Terrisha Kearse’s bizarre comedy Small Talk is a difficult film. The inverted Wonderland that screenwriter Farelle Walker envisions is deliberately ornate, turning a sharply critical and insightful eye on the nuances of oppression, specifically when that oppression is internalized into the consciousness of the oppressed. A motley of insufferable characters (all persons of colour except… Continue reading Small Talk: Big Subjects Disguised Under Uneasy Laughs
Category: Reviews
Two Little Boys: Brutal Demonstration Of The Effects Of Homophobia
Neither of the leads in Farbod Khoshtinat’s Two Little Boys is someone you can root for. The screenplay creates characters that are so deeply flawed and so far gone in their pursuit, they elicit only pity. The titular two little boys are high schoolers Josh and Tyler, the bullied and the bully. In the introduction,… Continue reading Two Little Boys: Brutal Demonstration Of The Effects Of Homophobia
Remnants: On The Nature Of Untouched Grief
Evers Pund’s Remnants, through the metaphor of purgatory, delves into grief and the pain of nostalgia. To demonstrate, it examines a motherless boy, grown into a young man, haunted by his childhood and the mother he lost. In the introduction, we see Milo (Cameron Eisner) stagger towards suicide, tormented by things we know nothing of… Continue reading Remnants: On The Nature Of Untouched Grief
Everything Is Upstream: Cathartic Portrayal Of Dreams
One of the first things you notice in Everything Is Upstream is the old tape noise. The nostalgia it evokes is in a way everything this film is about. But not quite. Martin Ponferrada’s animated documentary focuses on dreams, on the surface. But the four Buddhist practitioners who narrate some of their most emotionally significant… Continue reading Everything Is Upstream: Cathartic Portrayal Of Dreams
Sunshine Periphery: Treating Introspection With Surrealism
Eric J. Liddle’s second short Sunshine Periphery is in the same surrealist vein as his first, Mister Swolo. What distinguishes his second is the sheer magnitude it tackles, exploring a bewildering and as Liddle describes, fevered dream of a man at a crossroads in his life. Two things stick out about Sunshine Periphery from the… Continue reading Sunshine Periphery: Treating Introspection With Surrealism
Buttons: Feel-Good Holiday Film
Eric Andresen’s Buttons is a tearjerker, deliberately so, and despite its potential, turns itself into the kind of mush that is hard to enjoy without considerable suspension of disbelief. Starring a broke father and daughter duo, who are so poor that they cannot afford heat on a wintry Thanksgiving, the film also adds in another… Continue reading Buttons: Feel-Good Holiday Film
Le Choix De Sofia: On The Two-Fold Effects Of Capitalism
Alain Deslongchamps’s Le Choix De Sofia (English: Sofia’s Choice, interesting choice of title) runs a double narrative, wildly different from each other on the surface: a marketing specialist fatigued by her commitment to the job, and the worldwide devastations of climate change. Yet the metaphorical comparison that Deslongchamps draws (rather skilfully) is a sensible one.… Continue reading Le Choix De Sofia: On The Two-Fold Effects Of Capitalism
Like Animals: The Inescapable Hells Of Happy Childhoods
Leland Montgomery’s Like Animals is a tense family drama revolving around three sisters who live in their childhood home and their brother who comes in from LA to announce that their life plans are about to be shelved indefinitely. The characters are first introduced on the day of their mother’s funeral. Irene’s internal monologue serves… Continue reading Like Animals: The Inescapable Hells Of Happy Childhoods
Distance: The Bittersweet Poignance Of Toilet Paper Today
On the subject of COVID-19, during COVID-19 (production followed strict guidelines), it goes without saying that Jesse Edward’s Distance is a timely film. Which sometimes hits and sometimes misses, but that’s a story for another paragraph. At the core of Jesse Edward’s Distance is the lemonade spirit, i.e., it turns gloom and even doom into an… Continue reading Distance: The Bittersweet Poignance Of Toilet Paper Today
Push Up: On Love Within Hate, And Vice Versa
Bryan Enk’s Push Up is named, on the surface, on one endearing moment between a couple: one drunkenly asks the other to do pushups and he complies, enthusiastic and affectionate. On the surface, nothing much happens in the film or to its two characters, Matt and Maggie. And yet this is a moving film, brimming… Continue reading Push Up: On Love Within Hate, And Vice Versa