This is probably not the film you want to watch every Thanksgiving.
Based on his one-act play, The Humans was written and directed by Stephen Karam. The film told the story of the Blake family during Thanksgiving at Brigid (Beanie Feldstein)Blake’s new apartment with her boyfriend Robert (Steven Yeun). Her parents Erik (Richard Jennings) and Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell) were in attendance along with her sister Aimee (Amy Schumer) and her grandmother Momo (June Squibb). Momo was slipping further into senility, Aimee had lost her job, Richard was struggling to get by and Erik and Deirdre were very judgmental over the new apartment.
The film mostly took place within the confines of the small apartment and depended heavily on the acting chops of the strong cast.
There was something bizarre going on inside the apartment as well as Erik was being haunted by visions of a faceless woman. Erik was a witness of the 9-11 tragedies as he had intended on being on the observation deck of the Twin Towers as he awaited for Aimee to complete a job interview. However, the decks were not yet open and so he was in a donut shop across the street.
The dialogue carried the film and the elements of horror were kept in the background as questions of something in the walls were hinted at by the film.
At first, it was a little difficult to follow the movie, because there was not that much happening, but I enjoy many of the actors involved so I kept watching and, as I got to know these characters more, I began to become invested in their interactions and their family dynamic.
I love June Squibb. I think she improves any project that she is involved in and she gives a heart-breaking performance here as Momo and her decline into darkness inside her own mind.
The ending 20 minutes or so was compelling as could be and I was glad that I continued to watch the movie after the beginning.
However, there is a definite downer tone to the film and I would not necessarily want to watch it again. I am glad I watched it once, for some great performances.
I was looking for a shorter film today to work for the June Swoon. I was hoping for somewhere around 90 minutes or so and so I stopped on the Sony Animation film on Netflix called Vivo.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voice coming out of the animated kinkajou that was named Vivo. This was a musical featuring a kinkajou that was a street performer along with an older man named Andrés Hernández (Juan de Marcos González). Andrés received an invite to come see a famous singer named Marta Sandoval (Gloria Estefan), whom he had left years before. He was hoping to deliver to her the song he wrote when she left, but he died before he could leave Cuba for her Miami concert.
Vivo decided to deliver the song for him, with the help of a little girl without much musical skill named Gabi (Ynairaly Simo).
Much of Vivo was average, particularly the story. There was little original among the plot or of the character design. However, the music was really strong, many of which were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda himself. The animation was well done too, using some excellent computer generated animation that made the film easy to watch.
I would be lying if I said that, despite the formulaic structure, I did not find myself a little emotional at the ending of the film so there must have been something that the movie had done right.
I wanted to shout out one particular voice actor that I picked up. Michael Rooker appeared as a Burmese python named Lutador.
Vivo is not a stand out film, but it had some great music and looked good. You could do worse.
The first movie I had on the list for the June Swoon was American Underdog. When it was out, honestly, I was not in a huge rush to see it. I had people tell me that it was really good, but I just was not interested in heading to the theater to see it. So when it came up on streaming, I had come up with the idea about the June Swoon and I decided that this would be one of the films I watched during that time.
I have now finished the film, starring Zachary Levi as Kurt Warner, NFL MVP and Hall of Famer, detailing his bumpy and unlikely rise to stardom in the NFL, and I have to say that it was better than I thought it was going to be.
The film showed the struggle of Kurt Warner to get on the field to play the game, starting in University of Northern Iowa to the Iowa Barnstormers in the Arena League right up with the St. Louis Rams. It also provided the story of his relationship with Brenda (Anna Paquin), a single mother that Warner met in a country bar and who would eventually become his wife. There were plenty of terrible tragedies and difficult challenges that the pair went through that are dealt with in the film. Some of these scenes feel surface level though as if they are touched upon but not delved into deeply.
My biggest issue with the film prior to seeing it was the word that it was a faith-based film. Many of those kind of films are just so “hit you over the head” with their religious view that it takes away from the story that is being told. However, I did not find that in this movie at all. It was not preachy and the faith-based aspect was simply part of the characters. It was handled extremely well and fit in with the underdog tale that was being weaved.
Zachary Levi is charming and he has a decent chemistry with Anna Paquin. They feel well cast in the film, but I do feel like the script could have gone deeper with the story. There are parts of the film that felt more like a Lifetime original than a big screen movie.
However, a lot of the film does work and it tells a clearly inspirational story. I think the football scenes work very well in isolation and Levi and Paquin make a great pair. I would have liked to see more of a crossover between these two main story arcs. Still, it was a decent watch and I am happy that I finally got to the film.
I have been looking forward to watching Summer of Soul for quite awhile now. I wanted to watch it back around Oscar time, but I decided that I would wait until June for the June Swoon to finally watch it. It was easy to find on Disney + and I placed it on my watchlist. Today, I finally loaded up the Oscar winning documentary from Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson from the Roots.
Questlove’s documentary told the story of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place on six Sundays between June 29 and August 24 in Harlem, New York. The documentary is told through footage of the event that had never been seen, as well as news footage and present day interviews of artists involved.
Some of the greatest black entertainers of the time participated in the festival including Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension, B.B. King, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Sly and the Family Stone, The Staple Singers, Mavis Staples, Blinky Williams, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, and The Chambers Brothers.
There is more to this documentary than just playing the footage from 1969 and letting the remarkable moments sell your show. The film does a great job of showing how significant piece of history this was despite how few people in the cultural zeitgeist remembered. Interviews with the artists and others involved really compliment the ride that we are on with this fantastic music. We hear from Jesse Jackson and the Mayor of New York among others.
The film also showed the cultural significance and how this music was the soundtrack to the civil rights battle and the importance of finding a voice of a revolution.
It is two hours of entertainment that can also open up the thoughts of a generation. It was an exceptional documentary.
The June Swoon continues today diving into the world of comedy with Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. Barb and Star felt like characters that had been from another source, such as SNL or British TV, but, as far as I can tell from my research, they are originating in this movie.
Star is played by the wonderful Kristen Wiig and Barb is played by Annie Mumolo, who I was unaware of before this. Barb and Star are a pair of middle aged women who are friends and who spend their lives together, both widowed, talking and exchanging an almost non-stop banter with each other.
And it is exceptionally funny.
Poor Star and Barb lost their jobs and were kicked out of their discussion club for lying about it so they were at their wits end. They finally decided that they needed a vacation from their regular life, and they packed their bags for a place in Florida called Vista De Mar.
Coincidentally enough, an international terrorist named Sharon Gordon Fisherman (also played by Kristen Wiig), a white skinned woman, and her boy toy assistant Edgar (Jamie Dornan), were targeting Vista Del Mar for a complicated plan of revenge over its treatment of Sharon Gordon Fisherman when she lived in the community as a youth.
Fisherman sent Edgar ahead to set up her revenge. Unfortunately, he lost an important piece after a night of drunken debauchery with Barb and Star. Edgar, who had been in an unrequited loving relationship with Fisherman, started spending more time with Star. Star hid the relationship from Barb because she did not want to have Barb feel bad leading to a potential rift between the ladies.
The movie is utterly silly and has plenty of ridiculous scenes and moments, but it works because they are really funny. There were times when I could feel that if certain scenes were in different movies, I might hate them, but since I had drawn such a love for these characters, I accepted it as okay (I’m specifically thinking about parachute pants).
Jamir Dornan was great here too. He had solid comedic timing and he sang. Yes, there are a couple of moments when the film broke into songs. I would not consider the whole movie a musical, but there are at least two scene where it could make sense in a musical.
I’ve said this before… the most important part of a comedy is…does it make you laugh? Barb and Star made me laugh. I found it to be extremely charming and fun.
When I first saw Interview with the Vampire, it was on a rental (probably VHS). I found it boring. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was not what I was looking for at the time: a gothic horror period piece.
Today, for the Do Over, I watched Interview with the Vampire. It was one of the first films I thought of when coming up with concept. I would have done this earlier, but since I already had done Blade 2, I did not want to typecast the Do Over as a vampire topic.
According to IMDB: “Against the backdrop of a gloomy San Francisco, the nearly two-century-old vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac [Brad Pitt], recounts the unbelievable story of his eternal transformation and a life worse than death to the sceptic reporter, Daniel Molloy [Christian Slater]. Spanning two hundred years of cruel betrayals, extreme solitude, and unquenched thirst, Louis’ grimly fascinating tale pivots around his perpetually regrettable decision to embrace the dictatorship of blood, and, above all, his maker: the seductive blonde aristocrat of death, Lestat de Lioncourt [Tom Cruise]. Is Louis’ mystical epic of bloodshed genuine? Is this, indeed, an interview with a vampire?”
The moody, atmospheric film is considerably more interesting to me today than when I saw it for the first time back in the 1990s. The film is much more a character piece than what I wanted back then, focusing on Lestat, Louis and Claudia (Kirsten Dunst). Claudia, in particular, was a fascinating character and Kirsten Dunst, without a doubt, gave one of the best performances of the movie. Such a young girl who was able to bring such menace and, dare I say, evil was revolutionary and amazingly believable. She showed how powerful of an actress she was going to become with this early performance.
The story itself was fine, though a little too strung together for my tastes. I did not enjoy the very last scene in the car because it made the entire film feel too cheesy. I did not find any of Interview with the Vampire to ever cross into camp until the very end, and that tonal switch felt like a betrayal to what had come before.
Both Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were excellent in this movie as Louis spent his vampire existence longing for a change and Cruise wishing that he would just embrace what he was.
Based upon the book by Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire had a slow burn but it created an amazing atmosphere and built a sense of tension and suspense as these vampire characters tried to find answers for their unhappy existence.
Today’s June Swoon entry is a New Zealand psychological horror film entitled Coming Home in the Dark, which I found on Netflix. I do not remember where I had heard of this film or why I included it on my list for the June Swoon, but I am glad I did.
A family was out together on a camping trip when a pair of strangers came along and abducted them at gunpoint. They forced the, to go on a road trip with them, looking to bring out a terrible tragedy from the past.
This was a simple story of vengeance and cruelty, but it was filled with several unexpected and surprising shocks that I did not see coming. Daniel Gillies as Mandrake was menacing and terrifying, showing that you do not have to be screaming in order to create an anxiety among the audience. Mandrake was so full of rage and anger, but he kept it suppressed just beneath the surface of the character.
Erik Thomson, who played the father of the family, a schoolteacher, seemed to be the target of Mandrake’s venom and it became obvious that there was something in the past that led to this violence. At least, something in the head of Mandrake. The film does lean toward Mandrake as the damaged party here, but it never excuses the behavior or the violence from him. He is not shown as anything but a brutal killer, which despite any travesties in his past, is exactly what he was.
The performances are excellent throughout the film. Daniel Gillies takes the script to another level with his portrayal of Mandrake. And, though Erik Thomson was great, I found Miriama McDowell as his wife Jill matched him with every scene she was in. She brought such an anguish and loss to the role while still revealing the fierceness of a damaged fighter with her back to the wall.
The look of the film is sensational too. Mostly shot at night, the choreography and the imagery of the film built such a tense feeling in every scene. You are never sure what is going to be the end results of the night, but you are anxiously hoping for the best.
Coming Home in the Dark is a strong and anxiety-filled thriller that should not slip under your radar.
At the Oscars this past nominations, one film received nominations in Best Animated Film, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary, which, although it did not win any of them, was an amazing feat for Flee and the first time any film had been nominated for all three in a single year. So I found the film on Vudu and placed it squarely in The June Swoon.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, “FLEE tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan.”
The story of Flee is a true one, though the name Nawabi has been changed to protect the identity of the main subject. It is told beautifully through an interview with Amin, who reflected back on his childhood and his attempts to flee the country of Afghanistan and the country of Russia. It showed amazing specifics of the immigrant experience that has been so controversial over the last several years.
The animation style is beautiful and the creators also use many real life videos to help illustrate the story around Amin.
The situations that Amin had to face were harrowing and told brilliantly. It was absolutely deserving of the three Oscar noms.
The June Swoon took a weird nose dive this evening as I watched a film called John and the Hole on Amazon Prime.
I’m not sure how to review this one.
John (Charlie Shotwell) is a 13-year old boy who lives with his father Brad (Michael C. Hall), mother Anna (Jennifer Ehle) and sister Laurie (Taissa Farmiga) in a house isolated in the woods. John discovered an old bunker in the woods and he decided to drug his family and imprison them in the hole.
That is your general plot. By the way, about 30 minutes into the movie, we came upon a little girl (Samantha LeBretton) and her mother (Georgia Lyman). The girl asked her to tell her the story about “John and the Hole” and we get the title card. Later on, the mother tells the girl that she is leaving and she gives the little girl money to live on.
Wha?
Okay, SPOILERS from now on because I am not sure how else to talk about this otherwise.
We never learn a reason why John dumps his family in the hole. He does seem to be an odd child, and he is not much of a communicator with his family, but there is really no reason that I could see why he trapped his family in that hole.
In the end, John lowered a ladder down and let them out of the hole. They find John floating in the pool, but Brad jumped in and makes sure that John survived. Then, we see the family eating together as if nothing had happened.
I don’t know. I mean, performances were excellent. Charlie Shotwell was sufficiently weird and eccentric and he seemed to be extremely lonely once he dumped them down the hole. He talked his friend (Ivy O’Brien) to come over and later he wants one of his mom’s friends (Tamara Hickey) to stay with him.
He then cooks prosciutto and takes some in containers for his family.
You believe Shotwell the entire time, even though you do not understand why he is doing this.
The movie completely destroyed the narrative structure. I’m not sure how things fit together or why things are happening as they are. John is taking tennis lessons. Apparently he is really good at tennis. He drugs the gardener (I think) early on. Was he testing the drug on him before using it on his family?
There are a lot of ways to interpret what happened in John and the Hole, and I think that is the purpose from director Pascual Sisto. The viewer is allowed to determine exactly what is going on and what the different scenes mean.
It is a strange one. Very intriguing, but strange.
The next installment of The June Swoon binge is here with an animated movie that I have had on my queue for quite a long time. As a fan of professional wrestling, Rumble looked interesting to me. And as an animated movie, it was, at best, okay.
The film was very formulaic and predictable. It raised some themes of father issues that were never quite touched on enough to make it worthwhile.
According to IMDB, “In a world where giant monsters and humans collide, the monsters are superstar athletes and compete in a popular professional wrestling global sport called Monster Wrestling. A young girl named Winnie [Geraldine Viswanathan] seeks to follow in her father’s footsteps as a manager by coaching a lovable underdog yet-inexperienced monster named Steve [Will Arnett]. Winnie plans to turn Steve into a champion so that he can go up against the reigning champion Tentacular [Terrey Crews].”
The animation was fine. The monster designs were mostly fun. The voice cast was fine. There is nothing that really makes this one stand out, but nothing that dings it that badly either.
Rumble is harmless and is probably a good film for the kids who enjoy WWE or other wrestling organizations. However, it it light and fluffy and will not stick with you for long after viewing.
The first film of The June Swoon is a film that is contained in a series that I am returning to after watching several of the earlier films of the series in the DailyView. Seth Breedlove directed these documentaries dealing with the phenomenon of the Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot. The film that kicks off The June Swoon is On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Discovery.
This doc finds Seth Breedlove joining up with The Olympic Project. According to their website, The Olympic Project is “association of dedicated researchers, investigators, biologists and trackers committed to documenting the existence of Sasquatch through science and education. Through comprehensive habitat study, DNA analysis and game camera deployment, our goal is to obtain as much information and empirical evidence as we can, with hopes of being as prepared as possible when and if species verification comes to fruition. Our studies are conducted in a non-invasive manor with respect and sensitivity to probable habitat we believe this amazing species inhabits.”
The focus of this documentary, and the topic of the “discovery” of the film is an investigation in an area in Washington called the Olympic peninsula where several “nests” were found. Nesting is a known trait of gorillas, where they bust up branches and twigs in certain manners to build these nests for bedding and/or birth.
They spoke about the almost militaristic style of building these nests, how it is built to give the best possible cover and protection and the manner in which the branches are broken indicate a creature with an opposable thumb.
The doc heads out and seems to discover a nest that may have been in the process of being built when they came across it. This whole nest section of the doc was interesting and gave the viewers some definite questions to ponder.
There are more than just nests included in this doc. They spend some time on the vocalization of the Bigfoot and the attempt to capture the sounds of the Sasquatch. They played some intriguing recordings during the doc. They also included a bunch of really compelling stories from eye witnesses and from the members of the Olympic Project for why they joined up in this scientific organization that may not be perceived as very realistic.
I think I enjoyed this doc more than the other films in this series. This felt more compelling and offered some potential progress. It was also a better produced version of the film than the previous ones were.
The movie for this week’s Do Over is a film from Pixar, a studio where I have always enjoyed their efforts and some of my absolute favorite animated movies such as Toy Story 3 and Inside Out have been created. However, I have always stated that I did not like Wall-E, one of the films that is nearly universally beloved among the Pixar lineup. Wall-E won an Academy Award for Best Animated Film and holds 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. So this week’s Do Over will feature Wall-E to see if my opinion of this movie changed from when I first saw it years ago.
I did not see Wall-E in the theater. I would have watched the DVD of the film to watch it, which makes sense, since as I watched the film today on Disney +, there were several things that I did not remember. What I remember of my initial thoughts was that Wall-E was dull and boring. It is quite possible that I did not watch the entire film, skipping parts of it.
After watching this on Disney +, I found Wall-E to be considerably better than I remembered. I did not find it boring or dull in the slightest. While it may not break into my Pixar Top 10, it is certainly no longer going to be down at the bottom with Cars or The Good Dinosaur.
Wall-E (Ben Burtt) stood for Waste Allocation Load-Lifter: Earth-Class, which was assigned the job of cleaning a post-apocalyptic earth. Ultimately, the earth proved to be too damaged to be fixed and the robots all were gone. All, that was, except for one Wall-E unit that achieved sentience. Wall-E spent his day collecting intriguing pieces from the planet while compacting the rest into little blocks. Along with his cockroach friend, Wall-E did not realize that he longed for companionship as he watched old VHS copies of musicals.
One day, an egg-shaped probe arrived on earth named EVE (Elissa Knight), pronounced Eva, which stood for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator. Wall-E was taken with the new robot and tried to make friends with her. He showed EVE lots of the things that he had collected, including his VHS movies. When Wall-E showed her his latest discovery: a small, living plant, EVE went into her primary function, which was to return to the ship with the plant.
Wall-E hitched a ride along with EVE and found a starliner named Axiom. Aboard the ship was a population of humans who had become lazy and fat from decades of pampering and service by the robots. The humans sat on hover chairs and had the robots do even the littlest of jobs.
The Axion’s captain, Captain B. McCrea (Jeff Garlin) was just as slovenly, but when he learned of the existence of the plant from earth, he began to study the past history of earth, and he heard the terrible message from Shelby Forthright (Fred Willard), CEO/owner of the Buy n Large Corporation and President of Earth.
With the hope of the green plant, Wall-E, EVE and the Captain attempt to find a way to return to earth despite the resistance that sprung up against them.
This was a lovely film. The animation was extraordinary and remarkably imaginative. The section that I would have thought was boring back when I first watched this was an important aspect of the film as we learn more about our little robot and the status of the planet earth.
The film certainly seemed to have an anti-technology theme as it implied and came right out with how technology can cause humans to become complacent and lazy, despite their better judgments. However, I always thought that the humans in this movie were to represent the worst of the human race, those completely given in to the 7 sins, especially sloth and gluttony, but after watching this again, I do not think that is accurate. I think this is a warning to people that technology advancements could figuratively place them into a coma, a state of inactivity that causes them to stop thinking, living. The film wants people to be able to keep everything into perspective. You can tell it is not the seven sins because as soon as the plant appears, the humans kind of awaken from their trances and begin to hope to go home.
There are plenty of other themes at work here as well including the use of waste and the effects on the environment. For a movie about a little robot that has a limited amount of dialogue, Wall-E is considerably deep.
Wall-E is much better than I remembered and I am glad that I took the time during this Do Over to give it a second chance.
Everybody seemed to love 21 Jump Street, the “adaptation” of the 1980s TV show into an action/comedy movie starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. I did not like it much at all, but this is the Do Over and I give films that I didn’t like the first time a second viewing to see if I missed something about it the first time.
Honestly, there are a ton of things in 21 Jump Street that I never like in movies. I am not a huge fan of vulgarity, and there is plenty of that in this movie. Drug jokes are not one of my favorites either and this movie’s whole plot focuses around drugs. I have never been a fan of Jonah Hill as he falls right into the loud, obnoxious protagonist character that I have always found off-putting. All of that is still in 21 Jump Street.
I will say that I found a little more to enjoy in the film the second time around.
I did appreciate the chemistry between Tatum and Hill. If they did not work together, the film absolutely falls apart. I found Channing Tatum to be surprisingly good. This was one of the first opportunities he has had to show his comedic timing and he does an excellent job with it.
I’m not sure if Chris Parnell is just going to be in every movie that I watch from now on as he was in three different films that I watched this weekend. Ice Cube was funny as the 21 Jump Street Captain, and the cameo with Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise was fun.
The storyline is pretty stupid, which I think it was supposed to be. However, it is interesting looking at the idea of popularity in high school and how it has changed over the years. How the groups in high school form and how that affects the people involved. Getting a taste of being popular sent Jonah Hill off the deep end and he was doing things that he never should have been doing to maintain the level.
Phil Lloyd and Christopher Miller directed the film and tried to do something unexpected than just recycle an old TV show for nostalgia purposes. There were thoughts on deeper themes contained inside 21 Jump Street that elevates it above just another vulgar-comedy. Unfortunately, a lot of what turns me off in a comedy are on display here, so I still do not love the movie, even if I may respect it a little more.
I just barely remember the first time I watched The Golden Compass. It was on DVD and my slight memory was that I was bored during it. So when I saw that this movie was leaving HBO Max at the end of the month of May, I decided this would be a good film to use for week three of the Do Over.
What I found amazing upon the second viewing was that a film with as many fantastical elements and magical creatures could be as dull as The Golden Compass was.
According to IMDB: “It was no ordinary life for a young girl: living among scholars in the hallowed halls of Jordan College and tearing unsupervised through Oxford’s motley streets on mad quests for adventure. But Lyra’s greatest adventure would begin closer to home, the day she heard hushed talk of an extraordinary particle. Microscopic in size, the magical dust–discovered in the vast Arctic expanse of the North–was rumored to possess profound properties that could unite whole universes. But there were those who feared the particle and would stop at nothing to destroy it. Catapulted into the heart of a terrible struggle, Lyra was forced to seek aid from clans, ‘gyptians, and formidable armored bears. And as she journeyed into unbelievable danger, she had not the faintest clue that she alone was destined to win, or to lose, this more-than-mortal battle.“
That synopsis from IMDB just scratches the surface of the convoluted story of The Golden Compass. What a mess the story of this film was. It seemed to change every ten minutes or so, much like the main antagonist (if that is who she was) Nicole Kidman. Kidman played Mrs. Coulter and her motives changed in every other scene. The movie also starred Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, although I could understand if you forgot that he was in the movie because the movie certainly forgot that. He appeared at the beginning and was not seen again until the very end, and that was not even in person.
The young protagonist Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) showed herself to be quite a strong little girl who was an accomplished liar or manipulator. She was thrown into several situations but I never once felt that she was in any jeopardy (except the one near the end in a lab, but it was resolved in such a unlikely manner that you could hardly count that one).
I did enjoy the inclusion of Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby, a character nearly identical to dozens of characters I have seen Sam Elliott play before, though he is such a likeable actor that you forgive the repetitive nature. The ever wonderful Ian McKellan voiced the polar bear Iorek Byrnison, who went from drunken servant to king in the space of about 30 minutes. He pledged his fealty to Lyra because she let him know where his armor was being held, despite it being a painfully apparent location.
The CGI and special effects were hit and miss. Sometimes the film looked good, but other times it looked as fake as you could imagine.
The the film just ended. It pulled a Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring ending (which also had Ian McKellan in it) and the group had come together to head off on a quest. Let’s just say that this was nowhere near as satisfying as that movie was.
Prior to the abrupt ending the film pulled out about three Dues Ex Machinas in the final battle. This included the sudden appearance of Iorek Byrnison, who apparently can teleport (or else is a really sneaky gigantic armoured polar bear).
The Golden Compass was a disappointment and packed with ideas that are not executed or are so messy that you do not care by the time the film gets around to them.
This one was just 3 minutes and 44 seconds long, but it did a fantastic job of scaring me and making me feel uneasy.
When musician Vincent (Vinny Balbo) finds his roommate (David Illy Bennett) standing at the front door, eyes closed with his ear up against the door, and not saying anything, he was confused. When his roommate told him that he was listening for secrets from her, Vincent was even more confused, but he did the same to see what he could hear. He heard nothing, but that did not mean that there was nothing there.
This was really solid and creepy. I was very impressed with the story and the characterization for such a short film. And then, what we see, was nightmare inducing for sure.
I thought this was really well done and I would love to see more from it. This is also found on YouTube.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 