Nash Edgerton’s “Spider” has a cruel sense of humor to it, but one that I loved. It’s definitely reliant on a simple formula, but also very dependent on a chain effect that garners disastrous results in the very end. I was cringing, I was in disbelief, and by the very end I was laughing awkwardly for all the wrong reasons.
Director April Schroer’s “Sky’s the Limit” is a film that could use at least ten more minutes to help us identify with our characters. If there’s any complaint I can lobby at her film is that it’s much too short to really understand our characters. That said, “Sky’s the Limit” is a fun and entertaining short film about a dad who is looking for a direction in life after his wife left him widowed and a single father.
“Christian Mingle” and its main character Gwyneth in a nutshell: “I’m a successful and ambitious woman, a quality that completely turns men off. So to attract someone I’m going to lie about everything that I am and submit myself to subservience and relinquish everything I worked for! That’ll get me a guy!”
Granted, Lacey Chabert is adorable, but she’s just so much better than what this propaganda fest entails.
It’s remarkable how Pixar continues to top themselves in the arena of family entertainment that’s artistic, pleasing, and so multifaceted. “Inside Out” is that rare family film that demonstrates originality by appealing to its audience and tries to understand the experience of being a child in the modern age, rather than condescend or berate. “Inside Out” is one of Pixar’s greatest films to date; its complex, it’s heartbreaking, it’s sweet, and damn it, it should go down in the annals of animated Disney masterpieces.
Dustin Cook’s family drama is a brilliant and tragic picture of two sons forever strapped down to their mother. Too often has this image resonated where kids feel not only constrained to their parents, but dutiful despite their own unhappiness and lack of fulfillment. Cook’s short drama is immediately a compelling character study that explores how families can become a burden and how the children, grown or young, can be forced to forever keep their burden.
I’m not going to pretend I enjoyed “Honor Student” if only because the movie is so inexplicable and miserable it’s tough to pinpoint what it’s going for. I watched it twice and spent my time scratching my head as to what it was trying to get across and what in the world the finale meant, if anything.
I loved Jordan Wippell’s “Meat” if only because it’s the slow unraveling of the inner conscious of a suburbanite that’s been repressed likely since childhood. It’s the inner delving in to the mind of a man who is unraveling before our very eyes and all we can do is watch. “Meat” has a very simple premise, but one that’s effective and suggestive when it closes to its credits sequence.