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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
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‘Our Hero, Balthazar' Review: Jaeden Martell Is an Edgelord Obsessed with a Would-Be School Shooter in ‘Good Time' Producer's Angsty Debut
To revel in anarchy without an initial critical perspective about gun culture or social media addiction is the point of director Oscar Boyson's feature debut, 'Our Hero, Balthazar,' co-written with Ricky Camilleri, a movie wrestling with both topics. The 'Good Time' producer and 'Uncut Gems' executive producer's first film as a director stars 'Midnight Special' and 'It' breakout Jaeden Martell as a spoiled New York City private-school edgelord adept at making himself cry on self-cue for his online followers. Balthazar's (Martell) compulsion toward on-iPhone faux tears contributes to a broad satire of an ever-widening genre of curated suffering wrought by social media users. The ones who lather themselves up over causes (see Selena Gomez's tearful direct-to-camera confession about Trump's deportation policies, which went viral earlier this year) to signal their virtues, and often emptily or at least confused. More from IndieWire Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells Want Audiences to See 'I Don't Understand You' in Theaters, Say Film Has 'Feelings in Spades' Apple Drops Teaser for McConaughey Action Flick 'The Lost Bus' - Out This Fall Boyson captures this phenomenon, mostly poking rather than prodding, until the film's dramatic and very bloody finish puts a not moralizing but perhaps prescriptive cap on the endgame of its own expanding satire: 'Our Hero, Balthazar' follows Balthy, as he's known by his absentee mother (a perfectly uptight, power-dressed Jennifer Ehle), into a dark obsession with the also biblically named Solomon (Asa Butterfield), an internet troll with aspirations of shooting up his Texas school and maybe more. Balthy, though, doesn't have many virtues, and here the world of edgelords and online rage-baiters is a scuzzy one that cinematographer Christopher Messina and editors Nate DeYoung and Erin DeWitt plunge us into with all the subtlety of the Safdies' clock-ticking New York crime odyssey 'Good Time.' The synthy, pulsing electro art score by James William Blades further brings to mind those early Safdie movies, now generational touchstones for emerging filmmakers. Boyson doesn't entirely peel away from the Benny-and-Josh-established aesthetic that's now the expected parlance of millennial filmmakers seeking to capture an unvarnished, on-edge New York — Boyson, after all, co-founded the Safdies' Elara Pictures before the brothers split creatively. The stylized filmmaking becomes its own sort of critical point of view here, revving up the audience and probably encouraging even a few in the room to endorse its agonized worldview via the movie's compelling craft. 'Our Hero, Balthazar' is both a cautionary tale and an entertainment, and how Boyson straddles the highwire cutting between those two opposing forces is what makes this promising debut most fascinatingly restless. It's present day, and when 'Our Hero, Balthazar' begins, Balthy is weeping into his iPhone camera. 'This loneliness is killing me,' he says. But it's all fakery, as staged as the active-shooter drills at Balthy's private Manhattan school, crocodile tears welled up to weaponize his narcissism against the bleeding hearts of passive, smash-the-freaking-like-button social media sheep. Balthy is barely attended to by his single mom, Nicole (Ehle), who's so distracted by a romance with a rising politico (David M. Raine) that she goes out of town with the guy on Balthy's birthday weekend. Meanwhile, Balthy's nonexistent father just cuts the checks while remaining upstate in Westchester. Balthy appears to have no social life outside the internet-only interactions inside his high-rise bedroom overlooking the city. He's attracted to an activist classmate (Pippa Knowles), who sounds off on the 'monetization of narcissism' after one of those school-shooting drills, but he alienates her entirely after trying to make out with her while watching dark-web-dispatched closed-circuit footage of an actual Arkansas school massacre. (As in last year's 'Red Rooms,' about a woman perversely drawn to snuff films, Boyson keeps the carnage off-camera, letting the sounds of guns popping and screams overheard ooze into our imagination.) Balthy's preoccupation with school shootings entwines him over Instagram exchanges with Texas-dwelling convenience store worker Solomon, played by an unrecognizable Butterfield in brassy bleach-blond hair in desperate need of a rinse of purple shampoo. Solomon is lonely, too, ignored by his father, a Frank Mackey-type motivational speaker who used to be an amateur porn star and now peddles a powdery testosterone supplement called Thrush. The angsty teen, who's got far too much access to firearms and fantasizes about blowing up his peers, lives with his ailing, Franzia-wine-box-guzzling grandmother (Becky Ann Baker, hilarious and sweatily confined to an easy chair). He's loathed by (and perhaps in love with) his coworker, played by a crassly funny Anna Baryshnikov who again trashily steals the scene as she did in 'Love Lies Bleeding,' there as a lesbian stalker with gingivitis. So Balthy, using all the AI chicanery disturbingly at his disposal, poses as a nympho online female sex bot to lure Solomon's attention via DMs and to eventually meet up with him in a sad pocket of rural Texas. Balthy goads Solomon's forming Oedipal desire to murder his father, while cautioning as Solomon suits up for the kill, 'It's not even a school — nobody's gonna care.' Balthy, meanwhile, hopes that in stopping Solomon's parallel planned school shooting he can somehow win back the affections of Eleanor (Knowles), who begs Balthy to stop reaching out but seemingly hasn't learned how to block a caller. Is Balthy a hero? Is Solomon a murderer? Or are they both just hopeless casualties of an epidemic of over-interneted incel-adjacents who've turned being online at all these days into a pervasive existential risk? Car chases and police standoffs blare and beam from Solomon's grandmother's TV, giving 'Our Hero, Balthazar' an ever-on-the-edge-of-apocalypse vibe that literalizes our society-addling fixation on spectacle violence and if-it-bleeds-it-leads cable news, where the last tragedy is the latest news item. Though hardly transgressive if you've kept up with the recent crop of indies that blend New York-at-night thriller with Gen Z-skewering social messaging (Olmo Schnabel's queer Manhattan caper 'Pet Shop Boys' from last year comes to mind), the contradictions in the thrilling pleasures of this film's craft alongside its darkly comic warning letter about gun culture make for a potent if ultimately ambivalent first venture. But it's ambivalence by design, as Boyson ends his movie on a painfully inevitable, macabrely funny finale that brings the whole thing full circle, Balthy once again crying on his own command for all the world (or at least a handful of followers and news watchers) to see. Martell makes a strong dramatic impression as a seriously fucked-up kid, but is he more fucked-up than any kid — or any of us — is lately? It's Butterfield's pathos and toxic teendom that give 'Our Hero, Balthazar' its emotional anchor, if the film has one at all. Boyson seems more enamored with the pyrotechnics of filmmaking — and as a first-time feature director, why wouldn't he be? — than with sticking to an emotional landing. 'Our Hero, Balthazar' isn't cold by any means, but the result comes off as more ethnographic in tone than the in-your-face bravado of the approach would suggest. 'Our Hero, Balthazar' premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
Japan Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
‘Jinsei': Ryuya Suzuki's solo animation is a singular debut
I'm not sure what it says about the current state of Japanese cinema that one of the most striking movies of the year so far was created in isolation — not just from the film industry, but from people in general. Thirty-year-old Ryuya Suzuki wrote, directed, animated, edited and soundtracked his debut feature, 'Jinsei' ('Life'), all by himself. The only reason the end credits go on for as long as they do is because he drew individual portraits of each of the project's several hundred crowdfunding supporters. The film's publicity hails it as a successor to Kenji Imaisawa's 'On-Gaku: Our Sound' (2020) and Takahide Hori's 'Junk Head' (2021), two recent landmarks in outsider animation. Yet while those solo endeavors each took seven years to make, Suzuki got the job done in a more modest 18 months. This isn't to downplay the effort involved, merely to say that it's easier to imagine other people being inspired to have a go themselves. We never learn the name of the film's protagonist (voiced by rapper Ace Cool), although he's addressed by many different monikers over the course of the story: Se-chan, Kuro, Zen, God. By the time he gets properly introduced, we've already seen his parents' lives flash before our eyes, in a wordless prologue that recalls the famous opening sequence of Pete Docter's 'Up.' There's another montage toward the end of the film that's even more audacious, closer in spirit to Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' as it leaves the Earth — and humanity — behind. 'Jinsei' comes at you fast; it has a vertiginous effect that's both thrilling and stomach-churning. After seeing his mother run down by an elderly driver in an accident that also leaves his deadbeat father in a coma, our hero finds himself in the custody of hapless stepdad Hiroshi (Shohei Uno). At school, the other kids nickname him 'Shinigami' — God of Death — but he manages to strike up a friendship with a bleach-blond transfer student named Kin (Taketo Tanaka). The latter dreams of becoming a pop idol, and on learning that his pal's birth father was once a member of a hit boy band, he resolves that they make a bid for stardom together. However, fame comes at a price — in this case, a Faustian bargain with a predatory pop mogul clearly modeled on the late Johnny Kitagawa. There's already enough material here for a feature film, but 'Jinsei' is only just getting started. The story still has many decades to cover, as its protagonist — a taciturn, emotional blank slate — rockets between success and catastrophe, both personal and global. Perhaps having a more relatable character at the heart of the tale would have made it more resonant, but it's still a hell of a ride. Suzuki's flat, minimalist visuals and mordant humor bring to mind Liu Jian's 'Have a Nice Day,' another bare-bones production. Animation allows him to do things that would be far harder for a live-action film, while working solo lets him take bigger risks — and not just in his willingness to grapple with Kitagawa's toxic legacy. Sure, he overextends himself at times. When the story leaves all familiar reference points behind and hurtles into the future, it sacrifices some of the texture and richness of the earlier chapters. But this one-man indie wonder is a work of true vision.
Associated Press
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Indie Vegas Film Festival 2025 Blends Film & Fun in the Heart of North Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS, NV, UNITED STATES, May 9, 2025 / / -- The second annual Indie Vegas Film Festival was held at the 'Galaxy Theatres Cannery' located within the Cannery Casino Hotel in North Las Vegas. The four day event began on Thursday, April 24th, and continued through Sunday, April 27th. This year's festival drew a large crowd of gifted filmmakers, whose works were screened in two theatres for the duration of the festival. 'The festival was fun and exciting, and the location was perfect', said Jon Gursha, Festival Director. The festival featured an opening night kick-off party at the hotel casino. Local and international filmmakers enjoyed the sociable atmosphere and networked while enjoying the Las Vegas nightlife. 'We were thrilled by the positive responses we received from everyone who attended', added Jon Gursha. The festival featured over 200 films, with shorts and full-length feature films from all genres. Additionally, the festival held a closing-night awards party. 'We presented over 100 awards this year to filmmakers and screenwriters', said Peter Greene, Program Director. 'The after party was a super-fun event for filmmakers to celebrate their successes', added Peter Greene. To view the complete film festival schedule, program, and awards please visit the official festival website at The following are some of the highlighted films from the festival: 'BEAR BROOK', Directed by Tony Fanini; 'CLIMATE BROS', Directed by Ryan Reznick; 'DEAR HOPE,', Directed by Tony Sylvester; 'DRAFTED 2035", Directed by Ronald Hanson; 'FAITHLESS', Directed by Patrick Lazzara; 'FOOLPROOF', Directed by Sean Swaby; 'FRANK', Directed by Todd Ciske; 'FRITCHI MANOR', Directed by Jermaine Alexander; 'GAVIN'S ADVENTURES', Directed by Fiona Lincke; 'HAUNTS BEFORE VEGAS', Directed by John Gross; 'ICE BREATH', Directed by Leonard Alecu; 'INTERWOVEN', Directed by Dawn Carpenter; 'LOST HAVEN', Directed by Marisol Diaz; 'LOVE & GUNS MAFIA TALES', Directed by Darko Djeric; 'MOTHER OF FASCIA', Directed by Ales Urbanczik; 'SEARCH', Directed by John Magee; 'Tastes like Christmas', Screenplay by Tom Anastasi; 'THE JUNKY WARRIOR', Directed by Kay Rocknroll Brown and James Edward Todd; 'THE LAST SHIFT', Directed by Juan Morales; 'THE SANCTUARY', Directed by Maynard Bagang and 'THE WORLD OF JAMES GAGME', Directed by Lon Takiguchi. Indie Vegas Film Festival is an independent film festival based in Las Vegas, NV. Indie Vegas showcases films from around the world for independent filmmakers. Indie Vegas is a platform for independent filmmakers bringing together the filmmaking community of Las Vegas and Nevada. The Indie Vegas Film Festival was founded by Jon Gursha, Festival Director. Indie Vegas Film Festival is a registered trademark, Indie Vegas Film Festival®, a registered trademark. For more information, please visit Jon Gursha email us here Indie Vegas Film Festival Visit us on social media: Facebook X Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
