The art of the short film is one that's far from the mainstream. They are by definition obscure. But with the internet revolution, filmmakers with no budget at all can shoot and cut a satisfactory short (if the film works, which depends on the writers and directors.
I'd like to focus on some short films, mostly horror shorts.
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Thursday, June 13, 2019
The Final Entry THE TOP TEN films of 2018!
Here we are! I won't pontificate as I usually do before an entry like this since the suspense is killing you. So here they are.
9) "Disobedience" - Sebastian Lelio
Sebastian Lelio's follow-up to 2017's Oscar-winning "A Fantastic Woman" is every inch as good as its predecessor, maybe even better. When her father dies, Ronit (Rachel Weisz) is called back to her Orthodox Jewish home. She gets there only to be confronted by Esti (Rachel McAdams,) the love of her youth. With their affair reignited, they are once again faced with the question of how to respond to their conservative community. The real drama is between the two women and Esti's husband Dovid (Alessandro Nivola.) What pulls your heartstrings most in this film is the contrast between Esti and Ronit's joyous homecoming and watching this good man's heartbreak in real time as he slowly realizes what's going on.
8) "Beautiful Boy" - Felix van Groeningen
7) "The Favourite" - Yorgos Lanthimos
"The Favourite" demonstrates plainly that sexual politics are the most efficient to manipulate. They're also the most malicious. I don't know what I enjoyed watching more, the two vindictive-to-the-point-of-sadistic women vying for power and the queen's affections or just how delighted Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman) seems to watch it all play out in front of her. It's a very dark comedy that gleefully celebrates what it really means to be cruel.
Oh my God, did this movie throw the template for horror films into a bonfire! "Hereditary" has no rules. Every character is vulnerable and the evil has no restraints and that's what makes it so horrifying. The film is so terrifying that you want to turn away but feels forced to face it just to see where the hell it goes.
5) "Hotel Artemis" - Drew Pearce
Bizarre for the sake of itself can be entertaining, but in the end, it's not a solid foundation for a film. Lucky "Hotel Artemis" earns the right, through strong stories and well-written characters, to be bizarre as it wants to be. A healer known as "the Nurse" (Jodie Foster) runs an underground makeshift hospital at a former hotel. The characters who come to her are desperate, naturally. But there are strict rules for anybody needing to be stitched-up. Writer/director Drew Pearce takes us on a ridiculously fun ride through a single night at the Armetis when the rules are for shit.
4) "Cold War" Pawel Pawlikowski
If you disagree with me that "Cold War" is one of the best films of the year, you have to concede that it's certainly the most beautiful. Director Pawel Pawlikowski and Cinematographer Lukasz Zal were nominated for Oscars for their work on this film. But good looks can only get you so far if you don't have a good story with solid characters. "Cold War" has both. We follow Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) chasing each other through the fifties both behind the Iron Curtain and on this one. They're first separated in a self-sabotaged escape from occupied Poland. After that, they come across each other every once in a while, longing to be reunited. "Cold War" is more than a celebration of impossible love though. There's the simple joy of life in every frame.
3) "Border" - Ali Abbasi
Most years, "Border" would easily take the top spot as the best film of the year. The fact that it's only number three is just a testament to how brilliant Boots Riley's and Anne Ramsay's offerings were. Tina (Eva Melander) is a Swedish customs officer with an aptitude for sniffing out all sorts of smugglers and criminals. She also has a physical deformity that makes her feel less than human. Then Vore ( Eero Milonof,) someone with the same deformity but incomparably high confidence comes along, questioning everything Tina had come to assume over her life. The film is really about monsters and how they are defined. We learn along with Tina that a deformity does not define a devil.
2) "You Were Never Really Here" - Anne Ramsay
If "We Need to Talk About Kevin" was Ramsay's "Reservoir Dogs" then "You Were Never Really Here" is her "Pulp Fiction." Lynne Ramsay's follow up to her disturbing 2011 masterpiece "We Need to Talk About Kevin" became iconic instantly when the film was released. She attempts to study and submit the psyche of a self-loathing, violent revenge-seeker and she nails it to the wall. She understands that the source of Joe's (Joaquin Phoenix) compulsion to rescue innocents and murder wrong-doers is an underlying sense of helplessness he's had beaten into him since he was a child. "YouWere Never Really Here" is basically a celebration of righteous violence and boy, is it glorious!
And here we are – the greatest film of 2018!
1) "Sorry to Bother You" - Boots Riley
With "Sorry to Bother You," Boots Riley delivers what is most likely the greatest dark comedy so far this century. Aside from the morbidity that glues the whole thing together, we're also looking at rare, biting and important satires you'll ever see. Desperate for money and employment, Cassius Green, a.k.a Cash (LaKieth Stanfield,) takes a job as a telemarketer. He quickly learns that the key to doing the job well, to pull down those fat commission checks, is to put on his white voice. His numbers skyrocket and get the attention of corporate. After that, Cash slowly sells off his soul, piece by piece as he repeatedly compromises his sense of ethics. In the end, Cash finds himself essentially, a slave trader. Finally, the powderkeg explodes as we see the truly sadistic underside of corporate America, our citizens' lackadaisical response to true evil and just how far a grassroots revolution can go.
Monday, April 1, 2019
The First Entry Concerning the Best Films of 2018 - Worth Mentioning
Bienvenue, here's where I start talking about the best films of 2018. There will be three lists.
First one, this list right here, is for films which are more than worth mentioning, but didn't happen to make it on the Top Ten or Runners-Up lists. Good but not damn good enough. But seriously, these are great films.
The second list will be dedicated to the runners up, the films which are worthy of the Top Ten but because ten is a finite number, some just had to go.Then, the climax of it all – The TOP TEN films of 2018. (Pause for cheers, pause for applause.)
Got it? Good.
So here's the first of the three lists – Films From 2018 That Were More Than Worth Mentioning.
"Wildlife" shows us the truly devastating divorce has on children. I haven't seen a film brave enough to examine this problem in quite some time.
"Vice" has been called a cheap political parody comparing the performances to that of the cartoonish farce one would see in an SNL sketch and I will say it's a sneaky film. That is an unfair example to make. You'll see that "Vice" is much more than that when you watch it. It's an (dare I say?) important film, required viewing for anyone interested in politics.
"Halloween" is a more than capable return to the classic horror franchise. Michael Meyers is back, but so is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) with a vengeance. It's wonderful to see how prepared she is now and how she matches him blow-for-blow and pain-for-pain.
"Halloween" is a more than capable return to the classic horror franchise. Michael Meyers is back, but so is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) with a vengeance. It's wonderful to see how prepared she is now and how she matches him blow-for-blow and pain-for-pain.
The description of "The Tale" may sound like a high-financed Lifetime TV movie. It follows a woman (Laura Dern) on her journey to confront the man who sexually abused her as a teen. The plot sounds trite but "The Tale" goes deeply inside of the long-lasting psychological effects of sexual abuse blowing past any other I've seen. It's damning and dares you to look away. It's harsh and sickening, just as it should be.
"Bohemian Rhapsody
" really surprised the hell out of me. I don't normally enjoy bio-pics and I've never been much of a Queen fan, but this movie was just explosive. It made me feel connected to Freddy Mercury.
"Mary Poppins Returns" is not as good as the original, how could it be? So let's not compare and just talk about "Mary Poppins Returns" on its own merits. Aside from the fantastic direction, choreography and score, this film essentially works because of the charm of Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
"Soni" is more than heartbreaking, it brings to light a relatively downplayed human rights issue in a country that claims to be the "world's largest democracy." Soni (Geetika Vidya Ohyan) is a detective in India persecuted for pushing back too hard against sexual assault crime. When attacked, her superior officer tells her how reckless it is to fight off a potential rapist. The sexual politics in India desperately needs to change. Watch this movie and I assure you, you'll agree.
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*I should make a note about what films qualify for which year. For example, last year I had "The Death of Stalin" on my list for one of the best films of 2017. Then this year, many critics had it on their top ten lists from this year. Imagine my surprise. I saw it in 2017 and IMDb has it listed it to have it been released in 2017. (And yes, this lovely and disturbing black comedy was on last year's list.)
Confusion yes but there's an easy explanation. The official dates listed are when the films were released in the US. So, another film I have in my top ten, (not telling – spoilers) is listed as released in 2017 but actually came out in theatres in 2018. So my rule of thumb now is to go by the US. release date and not a festival showing or an international release date.
Conversely, I ought to tell you about another film, Lars von Trier's bloody and profound "The House That Jack Built." I thought about putting it on my list this year because it was released in US theatres in December. However, as you may know, the film was quickly pulled on account of the shock and offensiveness felt by normal people. So since the wide release has been moved to this June, I'm going to treat it as if it were released in 2019.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
The Second Entry Concerning the Best Films of 2018 - Runners Up
Welcome back consistently confused moviegoer! We're getting closer to where I'll inform you which films are the finest so you don't have to discern for yourself because thinking is hard and you deserve a break. So let's take a look at the runners up of 2018. These are the upstanding films worthy of a place on any critic's TOP-TEN list. But ten is a finite number and I just loved ten other films than I liked a bit more than these. I've put this list in alphabetical order so as not to play favorites.
"A Quiet Place" is a quiet masterpiece. There's no other way of saying it. The pervasive silence pulls this terrible sense of dread together. It's one of the most brilliant horror films of late. It's tense throughout with a wonderfully concealed villain.
"BlacKkKlansman" didn't quite make my top ten list, but it's every bit as relevant as Spike Lee claims. Yes, this is an incredibly ambitious film and most directors would not be nearly be up to the task of putting it together. But Lee balances humor, anger and self-righteousness perfectly.
"Black Panther" achieves what nobody would have thought possible. It's a social commentary with primarily black characters on race relations and black-on-black violence, and it's an audaciously determined comic book movie. It's also entertaining as hell, so it works on several levels, doesn't it?
"Eighth Grade" harshly brings us back to our adolescent years and reminds us just how awkward we felt. We can also clearly see the cruelty pervasive among students, subtly encouraged by the teachers and principal.
"The Hate U Give" startles and grabs you demanding you join this visceral experience. The problem we have of police brutality and corruption needs as much light shone on it as possible. Starr (Amandla Stenberg) is a girl caught between two worlds. Her parents have enrolled her in an esteemed and private (white) school but she lives in a black neighborhood. When she witnesses a police shooting, she is pulled into a dangerous situation.
"I Kill Giants" is the story about a lonesome little girl who has just lost her mother and is coping by imagining monsters for her to defeat. She just doesn't know what to do without her mom and she lashes out, leaving only her older sister, a school counselor and a new friend who just moved in next door willing to help her. As much as this film focuses on this heartbroken child, it's about the journey of these three people desperately wanting to help this girl and wondering if they're up to the task.
"Let the Sunshine In" is the perfect romantic comedy, if you like that sort of thing. I usually don't but damn, I loved this movie. Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) is on an expansive quest for true love. It evades her, leaving us to wonder if it's them or if it's her or if true love even exists in her world.
"The Miseducation of Cameron Post" follows Cameron (Chloe Grace Moretz,) a gay teenager who, when caught making love with her girlfriend, is checked into a Christian conversion camp. Watching Cameron getting beaten down is as sad as the delusions and the quiet contradictions the leaders of the camp live with and teach by. You'll feel as bad for the staff as you will for these poor kids. (Well, almost as bad. Or just a bit bad. Maybe.)
"Overlord" is a treat for anybody who loves B-movies. It starts out as a perfectly serviceable WWII thriller, but then descends into a story involving scientific experiments and monsters. I just sat there with a huge grin planted on my face. "Overlord" easily won my undying affection.
"The Other Side of the Wind" is a joyous dream of what filmmaking can be. Yes, it's damning to today's Hollywood system, but it invokes a strong hope about how far art can take you. One of the best film-about-films I've seen, plus watching John Huston is just hypnotic.
"Won't You Be My Neighbor?" does more than make us feel nostalgic. It reminds us of the importance of truly relating to children as Fred Rogers effortlessly makes a connection with children everywhere. Watching it, I wondered whether or not this generation of children will breed more psychotics just because of his absence. He may have been that important. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" would have been my #eleven had I been willing to lengthen my TOP-TEN list.
Coming in the next couple of days – THE TOP TEN FILMS OF 2018!
Saturday, March 16, 2019
A Quiet Place - John Krasinski (2018)
All my life, I've associated fear with cinema. I don't know how much of that fear came from growing up in the era of Tobe Hooper's "Poltergeist," Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street," etc. The boy-into-donkey sequence in "Pinnochio" traumatized me as did the trailer of "Poltergeist" which they played before "E.T." Children are easy to scare, at least I sure as hell was, but as we mature we become jaded, desensitized.But once that element of menace is established, our throats are in the hands of these storytellers, we're at their mercy. To genuinely terrify grown-ups, filmmakers have to work hard to fill us with that much-desired dread. So many turn to gore a lazy response. There are much better ways to successfully thrill, even terrify, horror movie fans. The element of sound is a time-honored method of injecting that bit, turning a bore into an experience where we find ourselves holding our breath.
Right at the start of John Krasinski's "A Quiet Place" it's made clear that nobody here is safe. It's a world where humans are hunted. These blind terrors can hear anything, any small noise and that's how they find their prey, for food or for sport, it doesn't really matter. They can't see, but they don't have to. Their ears are that sensitive and the hunters are that fast.
The Abbot family, with three children just like any family you might come across. In the opening sequence, the Aboots strip a small grocery store/pharmacy for whatever food and medical supplies they need. When the youngest child of the family if he can take a toy, Lee Abbot (John Krasinski) gives it to him, putting a finger against his lips, warning the child to play with it quietly.Of course, there are other Abbot children. One sister, too young to grasp the gravity of their situation but old enough to take batteries off the shelf to power up a toy. Later, the child turns the toy on, setting off flashing lights and loud sirens, violating the primary rule of survival. What happens next is some of the tightest seconds in recent memory. So now the Abbot family shares a trauma.
Flash forward one year. We can see from Lee's scavenged newspapers' headlines that these creatures have taken the entire planet. That they are indestructible. That they are the end of the world.The Abbot family still lives in silence and fear. Lee's wife, Evelyn Abbot (Emily Blunt) is expecting a baby which is problematic, to say the least. How the hell could a family survive with a baby? They have managed to keep their children silent, but how can one expect that from an infant?
The rest of the film follows what should have been a typical day for the Abbots in this hopeless, new reality - how they find their food, how they contact their neighbours, how they manage to stay alive. How they learn to enjoy life while walking on a tightrope.
One thing more needs to said about this film - what separates "A Quiet Place" apart from other horror films is that the focus is not only on the monsters but its characters. We come to deeply care for the Abbot family.
"A Quiet Place," effectively pins down an atmosphere of un-breathable fear and epic panic right at the start. Krasinski takes us to a place where making a sound, even a small one, could be fatal. The premise takes us to a malevolent place, how could anybody survive?
Sunday, February 24, 2019
The Oscars – Who Will Win, Who Ought To Win and Those Who Were Simply Screwed – Part 1: Who Were Left Out, Proving that Justice is Only an Abstract theoretical idea
We've already gone through which films will win and which ones ought to. So all the fanfare I can muscle from my PC, please enjoy – Which Films and Performances Were Criminally Overlooked
Best Picture – Sorry to Bother You
Yes, this has been a great year for black movies and black filmmakers. We had "The Hate U Give," "Black Panther," and "BlacKkKlansman."
"The Hate U Give" gives us a visceral picture of what is happening right now on our streets, in this world, shown to us through the eyes of an innocent."
"Black Panther" came out and transformed the shallow messages in comic-book films to a legitimate tool for social change.
But one offering this year by Boots Riley, a first-time filmmaker was superior to the aforementioned films in every way. "Sorry to Bother You" is the film that shows us what America is becoming with wit, a scathing scream out to grab our attention and dares his audience to choose a side – those who ignore the way Americans are changing for the worse and those who can see our country's true face.
Sebastian Lellio's "Disobedience"
Sebastian earned the attention of the world film community with 2017's "A Fantastic Woman." "Disobedience" builds on the themes he'd already established. The story of a rekindled love affair put away for years shines as a powerfully emotional drama where everything is at stake for each of those caught in this love triangle. Watch this film and I dare you not to cry. Go ahead, just try it.
Best Director – Anne Ramsay
Ramsey should've been recognized.for her taut, unsettling thriller "You Were Never Really Here," a frantic and disturbing film about the relationship justice has with violence. I want to proclaim Boots Riley the greatest filmmaker alive right now, but he needs to start a body of work and make sure he makes it clear to the wind that he's more than a true artist, he's also a force to be reckoned with. Ramsay has given us one masterpiece – "We Need to Talk About Kevin." With "You Were Never Really Here," she cements her place among great filmmakers.
Best Supporting Actor – Allesandro Nivola
Allesandro Nivola shows us true heartbreak looks and feels like. Rabbi Dovid the tortured man when his wife's former lover, a woman from their past comes to town. He's forced to helplessly stand there, caught between lovers, his wife, and their childhood friend, in Sebastian Lellio's "Disobedience." The one thing we're sure of when watching the film is that no matter how this all shakes out, somebody's going to be left alone with a broken heart.
Friday, February 22, 2019
The Oscars – Who Will Win, Who Ought To Win and Those Who Were Simply Screwed – Part 2: Who Should Win
Okay, we've covered which films are the most likely to take home Oscar gold. But which movies are actually deserving? Who SHOULD win?
Best Picture – "BlacKkKlansman"
Spike Lee's "BlacKkKlansman" may not be a sweeping epic (have you ever wondered why film critics use the word "sweeping" so much? Meh. When in Rome) like "Roma," the frontrunner this year, but it's the only film, with bigger balls than both "Black Panther" and the dark sex comedy "The Favourite."
I would really like to see Spike Lee honored at last.
Best Director – Pawel Pawlikowski
This one is easy. My pick doesn't have a chance in hell, but he sure deserves it. The cards are stacked against him, but putting away showbusiness politics and other factors, if there were any justice in the universe, the Oscar would unquestioningly go to Pawel Pawlikowski for "Cold War," a gift from God to the world.
Best Cinematography – Lukasz Zal
If God would intervene here, this honor would go to Lukasz Zal's "Cold War. It's one of those few films in which you could disregard story and characters and just watch at beautiful images as they are shown. Every frame of this work of art is a masterpiece.
Best Supporting Actor – Adam Driver
"BlacKkKlansman" has so much going for it that it's hard to give one performance too much credit. But Driver brings something special to the table. He turns what could've been just a standard cop role into an introspective detective who is wonderful to watch as he brings just the right amount of machismo to the table.
Best Actress – Olivia Colman
None of these actresses stand a chance against Glenn Close this year. I think pretty much everybody has accepted that.
However, if I had my druthers, Olivia Colman would win for her turn as Queen Anne in the hilarious and dark comedy, "The Favourite." The film is so damn clever and subversive. Colman shines as the object of two different women's obsession. She's lovers with them both and seems to delight in egging on their cruel rivalry. She's not above "I like it when she puts her tongue in me."
Best Actor – Willem Dafoe
If you saw "Eternity's Gate" you may already agree with me that Willem Dafoe deserves the trophy for his wonderful portrayal of Vincent Van Gough. The Academy has honored him before with plenty of nominations, but no gold this year. He's made so much of contribution to cinema, building up a reputation for choosing films that nobody else could've made their own like "Antichrist," "eXistenZ," "Shadow of the Vampire" and of course, "The Last Temptation of Christ."
His depiction here of Van Gough is as lovely as it is dark. He reminds us of the profound beauty of an artist in the context of his life, his neurosis and his crippling (and ultimately fatal) depression.
How a man who saw the world as oppressive and hostile and still find beauty everywhere, giving us the most gorgeous painting in world history, is unspeakably moving.
Tomorrow, we'll talk about the movies that got screwed out of any nominations whatsoever. I'll leave you will a bit of evidence as to why Adam Driver should win the prize for Best Supporting Actor.
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