The CineFiles

Saturday, August 8, 2026

JEFF OF THE CINEFILES & UNFINISHED BUSINESS: HALL OF FAME - FILE #0077: SIRAT (2025)

Directed By: Oliver Laxe

Written By: Oliver Laxe and Santiago Fillol

Cinematography: Mauro Herce

Editor: Cristobal Fernandez

Cast Sergi Lopez, Bruno Nunez Arjona, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Richard Bellamy, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, Ahmed Abbou

A father, accompanied by his son, goes looking for his missing daughter in North Africa.

Please watch this film before anyone can spoil any of it for you.

There is so much one wants to say about this film

This film is more of an experience. All its own. Then something you just watch and rate. As it makes you Feel many things throughout.

Perfectly titled, as it truly lives up to its appetite, which you truly only understand by the end

Imagine a movie centered around and filmed a club or on MTV spring break centering on the dance floor and dancers as well as the music only with a loose plot to interact with the dancing and Revels. Throughout broken up scenes and establishing shots of actual actors done for that you are here for you or spontaneous things happen or caught on camera. Like the movie CLIMAX

Only here Based around the main characters of father and son looking for their missing daughters/sister, which keeps it from being an on the ground documentary so more staged docudrama.

That is what I thought this film would be until it finally bared down and focused after I would say the first 15 to 20 minutes

What we do end up getting is a film that is useful less stylized and more radical. That is a road movie based around ongoing road trip through back roads in the desert. As the film plays like a tempo with brakes between tracks.

The characters, other than the lead, father and son, the so-called ravens are not the Hollywood version. These are more not only international, but older and middle aged as well as weathered characters who just seemed to go with the flow of life some disabled some just lost so I’m looking for the next party or to see where the wind takes them so they form a kind of loose knit family themselves.

The film is kind of a thrill throughout as you never know where it’s going and where we are going with these characters. It becomes hypnotic .

The film does manage to be shocking. As it doesn’t go where expected. Especially when you think you know how everything is gonna play out, which is one of the reasons one believes they got nominated for best foreign film, other than just its unpredictable mnature. Presented as a loss journey that is surprisingly emotional, though never allows itself to be sentimental as it is unflinching.

The film is a kind of unknown suicide mission of sorts that no one knows they are voluntarily going on though always seems to want to have hope even in the worst situations. A dance through hell

As the desert situations can be beautiful, but are also dangerous and deadly, so there’s always that threat looming which creates great tension as well as the father, never quite trusting the group at first, even as they seem to come through for him, though also them being quite cautious of him without him being with child certainly helps them to open themselves up more though the film does present us with plenty of worst case scenarios

The film does offer a sucker punch of a third act. As characters we grow to know and care about are threatened. Where we in the audience never truly expect to care so much. Are pushed to the edge. This isn’t a film about a journey but one of acceptance.

This is a truly unforgettable film. That seems like it will be a party, but ends as a nightmare.

Grade: A

Friday, August 7, 2026

WILD ZERO (1999)

Directed By: Tetsuro Takeuchi

Written by: Tetsuro Takeuchi and Satoshi Takagi

Cinematography: Motoki Kobayashi

Editor: Tomoe Kubota

Cast: Guitar Wolf, Drum Wolf, Bass Wolf, Masashi Endo, Kwancharu Shitichai, Makoto Inamiya, Haruka Nakajo, Shiro Namiki, Yoshiyuki Morishita

After a meteor strike aliens attack the earth and begin turning people into zombies. Rockers Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf aswell as their rock and roll blood brother ace and his true love Tobio are caught in the middle of this madness

WILD ZERO starts weird, gets weirder, and somehow still has room to surprise you.

The film quickly introduces its colorful cast before throwing all of their storylines together. At its heart, it’s an ensemble movie, even if the legendary Guitar Wolf stand proudly at the center like the coolest people to ever ignore the apocalypse.

This thing is loud, unfiltered, ridiculous, and incredibly charming. The third act is absolutely bonkers, piling on zombies, aliens, explosions, romance, and pure punk-rock energy. It shouldn’t make sense, yet somehow it feels completely natural. Every time you think the movie has run out of ideas, it casually throws another one at you.

Having Guitar Wolf play themselves is inspired . Imagine the Ramones in ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL filtered through a Japanese zombie movie with a garage punk soundtrack. They don’t perform every five minutes, but every scene they’re in reminds you why they’re the coolest band in the room. While everyone else panics, they just keep moving forward like the end of the world is an inconvenience.

One of the film’s biggest surprises is its love story. At the center is a romance between a cisgender man and a trans woman that feels remarkably thoughtful for a film released in 1999. It acknowledges fear and prejudice but ultimately lands on acceptance without ever feeling preachy. It simply lets the characters exist, and Guitar Wolf delivers one of the film’s most memorable speeches about love that perfectly sums up its philosophy.

The world itself is delightfully off-kilter. A club manager is so obsessed with revenge that he’ll chase the band to the ends of the Earth, usually while wearing hilariously tiny shorts. Another character looks like a punk-rock mercenary whose wardrobe somehow becomes more dangerous every time she appears. Nobody dresses normally, nobody acts normally, and that’s exactly the point.

Think of it as SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD nearly a decade early, only traded indie rock for Japanese punk, replaced the exes with a bunch of slow moving classic zombies, and decided aliens might as well show up too.

It’s a movie overflowing with imagination, creativity, and infectious energy. I owned the DVD for years but somehow never got around to watching it until now on streaming. Strangely, I’m glad I waited. I probably would’ve enjoyed it back then, but I appreciate its sheer originality much more today.

I wouldn’t call it a personal favorite, but I absolutely understand why it’s become a cult classic. If you’re looking for something unpredictable, inventive, funny, and unlike almost anything else, WILD ZERO is an easy recommendation.

Honestly, it feels like the CRANK movies were chasing this same “anything goes” energy years later. Few films embrace insanity with this much confidence and have this much fun doing it.

Grade: B+

Thursday, August 6, 2026

THE IN CROWD (1988)

Directed By: Mark Rosenthal

Written By: Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner

Cinematography: Anthony Richmond

Editor: Jeffery Wolf

Cast: Donovan Leitch, Jennifer Runyon, Joe Pantoliano, Sean Gregory Sullivan, Bruce Kirby, Scott Plank, Wendy Gazelle, Charlotte D’Amboise, Page Hannah

A young man of the rock and roll generation is in his senior year of high school. When one day he successfully gets on a popular teen dance television show he becomes a star. The plot follows him as he lives his new life in his new world. What he finds are adoring fans, jealous rivals, bitter friends left behind, and the girl of his dreams…his dance partner.

This film used to be on all the time on the legendary (To me at least) Flix Channel that Moore played films from the past 90s 80s 70s even 60s some even older but they mostly stayed within those decades.

I would always see glimpses of this film and advertisements, but never managed to catch the whole film. In fact the only scene I really remember was when Joe Potano goes into the star of the film Donovan Leitch’s classroom to retrieve them and decides he won’t take them out until the end of class and then they all have a discussion about Charles Dickens book A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

Now decades later, I finally got to watch this film, beginning to end, and while it leans heavily into nostalgia, there is that feeling that this is kind of a b-movie, less campy more romantic version of HAIRSPRAY (even though they came out in the same year. Like competing products with similar stories to revolve around) and of course it’s very white washed version of it too with no real mention of Race that at least was a major plot point for the other film. This seems just wanna almost be an updated HAPPY DAYS blast from the past.

Though it does pay a lot more attention to character. I wish there was more Joe Pantoliano throughout.

Now, while the film is more nostalgic less overall comedic. It does try to show the changing times, but sticks with a universal youth story. Surprised at how much this film chooses to be a study of class, but then again once you take Race out of the equation you gotta have some story of the haves and have nots.

There are quite a few things that are memorable by the end. Sean Gregory Sullivan is a scene stealer as Popeye, as well as a cameo from Peter Boyle and a dance battle in a loving room that has to be seen to be believed

By the end, the film isn’t necessarily remarkable. It’s a fun watch and fits along with all those 80s and 90s films that seem to want to take a look back at the 1950s and 60s through a more coming of age, romantic and throwback lens. Think movies like SHAG, THERE GOES MY BABY, 1969)

It’s an entertaining family film that tries to be rebellious, but by the end is all heart.

Grade: C+

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

FACES OF DEATH (2026)

Directed By: Daniel Goldhaber

Written By: Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei

Cinematography: Issac Bauman

Editor: Taylor Levy

Cast: Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Jermaine Fowler, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday. Charli Xcx, Kurt Yue, Ash Maeda

Margot Romero, a content moderator haunted by a viral tragedy, must track down a sadistic filmmaker who recreates legendary snuff cinema to silence the internet’s obsession with her own past trauma.

This was a film that I expected to be a bit more racy, confrontational and controversial, considering the source material. I thought it would be a bit more disgusting though really other than some notorious clips from the Internet that are ported to have been real the rest of the place pretty basic or what you might expect even actually a bit more disappointing.

As they have to include a story to make a narrative here but even that while it has something to say about social media, it feels a little late even though this film was supposed to come out in 2024 and was finally released in 2026 it still feels like it’s trying to say something that maybe most of the audience already knows about being addicted to the thrill and being desensitized by violence that we want more extreme more gore as a kind of rush.

Though at times certain seems like an unnecessarily quick sex scene in a hallway just seem to be there either as a bad tasteless joke, or an early warning sign of trying to show how badly this film wants to be rebellious and naughty, unfortunately, throughout the rest of the film that just isn’t there

The stunt casting of Charli XCX in this film amounts to nothing she does well in the small role that she’s given, but really doesn’t have that much to do. There aren’t as many killings in this film as one might expect and it just seems that at certain points, all logic is thrown out the window, especially in the leader scenes when Barbie for our manages to escape.

As everything after that pretty much makes no sense though the lead character at times makes no sense. Either her actions that feel really there only because the script says after telling her we’re training her coworkers oh, don’t get involved in any cases off-line. She immediately breaks that code very easily, and it doesn’t seem like it was really hard to convince her to do this, even though any opening of the film it tried to set her up as stern and orderly, but with a secret in our past.

Barbie Ferrara is OK in a lead role. I don’t think she’s the problem with the film. I think it’s the script and the material she’s given because seeing her and other films it’s obvious she is a good actress, but it would’ve been hard for anyone to make this character and script work fully and be believable and root for the character.

Also, the special effects for this film are a little lame there seems to be this big lead up that kind of hype the scenes up, but then nothing comes from the recreations of scenes from FACES OF DEATH, Here in the film look super fake and especially when they show victims bodies after the killings, you can tell that they are either mannequins or dummies so that it just looks so unrealistic that it kind of takes you out of the film especially for a film that seems well funded

One isn’t expecting a classic, but I thought it would be a little more stronger and inspired rather than what we get which feels basic and a little uninspired. I really wanted this phone to be decent and good especially from somebody who still is a bit uncomfortable trying to watch faces of death from 1983 the controversial video cassette or any of it sequel as any violence that is a bit too realistic makes me not want to watch the rest of the film. If it looks too real or too-plausible, it’s sickens me, and I don’t find that as entertainment

It’s really disappointing that the director Daniel Goldhaber who made the memorable drama HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE is the director behind this and how unrealistic this film feels compared, especially to a previous film. When would think who made something much more stronger and original. as this feels like maybe the title was thought of first and they figured they’d fill in the rest later and this is the best that they could come up with as even when it tries to be Meta it doesn’t exactly work. Unfortunately, this is also a film. One would never call clever.

Grade: C-