The 5th Short Film Hall of Fame

Ha! I already finished. NOT!

Anyway, I just finished Goodbye Mommy and what an experience

I know I still have a couple of films and a bunch of reviews to finish, but I still wanted to comment on something, since four of the 11 films put forward were animated... and I thought it was so interesting to see the diversity in all four; from the acid-trip sensory overload of Malice in Wonderland or this bizarro, trippy CGI world in Goodbye Mommy to the tangible and crudely cute figures of Hedgehog in the Fog or the stylized silhouetty sleekness of Shell All... it's been quite a thing to watch all of those almost back-to-back.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to sneak Nu before I go to sleep.

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Ok, Nu is done. Now I only need to do Night and Fog... and write a truckload of reviews!

Somehow missed this, but I'm so glad you liked it. It is indeed a stunningly shot short.

Well, the good news is that I just finished Night and Fog, which was the last one I needed to watch. The bad news is that I just finished Night and Fog and that was devastating... I need to watch something cheerful now.

Night and Fog

When I try to come up with my top ten favorite movies list, some films automatically spring to mind: Pulp Fiction, 2001, Ikiru, Passion of Joan, The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, Rear Window, TCM, and obviously Night and Fog as well. Some of those other films are there because of when I saw them, but this film shows up because I'm not sure I've seen another film hit this hard. I didn't get around to rewatching it, but the 2-3 times I've seen it before are enough for now. It's haunting to see the horrendous concentration camps shot so beautifully in color. Sure they are in ruins, but something about seeing them in color makes some of this stuff so real, when we are used to everything about WWII and the holocaust being in black and white. As much of this film is in, yet those parts in this film don't get that "back then" filter. When you watch a body get carried to a mass grave and the body no longer resembles a human, it doesn't feel right. As obvious as that sounds, it makes you feel something you can't quite explain. This movie is a day ruiner, but every capable adult should see this film.

A Gun for George follows Terry Finch (Holness), a struggling writer dealing with the aftermath of the murder of his brother George at the hands of local thugs. Finch channels his anger through a series of cheap crime novels about a viligante called "The Reprisalizer", who is determined to take on the thugs of Thanet in Kent.

The thing is that Finch's apparently not very good, if we believe the editor in the opening scene, who lashes at his "erratic plotting", "sledgehammer prose", and "disquieting ball fixation". But more importantly, his constant anger at everyone and everything seems to be driving him more into the shoes of his violent character, and therefore into insanity.

Set in the 1970s, A Gun for George does a great job balancing the real tragedy of its character and plot, with a cleverly handled dark humor and a more introspective character study. The way the tone is handled is masterful. It also manages to create a very real feeling of the time and place it's set in. From the locations and production to the way the film is shot, including some clever fantasy moments where Finch imagines himself as "The Reprisalizer", you really believe the film is from the 1970s.

Holness, who served as writer, director, and main actor, does a great job with all those roles. His performance is full of little moments that go beyond the comical and into the tragic. The awkward uneasiness of Finch and his bubbling anger at everybody, paired with the bits where we see him pondering about his life and the future while becoming more and more unhinged, it all makes for a worthy watch.

Grade:

Brats follows Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as two parents trying to relax and enjoy a night of checkers and pool while their two bratty children constantly interrupt them, with hilarious results. Something that I'm sure every parent in the world can understand and identify with (maybe not the "hilarious results").

The short is fairly simple, but notable for various reasons. First, it is one of those early insances where actors play two characters in the same film, and the result here is pretty seamless. Add to that the big/small special effects, and it makes for a really impressive short.

But other than that, I found it to be fairly amusing. As someone that's not that familiar with the comedy of Laurel & Hardy, I found their comedic timing to be great. Not something that blew my mind, but still made me chuckle.

Grade:

Hedgehog in the Fog

I've seen this short at least 5-6 times now, and considered not watching it again, but I'm glad I did. I've always considered it a gorgeous film, but perhaps I spent too much time comparing it to Tale of Tales or something. With it only being ten minutes long, I decided to pop it on real quick. Sadly humans are limited by the time we have, which limits how many different ways we can do the same things. I'd love to see this film a million times and think of a million different things to focus on each time. Sadly, there are a million other things I'd like to do too. This time around I trying to focus on what children would see in this and comparing that to children's entertainment in the U.S.. I get that children's entertainment has to be digestible for children, but I don't know that we need to treat them like morons. I also don't think we need to use children's entertainment to teach children basic math or letters or shit like that. Instead, let's show them a little hedgehog who bravely pushes through a fog that impairs his/her view the whole way through. The little hedgehog is brave and curious the whole way through and seems to come out the other side a different creature. Also, the animation is truly stunning at times in this film. It's interesting that the hedgehog looks kinda weird or off or whatever, but there are times where a frame will pop up that seems almost photorealistic. The water looks great, the near pov shot looking upwards at the tree that cuts through the fog is amazing. Rewatching this bumped it up a couple spots on my ballot, and solidified this hall of fame as being the one with the highest quality films.

Please, PLEEEEEASE, JJ! Don't eliminate me!!!1 I know it's July 9, but I'm trying to churn out my reviews!!! Pleeeeeasseee!!!11

Malice in Wonderland

I nominated this film not just because it's great, but because it is pretty short and allows you to think about it as deeply as you choose. Personally, I'm not much of a deep thinker, but I think there is probably something in here for you intellectual types to think about regarding all kinds of things like puberty or gender relations or the deconstruction of literary classics or something like that. I just look at this film and think it's wonderfully animated and it trips me out, man. It is an exhausting explosion of kinetic energy

Dude, I'm doing the same thing.

The Heart of the World

Guy Maddin, wearing his Soviet influences on his sleeves, crams a 90 minute movie into six breakneck minutes. As far as what the movie means, I don't know, but there are something going on here when we get biblical references and iconography, a scientist saving the Earth, an industrialist (or capitalist?) almost causing the scientist to fail, there was some phallic imagery thrown in there (maybe something about a pissing contest between the two brothers?), a woman becoming the new heart of the Earth. I don't know what all of it means. It's also pretty funny to see those Kino intertitles there at the end, filmmakers really believe films are important, don't they?

Nu

If you ever watch those video game making-of videos on youtube, you can see what a video game looks like before it really becomes a video game. There is this unpolished look to it or even before that, there is no texture anywhere and the buildings are blank walls, you can tell what the idea is, but it just isn't there yet. That's kind of what this film feels like to me. There is kind of some Maya Deren going on here, which for a lot of people would be a massive compliment, but I'm not a very big Deren fan, with the mystery and all of that, but it's missing something. I don't know if it's just atmosphere, or maybe I just think the film looks really dull. There's also maybe a Lynch thing going on or something. This film just didn't quite resonate with me.

A Gun for George

I may have underrated this film. I watched it for this HoF and it's the only time I've seen it, but when I think about it, I think very highly of it. It's kind of lost in the shuffle in this particular hall, but it deserves a little shine. It's very funny, but it's also as sad as it is funny. The main character provides both of those things, but underneath that layer of comedy and tragedy lies some horror as well. The saying "hurt people hurt people" is true, but there also seems to be something a little more going on with Terry Finch. He keeps getting closer and closer to that line that can't be uncrossed. He's a pathetic person, and pathetic people can be scary because they don't tend to hurt the people that hurt them. They tend to take it on people who are completely innocent. We see Terry fantasize about what he'd do with a gun, and of course at the end, he finds a gun. It's pretty obvious what we are supposed to infer there, and those scenes from before become a little less funny.

Un obus partout

The short review would be: pretty cool but not great. I do like this film, but it has better parts than its whole. The main negative I have is that short films are not the best medium for telling complete stories. The best short films usually aren't concerned with telling a story in the traditional way. That's not to say it can't be done, but for a story like this one, more development could have been helpful. They do utilize black and color backgrounds to create a pretty cool animation aesthetic. But the animation often feels a little too angular or clean, I guess. The colors are cool though and the visual style kept engaged throughout the runtime. I was also curious about the subject matter as I am not familiar with it at all. The concept of having these event run concurrently with the Maradona led Argentina World Cup was intriguing to me, because it highlighted something I was not fully aware of, and that's the importance of Maradona around the world. Maybe it's obvious to non-Americans, but it fascinated me.

Here are the highlights of the game that was being played during Un obus partout:

Seven

A lot of short films get made so that they can spawn a feature film based on them. It feels like that was the plan here, as this film really needs to be expanded to be good. I mentioned before that shorts that rely on story can really struggle because they probably don't develop properly because of the runtime. It has a good location, I'm a fan non-tropical islands as a setting. In a recent hall of fame, The Secret of Roan Inish was nominated, and I loved it's island setting as well. That film was shot a little better because it had this more homey vibe, but that could have just been the limits of technology preventing the filmmakers from making mistakes. This film looks a little too clean for me.

Hey, JJ. Can I send my ranked list before finishing my reviews? I will try to finish off tonight, but I can send my list right now.

No problem.

I'll get everything tallied up today and the winner will be announced either tonight or tomorrow