Lowbacca1977 Reviews

The Amazing Bulk (2012 Video)

Surprisingly watchable for being one of the worst things I've ever seen

[3/10 · 17 July 2014]

On a very fundamental level, this may be one of the worst things ever to be called a film. If the name and picture isn't a tip off, this is basically a fairly lazy ripoff of the incredible Hulk. It is also a fairly lazy ripoff of movies as entertainment.

I could go on about the plot being weak and nonsensical. I could talk about how most of the people in this have extremely poor acting skills (Shevaun Kastl apparently actually can do a decent job of it, though). There's a lot I could focus on, but really there's only one thing to discuss, and that's how utterly horrific the visual effects are.

For some reason, the entire film is filmed in front of green screens. That may seem common, but traditionally, those green screens are replaced with backgrounds that are not utterly horrific. There's only a few backgrounds, and so things repeat, locations are passed multiple times, and there's no feel of continuity during some scenes as scenery changes represent drastic changes. And then there's the fact that most things in the film are CG, but it's clearly using CG models that were pre-existing. This shows up early on when there's utterly ridiculous objects and animals that get screen time because the models were there and they didn't want them to go to waste, but it really reaches a climax towards the end when they decide to simply put every rendering they hadn't used yet in a chase scene that is like the idiot savant of chase scenes. It is so horrifically flawed to actually be sort of amazing. And finally, the Bulk may be one of the worst characters to show in a film, as it really feels like the movements are not in line with what the character is needed to be doing.

The attempts to merge it with live action fail embarrassingly. The running and walking in place ranges from hilariously overdone to barely existent, people routinely miss lining up with objects in the background or walk right through them, there's 4-foot cars, rooms that are far too small, and objects with strange perspectives, and every car scene is on a couch, sometimes a couch they didn't even bother to remove from the shot.

The only thing this has going for it is that it is simply so poorly done that it's almost astounding, and reaches comical levels. It's worth a watch once, but with a group of people that are good for a laugh because it's the only way to make it through it.

Binge & Purge (2002 Video)

Interesting premise, most botched execution since Lady Margaret Pole

[3/10 · 17 July 2014]

Large swaths of this film are unwatchable. When I say that, I don't mean it's really bad and tough to sit through, I mean literally unwatchable. The lighting is non-existent so probably a quarter of this film is so dark that I have no idea who was talking and where they were. Add to that audio problems and hollow dialogue, and it was extremely difficult to have any idea what was going on at any point in the film as such little information was successfully conveyed. It was really a team effort to even figure out what was going on in it.

The acting was also, largely, very underwhelming and the editing was extremely poor, showing both strange delays in people talking (edits that had too much waiting between lines and was very unnatural) and that conversations appear to be going on with people in different places. There's a lot of quick flashes of shots that don't seem to make much sense, and the film jumps between things so much it's hard to track any continuity or arc. Finally, the kill shots are more like shooting mug shots with a white wall behind people such that it just feels ridiculous to keep seeing the exact same angle and effects for various deaths.

I will grant that the first 5 to 10 minutes of this film were fairly impressive, mostly as the film started off set in the Spanish Civil War, and it was a few minutes before we were even sure it was the right film, starting not in English and in black and white. It was a very good start to the film, and it went downhill from there. Characters come and go without much clarity, and the film never decides if this is a film about zombies or cannibals, or some weird spot in between, and so it also means that the feeling of continuity between what the status of characters are is totally non-existent.

The film has a surprisingly interesting start, and what could be an interesting premise, but then the film very quickly starts to fall apart into some sort of train wreck for most of the film, to then have a couple interesting scenes to end it on, beginning and ending on notes that suggest this film stood a chance of being decent at one point in the planning stages.

Closer to God (2014)

A moderate, modern Frankenstein

[4/10 · 26 April 2014]

Closer to God is a modern revamp of Frankenstein, and it somewhat straddles the genres of science-fiction and horror, or at least tries to. While there's a large attempt of things that seem scientific, I really feel like that area was so underdeveloped that I just didn't find that at all convincing, even for suspending disbelief for the purposes of a film. It's what comes of a film trying to make some pretty broad claims about science without really exploring or addressing them. The horror film aspect of it has its moments, and while I think it did a very good job of building up tension, it really seemed to fall apart when it came time to cash in on that by being a bit blunt about it, after doing a fairly good job of building up the unease and mystery.

There certainly are some other interesting questions that are at least mentioned about what represents humanity and how cloning factors in, and it acknowledges a lot of issues with the ethics, philosophy, and spirituality of cloning, but it doesn't really explore or discuss those issues much. It opens the door to them, and I do give it some credit for not pushing a particular answer to those questions, but I feel like more could have been fleshed out with them.

An overall slow pacing, I think it could've been made up for with stronger points, both conceptually and thematically, instead it fizzles out a bit at the end.

Love Me (2013)

A love story without words

[7/10 · 26 April 2014]

The simplest way to sum up this movie is that it reminds me, quite strongly, of the Jamie and Aurélia arc of Love, Actually, where the two develop a relationship of sorts even with a language barrier in play.

Ushan Çakir takes on the role of Cemal, who has an arranged marriage set up for him, but is taken by friends and his uncle to Kyev as a sort of bachelor party, with the intention of it providing him a chance with a prostitute before he heads back and gets married. While at a club, he spots Sasha (Viktoria Spesivtseva), and without communication, he goes with her out of the club and back to her place, all in a very quiet, uneasy position as they don't communicate at all.

When Sasha finds out her grandmother is missing, their activities are interrupted and instead the two end up searching around Kyev together, and the two slowly build up a chemistry between the two, and the whole thing always has a bittersweet undertone to all of it, knowing the communications difficulties, the miscommunications, and that both of them are already in their own relationships of sorts. The language barrier persists, though, in causing troubles and leading to the two being pulled apart towards the end.

With the language differences throughout, I do think one of the impressive things is just how communicative the two lead actors are, especially given that so much had to happen without talking, or only single words, and yet the way they play off of one another feels so natural and so genuine.

The boldest choice of the film, though, was how it ended. Romantic films are full of the cliché ending, where they realize that how they feel is worth pursuing, and they make that last minute gambit to stop the other person before its too late, from It Happened One Night to Frozen. And then there's this, where they both have those moments of realization.... and then bittersweet turns to almost bitter, as they both decide to return to their lives as it was before, as though none of what happened between them occurred. It's a poignant moment, realizing that they've both decided to go back to where they were before, even if they were less happy, but it's also a very sad moment that adds a somewhat bleak nature to film, all in all.

It may be a good story, but with an almost melancholy tone to it.

Boulevard (2014)

A heart wrenching story about being honest with oneself

[6/10 · 26 April 2014]

Robin Williams takes on another serious role here as Nolan, and he does another good job in playing a serious role like this and handling a lot of raw emotions that really diverge from the image of Robin Williams in the role of comedy, although there's certainly some humour he brings to some scenes.

Really though, the film tackles a very somber and difficult topic as Nolan, long since married, takes a sudden leap into trying to acknowledge his homosexuality when he picks up a young guy off the street, paying him just to spend time with him. The idea of someone in a marriage having an affair usually is linked with boredom or disinterest, or some sort of deficiency present. What makes this powerful is that there is no deficiency in the marriage, it's simply something that Nolan can't choose to be. There is love between him and his wife, but they seem to be different loves.

To an extent, I found the film difficult to watch, particularly the scenes with Leo, the young man that Nolan develops an infatuation with, but part of the power of the film are those scenes, the awkwardness and uncertainty that Williams brings to Nolan, and the overpowering feeling that he's not sure how to accept what it is he wants. It's a very different sort of story than what I've seen of dealing with someone being gay, but it's strongly shown that it is a story that deserves telling.

Most poignant about the film, for me, wasn't the film itself so much as what was discussed during the Q&A, and an unusual coincidence that happened during the shooting of the film. One of the filming locations belonged to a couple that had been married for decades, but where the husband came out only a few years prior to being contacted by a location scout. That just adds something powerful to it for me, perhaps just as it really added to the sincerity of the film to have someone stand up and say that the heart-wrenching and painful scenes in the film can be very real, but that the underlying love, even if not quite romantic, is also very real.

I did find the film dragged, and there was a slow agony to it, somewhat like slowly removing a band-aid, so while I think the core of it is a very powerful set of emotions, as a film I was less impressed, and that as a film it was solid, but not stand out.

Lucky Them (2013)

Thomas Haden Church steals the show

[6/10 · 26 April 2014]

Toni Collette plays the lead role of Ellie, a music critic still living in the shadow of her ex-boyfriend, emblematic musician Matthew Smith, who disappeared ten years previous. Ellie still really is living as though she's ten years in the past, and that includes not adapting to the changing expectations of the magazine she works for, until she's given an ultimatum to do a story on Smith, and the music impact he had. She begins a search to see if he's out there, somewhere. Also featured are up-and-coming musician Lucas, played by Ryan Eggold (who wrote and sang his own songs), and one-time date Charlie (Thomas Haden Church).

I wasn't particularly impressed with Ellie as a character, her challenges she's facing certainly are the point of the film, but it was hard for me to really get by the number of chances it seems she gets, and some of what seems to be her more manipulative tendencies. That said, for that character, I do think Collette plays it well, just that there's parts of the character that were not so motivating. Lucas also feels like a bit too cliché of a character to feel particularly real.

Oddly, and certainly not something I'd expected when he first showed up, but for me Charlie quickly became the most interesting character. At first introduction, there's certainly a repellent vibe to him, but it gets developed more into an extreme social awkwardness and unawareness than maliciousness. He still doesn't quite strike me as pleasant, per se, but there's a personality to him from both the writing and Church's performance quickly makes him the most memorable character for me. His actions, his words, his personality all are very idiosyncratic but with an element of being genuine hinted at, but never fully convincingly there. It certainly does make him the character that held my interest best though.

The film feels like it makes some sudden stops and gos, with overly convenient plot turns, and a lot of side events that clutter the film, but don't quite seem to really add enough to the story to justify their inclusion, and there could've been a lot more included in there to flesh out Ellie's search for Matthew. I do like, though, that ultimately the film becomes more about if the search is worth it or not, or if ten years is long enough to let the past remain in the past or not. It's an interesting theme, and while I think the search isn't conducted consistently, thematically the film is always exploring if that search is worth it.

Noble (2014)

A global look at humanity at its best, and some of its worst

[9/10 · 26 April 2014]

While this is all sourced as being based on a true story, I almost find that hard to accept, simply because of the sheer number of hurdles involved, on top of the appropriate naming of the titular character, Christina Noble.

The film straddles two different arcs; on one hand is the early life of Christina, and all the hardships she faced, and it's incredibly bleak. It makes it all the more impressive to me with how bright and energetic a character Christina is by both actresses that play her as a child and a young woman, and it does feel like the same character the entire way. Christina's Irish upbringing also is somewhat familiar cinematically now as the state of Ireland's treatment of children was showcased recently in another true story, Philomena.

While her early life is simply, well, tragic, the other arc is of much more mixed tone, as she travels to Vietnam after her kids have grown up, now played by Deirdre O'Kane, and she does a great job as Christina, from the humour and tenderness to the strength and determination. She takes the role very naturally, and her portrayal of Christina is very warm, and I think part of this may be O'Kane's involvement with Christina Noble's charity beforehand, so I think her performance was strengthened by her personal investment. As she finds a calling helping the homeless children of Vietnam, and tries to figure out how to help, she serves as this great and uplifting protagonist, all the more impressive given that this is, again, actually a true story and really did happen, to at least some extent.

In Vietnam, the story isn't simply carried by O'Kane, but has a great set of supporting roles. Right off the bat, the employee at the hotel front desk that calls himself "Mr. Front Desk" or some such thing has a great role as this begrudgingly helpful curmudgeon, and almost all his lines were great, both in writing, and in performance (and I'm somewhat annoyed that I don't remember a name ever being used for him for me to give the actor proper due). The children in the film are great, and a few of them even have more involved roles, and they actually have all been, or still are, helped by Christina Noble's charity and that makes me all the more impressed by their involvement as well.

It would be very easy of me to criticise the overly dramatic nature of this film and it's lack of believability, but what's so impressive is that I don't think it actually did take that many liberties to make it the story it is, and as raw as the film is, it's genuine. It does make the film much more powerful, and the points it makes about being poor being a constant experience anywhere is a very salient one, and the way Christina steps up the challenges in Vietnam is extremely compelling. There's so many social elements on both small and large scales that this film touches upon, and that's quite impressive.

There's something I find very moving about a film with such a vibrant person as Christina Noble (as depicted, but apparently fairly accurate) that faces so many challenges with that strength.

White Shadow (2013)

Strong in premise, but confusing in execution

[3/10 · 26 April 2014]

The concept of the film is an interesting one, the story of an albino in Africa, facing dangers somewhere where albinos are killed because their body parts are considered to have magical properties. As a premise, I do find that quite interesting.

However, the style of the film-making really rubbed me the wrong way. Rather than one linear story, the film seems to jump around in time a little bit, and I simply don't understand what time points I'm looking at and where, and it just doesn't make sense to me. Without being able to follow it, I just ended up lost, and I didn't feel like the characters were particularly fleshed out, something not aided particularly much by character evolution being difficult for me to spot as scenes jumped around a bit.

I was a bit let down by this as I don't think it conveyed a strong story.

Kidnapped for Christ (2014)

Deeply unsettling, and makes Jesus Camp look positively cheery

[10/10 · 23 April 2014]

Several years ago, Jesus Camp circulated around as that film that horrified people, especially the nonreligious, when it came to how religion was pushing views on children. With Kidnapped for Christ, Jesus Camp seems like a welcome change.

It's first noteworthy to mention the filmmaker. Kate Logan, a conservative Christian college student in the Dominican Republic for mission work, decided to do a documentary about a school there where American teenagers in crisis were sent. What she found there was teenagers that were woken up in the middle of the night by strangers and removed from the US, sometimes with no one outside their family knowing what happened to them, to be sent off to the Caribbean to have their behaviors corrected. Far from the extremes that one would expect to lead to this, some of them were fairly normal teenagers, all in all, before this happened.

The film goes through the processes of the school by following a few of the 'students' there over the course of the several weeks that Logan was at the school. The reason her background is relevant is because as she continues, she starts to find her own faith challenged, as well as her approach to the film challenged, as she is repelled more and more by what's going on in the name of Christianity. And that's what gives this film so much power.... it tries to take a relatively fair stance, but the sheer weight of evidence is heavy enough that it has a clear conclusion, and it even runs counter and challenges her preconceived notions when she was coming into this situation in the first place. (Indeed, this might have never come to light if not for her background.

So much of the power comes through what the three students she follows through go through, the way they talk about being treated, the fact that they've been sent to a foreign country without a say, and this is a film that I think very few people could watch and not find this upsetting, frustrating, angering, and disgusting.

Logan shines a light on something that I would think most people in America don't even realize goes on, and something that even some of these parents don't realize, to the full extent, what these children are being subjected to.

Kekasih (2014)

Closer to a light show than a film

[4/10 · 23 April 2014]

The basic premise is a scientist that is trying to in some way save, or rather, preserve his wife after her death.

The film starts off being very reminiscent of a lot of sci-fi films that have similar concepts surrounding dead loved ones. Then... then it gets weird. A good portion of this film is simply long segments of color and lighting effects for the entire screen with brief clips back to the film, and at that point, this is less watching a short film and more watching a screen saver. It's an awesome screen saver, sure, but that's not really enough to cut it.

I like the bare concept (although it becomes very familiar to some stuff at the end) but that doesn't really carry over to how it was executed.

Freedom Summer (2014)

How the South was won

[10/10 · 23 April 2014]

Ultimately, documentaries are about, clearly, documenting something. And, of course, this is most useful when what you're documenting isn't something that's commonly known, or the perspective is unique and valuable. This film does all of that, and it's the first time I've ever watched a film where at the end, I could hear multiple people talking about the things they didn't know about until watching this, and were surprised they didn't know about. Being that clear a conduit of information is, alone, a great mark of how good this film is.

The focus is on the summer of 1954 when college students flooded into Mississippi to help African-Americans register to vote, make up for deficiencies in education with Freedom Schools, and attempt to replace the all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention with an integrated delegation from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, started that summer.

The story is told not just with stock images, and video and audio recordings that are extremely eye-opening, but by a great selection of interviews. There's a good balance of interviews with black organizers in Mississippi, black supporters in the South (such as those that provided places to stay), organizers outside Mississippi, and both black and white participants in Freedom Summer, as well as a member of the Citizens' Council, a dominant force in Mississippi to preserve segregation and stop black citizens from being allowed to exercise their right to vote. The story is told in such a way that it really does feel like they capture all sides of this, both the inner conflicts with the different groups within the Freedom Summer, how the activists interacted with the black Mississippians, and how all these groups faced the threats posed by the dominant portion of the white population trying to preserve the status quo.

The way it covers all this really is powerful, and the emotions that come from many of the interviews are very raw, and at points very honest. I really do like how often interviewees talked about not just their experiences, but compared and contrasted them quite interestingly, and it paints this great detailed picture about the dynamics in Mississippi in 1964, as well as the politics and risks of the situation.

I walked out feeling like I understood so much more about what happened, and realizing that it's an absolute shame that so many of these things were stuff that I've never come across, and clearly so much of the audience hadn't, but at least these stories are being told now. An exceptionally informative film, as well as very powerful.

Ghetto Goblin (2013)

Putting South Africa on the map for horror

[8/10 · 22 April 2014]

A South African horror film, it takes a strong basis in what, I presume, can accurately be described as their own folk traditions. However, there's definitely elements of this that seem a bit familiar when compared to more well-known horror films, and several of the dynamics in the film seem fairly reminiscent of vampire movies, the proper Dracula kind.

This isn't the sort of lazy B-movie horror film that can get passed around and watched over pizza making fun of it, this really is the sort of horror film that has such a polished look to it (although a couple performances felt a bit more wooden, but that may be how I hear the accents) and a well-crafted storyline that it definitely deserves to be watched in a theater, and if this was in English, I'd say this would be well in line to be another of the pantheon of horror classics one day.

The greatest issue is the subtitles, as there are lines that don't quite make sense, and that I presume mark points where things were incorrectly translated, but those were relatively few in number. The imagery of the film is quite strong, and I think that is often a key point in horror films, and it also certainly seems to take note from many past movies, things like Jaws, in knowing that there's no reason to go out of your way to show things when you can let people's minds do the work for you.

This isn't what I'd consider the very top tier of horror films, but it certainly does what it does far better than many films considered horror classics, and it's quite interesting to see the similarities between this and American horror films.

Before I Disappear (2014)

Amazing feature length debut for a writer/director/actor.

[9/10 · 22 April 2014]

A few years ago, Shawn Christensen won an Oscar for his amazing live- action short called Curfew, focused on a man in despair and contemplating suicide that gets the first chance to spend time with his niece, now around 11 years old. The short was very deserving of that Oscar, and Christensen took an interesting route to build on that by starting with that same initial story and fleshing it out into a full feature length film.

On one hand, I would like to see him go into something new with the same finesse that he showed in Curfew, and I feel like there's directions he went here that didn't feel as genuine as some aspects of the same characters in Curfew.

On the other hand, though, he kept many of the key moments and feelings from the short, while fleshing out so much more to it. I do also very much like that Fatima Ptacek returns as Tabitha, the niece, as she had a great performance in the short, and she does just as strong of a job here. This film really wouldn't be as strong as it is without her.

Christensen plays the lead role as well as directing, and while he's good in front of the camera, it's behind the camera that's really what impresses me. The style and flow of the short was good, but he does so much more here, and there's a very strong visual presence in so many scenes that it really sticks with me. This includes not only some of the more fanciful parts, like an expanded version of the music number from the short to simple shots, like the phone on the floor at the start of the film.

What really strikes me is how he managed to take a short and really not dilute it when he extended it out to feature-length, and it still maintains its emotional center, and I think that shows a lot of creativity and skill as both a writer and a director. I really hope that this film does well enough that it opens the doors to more work by Christensen, although I can't help but feel that with the quality of this film, it will do so.

Hacked Circuit (2014)

A very technically impressive short

[6/10 · 21 April 2014]

I found the structure of this short to be... interesting, although I'm not sure I see the full concept that it was designed for. The most impressive part is that it appears to be all one single shot, although I have some suspicions as to where it might have involved clever editing, but I can't tell for sure. In that shot, it does an entire exploration of the foley process, but approaching it from a more unusual manner. The camera comes in to the building and observes the foley process in progress.

There does seem to be something said by the camera's presence, unannounced and silently observing, with no signs that it's been noticed, while at the same time the scene being given sounds is from The Conversation, a film entirely focused around people being observed without their awareness. On one hand, I feel like I may be reading too much into this, but on the other hand, it also has a dedication to Snowden, and I'm unsure if that only represents a sort of solidarity, or if that really is one large-reaching theme of the short.

The Human Experiment (2013)

An agenda-driven, rather than fact-driven, polemic.

[1/10 · 21 April 2014]

This had the distinct feeling of the exact same sort of slick misuse of words that I would expect from any film put together by someone trying to obfuscate a topic in order to ram through an agenda. The largest point was the clear misframing of points by the narration, including the complete avoidance of nuances that some people that were interviewed clearly did show.

The film interchangeably talks about the dangers of chemicals, the dangers of cancer-causing chemicals, and the dangers of artificial chemicals, as though it has no understanding that all things are chemicals, that many chemicals it uses as examples of health risks are, in fact, naturally-occurring, and that amounts of exposure do matter. It becomes quite clear that some people interviewed are aware of this and only discuss toxic chemicals, but the narration in the film, especially early on when context is being established, fails to do so.

There's also some very suspicious handling of data, providing some data and then stating that there are exceptions that strengthen their case, again a tactic of the film, not those interviewed. There's also some concerning discussion, like discussions on autism that sound very suspiciously like the arguments that come from long-since discredited anti-vaccination proponents about chemicals and autism (discussions like not wanting children to 'develop' autism). As they are generally arguing against the scientific consensus in some cases, this also sounds concerningly like the same anti-science conspiracy arguments that come from anti-vaccine proponents, creationists, climate-change deniers, and tobacco companies (the last being particularly ironic).

For what could be a very interesting topic, it's clearly pushed blindly to further an agenda rather than actually examine the issues in question. Rather than trying to present facts and letting the audience process it all, they simply through every allegation they have, often allegations that are contradictory, and many of which run counter to available data when followed up on. It's a film that seems founded on lies and deceit conveyed in a slick presentation in an attempt to hide an agenda that utterly sabotages any attempt to take a real and serious look at what sorts of exposures we face to various chemicals, and it'a a shame that they so willingly undercut the significance of the topic like this.

Besa: The Promise (2012)

An amazing story of humanity and WWII finally being told

[10/10 · 21 April 2014]

During World War II, thousands of Jews in Europe found an ally that many would not expect; Albanian Muslims. In Albania, besa represents the concept of helping someone that knocks on your door and a high treatment of guests and occurs on a large scale cultural level. In WWII, that came to include many Jews who were fleeing the Nazis, and were aided by the king of Albania opening the country to Jews from throughout Europe with no questions asked. Many took shelter with Albanian families that risked everything for strangers.

The film initially follows a Jewish-American photographer who has been trying to document the remaining people in Albania that helped Jews at great risk, both in the context of remembering their aid to Jews in WWII, and in recognition of these pure acts of humanitarian goodwill that Muslims carried out at great risk at a time when the religion faces vilification. This part may be the one weakest part, as it follows just enough of an introduction that I'd rather keep to the focus than redirect into talk of New York and the like, and get to the heart of the matter.

Once the film transitions to Albania, it really becomes an amazing set of stories, as it features interviews both with those in Albania that helped Jews, and the Jews that were helped discussing the great lengths that people went to to help them. It's incredibly powerful to see how strong the emotions are on both sides of this, as to some extent it becomes evident that with the time involved, these people began to view these strangers they were with as close friends, or even family, because of the strong bonds that formed. It really is a testament to humanity.

The main focus finally becomes the concept of besa, of a promise that is made, and the way that Albanians treat guests. In particular, the son of a man that sheltered a family carries his father's responsibility to return some books the family had to leave behind when they fled Albania and never returned for them. There's a very powerful optimism to it, and an amazing sense of doing what is right, no matter the difficulties involved.

The film is very well put together and certainly ends on a powerful last several minutes. I do hope that some other footage apparently taken of other people, beyond this main focus, becomes available to further flesh out the stories, but I very much like that the film itself merely frames the stories, for the most part it doesn't try to provide any of the context, and leaves that to the people that experienced this, or were told about it from parents.

There have been a great many stories told about people's actions during WWII, and this is one set of stories whose time is long overdue, but they've been told beautifully and powerfully.

A Story of Children and Film (2013)

An overabundance of style and symbolism over substance

[3/10 · 21 April 2014]

Mark Cousins was the force behind a series of documentaries that were recently aired on TCM, The Story of Film an Odyssey, something on the order of 15 hours that looks through film as a worldwide journey. There was something with that that could at times bother me, but it still could also be fairly interesting even if it had its lulls.

However, in this, I feel more like Cousins is somewhere between laziness and simply inelegant. The framework he uses to set this exploration is, in my view, tenuous at best as he starts off with filming his niece and nephew, then attempts to use this video to highlight all the aspects that film depicts of children. The concept may sound quite original, but the way he pulls things out of that initial video is forced, at best, and while it's an attempt to create an overarching theme, it just doesn't hold up. The way he ties film into this initial video also seems to use the most tenuous of threads, including very forced links and strong attempts to create parallel situations that often are not present. While some of this is the same style that I saw in The Story of Film, it seems to really go to new heights here, milking such things as movies with balloons in them.

The point where it seems to really go beyond any reasonable credulity is when he begins using footage he had of a dog to remind him of the things about childhood that WEREN'T in the video of his niece and nephew, and when ha manages to use their grandmother stepping in shot but with her head above the frame as some way to create a series of links starting with Tom and Jerry, notable for its distinct lack of any kids in it. It also violated his initial statement that he was only going to focus on live-action.

What I've seen of him in the past was far exceeded here in terms of attempts to force symbolism and connections in increasingly convoluted ways. Additionally, without the historical element to provide a common theme, the film really gets lost in itself at points, and it spends far more time trying to be profound that in does really discussing those themes in a more substantive and cohesive way.

Butter on the Latch (2013)

An entire film lost in the woods

[1/10 · 19 April 2014]

The film started off rocky for me, as the opening scene was so disjointed from what followed that for a time, I was wondering if that was actually a very quick short that preceded the film and had nothing to do with it. And in many ways, that scene doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the film, making for the most peripheral and unrelated opening scene since Beast of Yucca Flats. That is always a concerning sort of movie to be reminiscent of.

The largest and most glaring problem, I found, was the cinematography. A frighteningly large amount of this film was shot out of focus, giving everything a very vague and undefined look. While this can certainly be used to good effect sometimes, when it feels like it's every other shot, or is for very long shots, it starts to lose its efficiency and just becomes somewhat disorienting and disengaging. It's also the sort of effect that I've seen more to highlight confusion, or intoxication, or being a daze... here it just seems to be done without a reason behind that choice that I could see. Some of the shots also just hold far too long.

The story itself was weakened by a combined set of frequently boring, sometimes repetitive, dialog and a plot that may count as only the vaguest of plots. The dialog between the main two characters has so many superfluous conversations that just repeat or don't go anywhere that it seems to really not excuse later in the film when their conversations seem to contain no useful information (either for the audience or for one another) while seemingly treated like actual conversations of substance. The plot, on the other hand, seems to be more like a series of scenes, without really what seems to be any rhyme or reason to how those scenes are put together. There's long chunks of film that carry the vibe that they are meant be symbolic, not of anything in particular, but just representative of what symbolic things would LOOK like. It's not exploring the mind, it's not setting the atmosphere, it's not foreshadowing or something, it's just things that are meant to look symbolic that seem to carry no actual meaning, and in some cases actually came off as humorous more than sensical.

When this ended, I was just in my seat for a few minutes trying to figure out how any of that was meant to fit together, as as the film goes on, it starts to make less and less sense, with multiple narrative jumps, wild swings in characterization that feel inconsistent, long scenes that don't seem to convey anything, and a very unusual choice of what scenes to feature. I really don't know what, if anything, I was actually meant to come away from this film with beyond a vague familiarity with the eastern European folk music that is a constant background throughout.

Chasing Ghosts (I) (2014)

Chasing thematic unity

[6/10 · 18 April 2014]

A plot sparked by a young boy catching a strange image while filming a funeral, I'm still not entirely sure the best way to describe this film. The film he captures seems to set itself up to be some sort of spiritual or paranormal film, perhaps another film along the lines of Hereafter, which addresses a lot about ideas of death and the afterlife. However, the film then goes on to add a more comedic tone, and a part of this seems to be the interactions between Lucas (Toby Nichols) and Kimberly (Meyrick Murphy), which has a sweet sort of tone that I feel like I've seen in many films before, not as a criticism, but just as a familiar sort of interaction that I found very enjoyable, but a different tone. The third facet is the focus on dealing with grief, how it effects Lucas' family, and how Lucas turns to Chris (Tim Meadows) as a source of outside guidance to better understand all of this.

My immediate reaction during the film was that it seemed to lack a sort of realism, as Lucas and Kimberly didn't feel like believable kids, certainly not at 11-years-old, and it seems more like a film that would need to be slightly older kids by a few years to seem believable. However, I reassessed this after seeing how Nichols and Murphy handled themselves during the Q&A, and the way they behaved really made me rethink the authenticity of those characters, and with a dynamic I already liked, I do think their development is my favourite part of the film. There's also some very entertaining bits that compare amateur film-maker Lucas with a very interesting set of notable directors, and it is one of the more memorable parts of the film.

I was also impressed by Tim Meadows performance in a fairly serious role, as while there was certainly ways he brought comedy into the role, I didn't think he could pull off a character that had to be as emotionally nuanced as Chris turns out to be, and it was a pleasant surprise. The great fault in the role, in my opinion, is not anything that reflects on Meadows, but rather that the character seems very poorly defined and inconsistent at several points. It doesn't destroy the character's impact, but it did hinder it, especially early in the film.

The film goes on a bit further than it should, in my view, and there are points to break the film slightly earlier and leave it as a suitable resolution. Instead, I think there's an issue with how the end of the film seems to try to tie everything up into one nice package, and it does so in a way that just seems phony and rather saccharine. It seems to run counter to the tone of the rest of the film, that at points takes an almost dark sort of humour, and certainly has a very grim or philosophical nature to it that just seems at odds with the film's ending.

There's a lot I like about this, especially a lot of SCENES that I like, but as a full film, it just seems like there's a lot it's lacking in having an overall sense of unity. It feels more like a few different potential films of different tones and focuses that all are addressing the same fundamental questions about life, but those different tones don't make for a cohesive film, and I do wish it had been more consistent and unified, and not lacking in focus.

Allergy to Originality (2012)

A great message limited by a flawed execution

[5/10 · 18 April 2014]

Allergy to Originality starts off with, I think, a very noble intention of addressing discussions about how so many films seem to be reinterpretations or sequels of other works (either already made films, or source material in some other medium); it's a discussion that happens frequently about how Hollywood is out of ideas now as though every year is the sudden demise of cinematic creativity. Instead, it shifts the focus to how much of our culture represents the adaptation of previous works to help create new ones. However, the short just doesn't keep that strong framework it establishes and really fell apart at the end for me, as it began with some decently established roles for the two characters, and the final point of the film seemed to be made in a sloppy fashion that didn't feel to share the same tone as the rest of the short.

I think it's still worthy for the message and how it's presented, but it also could have been done in a way that finished much stronger.