TFF15 REVIEW: Jackrabbit [2016]

“Rebuilding Our Future Today” Dystopian sci-fi is trendy. Anyone who has any knowledge of today’s pop culture could tell you that and it’s no surprise Hollywood has jumped on its collective consciousness with The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. I enjoy them all, don’t get me wrong, but the reality of their monumental success removed from classics like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 is a more glaring commentary on twenty-first century society than the political messages they use as a backbone to romantic, YA plotlines. There has been a…

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REVIEW: Brazil [1985]

“Care for a little necrophilia?” Although Terry Gilliam had already established the highly imaginative filmic style we now associate him with above his Monty Python animations, no one could have imagined the scale of what would become his unequivocal masterpiece, Brazil. There were shades of its escapism in Time Bandits and its bureaucratic satire in short film The Crimson Permanent Assurance, but nothing as grandiose as Sam Lowry’s (Jonathan Pryce) fantastical dreamscape juxtaposed against his Orwellian, nightmarish reality. In fact, Gilliam even sought to title the film 1984 1/2 before…

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REVIEW: Scenes From the Suburbs [2011]

“I wonder what happened to the other moments” There is no better praise to heap on a short film than to admit you watched it again right after the initial viewing. Scenes from the Suburbs is just such a piece, not because of the connection to one of my favorite albums of 2010—Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs—nor the fact it’s directed by Spike Jonze, but because it really hits upon the jaded cynicism of our current world. No longer do we live in an environment deemed safe. My childhood of leaving…

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