5 Films About Technology (2016) User Reviews

Close call, but funny enough overall

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 21 March 2019]

"5 Films About Technology" is as the title already says actually not one, but five films with the focus on how (not) to use your mobile phone. It is a Canadian production that runs for slightly under 4 minutes plus 45 seconds of credits. The final film is like one or two seconds short, so you could say each chapters gets a minute as average running time. The writer and director of this award-winning short from Canada was Peter Huang. First chapter is a gang of girls sitting at a restaurant taking pictures of their food. Second chapter is a young boy watching these photos before moving on to watching porn in the (so he thinks) absence of his mother and sister. 3rd film is a most disrespectful selfie. 4th film is somebody taking another person's mobile phone at the office (least funny sequence I think) and final moment is a little slapstick. Overall, I think with the exception of number 4 as I already wrote, all these are worth checking out I assume, maybe the first not that much either. Funnily the fifth and by far briefest part is a definite contender for best. I also thought Huang did a decent job with connecting the sequences with each other. Overall, this film is a good example of how a fun little script is enough for a quality movie and you don't really need much money for that. The actors also basically have very little to work with here, so you don't need to invest in really gifted performers. Sure you could say this could also be seen as a series of sketches suitable for Youtube max, but these days this is not a negative criticism anymore if you look at the influence the world's biggest video website has reached by now. All in all, a solid thumbs-up. Go watch when you got 5 minutes free in-between activities. And maybe turn off your phone while doing so.

Captures the absurdity but in a way that is wholly natural, which makes it work better

[bob the moo · 6 May 2017]

This very short film is made up of 5 chapters which each deliver a small moment of technology in a wider flow of a narrative. It very much has an element of sketch to it, but it works because mostly these moments are funny, move quickly and are honestly absurd. This last factor is the making of the film because the other elements are not as consistent. Instead of mocking those using technology in the ways we see, the film manages to make them appear absurd but yet still very much showing just a normal situation that all of us can relate to – maybe not the specifics perhaps, but certainly in general.

Photographing food; making a mistake to expose our online habits to others; not paying attention to where we are going; dropping our phone into water; inappropriately timed focus on our phones etc etc. The film places its moments in a way that works as comedy, but yet remains wholly real. As a result we can laugh even though many of the jokes are on us all. I'm a bit older, so I have the advantage of being able to be snobbish about some of these (I'm proud to say I have never in my life photographed a meal) but at the same time it all hits home. The pacing and delivery of the film is spot on, and it makes the whole compact package work well. Simple, but effective.

so familiar situations...

[Kirpianuscus · 17 June 2021]

The fair term to define it is ...creepy. Because it gives a too realistic perspective about ordinary, every day habits . So, it is just powerful , because the absurde situations, the bizarre relations, the addiction by technology are so familiar than the smile is not the fair reaction. A short film reminding the high need to live out of technology. Smart, ironic and, in some measure, high cruel.