Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Haskell (2017) [HollyShorts 2017]

Posted on by

Three moments from the life of a man who can manipulate time and how his ability is affecting him.

Written and directed by James Allen Smith, Haskell is a small part, or three small parts, of what feels like a much bigger story.  The story deals with time and how it affects people, especially the man who can manipulate it and those around him.  The story is one that is multi-layered and deals with plenty to become a full length feature easily.  The way it’s written does make it feel like it’s a part of something much bigger and perhaps a proof of concept for a feature film.  However, it does still work as a short where not everything is explained and the film works with some mysteries not explained.

Continue reading →

Death Note (2017)

Posted on by

I’ve been a casual fan and observer of “Death Note” since the mid-aughts and have always been fascinated with its premise and the moral dilemmas it props up for the audience and its characters. It’s almost like “The Box” but with a hit of adrenaline and more complex ideas and philosophies. Director Adam Wingard adapts “Death Note” for a new audience, taking the material from Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, and adding his own quirks, ideas, and dashes of dark comedy. What we get is a stark, entertaining horror movie that is very much a “Death Note” tale, but one that works in its own rhythm for a broader audience, without alienating the core fan base.

Continue reading →

No Roads In (2017) [Oceanside International Film Festival 2017]

Posted on by

No Roads In is a music documentary but also one about how music can transform lives.

Written by Christopher Leeson and directed by Josh Wong, this documentary follows a band as they record an album in an abandoned home in the Canadian Prairies.  One of them finds this place while driving and brings the rest back to record a more natural, organic album in terms of sound and how it comes to be.  The film follows these men and looks into their lives through interviews and music.  The men shown include Adam Naughler, Jon May, Blake Reid, Aaron Young, and Jason Valleau who all work on the album together and have their lives and hopes discussed by themselves and others.

Continue reading →

30 Minutes with Laura (2017) [Oceanside International Film Festival 2017]

Posted on by

A man meets with a woman in a restaurant where they get to know each other.  As they talk, not everything is as it seems.

Written and directed (and edited) by Juanjo Haro, this short film takes a simple premise and spins it on its head.  It builds what looks like a meeting between two lonely people in a restaurant through their conversation into something quite different.  About halfway through the film, something happens that greatly affects the plot.  As this is an important factor into this film, it shall remain a secret here.  The film takes this and works with it, explaining itself in images, something that may not have been needed, but works well nonetheless.

Continue reading →

The Monster Project (2017)

Posted on by

A group of filmmakers decide to do a reality tv/found footage project about real monsters.

Written by Victor Mathieu, Shariya Lynn, and Corbin Billings, the film is directed by Victor Mathieu who takes a found footage approach to things, having the show within the movie and the action of the people behind the scenes all being in found footage style, for better or worse. The story here is one found footage fans are familiar with. A team goes into a building with the hopes of filming real monsters and interviewing them. In what looks like something very inspired by ghost hunters tv shows, the crew shoots themselves doing this in night vision on very shaky cam. The monsters here may or may not be real, something the film hopes to blur with its approach and how the characters are brought on.

Continue reading →

post

My Father’s House: A Journey of Love and Memory (2017)

Posted on by

Hannah Reimann’s nonfiction short is a video diary of the final four years in the life of her father, Dr. Peter Reimann, whose life was slowly weakened by dementia.

The German-born Dr. Reimann served as a medic in the German Army during World War II – the film briefly states he was anti-Nazi, but never goes into depth on his war record. He married Korean psychoanalyst Dr. Myunghee Kim in 1957, eventually settling in New Jersey. Dr. Kim’s death in a car accident during a 1996 vacation in Chile was an emotional loss from which Dr. Reimann never truly recovered, and the sense of melancholy resonates throughout his on-camera footage. When asked during a birthday what it means to turn 89, he responds, “You didn’t die at the right time.”

Continue reading →