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Red Mission (2015)
worth checking
Definitely more interesting than its commentators suggest.
There is an inflation of science fiction short films recently, and while most of produced short films that are not genre bounded are lost in obscurity, many sci-fi shorts are available for online viewing, and have pretty a wide audience. The reason part of this can be seen as inflation is their approach to the format of short film. Some (and maybe many) of these films, either work as a vfx showcase or a proof of concept for (without stating it) a web series, a feature film, etc. In both cases these films often have broken, under-thought or non- existent story structures, characters, ideas which make them end up as ..........., you can fill in the blanks depending on your world view, I find them quite curious objects.
Yet, considering Red Mission a product of this understanding is plain unfair. Contrary to the other comment here in IMDb, film has a plot, a decent story arc that definitely results in an ending, and executes these with more or less effort, thought, and diligence. I don't see their presence really, but if there is any, its obscurities comes from its understanding of its philosophical sources (-s), which mainly seems to be Kubrick's 2001; but as I've said if there is any, because situation characters find themselves in are pretty much solid rather than being abstract.
So, if it is not to witness the greatest of all productions or brightest of all hidden gems what you expect from cinema, Red Mission is worth checking, after all (like thousands of films produced every year) it has more cinematic virtue than some of the box office hits combined. Also, it is interesting as a decent and honest example exploring the depths that have beacons set on by earlier and more grandeur films.
Gyarakushî kaidou (2015)
Simple, Imaginative and Funny
By an intergalactic road, which is now pretty defunct due to its rival broader expressway, lies a hamburger joint, managed by a husband and wife and an eccentric cook. Like the intergalactic road now serving to only a few alien specimen and that is subjected to an inspection for demolition, the restaurant is getting more and more desolated with every passing day. Also, relationship of husband and wife is also in question, challenged by old and new lovers.
Film basically adds intergalactic prostitution, love triangles, and tiny bits of masochism and food porn into 1950's American future depictions. Its roots in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Caro- Jeunet inventions are pretty visible yet not annoying at all.
Film's solutions to otherwise complicated technical problems are simple, smooth and funny. And invented in same manner, contains bunch of imaginative aliens and entities (also dilemma of Captain socks) that are good to see.
Computer Chess (2013)
an exceptional vortex
The film takes place in 1983? at a lousy hotel during a little computer vs computer chess tournament with the participation from major technical universities of US of A and a not so major chess grandmaster as an end game boss. Most of the time camera stays indoors hence the direct orders from the grandmaster who is also the host and splunge of the show restricts the cameraman who is making the documentary of the tournament to shoot outdoors while the early model video camera is sensitive to light. Stick in the hotel, camera discovers which can be put as colliding worlds of eccentric characters of a spiritual action-therapy convention group and bunch of the tournament.
The first interesting move that film makes is to split the stance of camera in two, almost as son as it is restricted to outdoors. Without trumpets celebrating the move film slowly slides from being a mockumentary to a conventional drama. Yet the second personality of the camera protects the cinema verite understanding of the first personality of the camera that is still inside the film. This is one of the key elements of the film since one of the main subjects of the film is the deus-ex machina, referring to 'the turk' several times, the chess playing automaton which is a mixture of a device of illusion and a simple puppet, film settles to its ground to ask one simple question to all the elements in the movie which is 'who are you'. This is the question digitally been asked to one of the computers, who is the more extrovert one in the group, and been answered in a more certain manner and quickly than the human characters.
Except other values that film has, by dealing with this matter of subject film becomes -what i can put with my narrow English- a provincial science fiction film, science fiction in its purest form. Science fiction of an era, a world, which has gone beyond or reached the borders of the genre. This is a funny feeling which i felt just the opposite of during 'gravity', at that experience, and still is, it is clearly visible that the film is not a science fiction but an ordinary series of events happening but in space plus the Hollywood exaggeration quite similar to 'die hard'. For me it is almost inevitable to write a few words on 'gravity' when writing about 'computer chess' not only because they occurred almost at the same period and culture, standing at the two extreme points of contemporary film making but also because of this mind blanking shift in the understanding.