Coda’s ongoing coverage
of the 2025 Phoenix Film Festival & International
Horror Sci-Fi Film Festival. I'll be using these posts to recap the films I've experienced as
part of these festivals.
BURT – Directed by Joe Burke
Burt (Burton Berger), a 69-year-old street musician and guitarist, suffering from Parkinson’s Disease is approached by Sammy (Oliver Cooper) with the shocking revelation that he is Burt’s unbeknownst son. Burt relishes in the opportunity to be a father, inviting Sammy to stay the weekend with him and his grumpy and suspicious landlord, Steve.
This really is the
perfect festival film. It’s small and quaint, with interesting characters and
well written dialogue and plot. Overall, it’s a relatively low impact way to
spend 80 minutes in the dark, perfectly achieving every note it attempted. I
think the point of the film was more to showcase the musical talent and
personality of star, Burton Berger.
From what I can gather
contextually, Burton is essentially playing himself. He really is a street
musician in L.A., struggling with Parkinson’s. And the music showcased in the
film are all original songs, written and performed by himself. The music was pretty
great and I was quite engrossed with every moment that he was on screen. And I
truly hope that this film finds enough of a following to give him the exposure
he deserves.
It also didn’t hurt that
Burt reminded me quite a bit of my own father, who was also a folksy guitarist.
They’re even from the same town, Elmira, NY.
THE LADDER – Directed by
Emilio Miguel Torres
Meditative and
picturesque, Ketchikan becomes the perfect stage to explore the timeless
cerebral conflict between nature and technology. This film is deliberately
paces, patient and beautiful. It’s a sentimental story about aging and time;
how much we have left and our very right to claim it for ourselves.
Unfortunately, the film
didn’t really work for me. I think this falls victim to the all-to-common
issues when a successful short film is adapted to feature length. I never saw
the short that preceded this, but it certainly wouldn’t shock me to find that it’s
brilliant. Too often, a concept that works for a 15-minute story is vulnerable
to ineffectiveness with the attempt to stretch out the narrative and flesh out
the characters. I wish that filmmakers that have already proven themselves in
this way, would focus their talents on a new original idea in these cases. The
delicate economy of storytelling often does not lend itself to translations and
adaptations of this sort.
DEAD LOVER – Directed by
Grace Glowicki
A lonely gravedigger (Grace Glowicki) with severe work-related body odor issues finally finds the love of her life. But when he dies at sea, she’s unwilling to accept the loss and goes to great lengths of grotesquery to restore her love.
I first have to
acknowledge the very strange and unintended trajectory of the three films that
I saw yesterday. Working my way from the heartfelt dramedy about an elderly man
suffering from a chronic illness, to a slow-burn sci-fi about a man contemplating
a new a radical medical procedure that restores his youth, to end on this film
about a freaky love affair with a reanimated corpse? Wow! If I could have
planned it, I would have planned it exactly like this. So, bravo to me.
I honestly had an
amazing time with this romp of artifice and debauchery. The entire film was
shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, on a minimally dressed sound stage.
As someone that sees a
large quantity of films, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the level of
originality and uniqueness that went into this. I think cinema is the most
post-modern of all mediums so to see something that’s this distinctive is rare.
I got strong Guy Maddin vibes from aesthetic aspects, but even that left tons
of room for Glowicki’s creative voice.
There’s something I kind
of love about the feeling I get, seeing multiple people walk out of a screening
that I’m thoroughly enjoying. I can’t explain why exactly, and I’m happy and
confident that this film (that has been picked up by Yellow Veil Pictures) will
find its audience. But I love the feeling that this was, in at least some small
way, made for me and not for them. I’m pretty sure this is what Kendrick was on
about.
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