“Water off a duck’s back” First-time writer/director Anton King‘s Lust for Love is primed for audience consumption two years and change after its Kickstarter campaign went live. A labor of love for a group of creative friends—previously brought together on Joss Whedon‘s “Dollhouse”—this indie rom/com is a cutely funny tale refusing to hide its conclusion from frame one. Anyone who has ever seen a movie knows that a guy asking a girl to teach him how to win back his ex inevitably sparks something between them that neither party saw…
Read MoreMonth: January 2014
REVIEW: Karama Has No Walls [2013]
“Sit-in! Sit-in! Until the regime is toppled!” The last words Anwar Al-Muaati spoke to his father upon leaving for “Change Square” in Sana’a, Yemen were, “If you tell me I can’t go and all the other fathers tell their sons the same, who will fight the revolution?” That’s a powerful sentiment of patriotism, freedom, and want for peace most born in the United States simply cannot comprehend. Anwar was one of 53 innocent, non-violent protestors who died on March 18, 2011, a day known as Juma’at El-Karama (Friday of Dignity).…
Read MoreREVIEW: The Lady In Number 6 [2013]
“Calmness is strength” Despite starting with a smile watching 109-year old Alice Herz Sommer playing classical music on her piano, we know there will be more to The Lady In Number 6 than simply learning how beloved she is to those in her building woken at 10am to the sounds of Chopin and Bach. It’s in her age, face, and Czech accent where thoughts of WWII and the Nazis conjure our wonder as to when the tragic circumstances of her freedom will be introduced. But somehow her telling it doesn’t…
Read MoreREVIEW: Facing Fear [2013]
“I don’t know if I could forgive somebody the way he’s been able to forgive me” While it may be a “talking head” documentary, Jason Cohen‘s Oscar nominated short Facing Fear is anything but boring or static. It’s a story about two men who grew up in fear of the unknown, the different. Matthew Boger had a very Christian upbringing where his being gay found even worse disgust at home than that of his classmates at school. Tim Zaal grew up in an Anglo neighborhood feeding on the aggression of…
Read MoreREVIEW: Cavedigger [2013]
“I’m a digger of caves and a piler of rocks” Sculptor Ra Paulette is an amazing artist. His philosophical manifesto for space and the metaphor of interior versus exterior is well-put and meticulously brought to life through malleable sandstone to create unimaginable beauty in a collision of Mother Nature and mankind’s mark as builder. I couldn’t help but remember my days as a freshman art student dealing with a project entitled “Containment” wherein we had to play with aesthetics and utility in order to embody the word. We had an…
Read MoreREVIEW: Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall [2013]
“I’ll get out of here one of these days. In a box.” Born George William, PFC “Jack” Hall served four years in the military during WWII, was a POW, and ultimately found his way back home. Unable to shake what he saw and did in war, the feeling to kill anyone who crossed him remained. So, when his youngest son hung himself after battling drug addiction since the age of fourteen, the chance for revenge was too much to ignore. Hall came across the dealer that hooked his son bragging…
Read MoreREVIEW: The Voorman Problem [2013]
“Release?” It’s an Oscar nominated short film and yet I thank The Voorman Problem not for its entertaining wit or Martin Freeman‘s outburst of hilarity at its end, but instead for it cementing my need to start reading David Mitchell. Yes, the author of Cloud Atlas is the main inspiration behind director Mark Gill and cowriter Baldwin Li‘s movie courtesy of it being an adaptation of an excerpt from the novel number9dream. Detailing the encounter of a psychiatrist named Dr. Williams (Freeman) and an imprisoned patient who believes he is…
Read MoreREVIEW: Pitääkö mun kaikki hoitaa? [Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?] [2013]
“Were you styling your beard?” You’ve probably heard these words before: Pitääkö mun kaikki hoitaa? [Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?]. It might have been your wife, girlfriend, or mother (or the male equivalents despite it being a generalization stereotypically placed upon the fairer sex) and I’m sure they were correctly using those frustrated sentiments more often than not. But while building a seven-minute short around that phrase would be funny in any context if only for the incredulity of whoever utters it, writer Kirsikka Saari and director…
Read MoreREVIEW: Helium [2013]
“They say I’m going to Heaven” What do you tell a young child dying of an inoperable disease? Do you fill his/her head with religious concepts of heaven and hell, explaining how innocence and youth guarantees a place in the former’s angelic clouds? For a kid like Alfred (Pelle Falk Krusbæk) that’s simply not enough. Heaven is just a place—a sterile, overused destination he finds boringly clichéd and trite rather than some grand resting place someone who’s lived a long, fruitful life strives to achieve. He hasn’t lived, hasn’t had…
Read MoreREVIEW: Avant que de tout perdre [Just Before Losing Everything] [2013]
“You have to do it, Miriam” Whoa. Xavier Legrand‘s screenwriting and directorial debut Avant que de tout perdre [Just Before Losing Everything] is a tense piece of filmmaking that will have you holding your breath throughout. It starts with a young boy walking the opposite way from school before being stopped by his teacher. He says he’s buying cigarettes for his father and will be in class soon, yet he’s seen waiting at a bridge upon her dismissal until a woman pulls up in her car. From here the two…
Read MoreREVIEW: Aquel no era yo [That Wasn’t Me] [2013]
“With your guns, people will respect you” If someone told me they didn’t see Esteban Crespo‘s Aquel No Era Yo [That Wasn’t Me] as more than a contrived piece of melodrama tugging at heartstrings I’d believe them and understand completely. However, for me it was an affecting work brilliantly encapsulating the climate we now find our planet caught within. This is war devoid of rules, civil unrest placing automatic weapons into children’s hands, and the naively idealistic foreigners who believe they can enact change with a friendly smile. Crespo doesn’t…
Read More