Director Damien Colboc’s short animated film is a bittersweet tale of how far we’re willing to go for our loved ones. Though there’s no dialogue and not a lot of set up, “Away” pretty much sets up the exposition through actions and sights. There’s also a lot of ambiguity that the viewer is capable of putting together by the time the film comes to a sad close.
For now, David Weinstein’s “Envoy” is really just “Iron Giant” meets “Predator,” but I think with a wider scope and feature length, “Envoy” could be so much more. The short film from director Weinstein acts simultaneously as a spec film for a more fully realized follow-up and I’m anxious to see where he takes this premise. “Envoy” feels like Weinstein took Spielberg, “Iron Giant,” and The Zeta Project for one really good, but menacing science fiction adventure.
Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday” is a film that literally anyone can watch. Because while it’s certainly a sport films centered on the industry of football, its central themes are relatable to anyone. While on the surface it’s about business and athletes, and competing, mainly “Any Given Sunday” is about a group of people trying desperately to out run the clock of time, and gain some sense of security for their future before father time catches up on them. When we meet these people in the narrative, many of them are at the beginning of their short careers trying to build a future, while others find their windows of opportunity closing and desperately cling to any chance to secure their future for themselves and their family. Stone composes a very richly defined ensemble drama about the football industry and how demanding it is both as an arena for skilled athletes, and athletes anxiously trying to bank on the momentum of their popularity, as fleeting it may be.
It’s really tough to approach “The Slave” (also known as “Check To The Queen”) on a level where you would an average film. By all respects, Pasquale Festa Campanile’s drama is a unique and surreal drama based around a sadist-masochist relationship. For a long time I’d all but been convinced that “Secretary” was as good as film of this ilk got, but “The Slave” comes close to conquering this small sub-genre well. Pasquale Festa Campanile’s film is solely based around a young girl whose own lust for pain and humiliation is rivaled by her unusual obsession with her vanity.
In a dying world how far would you go to keep the environment you loved? And more importantly, in a world where you’ve lost the only person you’ve loved, can you ever really get them back? Is it worth trying to pretend you’re still where you were decades ago, or isn’t it just easier to let go and accept your fate? “Similo” is a brilliant and beautifully directed science fiction short that uses the world our character Heve lives in as an allegory for the relationship she lost a long time ago.
This is about as low as sequels go. At least for third rate horror franchises. “Ghoulies” was never sure what the hell it ever wanted to be, and “Goes to College” shows. The third part in the series shows them as nothing more than annoying little monsters that wreak havoc by inflicting pain, though never really murdering anyone. In fact they’re really nothing but third wheels in what feels like a stale campus comedy about prank wars with the Ghoulies attached for a wider audience. Before the ghoulies actually pop out to terrorize people, “Ghoulies Goes to College” watches like a fourth rate “Revenge of the Nerds” wannabe, about two warring frats and their ever lasting prank war.
What’s most striking about director Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Dallas Buyer’s Club” is the way AIDS is depicted. From the moment Ron Woodroff is told he has terminal AIDS and thirty days left to wrap up his affairs, his life is literally running down on a timer, and he’s literally scrambling back and forth for a way to preserve it. And what begins as a means of self-preservation transforms in to a very eye opening exploration of the world and how AIDS is a very unbiased disease that isn’t restricted to the homosexual community that it’s been used to demonize for many years.