REVIEW: Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall [2013]

“I’ll get out of here one of these days. In a box.” Born George William, PFC “Jack” Hall served four years in the military during WWII, was a POW, and ultimately found his way back home. Unable to shake what he saw and did in war, the feeling to kill anyone who crossed him remained. So, when his youngest son hung himself after battling drug addiction since the age of fourteen, the chance for revenge was too much to ignore. Hall came across the dealer that hooked his son bragging…

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REVIEW: The Voorman Problem [2013]

“Release?” It’s an Oscar nominated short film and yet I thank The Voorman Problem not for its entertaining wit or Martin Freeman‘s outburst of hilarity at its end, but instead for it cementing my need to start reading David Mitchell. Yes, the author of Cloud Atlas is the main inspiration behind director Mark Gill and cowriter Baldwin Li‘s movie courtesy of it being an adaptation of an excerpt from the novel number9dream. Detailing the encounter of a psychiatrist named Dr. Williams (Freeman) and an imprisoned patient who believes he is…

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REVIEW: Pitääkö mun kaikki hoitaa? [Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?] [2013]

“Were you styling your beard?” You’ve probably heard these words before: Pitääkö mun kaikki hoitaa? [Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?]. It might have been your wife, girlfriend, or mother (or the male equivalents despite it being a generalization stereotypically placed upon the fairer sex) and I’m sure they were correctly using those frustrated sentiments more often than not. But while building a seven-minute short around that phrase would be funny in any context if only for the incredulity of whoever utters it, writer Kirsikka Saari and director…

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REVIEW: Helium [2013]

“They say I’m going to Heaven” What do you tell a young child dying of an inoperable disease? Do you fill his/her head with religious concepts of heaven and hell, explaining how innocence and youth guarantees a place in the former’s angelic clouds? For a kid like Alfred (Pelle Falk Krusbæk) that’s simply not enough. Heaven is just a place—a sterile, overused destination he finds boringly clichéd and trite rather than some grand resting place someone who’s lived a long, fruitful life strives to achieve. He hasn’t lived, hasn’t had…

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REVIEW: Avant que de tout perdre [Just Before Losing Everything] [2013]

“You have to do it, Miriam” Whoa. Xavier Legrand‘s screenwriting and directorial debut Avant que de tout perdre [Just Before Losing Everything] is a tense piece of filmmaking that will have you holding your breath throughout. It starts with a young boy walking the opposite way from school before being stopped by his teacher. He says he’s buying cigarettes for his father and will be in class soon, yet he’s seen waiting at a bridge upon her dismissal until a woman pulls up in her car. From here the two…

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REVIEW: Aquel no era yo [That Wasn’t Me] [2013]

“With your guns, people will respect you” If someone told me they didn’t see Esteban Crespo‘s Aquel No Era Yo [That Wasn’t Me] as more than a contrived piece of melodrama tugging at heartstrings I’d believe them and understand completely. However, for me it was an affecting work brilliantly encapsulating the climate we now find our planet caught within. This is war devoid of rules, civil unrest placing automatic weapons into children’s hands, and the naively idealistic foreigners who believe they can enact change with a friendly smile. Crespo doesn’t…

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REVIEW: Room on the Broom [2013]

“And WHOOSH …” Just like with The Gruffalo back in 2011, Max Lang has found his second adaption (this time co-directed by Jan Lachauer) of UK children’s author Julia Donaldson‘s work garnering an Oscar nomination as well. It’s 2002’s book Room on the Broom, a cute tale about making new friends and selflessly banding together to save each other from the clutches of a fat, evil dragon. Axel Scheffler‘s cartoony illustrations have been given dimension with computer animation rendered to look like Claymation while Simon Pegg lends his voice to…

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REVIEW: Feral [2013]

Writer/director Daniel Sousa‘s animated short Feral is a tragic tale of a young boy raised in the wild and his attempt to assimilate into human civilization. Drawn with a rough, charcoal texture that shimmers and swirls with each new frame of motion, its contrast of blacks and whites show us the child’s isolation from both worlds at either side. He’s a stark white against the greys of the forest birch trees and building block façade houses, a prize easily seen by the pitch black wolves and people curious as to…

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REVIEW: Mr. Hublot [2013]

“Hey, Hublot. I think you forgot to turn the key once more.” For OCD-ridden Mr. Hublot, life is a steady series of mundane tasks to ensure everything is in working order around the house and exactly where his mind needs them to be. He wakes up, flicks his light switches off and on, adjusts the frames hanging on his wall, and rearranges his biscuit and salt shaker to the optimal positions before settling in for his cup of coffee. He notices when things are amiss yet has the ability to…

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REVIEW: Tsukumo [Possessions] [2013]

“Here and there, use and dispose” The title of Shuhei Morita‘s Oscar nominated short Tsukumo [Possessions] on first blush conjures thoughts of two separate meanings. One is the idea of spirits possessing objects or people to do their bidding and the second is a grouping of things someone owns. If not for an opening textual prologue, it would be easy to believe what goes on strictly concerns the former when in fact there is more to it. Because as the screen explains, Japanese lore says tools and instruments attain souls…

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REVIEW: The Beauty Strip [2014]

“I think individuality is a very complex thing” There’s no better description for Marshmallow Press Productions than “cinema for the obscure viewer”—at least where their newest on-demand offering The Beauty Strip is concerned. Is its sixty-minutes a series of erotica music videos for electronica bands like Zigo Rayonpineal, Occurrences in Rain, Names, and Bob Orum? Maybe an art piece by writer/director/cinematographer Ginnetta Correli depicting staged documentations of women in multiple states of undress? Both? More? Alternatingly pulse pounding with Skrillex-esque dubstep and calmly serene with smooth atmospheric noise, we visit…

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