A24 On The Rocks

In 2016, Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan premiered their first full length feature film called "Swiss Army Man" at Sundance Film Festival starring Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, Little Miss Sunshine, The Batman) and Daniel Radcliffe (the Harry Potter series). It was about a man named Hank intent on killing himself before he finds a farting corpse on the beach and a bag of cheese puffs....

For the A24 Rocks crew's 35th movie review, they take on the 2016 documentary "De Palma," directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. They also invite fellow postman and world-renowned Brian De Palma expert Ray Neeman onto the podcast, who has seen and lived De Palma's whole filmography. This documentary is an autobiographical look into every single Brian De Palma film (director...

Out of all the dystopian sci-fi future's we've seen in film, did you ever think you'd see one where people are turned into an animal if they can't find a significant other within 45 days? The Lobster (starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz) creates a world that writer’s Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou could only envision. David (played by Colin Farrell) is a lonesome man whose wife just le...

The Adderall Diaries is a 2016 Crime-Drama based off a autobiographical book by Stephen Elliott. Stephen Elliott is an author struggling with Adderall addiction when he is exposed as a fraud by his own father, the same man who beat him as a child, it isn't long before his life begins to implode. Through flashbacks from Elliott's childhood, we see his troubled adolescence and ponder how Elliott bec...

The A24 cult classic "Green Room" follows a D.C. punk band called “Ain't Rights" on a pacific northwest road trip, where financial problems force them to play at a less than savory Nazi skinhead bar. Shortly thereafter... a madhouse of terror ensues. Directed and written by Jeremy Saulnier while starring Anton Yelchin, Patrick Stewart, and Alia Shawkat: Green Room has turned into a A24 indie favor...

Trey Edward Shults became an acclaimed A24 director with indie favorites such as It Comes At Night and Waves, but he got his start on the big screen with the heartbreaking addiction drama Krisha. Starring longtime T.V. and movie actor Krisha Fairchild, Stults pulled from an amalgam of people in his own life to write this film that was funded from a kickstarter campaign. Krisha was also filmed in S...

"Remember" is a 2016 A24 suspense-thriller starring Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau about a Holocaust survivor with dementia on a mission to seek vengeance before he can no longer remember his life. Directed by Atom Egoyan and written by Benjamin August, we follow Zev Guttman throughout the U.S. and Canada as he rereads a letter to remind himself exactly who he must lay his vengeance upon. D...

Wouldst thou podcast listener like to live... deliciously? Then prepare your ears for an hour in a half trek into the New England wilderness with a film review of one of A24's most famous film's: The Witch. It birthed the career's of actress Anya Taylor-Joy and director Robert Eggers even though this 2016 Horror-Thriller and period piece didn't have the best treatment of babies. The Witch is consi...

A24's first distributed film of 2016 was the crime thriller "Mojave." Starring Garrett Hedlund and Oscar Isaac, this film follows a chaotic film director named Tom that decides to go on a drunken escapade in the desert. It isn't long before he runs into trouble in the form of an enigmatic drifter named Jack, which causes Tom's whole life to spiral. Written and Directed by William Monahan (writer o...

The A24 Rocks gang has now reviewed every A24 film from 2015, and you know what that means... IT'S AN AWARD SHOW! Join in as we discuss and vote on who will win an Oscar in six categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Screenplay. A24 On The Rocks will also be taking a break until January 2023, more than enough time...

A24's final film from 2015 garnered its most mainstream success in its three years of existence. Room, starring Brie Larson who won the academy award for best actress for her performance, is about a woman who had been abducted before birthing a child from her abductor and sexual assaulter Old Nick. Jacob Tremblay plays Jack, a child who only knows the 10x10 room that he and his mom have been force...

Written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Mississippi Grind is a movie about a lonely and depressed gambling addict named Gerry (played by Ben Mendelsohn) who meets a charismatic wandering soul at a poker tournament in Iowa named Curtis (played by Ryan Reynolds). After a night out where Curtis and Gerry get along famously: we figure out Gerry owes money to a bookie, he hates his job, and...

It's Halloween week, and the A24 Rocks gang has quite a spooky review for you: Dark Places starring Charlize Theron and Christina Hendricks. In the 25th film A24 distributed, was this the creepshow you wanted? That's ok, there is still plenty of great horrors to be had. Satanism and true crime is the theme for this film, amongst things like Chloe Grace Moretz convincing you to runaway with her to...

In 1996 following the release of the critically-acclaimed post-modernist Magnus Opus "Infinite Jest," Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky (played by Jesse Eisenberg) set out to interview author David Foster Wallace (played by Jason Segel). David Foster Wallace nears the end of his book tour and is dealing with newfound fame and respect from the literary world. Over those days, Lipsky finds a per...

The first documentary distributed by A24 was Amy, a poetic tragedy of a film that documents the life and music of British singer/songwriter/pop icon Amy Winehouse. Directed by Asif Kapadia, Amy went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards. Kapadia decided to mostly use found footage to depict Winehouse's life, and give fans and viewers a window into what she was...

Today the A24 Rocks gang reviews what may be the worst A24 film of all time. They've said this before, but this time they mean it. Barely Lethal is a 2015 action comedy film directed by Kyle Newman (director of Fanboys and several Taylor Swift music videos), and written by John D'Arco (writer of Trolls: The Beat Goes On and TrollsTopia). It's packed with the star-studded cast of Hailee Steinfeld,...

Slow West was a 2015 A24 Western film written and directed by punk rock star John Maclean. Taking place in 1870 Colorado, young Jay Cavandish (played by Kodi Smit-Mcphee) treks into the wild wild west with help from a bounty hunter named Silas (played by Michael Fassbender) to find an unrequited love from his homeland of Scotland. On the way, he encounters all the dangers and thrills of the anarch...

The A24 Rocks gang reviews its 20th film, and perhaps one of the best A24 films of all time: Ex Machina. Directed and written by Alex Garland (director of Men and Annihilation), this academy award-winning Science Fiction flick is about a programmer named Caleb (played by Domhnall Gleeson) who works for a Google-reminiscent company called Bluebook. Caleb wins a raffle to meet Bluebook CEO Nathan Ba...

In Cut Bank, Montana (supposedly the coldest town in the country), Dwayne McLaren (played by Liam Hemsworth) is sick of small town life and devises a money making scheme with local mailman Georgie Wits (played by Bruce Dern) to earn a quick buck and get out of town. Dwayne quickly finds out that getting away with this scheme won't be all that easy. Guest-starring Billy Bob Thornton, John Malkovich...

In the second A24 film of 2015, actors Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are Josh and Cornelia, a young 40s couple with no children dealing with aging and a stagnant professional. Josh, a documentary filmmaker that hasn't released a film in years, meets Jamie (performed by Adam Driver) and Darby (performed by Amanda Seyfried) at a class he's teaching. When Josh and Cornelia get dinner with Jamie and Dar...

The first film distributed by A24 in 2015 was Son of a Gun starring Brenton Thwaites, Ewan McGregor, and Alicia Vikander. Directed and written by Julius Avery, this Australian crime-drama follows JR, a recently imprisoned 19 year old kid. JR meets Brendan through a mutual love of chess. Brendan, a hardened criminal and bank robber, offers his protection in exchange for help when JR gets out of pri...

In this special episode these A24 nerds talk to Brandon Johnston from The Martini Shot, a fellow film reviewer and mixologist who makes unique cocktails for every film he reviews. Brandon shows them how to make a "sex on the farm," inspired by the A24 film X and the cocktail "sex on the beach." Now that every film from 2013-2014 is reviewed: these cinephiles give their favorite film and least favo...

It's 1981 New York City and Ronald Reagan (the actor) is President, you own a heating-oil business and your oil trucks keep getting robbed... what do you do? This film may have the answer. Starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year is a period crime-drama that explores the inner workings of the oil industry in the early 80s. The film centers around Abel, an immigrant and busine...

In this suspense-thriller starring Ryan Reynolds and Rosario Dawson, The Captive focuses on a dad and mom whose daughter has been abducted by a pedophile ring. Eight years after the abduction, a police unit tasked with taking down pedophile rings have found a clue that proves she is still alive. But will the family and the cops overcome a wealthy and powerful group of child sex traffickers? These...

If we were to tell you Martin Scorsese produced another gangster movie with Ray Liotta in it, what would you think? Would you probably not think it’d be one of the worst gangster movie's of all time? Well then, you’d be wrong. Revenge of the Green Dragons is a 2014 film based on a true story about a Chinese gang named the Green Dragons that wrecked havoc on Queens in the 80s and 90s. Directed by A...