“The Maple Leaf will prevail” Sometimes a film can be successful as nothing more than a good time; a point driven home by the local Buffalo production Bravo Sierra. It’s a satire of the war in Iraq that is so over-the-top you can’t help but become part of the joke. While the first few minutes [...]

“The Michael Jordan of competitive fish eating” Not to belittle the comparison of Badfish to the films of Christopher Guest that the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival’s program contains, but that is some lofty thinking. The movie being a faux documentary is an accurate similarity, yet what makes the works of Guest successful is that they [...]

“All I can do is drive” The eight-minute short film Cadillac, by Nathan Lewinski, is a sentimental portrait of the memory of a man who has left this earth. Beginning without dialogue, an older gentlemen turning on his Caddy while still in the garage, I thought that maybe my cynical mind was playing tricks on [...]

“A bitch named Leroy Brown” By far one of the highlights during my first day at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival, Emily Johnson’s senior film project for the Savannah College of Art and Design, St. Gertrude, is a gorgeous little film. Right from the beginning, during a sequence that sees a family in mourning, as [...]

“Did you have pygmy zygotes?” I really didn’t know what to expect when Becky Lane’s short film Hens & Chicks began. It opens up to show young Hanna and Marco on their way home from school. You assume the two have whatever kind of crush one can at the age on each other, and see [...]

“I just don’t know how they got so orange” It’s tough to create a film that’s only four and a half minutes long that can resonate the same way a feature can with all its character development and plot progression. One way around the time frame is to just make it a fun little bit [...]