Movie Reviews

Sasquatch Sunset (2024) – Movie Review

Published

2 years ago

April 8, 2024

Sasquatch Sunset, 2024.

Written and Directed by David Zellner and Nathan Zellner.
Starring Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner, and Christophe Zajac-Denek.

SYNOPSIS:

A year in the life of a unique family. It captures the daily life of the Sasquatch.

Sasquatch Sunset is what happens when you cross a crude, juvenile sense of humor that feels transplanted from the mind of a teenager who just discovered sex and its resulting bodily fluids from all genders, with a surprising sense of poignancy and emotional resonance. When one thinks directors David and Nathan Zellner are losing interest by repeating some of the same jokes, which primarily include a sasquatch family fornicating, masturbating, urinating, pooping, and fumbling their way through life (any interaction with small woodland animals is amusing), they don’t necessarily pivot away from that graphic onslaught of raunch or lose confidence but simultaneously embrace something more moving and thoughtful regarding parenthood and the planet. It’s dumb and gross in its approach to humor, but it also comes equipped with something vital to say.

Dumb is also used affectionately, as this sasquatch family, who do nothing but grunt and gesture (the actors reportedly worked with mimes to help effectively express themselves in this wordless feature), are free to be crass and brainless. At least until the sibling filmmakers flip that upside down, showing that Riley Keough’s pregnant sasquatch (the light narrative follows the family for an entire year, broken up into the four seasons in a chapter structure) has as much maternal instinct as any other animalistic species and slowly seemingly becomes self-aware of the damage being done to the planet. Shot by Mike Gioulakis, part of the joke appears to be that something so raunchy looks sweepingly beautiful, further emphasizing the ecological points being made.

Given that there is also some astonishingly detailed costume and makeup design that make these creatures feel like they exist, the emotional element is more effective. It’s a small ensemble of four, but with two recognizable names, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, unafraid to appear unrecognizable in the film; you might have to squint or use a bit of extra focus to adjust yourself to see who is playing which sasquatch, and while that might sound initially confusing for some, it doesn’t turn out to be an issue and is, if anything, might be the highest compliment there is to pay the below-the-line team. The sasquatches look nothing like their acting counterparts, save for slightly noticeable facial structure features and eyes, but evoke a strong sense of humanity among their toilet humor shenanigans.

As for the story itself, Sasquatch Sunset certainly benefits from heading in knowing very little about it. What can be said is that the family (it is unspecified how they are exactly related to one another) spend their days traveling across the forest, picking for food, and occasionally stopping to take care of business such as bowel movements or sex. Within the group, a rather aggressive sasquatch (played by one half of the writing/directing team, Nathan Zellner) is taking charge (many times in ways that backfire) and sexually forcing himself on the resisting Riley Keough sasquatch, currently meeting with the Jesse Eisenberg sasquatch. The love-Bigfoots also appear to have a younger son (much smaller and even more curious about the surroundings), played by Christophe Zajac-Denek.

This leads to a dramatic change in the group, with the sasquatches discovering more about the world, threatening the existence of all wildlife. There are such small, brilliant choices here that shouldn’t be spoiled, but one can’t go without mentioning a couple of devastating needle drops, and a score from The Octopus Project simultaneously tapped into the silliness and seriousness of the project. Admittedly, even with an 88-minute running time, there are still bits of dead air and repeated gags, with a slower first half that takes on a presentation similar to a nature documentary before emotions beyond crudely laughing emerge. Even for someone on board with its sense of humor, some of it can feel like an endurance test of ranch.

One of the first sights in Sasquatch Sunset is of the Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough creatures fucking in the woods, which is funny and also kind of bottom-of-the-barrel lazy comedy. The impressive trick is that the Zellner brothers make us care about these characters either way; it’s a film with no right to be as melancholy and emotionally affecting as it is, which lends substance to the gross-out humor. It walks the line between stupid and smart, pissing and shitting with every step.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

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Movie Reviews

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

Published

4 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

by Sean P. Aune | May 9, 2026

Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.

We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.

Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.

The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.

This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.

Dangerously Close

I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.

An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?

The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.

Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.

Fire with Fire

Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.

Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.

This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’

Last Resort

Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.

George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.

There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.

Short Circuit

Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?

NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.

Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.

His whole character is mystifying.

Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.

1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: AFFECTION – Assignment X

Published

16 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026

AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.

There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.

Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.

But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.

The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.

Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.

Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.

The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?

AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.

Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.

We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.

As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.

Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.

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Movie Reviews

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

Published

1 day ago

May 8, 2026

Press Room

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:

Deanna: ★★★★.5

Allison: ★★★.25

Julia: ★★

To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.