JP Bradham’s Consumed deploys horror and tumultuous film language to showcase the frenzied mental scape of a character caught in the throes of grief and shopping. It is simultaneously committed to silence as denial in incidents both old and fresh, which eventually becomes a well of fear in its own right. As the film closes,… Continue reading Consumed: Serving Consumerism Plated on a Foundation of Grief
Tag: Private
Mayfly: Damming Charisma to Look at the Wreck Behind
Keith Andreen’s Mayfly lays bare the fallibility of glorious figures while graphing the ravaging work of grief. Twenty-seven minutes long, the film follows a self-help guru through his protracted, agonizing undoing at the hands of his private life. For the length of the film, it keeps him in a chokehold until he demolishes his public… Continue reading Mayfly: Damming Charisma to Look at the Wreck Behind
Ghoul: Living in Sweetened Horror for A Mother-Son Duo
Magnus Lyche’s 16-minute domestic violence drama Ghoul showcases the experience from the perspective of the child in the household. His sole line of defence, his mother, mediates it for him. As she turns their environment into a digestible fairytale for him—with the concomitant expectation of eventual salvation—the film lays out the powerlessness of it all. … Continue reading Ghoul: Living in Sweetened Horror for A Mother-Son Duo
Favorites: A List of Lost Favorites
Lauren Hoover-directed Favorites is an introspective drama where the past mingles with the present in a depiction of life as we live it within our minds. The protagonist, experiencing the slow disintegration of her relationship, remembers old lovers, finding big and small reflections scattered through her history with love. The screenwriter for the film, Mariasha… Continue reading Favorites: A List of Lost Favorites
Are You Awake?: Kinship in Dread and Paralysis in the Unnatural Everyday
Gabriel Caste’s Are You Awake? is an astute psychological drama that depicts routine dread with precision. Compressing time and history into a flat plane, the narrative does away with comprehensible temporality. Everything exists simultaneously and nothing has a dimension in history. With a face reminiscent of Patricia Arquette and Robin Wright, Ellyn Jameson’s performance as… Continue reading Are You Awake?: Kinship in Dread and Paralysis in the Unnatural Everyday
Between the Lines: A COVID-Era Musical-Comedy that Gets it Just Right
Dom Lee’s Between the Lines is a 15-minute musical comedy that bears the markers of the COVID era, in that it is a brazenly, determinedly joyful film, a pushback against the bleakness of isolation. Set against the backdrop of the threat of a library’s closure, an anxious Jane is tasked with making the crucial pitch… Continue reading Between the Lines: A COVID-Era Musical-Comedy that Gets it Just Right
Vanilla: Method Acting, Roleplaying, and How the Two Don’t Mix
Chase Pearson’s Vanilla, built as a classic sex comedy, uses its many twists and turns to deliver laughs that come right at the peak of tension, sexual and otherwise. Premised on a date that leads to kinky places, the film’s wild plot is not never-seen-before stuff but is original enough to earn the laughs it… Continue reading Vanilla: Method Acting, Roleplaying, and How the Two Don’t Mix
The Sikh Soldier: War Heroes and Colonial Victims
Joseph Archer and Sky Cheema’s 15-minute war drama The Sikh Soldier views the bleakness of heroism in the colonial context through the story of the eponymous Sikh soldier fighting in WW1. The soldier, against his mother’s better judgement, joins the war effort with towering optimism. The dream of war glory, money, and national sovereignty feels… Continue reading The Sikh Soldier: War Heroes and Colonial Victims
What We Did Yesterday: Replacing Vacuous Broad Strokes with Intricate Groundwork
Matt René’s What We Did Yesterday splits the narrative into three parts, each led by one of its three characters. The film uses visual cues and continuous movement than dialogue to develop individual narratives as the truth of the previous night waits to be seen. Opening on a coffee table cluttered with the remnants of… Continue reading What We Did Yesterday: Replacing Vacuous Broad Strokes with Intricate Groundwork
Trinou: A Quest for Life’s Vibrancy
Nejib Kthiri’s Trinou explores the inner life of a withdrawn, wheelchair-bound teenager in the Tunisian countryside, limited first by his body and then by his tense home life. With all walls closing in on him, dreams seem to be the breadth of possibilities for the boy. Over the course of the 15-minute film, Omar makes… Continue reading Trinou: A Quest for Life’s Vibrancy