MicroCinema Scene

Many would call Bill Kersey’s Solace a music video, but it does what the genre often fails to convey most of the time: it establishes an emotional connection. Solace does in three minutes what a regular feature should do in a hour and a half. It recounts the story of a man who goes through life playing his guitar; a man dealing with both happy and sad moments via his music.

It is a fine example of how a moviemaker can do so much with so little. The concept is simple as it is structured around one instrumental guitar song. The story is told without dialogue, relying only on a solid montage of still photographs, depicting the different phases of the man’s life in chronological order, starting as a kid (even then with his guitar.) This is something I respect very much: To be able to tell a story without the aid of dialogue, titles or any other expositional devices aside from the images.

Solace doesn’t have any extraordinary events, save a single tremendous one that takes up a huge portion of the piece. But at the end, the piece is just about life and that’s the beauty of it. The film works at all levels, whether you review it as a music video, a documentary or a drama. It also happens to have the right length; at 3 minutes, 36 seconds Solace is a simple yet very concise and effective short film.

Steve (Greg Parker) is a mentally challenged, but good-natured, nerd who works at a rubber band factory and has a crush on his coworker who shatters his dreams, humiliating him in public.

Emotionally wrenched, Steve finds an old book in his basement that evokes demonic forces which turns him into a vengeful demon who embraces its victims before melting them. He meets a nurse (Kathy Karly) who tries to help him find out what’s wrong with him.

Lord of the Dead is a recycled genre story filled with “homages,” bizarre characters, and sparse bits of originality.

One of my problems with most “horror comedies” is that for me gore alone is simply not funny, amusing or shocking, but just silly, and it gets tiring after a while. I love a dark sense of humor, but why should I simply laugh at heads being chopped off, eyes gouged, or melting bodies? Even if the special effects were seamless, if out of context they will only be gimmicks, not horrific or funny, but just silly if we don’t care about the characters.

I get the feeling, watching a lot of microcinema horror pieces, that many of these films don’t have a clear idea of their mission and struggle to find the right balance of tone. Is it pure horror, comedy, or both?

Apparently, Lord of the Dead wants to be a comedy, but aside from the inspired, if over the top performance by Greg Parker, many of the occasional laughs arrive when the acting or the FX go wrong. How much of this is intentional? You can never tell. Whatever the choices were, they are not consistent on the screen.

Still, there are some nice touches throughout the film: The nurse’s obsession with washing her hands all the time, the rubber band factory sequence, and the inspired design of the creatures, even if sometimes hampered by its unavoidable low budget execution (another reason to hide the monsters and gore FX when working at this level)

However, probably comedy-horror fans will find appeal in Lord of The Dead.

The DVD contains a “Making Of” that effectively chronicles the process of creating the make-up and other FX. Even if the movie didn’t work for me, I still applaud Greg Parker because of his ambitious make-up, with different zombie and demon masks for each character, and the grueling murder scenes.

Two Stars

Stan Jackson (Fred Russell) is one of the founding members and a business partner of a prestigious company called Connections Marketing. His nine years old marriage means nothing to him since he “has the need to try new things” and has a history of sexually harassing his female employees in exchange for favors like salary increases or promotions. One wonders how the company is still in business since (in the words of his co-workers) “he chooses ass against money.”

Lewd Behavior is a talky piece with an effective view on the amorality of the corporate world. Those who work in this kind of competitive environment will truly have fun with this movie. It doesn’t really have anything new to say, but it doesn’t pretend to do so either. It is a story about backstabbing, adultery, and all sort of betrayals beneath the façade of correctness. The lusty amorality of most of the characters is a delight throughout. The movie only falters a little with some lack of credibility in the third act, turning to a melodramatic approach, a tone that doesn’t blend well with the playful lightness of the first two thirds of the piece.

The screenplay is efficient enough despite the overall flatness of the production values. The filmmakers rely heavily on “talking heads” throughout the movie. In a sense it is a piece that could easily exist in the radio or theater, as it has no cinematic approach whatsoever. Some editing choices (fade outs) feel awkward, some dead bits could have been trimmed for a better flow, and the sound needs some work. That said, Lewd Behavior is enjoyable, sometimes really funny ,and moves along with correct performances from most of the cast members.

Three Stars.

Don’t let the first minutes of Usher give you the wrong idea. This is not a hitman movie, although it pays homage to the genre without being self-conscious and succeeds, for the most part.

After screwing up a killing job, Ash (Thomas Alexander), a young mobster, is dispatched by his boss and gets a minimum wage job in a movie theater, only to realize that he can’t deal with ordinary people’s behavior. In the meantime he develops a crush on Novelyn (Elizabeth Turkel), one of the employees who is constantly harassed by Alvin (Quin Gordon), the hotdog guy next door. Usher has a great premise and for the most part is really engaging. Every single member of the cast is at least efficient when not great in their roles.

Fortunately the movie doesn’t fall into sentimentality, and Ash’s social ineptitude–mixed with his strong principles–are consistent throughout, resulting in the highlight of the film. Strong-headed and reminiscent in a way of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, he soon wins the audience even without the help of a voice over.

Thomas Alexander is convincing in his role, despite being too young to portray Ash, who in my opinion should have been at least in his late twenties. It would have been more interesting when dealing with his high-school-aged co-workers. Still he pulls it off effortlessly, always keeping the tension, inducing in us the notion that he doesn’t belong to that crowd and that he might explode any time. If you ever had a job of this kind you would identify even more with the protagonist. There are great scenes involving his struggle to preserve order in the theater. Particularly hilarious is a segment involving two drunk bikers who refuse to give up their beer.

Which brings me to another character that deserves recognition: The Orinda Theater, now a National Landmark. Its old-fashioned art-deco grandeur and artwork transports us into another time, another world, and it is photographed with complete fascination by the filmmakers. We want Ash to protect this place, which inevitably grows in him as the film progresses, almost taking over Novelyn as a love interest.

Like Taxi Driver, Usher builds to a violent conclusion. The action is a mixed bag. Some of it is great and inventive as Ash uses his working tools as weapons, but the cat and mouse chase at the end drags unnecessarily, turning into a conventional thriller. And the resolution of the climax feels contrived from Alvin character’s standpoint, although so effectively executed that we soon forget that Alvin is not a cold blooded samurai but just a cowardly jerk who will never have the guts to do what he does.

The film is also hampered by jump cuts which may pay homage to Godard’s Breathless and the Nouvelle Vague, but don’t integrate well with the otherwise correct low-key storytelling, resulting more in a random, distracting defect as opposed to an effect. Still those are minor quibbles that won’t stop you from enjoying this rare piece, which flirts with genres but almost never falls in them. It is nice also to see a 1970s type anti-hero on the screen again.

In 1981, seven-year-old Alice Walker barely managed to escape the wrath of the Black Rose Killer during a city-wide blackout. Now twenty years later, the murders have begun again and Alice fears he has come back for her. She can see him in her dreams and even when she is awake. Those around her believe that she is insane. One week before the anniversary of her parent’s murder, Alice desperately searches for the truth before time runs out.

A derivative, recycled plot hampers the otherwise correct storytelling of this film. The acting is a mixed bag. The lead (Rosemary Gore) is uneven, her friend (Vanessa Edwards) is always on the right note, but Alice’s boyfriend (Mike Lane) is constantly over the top.

Despite the conventional feel of the movie, you can see that some effort was put into the screenplay as it contains a few nice touches. Sometimes the physics of some of the murders deny logic, but that kind of liberty is forgiven in the genre. Alice’s descent into madness is pretty well conveyed and there are a few scenes that stand out from the usual slasher fare. One of them goes into the bizarre territory of necrophilia as the lead masturbates, imagining sex with her dead, mangled face boyfriend!

On the other hand, the camera work and lighting leave a lot to be desired. This is the kind of movie that would have benefitted from stronger visuals.

The gore effects are sometimes great, but the execution of the action is not always properly choreographed. In a way this would have been the ideal material for Dario Argento, whose weakness is always the script, but who could have gone insane with the visuals as it has many of the elements that attract him: gory murders, hallucinations, and black gloves for the killer’s hands. One can’t help to notice that the story is reminiscent of The Stendhal Syndrome (1996).

But, if you are able to put the flaws aside, Fear of the Dark remains watchable (if sometimes predictable) by microcinema standards, and it ends on a high, clever note.

Two and a Half Stars.

When Michael is hit with a writer’s block, his sister and five friends take him out camping for the weekend; but what starts out like a fun trip ends in horror mayhem when Jason Voorhees shows up.

A solidly-assembled cast that delivers the right notes most of the time can’t save Legends from its recycled homage. Truth is that I’m not a fan of fan films since as a spectator I strive to find originality, especially if we are talking about independent films. But I know that fan films are common and that they have a following, and it is fine if you just want to make a movie to show to your friends.

Aside from the fact that I don’t even like the original source of inspiration, what bothers me here is that there are production values, good performances and effective special effects wasted on a lame script resulting in a predictable movie. What new stories can you about Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger? If there is something left to say it is certainly not here.

Everything is framed decently if not lit properly sometimes (but the powerful Panasonic DVX 100 makes almost anything acceptable), the pacing is efficient, and the directing is correct. But despite the obvious effort the story, which is the backbone of a horror film, fails in too many common places resulting in a very bland movie. We’ve seen it all before, so I can only recommend it to hardcore fans of Freddy and Jason. The DVD is nicely packaged and contains many extras.

Two Stars.

Set in a near future where almost everyone is addicted to the “drip”, a young woman named Claire (Jennifer West Savitch) searches for her long lost companion, the creator of the drug. This is when a picturesque and amoral drifter named Miles, splendidly incarnated by Dominik Overstreet, steps in and joins Claire in her quest. Present day scenes are shot in film and flashbacks in saturated video.

Along her quest she’ll meet interesting characters that inhabit this dark atmospheric world filled with run-down hospitals, tunnels, humid docks, seashores, and desolated outdoors where people wander in a zombie like state. Suitable, sometimes great music, high contrast lighting, appropriate costumes and make-up canalize the post-apocalyptic mood of the movie.

An interesting non-linear structure of storytelling that chooses to fragment time constantly is occasionally hampered by edits that could have been be more precise from a stylistic standpoint. Some shots could have been longer and others shorter. Yet this is not a big issue. Those who appreciate a bleak uncompromised sci-fi story will surely enjoy Numb. There are touches reminiscent of George Lucas’ THX 1138, Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville, and a great Fellini-esque party populated by extravagant addicts who behave almost in slow motion. This is fortunately in the line of the great conceptual sci-fi’ers of the pre Star Wars era.

A solid effort.

Four Stars

“Jerica Rhian has been avoiding her past for quite some time, but on this particular evening, her past will no longer be avoiding her. While Jerica must employ the help of new kid in town Xavier Newton to protect her pregnant (not to mention clairvoyant) best friend Cassie Chailyn from her psychotic ex-girlfriend, Jerica also crosses paths with a number of familiar faces, including her sadistic former partner in underground crime and her ex-boyfriend who she deserted nearly a year earlier.”

It’s hard to attempt to describe this movie. While all of the above seems enough to create at least an entertaining genre picture if handled properly, the fact is Outside of Nowhere is one of most incompetent cinematic experiences I’ve ever sat through. This is not cinema, nor a play; although it is talky enough to be listened to on the radio if it could at least have had a proper sound mix, or just a sound mix at all, for that matter. Lazy coverage turns the piece into a tiresome ping-pong of talking heads. You can’t help noticing the lack of lighting on the sometimes dreadful, mostly wooden, occasionally passable performances. With one or two exceptions, the actors are reciting their lines without probably understanding them, or they seem too busy trying to remember said lines.

There are occasional redeeming moments in the dialogue, but these are few and far between, either separated by endless hordes of wordy clichés or buried by disinterested acting.

The Pulp Fiction-structured story involves an outsider returning to her supernatural town filled with vampires, werewolves, drug addicts and drug dealers, former lesbian lovers, and a ghost. Yes, it is as ridiculous at it sounds. Or maybe not. Actually you can do a really fun movie with those elements. But is this a comedy? I wouldn’t be able to tell. The tone is impossible to decipher since it is drowned by its painfully dull execution. The pacing is so poor, the editing choices so nefarious, that at times it feels like a purposely-experimental film, where the filmmakers want to intentionally draw us out of the storytelling. This could have gone the direction Godard went with Alphaville, by openly making fun of the genres with a strong vision and cynicism on the material. Not the case here. This is not postmodernism, not even Ed Wood.

One star

Three armed, hungry roommates wake up to realize there is only one waffle left for breakfast in this fun short filled with non-stop shootouts. Yes, there is not much story here. But one feels that this piece was not only made for fun, but mostly to showcase the FX skills of the filmmakers wrapped in an offbeat sense of humor.

Everything is decently shot, scored and edited (except for some abuse of strobe effect during action scenes) but the pyrotechnics are truly the highlight of Bullets Over Breakfast. The result is a mix of Tarantino, John Woo and even the Matrix: Characters dodging slow motion bullets breaking through the air, a whole array of different weapons, digital bullet holes all over the walls. It is a good marriage of live action with CGI. This is the result of good planning when shooting, having in mind the right choices for postproduction when you know exactly what you want.

The DVD is nicely packed with all sort of extras, commentary, bloopers, etc.

Overall while not very deep, Bullets Over Breakfast is fun, and a good short to take a look at if you are planning to do no-budget action. I look forward to see more from this group.

Three Stars

Annie, an orphan, finds herself in a marriage of necessity and bears the child of a man she doesn’t love. She feels trapped by her brutal, animalistic husband, who spends most of the weekdays out getting drunk or in whorehouses. When Annie gets her first taste of respect, love and tenderness from a traveling peddler, things start to complicate even more.

Winner of several awards (four of them at the Microcinema Fest 2004), Tom’s Wife is most unusual for a microcinema production: This effective drama is set in 1932, in rural Texas. It’s a simple, slowly-paced story that has captured successfully the mood of the period both in the images and the in performances. Annie (Meredith May) soon wins the audience with the fragile innocence concealed in her child-like face, beautifully photographed by Jessica Gallant. The compositions and the soft texture of the image successfully recreate the feel of a bygone time.

Some might argue that the film is slow. But it is a film about the little moments of these people’s life: Slow and fascinating if you accept its naturalistic flow. A few elements, however, hamper the overall tone of the film, like the appearance of an almost farcical character towards the end. And Annie’s build up to the violent conclusion could have been developed more effectively, and some plot points need tightening.

However, putting those minor flaws aside, Tom’s Wife is a wonderful achievement, a solid period drama that deserves to be picked up by a movie cable channel.