest popular urban novel, We’s Live in Da Ghetto, by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), Monk refuses to stoop to this level as an insult to himself and Black America. When put on leave by the university where he teaches, Monk takes a quick trip home to visit his sister, Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), and mother, Agnes (Leslie Uggams)....

Shane left the circus when it pulled into the small beach community of Cornwell, Canada, after noticing a sharp adjustment in attitudes toward her. She hit the clubs in Montreal, which were controlled by the mob then, as they ran drugs and other goodies through them. The singer was an instant sensation, which drew her some dangerous attention from the gangsters. It was in Toronto that Shane found a home....

Maybe for the first time, the world can see how young minds are molded into someone ready to fight for their country. This is because, at Horizon High School in El Paso, Texas, students train to become law enforcement officers in the hopes of making a positive difference in their communities and neighborhoods. However, this group of teenagers learns that navigating high school can be a challenge. The students focused on are Kassy, Cesar, and Christa, who are mature beyond their years....

Depressed and emotionally paralyzed, Austin exacts his revenge by using spring break to produce an album and enter it in a singing and songwriting competition known as Big Break. His best revenge is to win the contest with a song about Eve. Seeing the project through is his best friend/manager, Palms (Julian Berger), who sequesters Austin at his father’s studio for the proper creative setting. Joining the pair is Palm’s girlfriend, Stella (Marie Zolezzi)....

Chance is a bald, middle age, white dude who has the big task of keeping the world from total destruction. He has some odd obsessive-compulsive traits (like stating the Gettysburg address every morning, turning into a dog when someone says the word ‘sofa,’ etc.) that he claims would cause the harmony of the world to fall apart, should he stop performing them. With these traits (the baldness, the compulsions) going against him however, this guy really ends up with some beautiful girls, even though none of them last (because he is crazy)....

I Like Movies is the story of 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen), who dreams of attending film school at NYU and becoming a great director. He spends all his time with his buddy, Matt (Percy Hynes White), and each weekend is Rejects Night, when the two watch Saturday Night Live. Right out of the gate, we learn that Lawrence is a bit messed up. His father recently committed suicide....

Despite the fantastical elements and freezing temperature, the animated short feels very real and fosters a warm, loving connection between the audience and its silent characters. The father and son sell their ice. They parachute and even buy motorbikes. We watch the precious existence they have carved for themselves on the edge of destruction. But as temperatures rise, the father and son soon realize their humble way of life is in jeopardy....

Matsui (Yusuke Fukuchi) is a food delivery driver who lives on the street and occasionally finds shelter in a rundown office building. Ching (Wang Yun-Chih) is a beautiful prostitute who survives day-to-day sleeping with clients in her apartment. Helen (Huei-Ling Jan) is a middle-aged cleaning woman from the Philippines. Her low wages are not enough to survive, so she resorts to dumpster diving and eating anything her clients throw in the trash....