All posts by Giles Edwards

Film major & would-be writer. 6'3". @gilesforyou (TwT)
Capsules

CAPSULE: HIM (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Justin Tipping

FEATURING: Tyriq Withers, Marlon Wayans

PLOT: After suffering a traumatic injury just before the draft, a star college football player attends a remote retreat to be mentored by his idol, who years ago suffered a similar setback before making an unlikely comeback.

Still from Him (2025)

COMMENTS:

Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.

Stamina, speed, and sacrifice: three elements you need to become the GOAT. Especially sacrifice. Football must be what drives you. Forget family, forget God. Everything for the game. Isaiah understands this—it’s why he ushered his team, The Saviors, to victory in eight Super Bowl championships. But Isaiah has grown old, and new blood must take the helm. Does this young rising star have what it takes?

And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

The parallel backgrounds of Isaiah (Marlon Wayons) and Cam (Tyriq Withers) are slammed on the screen, sports news-style, showboating the talent and lite psychosis of the fanatical athlete mind. Growing up, Cam watched Isaiah dominate the field, all under the relentless pressure from his own father to become HIM, to become the GOAT. Cycle forward a decade-and-a-half, and Cam is on the cusp of his first professional draft. Then one night, after practice, he ends up brained by a warhammer-wielding team mascot.

And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.

The bulk of the story unfolds within Isaiah’s remote compound, chronicling a week of Cam’s trials as he recovers from his injury while attempting to gain his idol’s favor. During that time things become strange—borderline weird, in fact. Mystical overtones abut sports satire: Isaiah’s wife is a cryptic marvel heading up a cavalcade of followers, enablers, psychos, and fools. HIM (all capitals, mind you) has smash-style to spare, and as it ratchets up the intensity, so it also ratchets a primordial kind of evil. I shall say no more on that point, save my observation that I’m not sure whether the finale went too far, or not far enough. Regardless, the talents behind HIM rise to the difficult challenge of providing me a third sports movie I can wholeheartedly recommend.

For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… director Justin Tipping’s Him is a strange film, in ways that go well beyond the surface-level observation that ‘American football horror movie’ is a pretty bizarre pitch… A trippy, giallo-inflected freakout that unabashedly portrays professional sport as a heathen ceremony of blood, greed, and power, the film is chiefly a showcase for Tipping’s off-the-leash stylistic excess. Does it make a lick of sense, either narratively or thematically? Not really. Is it weird, unsettling, and nightmarishly gorgeous? Definitely.”–Andre Wyatt, The Take-Up (contemporaneous)

HIM

HIM

  • Runtime: 97 minutes

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SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: TONY ODYSSEY (2025)

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Antônio Odisseia

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DIRECTED BY: Thales Banzai

FEATURING: Kelson Succi, Iraci Estrela

PLOT: After robbing his father’s restaurant, Tony runs off with his girl Ivy and they share a “paste”-fueled transdimensional journey.

Still from Tony Odyssey (2025)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Tony Odyssey is down-to-Earth dramedy meets high theological physics, with motorcade bunnies, a lusty ur-Mother, and a game show God amongst its otherworldly revelations.

COMMENTS: Tony hates reality. We first find him cleaning an uncooperative toilet in his family’s restaurant, slipping on a damp patch and landing his hands in something best left unmentioned. It’s worth mentioning that this restaurant seems to be nothing but a front for a drug (and firearms?) operation, run by Tony’s cold-hearted father and his one-legged brother. Being down a leg doesn’t stop the would-be Lothario from hitting on Tony’s girl, Ivy,  who’s popped by for a visit, snatching a firearm from a motorbike parked out front on her way in. Things then happen quickly: guns drawn, hostage taken, drugs stolen, and Tony and Ivy escape to a not-far-enough-away warehouse to take some of dad’s mind-bending chemicals.

Banzai’s dream blast has energy to spare, and does its best to keep the viewer unmoored. The opening credits spool over a craggy quarry, with a horse-drawn cart slowly making its way up the spiraling ruins of the access road. Sergione-y guitar licks thrum out a jagged, ambiguously Western tune, while the fonts for the credits evoke early ’80s computer text. Space and time are not our enemies—but they are not our friends, either. It is key that Tony manipulate these elements, and with his witchy friend Ivy, he unlocks a door. But where does it lead?

The short answer is: nowhere, and everywhere. The mind-altered pair drop a dark, gluey goo in their eyes, and find themselves in a taxi driven by a man who cannot remember his own name. Tony parts with a necklace of untold wealth to fly a boy’s kite, soaring at first into the air before jerkily crashing down. Desserts overflow at a chic boozery where a self-avowed Contrarian holds court, monologuing at length about how art means nothing any more, and that art patrons may as well just nail their money on the walls. Ivy’s and Tony’s fates diverge for a stretch, during which time Tony apparently dies, and after a brief wait in Hades’ check-in, has an awkward encounter with a bazonga’d matriarch. Watching violent milk porn, he is eventually pulled into the presence of God themselves.

This dream quest is a delightful affair, shot in a crisp black and white that renders the experience old-fashioned while oozing a vibrant surrealistic pop. Kelson Succi is perfect as the plebian dreamer, and  Iraci Estrela is the perfect foil as the down-to-earth occultist. The soundtrack pulsates jauntily, often performed by cool-cat jazz men on invisible instruments. It inspires thought, too, about many of the unknown and unknowable angles concerning fate, life, facsimile, and destiny. Are we all God’s avatars? What grand drama—or nonsense—is the end game? And how can we hope to control our reality when we exist in it at such a finite and arbitrary intersection? Who knows. Just dance like a bunny as you bend your mind to the rhythm of flickering lights.

Tony Odyssey has a worldwide distribution deal (excluding UK and Ireland) from Kaleidoscope Film Distribution, and should show up for viewing somewhere in the future.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…it’s rooted in the quite ordinary disappointment of a person, before the movie breaks apart, twists, and ultimately doesn’t bother to be polite or even make sense (and doesn’t need to).”–Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews

Miscellanea

SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: CARTOON CORNER (2026)

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Why, yes I watched thirteen films today…

Wan Wan (dir. Mayuko Kobayashi; 8 min.)—A kaleidoscopic grapeshot blast of vibrantly vague memories. I suspect this font of imagery—trees, water, pigeons, noodle pan, fireworks—flows directly from Mayuko Kobayashi’s memories, but there is a universality. Beginning with home-video of a matriarch, we dive into a series of child-drawings in constant motion. There’s also a cute dog.

Transitional Object (dir. Shayna Strype; 7 min.)—D’aww, that was adorable. Shayna Strype uses stop-motion, traditional, and a combination of the two animations to honor a girl’s stuffed toy as it watches over her through the years, before passing her along to the afterlife. Lo-fi synth keyboarding provides a chirpy, nostalgic soundtrack.

Play Fight! (dir. Katrina Larner; 8 min.)—There are countless gaps in my personal experience, and one reason I’m drawn to animated shorts is in order to fill those gaps. Herein, Katrina Larner explores the vagaries of ‘tween girl sleepovers, and the mental impact of homosexual preferences at that age. A 5th-wheel girl is dropped off for a night of party-playing, and so we observe a cavalcade of cacophonous color and craziness. A giant mother mother shoots a knife and fork from her eyes and pursues what she views as wayward behavior. But!, things wrap up well enough for our pentad of party people, ’cause it’s only a play fight.

blinks in mimi’s singing voice (dir. Natalie Xie; 6 min.)—Is this but an elaborate series of notebook doodles brought to life? Perhaps, but maybe not. I can’t say I understood just what this was or where it was going, but Natalie Xie kept my eyes occupied throughout as the image shifted from clusters of kitty faces to jumping jacks to desks, chairs, and birds. On its one-and-a-half second course across the screen, a green dot kept my rapt attention.

A Flame the Color of Air (dir. Emily Pelstring; 7 min.)—Words, lines, color, and voice all flow and spin across a black backdrop, shifting and never taking full form for long. Pelstring’s study of womanhood focuses on the ineffable, drawing from a medieval Continue reading SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: CARTOON CORNER (2026) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MATAPANKI (2026)

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DIRECTED BY: Diego Fuentes

FEATURING: Ramon Galvez, Antonia McCarthy, Rosa Peñaloza, Diego Bravo, Rodrigo Lisboa

PLOT: Punk kid Ricardo unlocks superpowers from a mysterious alcoholic admixture and reluctantly pursues the path of a superhero.

Still from Matapanki (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The punk DIY aesthetic goes quite a ways in making this one a bit different—but the apocalyptic, kaiju-scale showdown with the US prez takes it over the finish line.

COMMENTS: Punks and their punk movies. Jerky camera maneuvering, hand-painted ¡Poder! effects, naturalistic acting, boozing, cigarette-lighter huffing, amiable grandmothers… Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, and they can’t even afford to film in color!

Of course, I jest. (And I’m something of a square.) To be honest, this film is quite charming. Ricardo and his pals have a healthy social thing going: the cover charge at the club they frequent can be paid through second-hand books. All they’re trying to do is live their low-key party lives on their own terms. But as is always the case, the Man (in particular, the Gringo) wants to bring ’em down.

With an opener straight out of ‘s dark alchemy, Matapanki‘s punk cred is never in question, despite the feel-good throughline. The superhero storyline unspools in thrash time, taking somewhere under an hour (if you don’t include the credits). Viewers get a wallop of antiestablishmentarianism, with fast cuts and vibrant doodles whenever our hero (and later, the supervillain) pumps up the ¡Poder! Matapanki jouncily stumbles toward the finish line, keeping merely oddball throughout (with more than a few hints of Repo Man) until culminating with a BANG! when Super Punk Boy battles Super Neocon Gringo Man.

Take that, you square! And don’t you ever mess with our anarcho-drunken heroes again.

Matapanki does have a worldwide distribution deal with Italy’s Minerva Pictures, so it should become available to the general public in the nearish future.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a perfect rendition of a superhero flick made in the style of the cinema of transgression… Like a good punk song, it stuffs a lot of chaos into a very short running time…”–Micheal Talbot-Haynes, Film Threat (festival review)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNICORN BOY (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Matty Kiel

FEATURING: The voices of Matty Kiel, Maria Bamford, Sethword, Harold Perrineau, Cindy Paola, ,

PLOT: After a poorly thought out break-up and a concussion sustained in in a café bathroom, Matt travels to a unicorn dimension.

Still from Unicorn Boy (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Anyone who wondered what a mash-up of Hieronymus Bosch and Lisa Frank might look like need wonder no longer.

COMMENTS: Shamans of yore sought vision by pushing their bodies to extremes: employing drugs and self-privation in pursuit of higher awareness. Matt’s methods are softer, and manifest softer visions—ones of pastel bug- and fish-monsters fusing together in sexual pulsation, or uptight unicorn citizens grumbling about the profusion of rainbow vomit staining the roads of their “perfect” city. Mostly, though, Matt has visions of rainbow vomit, beginning with a sudden visitation from Prince Purpleton (perhaps the doofiest unicorn imaginable), who stomps onto Matt’s couch, spatters his pastel weirdness about, and disappears as abruptly as he appeared.

Unicorn Boy mixes equal parts anxiety and vibrant vomit, which is to say, there is a seemingly endless stream of each. Matt is working through some Things, and it is while trying to discuss these Things with his grandly moustachioed buddy Sethward that he himself becomes sick in a trendy café, escapes to the restroom, and probably endures brain damage. The remainder of the film follows his adventures in the unicorn world and his subsequent pursuits of further addlement through yoga to resolve the unicorn plot line.

I’ve long maintained that animation is at its best when it creates a reality above, beyond, or outside our own, and Matty Kiel doesn’t disappoint. Purpleton and the fellow denizens of a magical realm squish around their oddball business, fusing (or is it shunting?) with others, with the ever-present risk of blacklight-ready rainbow spew keeping us on our toes. The protagonist’s troubles are relatable, providing a recognizable emotional mush for which the technicolor flights of goo are a reasonable visual extension. His fantastical visions suffer as he does, suppressing their depressing desires lest a burst of violently colorful, demanding bugs spring forth from within. Even the unicorn realm demands  wholesomeness and positivity.

Unicorn Boy is a cringe-y melodrama, a slice of life, and therapy through narrative. Judging from the character names and video clips in the credits, Matt in 2016 evolves into Matty in 2023, having endured some small-bore (though impactful) troubles of the heart. From his mind’s black box he creates a cute-‘n-gross voyage of personal growth. And while its ultimate message of love and acceptance is nothing new, its means are rather unique. Matty Kiel, and their Matt-in-movie manifestation, line their path to wisdom with splotches of sparkly spew. Not classically shamanistic, perhaps, but it gets the job done.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Age 14+ Personal growth, rainbow-barfing unicorns in animated indie… For viewers who don’t like gross-out humor or surrealism, the imagery might be unpleasant—but that’s also the point, since even the characters call out how gross the land’s magic is.”— Monique Jones, Common Sense Media (contemporaneous)

Unicorn Boy [DVD]

Unicorn Boy [DVD]

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