Made around the time of the Hal Roach collaborative period with the duo making nothing but shorts, “The Music Box” became the standard for complicated situation talkies that would show buffoons making a bad situation out of a predictably simplistic one. When we learn that yes, it could have all been so simple, we groan at their idiocy, and then realize: What fun would that have been if they took the easy way in their job?
What Michel Gondry does is take some of the most realistic and unique teenagers from the South Bronx, plants them on a public bus, and creates what is basically his own “The Breakfast Club” with the aimlessness of “Dazed and Confused.” Every character is put on to the bus by circumstance and come to some sense of realization by the end of the ride that will likely have no effect on their personal lives. In the end, every character in “The We and the I” are victims of peer pressure and their home lives, and are just ships passing in to the night. Filled with a cast of young actors that were cast right out of the South Bronx and honed to work with Gondry for their characters, “The We and the I” is a pretty excellent dramedy about the modern teenager that never sugarcoats their dynamics.
Director Josh Johnson pulls off an ingenious move with “Rewind This!” Truly, it’s about the age of VHS and recalls many of the fond memories of buying VHS and learning how to enjoy the spoils of the hunt for the perfect Friday night entertainment from your local mom and pop video store. But by the end of the documentary, director Johnson is wise to warn about how personal media and art is slowly becoming impersonal and is gradually breaking from our grasps.
Director Darrell C. Hazelrig’s “The Dark Companion” is an odd animal to make out. It’s darkly comedic, but also kind of grim when you think about it. It’s about a world where humans and puppets live beside one another, and drink in the same bars, and yet puppet Howard’s plight can be interpreted in both ways, when you boil it down. Director Hazelrig has a good time toying with this premise of a puppet that realizes it has a sentient hand up its back, and I like where the story inevitably goes.
“Steps” from director Josef Rodriguez has a lot more coherency than “Take It Back” does, but it is still a work in progress. “Steps” is a short with a lot of potential to be a funny look at a jerk’s punishment when he crosses a girl at a party. When he’s kicked out, he realizes he has to pee and there’s not a bathroom in sight.
5. Bart of Darkness
Season Six
1994
“Flanders is going to kill Rod and Tod, that’s horrible…! In principle.” This episode drew a little bit of a connection for yours truly, as I could pretty much sympathize with Bart’s situation, sans the lunacy. Breaking my arm years ago, I was excluded from many summer activities including sports, and yes, going to public pools. In possibly one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen, the summer heat wave is so bad in Springfield that a guitarist singing “Sunshine on my Shoulders” gets knocked cold by a passerby, and the ice cream man drives around the neighborhood announcing that he’s all out of Ice Cream.
Much of what we do and say has consequences. Every step we take in human relationships from body language to even the most minute word has a profound impact on how we see one another and approach our lives. “Within a Blink of an Eye” astutely examines such a factor in the human dynamic, while also examining the concept of fate.