2016

Short Film Showcase #5

Two Dollar Bill (2016)
Written & Directed by Hannah Marks

Hannah Marks was born into the industry, the daughter of actors, granddaughter to a musician. She made her debut in 2006’s Accepted, a middling Justin Long vehicle. Along the way, she became interested in directing and has jumped into the deep end. After a series of successfully received shorts, she’s made a feature film with another in the pipeline.

Movie Review – Dark Night

Dark Night (2016)
Written & Directed by Tim Sutton

On July 20th, 2012, during a midnight screen of The Dark Knight Returns, a man wearing tactical gear set off tear gas inside the theater and proceeded to fire into the audience using multiple firearms he’d prepared for this occasion. 12 people were dead, 58 were wounded in the shooting. What followed was another cycle of the gun/mental health debate in America, which ended, as always, with nothing done on either front by leaders who feared political reprisal if they were to act. It was another reminder that we live in a society where the average and considered politically safest response of an elected official in the wake of mass murder is to do nothing.

Movie Review – The Bad Batch

The Bad Batch (2016)
Written & Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour

The film begins promisingly. A young woman is tattooed on her neck and tossed on the other side of a fence that spans the U.S.-Mexico border. Signage indicates that this is a no man’s land, a place where the refuse of the United States is now tossed in an unspecified future point in time. The woman finds a run-down car where she takes a bit of respite only to be chased down and captured by a bizarre tribe of body-building cannibals. All of this sounds like it could be the makings a new post-Apocalyptica, refashioning the tropes of Mad Max into something of the 21st century and female-driven. Yet, all of the promises of Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night feels squandered in what becomes an aimless character-deficient story.

Movie Review – Sausage Party

Sausage Party (2016)
Written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg
Directed by Conrad Vernon & Greg Tiernan

Sausage Party holds the rare achievement of being the first American computer-animated film to receive an R-rating. Despite the character designs and colorful marketing materials, this is most definitely not a picture a child should ever watch, and no adult should waste their time either. Our main characters, Frank the Hot Dog and Brenda the Buns dream of finally giving in to their carnal desires and being together once one of the gods (customers) chooses to take them to the Promised Land. The grocery store products’ ideas about what happens when you are chosen are skewed and much worse than they realize. Once Frank discovers this knowledge, he wants to do everything he can to stop his friends from being devoured.

Movie Review – Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth (2016)
Written by Alice Birch and Nikolai Leskov
Directed by William Oldroyd

This is not a movie about Lady Macbeth. It’s not an adaptation of Shakespeare. It’s not a reimagining of the events of his play. This is a film noir, set in the English Victorian era, about a classic femme fatale, told from her perspective coldly and neutrally. She’s a child bride, sold off to a wealthy man so his son can have a wife. The problem is that the son has no attraction to her; we later learn why, and it’s not what you expect. Left alone in a dusty manor house, our protagonist seeks out the affections of a gruff stablehand, someone like she used to know before this life. The two engage in a torrid affair, the house staff knowing exactly what is going on, and this all leads to murder.

Movie Review – Under the Shadow

Under the Shadow (2016)
Written & Directed by Babak Anvari

It should come as no surprise that, being a Westerner, I know very little about the Iran-Iraq War. The opening prologue of this film explains that it went on for almost a decade, the 1980s. I would suspect most ignorant Americans like myself, not helped in any way by the media, consider Iraq and Iran the same in most ways. However, the Middle East is a more complex region than most in the West give much credence too and if anything comes of watching this film I’ve already found a well-reviewed text on the Iran-Iraq War to read and educate myself on. That opening prologue was most definitely added for audiences outside of the region, and the rest of the film doesn’t spend time expositing the details of the conflict, which is precisely as it should be. The human element becomes the focus, and primal emotions help us connect with the characters.

Movie Review – Silence

Silence (2016)
Written by Jay Cocks & Martin Scorsese
Directed by Martin Scorsese

There has been more than one Martin Scorsese. He’s become most famous for pictures like The Wofl fo Wall Street, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. These are movies about intense, volatile figures that eventually explode. There is also the Scorsese of muted and contemplative films like Kundun and The Age of Innocence. Much like the man himself, his filmography is slightly manic, overflowing with ideas, and able to appreciate art across the spectrum of tone and theme. Silence is one of the quieter films, but it addresses monumentally enormous concepts and touching on a message that resonates across the ages. Few films deal so maturely with matters of faith, genuinely questioning and looking at belief from all angles.