INTERVIEW: Aaron Moorhead, director/cinematographer & Justin Benson director/writer of The Endless

As someone who loved Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson‘s Spring to the point of seeking out everything else they had done before that point, hearing about a new work debuting at Tribeca got me excited to see what they would deliver. My assumption was that it was the Aleister Crowley picture they spoke about when I interviewed them last year—I was wrong. While that discovery wasn’t surprising considering how long projects gestate, it was shocking to discover The Endless proved to be a sequel to their first feature collaboration Resolution.…

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TFF17 REVIEW: The Endless [2018]

“Please, be quiet” To resolve is to settle, finding the determination to do something rather than simply wait for something to happen to you. A resolution isn’t therefore a firm ending. On the contrary, it serves to provide beginnings. That decision has the potential to set you onto a path towards freedom either from the danger of outside forces or the complacency rendering you immobile within. So to look upon the conclusion of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson‘s debut feature (as a tandem) isn’t to relinquish hope. The being—their riff…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: The Alchemist Cookbook [2016]

“This human form, which I was born, I now repent” I have no clue why Sean (Ty Hickson) messes with the titular book in Joel Potrykus‘ The Alchemist Cookbook. He doesn’t seem to care about money while living as a hermit inside a hidden trailer deep within the woods—bill collectors “no longer owning him”—so gold is out of the question. It might be for an elixir of immortality, his ritualistic incantations recalling satanic verse in search of dealing with a demonic presence that only pentagrams and dead animals hope to…

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INTERVIEW: Aaron Moorhead, director/cinematographer & Justin Benson director/writer of Spring

Sometimes the festival experience has a way of making you overrate films. The excitement of seeing things early with like-minded individuals, listening to filmmakers talk before and after their screenings, and the general festival aura are hard to separate from the work itself. So I won’t lie and say I didn’t re-watch Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson‘s Spring—my favorite of TIFF 2014—with a little trepidation in case the memory proved grander than reality. 109-minutes later, however, I realized I might have actually underrated it. This supernatural, sci-fi, horror, romantic drama…

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REVIEW: Resolution [2013]

“They said they were researching folktales” ***Possible Spoilers*** Films like Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead‘s Resolution can’t help but get under your skin and risk never letting go. Any issues you may have about production quality, plot holes, pacing, and performances fall away because of one genius detail planting the seeds of curiosity. Then, when you attempt to discover answers, inspiration, or whatever else might help shine a light on exactly what these filmmakers created, the rabbit hole opens wider to reveal an internet puzzle still intact today courtesy of…

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