First, the entire film takes place in the video game Grand Theft Auto. After being shut down for the third time in London, actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen had been doing odd little shorts on Grand Theft Auto akin to Red vs. Blue. While online together, they discover an open-air theater like the Hollywood Bowl, and both wonder if they could perform a play together. As they test the waters on this virtual stage, the performance goes awry when a stranger passes by and murders the pair....

It is a sunny, perfect day, full of beautiful young people and music when the first shots ring out from a masked gunman in the crowd. As people fall bleeding, the now screaming crowd disperses. Guy and Joy make it back to his place, where they find another apparently stunned pride celebrant named Dan (Dean Miroshnikov) sitting in their stairwell. They bring him in to look after him. The news reports on TV state that the shooter is still at large and later says there is reason to believe he may be a member of the LGBTQ community himself....

First up is Juan the Soldier by director Abraham Sanchez, and written by Alfredo Mendoza. It follows the aftermath of the execution of a criminal who professes to be innocent by a sadistic commander and his conscientious, driven grunts. The excellent desert cinematography makes you feel the water go down your parched throat, recalling those spaghetti westerns. Evil and revenge play a part in a pious ending. The Christian belief system plays an important plot point in most of these stories without being “preachy....

To be fair, the film’s opening is a sign of things to come. After an uncomfortably long wide shot that eventually zooms into an apartment window and finally finds a set of bloody footprints, I can’t say he didn’t warn me. But the film immediately jumps back in time three months to a story that is certainly dramatic, but not conspicuously noirish. Our protagonist is Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”), a frail, beguiling girl who puts on a happy face to welcome her husband home on the day of his release from prison....

Jack is a local police officer in a small town in the Rocky Mountains. Things are quiet in his neck of the woods, and people usually mind their business. But all the quiet fades away when Kristian goes missing in the shadows of the vast mountains. Rescue crews searched for days but only found the child’s bike. Stricken with grief, Jack witnesses unique light patterns on the Christmas lights around the house....

Still with me? That’s roughly the information you get after a text crawl in the first minute or so of the film. If it’s a lot to digest, that’s one of the primary issues with the film: it throws a lot of information at you before twisting it all up in the name of intrigue and mystery. Within the first few minutes, you’re either into the overall tone and story, or your mind has already started to check out....

As you can guess, the women aren’t alone in the woods, and the clues they’ve been given may not be in their best interest. Pink (Courtney Moore) runs afoul of a tea party of masked men, the Gentlemen (Zyan Panagopoulos, Chris Froese, Tommy Livsey), who seem as polite as they are murderous. White (Jen Kirkbride-Dobbin) finds herself at the mercies of a trio of violent women, the Public Servants (Jenn Marshall, Samala Kayzer, Amy Muc), and Black (Dorothy Dalba) winds up battling a gruesome man known as Cuddles the Bear (Andy Holmes), likely named such for the stuffed toy bear’s head he wears over his own....

Mort Madison (Matt Rife) is a down-on-his-luck private eye who spends his days drinking and smoking without many knocks on his door asking for his assistance. Then, one day, a mysterious woman named Michelle (Clare Grant) hires Mort to follow and scare off her boyfriend, David (Elliot). During the case, Mort’s past and present collide as he navigates his strange connection to Michelle, his own identity, and how far he will go for love....

In this vampire world, the blood supply has been stymied due to an attempt to destroy the vampires who kill the food source, a.k.a. humans. The ensuing fallout created zombies. There is a superweapon that dispenses with the traditional stake in the heart and sunlight, replacing it with a simple one-shot incineration that works on each entity vying for a place on the planet. The battle for it is on, as whoever controls the weapon can destroy the others and reign supreme....

The good news is you need to know exactly nothing to get swept up by this 8000-pound entertainment juggernaut. The screenplay by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere is that impressive. It plays more like an Excalibur-level fantasy than a historical drama. Things start with a bang (and a little different than the source material), with D’Artagnan (Francois Civil) arriving in Paris searching for the people who left him for dead....

As if the status quo wasn’t dramatic enough, Cotton’s estranged older sister Sunny (Laura Bell Bundy) returns to town after escaping to Hollywood years earlier. Hoping for some closure with her mother, with whom she had a falling out, Sunny arrives right on the heels of her mother’s death and is forced to take responsibility and custody of Cotton, lest Cotton be placed in foster care. Sunny agrees to care for her sister, and the two go about navigating the new waters of their life together, in a dying town, where Sunny’s past just won’t let her be....

Kris (Martin Cummins) is an artist struggling with addiction. His friend, Michael (Darcy Belsher), is an actor looking for a role whose drug abuse gets worse when his mother dies. Things between the two pals quickly start to spiral out of control, and when one tries to get his life back on track he finds out how the universe has other plans for him. This is not exactly a happy movie, but its overall message is one of hope in the most barren of places....

Especially after the less-than-incredible coincidence of “Hillside Cannibals” coming out at almost the same time as the remake of “The Hills Have Eyes” in theatres. Oh, Asylum. Oh, oh, ohhhhh Asylum. What happened? What happened to the studio I was applauding this time last year for gutsy moves and original programming? What happened to the studio that was willing to take chances on movies like “Haunted House”, “Corpses Are Forever”, “Hide and Creep”, and plenty of others?...

The next morning, Ash is told that her services may no longer be necessary. Processing the hint, Ash takes a walk away from the home for the first time. Full of wonder and whimsy from the outside world, Ash finds herself at a park where she meets a special child who changes her outlook on the world abroad. In When Unfettered, the audience is taken on a journey of discovery through the eyes of the protagonist, Ash....

Karl, is holding his wife’s hand as she gives birth. It’s a momentous part of life, the time when a squealing, screaming infant pops out of a lady’s Shangri-La, ready to begin exploring our overcrowded world. And life for Karl’s newborn might consist of him making sure the dog doesn’t drag it out and bury it in the backyard, next to the smashed-up dog bones. The reason is because the kid isn’t Carl’s....

The title refers to an old, decrepit ship stranded at a Fuerteventura beach: a gargantuan pile of scrap metal, once glorious, now on the verge of collapse. And that’s exactly what happens to it when the protagonist, reticent assassin Wilson (Ian McShane), visits the abandoned vessel with the vivacious, striking bartender Gloria (Nora Arnezeder): it tilts to the side, perishing into the water as if having waited for a witness to die finally....

On this particular night, Mitzy is having a slumber party while her parents are away. She, Chi Chi, Biggie (Whitney Carroll), and Powder (Gwenett Henderson) decide to play Bloody Mary. Immediately after saying her name three times in the mirror, nothing happens. So, the friends smoke weed, play board games, and eat cereal. Then Ricky (Bernard Countryman Jr.), Mike (Clayton Miller), and Ronnie (Adonijah Malone) show up without Bobby and accidentally scare the girls half to death....

Initially, the 3-minute short seems to be a sad story of a lonely old man walking home with a brown paper bag. The rotund, bearded man places the bag on the table and smiles at it. Is he a recovering alcoholic proving something to himself? This is when the narrative unexpectedly takes a heartwarming turn. The bag contains whipped cream, which he uses to top off his hot chocolate. The drink instigates the man’s Christmas spirit....

Australian filmmaker Alex Lykos turns his cameras on and decides to conduct an experiment. As an experiment, he locks his phone and tablet in a safe for thirty days to demonstrate people’s reliance on their devices. Cellphones, tablets, video games…everything. Armed with only a rotary phone and an old-school television, how long can Lykos go? Much like Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, Disconnect Me is as much educational as it is personal....

Everything about Fiona hurts — her neck and joints. Oh, and she may have found a lump. The two are now forced to complete their journey on foot. Fiona’s constant whining is testing Kimmi’s patience. The task at hand is simple. Kimmi must return the small stone she stole from the house. The curse will be lifted once the stone is returned to its exact position. But “simple” is never so in horror....