Bad Hombres film poster
Bad Hombres
(Limited Theatrical Release & Streaming on VUDU, Jan. 26)
Luke Hemsworth appears as Donnie, a drug-dealing killer, who hires undocumented immigrants, Cesar (Diego Tinoco) and Alfonso (Hemky Madera), to dig holes in the desert. The pair don’t realize they are gravediggers for corpses of a drug-deal-gone-wrong, but they catch on once their lives are on the line. Alfonso’s criminal past grants him skills that Donnie and his gang hadn’t counted on. Cue cat-and-mouse bloodletting mixed with dark comedy. The film also stars Thomas Jane, Nick Cassavetes, Tyrese Gibson, and Paul Johansson.
Premiering at the 2023 Mammoth Film Festival (in Mammoth, CA), “Bad Hombres” won the Grand Jury Award and Achievement in Screenwriting. John Stalberg Jr. directs from his own concept penned as a screenplay by Rex New and Nick Turner. Name-brand cast members along with well-paced action, garnered a distribution deal with Screen Media Films for the movie’s release in select theaters while streaming on VUDU. (Lisa Miller)
The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra
(IndiePix DVD/Digital)
A young woman, exasperated by her lazy boyfriend, hauls a mattress into their new apartment. It’s 337 Days Before Birth, according to a cryptic title on screen; gradually, it we see that the tiny mold spot on the mattress is gestating into something previously unknown and soon to be born. South Korean director Syeyoung Park employs close-ups on textures of skin and mattress in his 2022 film, bloody corpuscular movements in the mattress’ innards (David Cronenberg?) and fast jumping edits to signify time’s passage—to Day of Birth and beyond as the danger spreads. The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra is a horror film the plays on anxiety about the unknown hazards of our toxic environment. (David Luhrssen)
The Seeding
(Limited Theatrical Release & Streaming on VOD, Jan. 26)
Seeing the stark, stunning landscape that becomes a man’s trap, it’s easy to imagine that writer-director Barnaby Clay encountered this small, four-sided canyon and thought, “This would make an ideal location for a horror.” And so this film begins with a photographer (Scott Haze), hiking into remote lands to capture a unique perspective on an eclipse. He sees something he hadn’t reckoned on; a toddler chewing on a human finger. He follows the lad, and before long the man becomes stranded in a canyon that houses a tumbledown cabin inhabited by an attractive woman (Kate Lyn Sheil). She appears unconcerned there’s no way out of this canyon so far off the grid. Teenage boys appear atop the rim, taunting the man. The woman dishes out her own psychological torture, promising to care for the man while ignoring his pleas to help him to leave. Pictures of the moon reveal time is passing as the man tries to comprehend his predicament. The unrated film contains some nudity and violence, but it’s the depiction of how easily we fall into a trap, that lingers. (Lisa Miller)
