The Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts
I already posted about the documentary shorts, now I s'pose it's time to spew out my thoughts on the Live Action. I'll do animation later. It was really cool to get a chance to see these, even if they were projected from a digital server that killed the picture quality to sub DVD levels.
Anywho.
Our Time Is Up
Kevin Pollack stars as an uptight psychiatrist who never really engages his patients, who are shown successively from the same angle, finishing each other's sentences and such. "How do you feel about that" is about all he can muster. Then he learns that he has just six weeks to live, so he starts telling off his patients. The patients are put off at first by his bluntness, but the new therapy works. This is a pretty conventional film, full of psychiatry and dying cliches but the short film form never lets the cliches take over the plot. So it's put together prett well. I wish I had access to Kevin Pollack for my short films.
The Last Farm
A lot of people I'm going to school with now have made movies like this, but not as good. An old man lives in an isolated cottage on the cliffs by the sea. His daughter calls him, but he doesn't really want to talk He buys a bunch of wood and spends his time carving it. It takes about half the movie to figure out that he's buidling a coffin for his wife and that he plans to bury her. Then at the end, he buries himself alive next to his wife. There's not much plot to the movie, but the majestic fjords make up for it. Most of the time is dedicated to the old man struggling to move giants logs of wood and transport dirt with a big truck. But the movie pays off at the end with a few money images. The only real misstep is that the movie introduces a suspense element at the end when the guy's family just decides to visit him (despite him telling them not to come). Will he kill himself before they show up? It takes the focus off the man and never really pays off. Otherwise, pretty well done.
Cashback
This starts off as your predictable British bloke working the night shift movie, complete with voiceover narration introducing you to all the lovable wackos who work the overnight shift at a grocery store. There is no plot, just the main guy (I can never remember characters' names) introducing the characters and telling the audience about what it's like to work at a grocery store. I liked it because a lot of things he talks about reminded me of when I worked at a grocery store. Then at about the 2/3 point, the movie does a complete 180. The main guy (who doubles as an artist) freezes time and proceeds to take off all the women customers' clothes to "see the beauty within." I liked that the movie threw me for a loop, but I noticed that all the naked people were attractive women in their early 20s. It seemed very superficial to me. According to the IMDB, a full length version of this movie will be coming out later this year.
Ausreisser
This movie combines the "reserved man warms to cute kid" genre with the "mysterious kid turns out to just be in his head" genre. Basically a kid shows up at a reserved architect's house and claims to be his son by his exgirlfriend. The architect says "No way man, I haven't seen my exgirlfriend in six years, which is coincidentally, how old you are. Where is she anyway?" To which the kid replies "She's gone, I'm gonna disappear now" then the kid disappears and the architect tries to find him. And when the architect does find him, the kid runs away. And the architect chases the kid right into the hospital where the mom has been pronounced dead and the son the architect never knew he had is lying in critical condition from a car crash. Ever since The Sixth Sense, the audience has always been two steps ahead of movies like this. I know I was.
Six Shooter
Six Shooter stars Brendan Gleeson (I wish I could put him in a movie!) as a middle-aged Irish guy whose wife dies. On the train ride home, he sits next to an ADD riddled teenager whose mother just died. One booth down is a couple whose son just died. See a pattern? The teenager is a motormouth who has no shame in asking the couple if they feel bad about not being there for their son when he died. For a while the movie just watches as the kid talks bad to the couple and Brendan Gleeson steps in to stop them from fighting. The kid also keeps wanting to tell a story about the best day of his life. When he finally does get to tell it, it's the funniest thing you'll see all year. Eventually the kid's insults drive the wife of the couple to throw herself off the train. So the train's stopped and the police interrogate everything. Then there's a shootout between the kid and the police. When Brendan Gleeson finally gets home, he tries to committ suicide, but can't bring himself to do it.
This movie deservedly won the Oscar. It doesn't really have a plot per se, but it's the most emotionally moving and the deepest of all the short films. It's also the strangest, which is a plus too. I suppose all the characters were supposed to be different parts of the same person (they all have dead family members and they all deal with in in different ways), but the movie never explicitly states that. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't intended to be that. It's a very moving experience. I could imagine a good full length could be made from this (moreso than Cashback anyway).
So, my choice: Six Shooter
Anywho.
Our Time Is Up
Kevin Pollack stars as an uptight psychiatrist who never really engages his patients, who are shown successively from the same angle, finishing each other's sentences and such. "How do you feel about that" is about all he can muster. Then he learns that he has just six weeks to live, so he starts telling off his patients. The patients are put off at first by his bluntness, but the new therapy works. This is a pretty conventional film, full of psychiatry and dying cliches but the short film form never lets the cliches take over the plot. So it's put together prett well. I wish I had access to Kevin Pollack for my short films.
The Last Farm
A lot of people I'm going to school with now have made movies like this, but not as good. An old man lives in an isolated cottage on the cliffs by the sea. His daughter calls him, but he doesn't really want to talk He buys a bunch of wood and spends his time carving it. It takes about half the movie to figure out that he's buidling a coffin for his wife and that he plans to bury her. Then at the end, he buries himself alive next to his wife. There's not much plot to the movie, but the majestic fjords make up for it. Most of the time is dedicated to the old man struggling to move giants logs of wood and transport dirt with a big truck. But the movie pays off at the end with a few money images. The only real misstep is that the movie introduces a suspense element at the end when the guy's family just decides to visit him (despite him telling them not to come). Will he kill himself before they show up? It takes the focus off the man and never really pays off. Otherwise, pretty well done.
Cashback
This starts off as your predictable British bloke working the night shift movie, complete with voiceover narration introducing you to all the lovable wackos who work the overnight shift at a grocery store. There is no plot, just the main guy (I can never remember characters' names) introducing the characters and telling the audience about what it's like to work at a grocery store. I liked it because a lot of things he talks about reminded me of when I worked at a grocery store. Then at about the 2/3 point, the movie does a complete 180. The main guy (who doubles as an artist) freezes time and proceeds to take off all the women customers' clothes to "see the beauty within." I liked that the movie threw me for a loop, but I noticed that all the naked people were attractive women in their early 20s. It seemed very superficial to me. According to the IMDB, a full length version of this movie will be coming out later this year.
Ausreisser
This movie combines the "reserved man warms to cute kid" genre with the "mysterious kid turns out to just be in his head" genre. Basically a kid shows up at a reserved architect's house and claims to be his son by his exgirlfriend. The architect says "No way man, I haven't seen my exgirlfriend in six years, which is coincidentally, how old you are. Where is she anyway?" To which the kid replies "She's gone, I'm gonna disappear now" then the kid disappears and the architect tries to find him. And when the architect does find him, the kid runs away. And the architect chases the kid right into the hospital where the mom has been pronounced dead and the son the architect never knew he had is lying in critical condition from a car crash. Ever since The Sixth Sense, the audience has always been two steps ahead of movies like this. I know I was.
Six Shooter
Six Shooter stars Brendan Gleeson (I wish I could put him in a movie!) as a middle-aged Irish guy whose wife dies. On the train ride home, he sits next to an ADD riddled teenager whose mother just died. One booth down is a couple whose son just died. See a pattern? The teenager is a motormouth who has no shame in asking the couple if they feel bad about not being there for their son when he died. For a while the movie just watches as the kid talks bad to the couple and Brendan Gleeson steps in to stop them from fighting. The kid also keeps wanting to tell a story about the best day of his life. When he finally does get to tell it, it's the funniest thing you'll see all year. Eventually the kid's insults drive the wife of the couple to throw herself off the train. So the train's stopped and the police interrogate everything. Then there's a shootout between the kid and the police. When Brendan Gleeson finally gets home, he tries to committ suicide, but can't bring himself to do it.
This movie deservedly won the Oscar. It doesn't really have a plot per se, but it's the most emotionally moving and the deepest of all the short films. It's also the strangest, which is a plus too. I suppose all the characters were supposed to be different parts of the same person (they all have dead family members and they all deal with in in different ways), but the movie never explicitly states that. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't intended to be that. It's a very moving experience. I could imagine a good full length could be made from this (moreso than Cashback anyway).
So, my choice: Six Shooter
posted by Jesse @ 11:58 PM
<< Home