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

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.

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The Monster Project (2017)

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.

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

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.”

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Justice Served (2017)

In the modern social and political climate, Patrick Rea’s “Justice Served” is going to play well and perhaps stir up some much needed controversy. While director Rea delivers his usual slick special effects and morbid tone, “Justice Served” is a brilliant commentary on society and how far we’ve come. Society is nothing but people exploiting people, exploiting people, we’re devils and devil’s advocates. Director Rea creates a backward world where the society we witness is shockingly not that different than what we’re seeing today.

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