Your Turn to Smile (2013)

Director: Luis Prado III
Stars: Ross Columbia, Jaime Gaeta and Dede Denman

This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions.

Another winner at the Mystery Box challenge, Your Turn to Smile took the award for Best Story, though there's not much of one to be found. It follows a young man called David who's clearly hurting from the recent loss of his younger sister, Tracy. He can only look backward, such as at a dry Arizona river that had water in it yesterday, because that's the only way he can see her. The story, which was written by the actor who plays David, Ross Columbia, has him take the initial step to come to terms with his loss through a neat little prop passed on to him by a friend and co-worker. It's a smile jar, made for him by his sister which could so easily have been irredeemably saccharine but plays well here with David's realistic reactions to it. The idea is simple, as are Tracy's instructions: he should read one of the notes in the jar each time he's sad. Of course he's sad rather a lot right now, but there are notes enough for each occasion. We're not told how many he goes through but it's enough that he starts to move on.

Columbia is good here, though it's a tough role that calls on him to look miserable for most of the film and yet remain sympathetic. Much of his pain is internal, clearly there but not always thrown out so we can't fail to notice it. Like the idea at the heart of the film, his portrayal could easily have ended up as painful as the loss his character is channelling, but it turns out pretty well. Unfortunately the rest of those involved aren't up to his standard; the sound is frequently lost in the wind and the visuals are occasionally lost in the sun. Dede Denman may have been good too, as the co-worker who delivers the smile jar, but she loses her fight with the technical issues. The music by Joshua Vern is decent, but not unexpected. The script, its win notwithstanding, is vague enough to work through impressions but not strong enough to carry much weight. At least the ending, always crucial in an emotional story, is done capably, simply but effectively, with impact but not much, all rather like the movie itself.

Long Way (2013)

Director: Josh Kasselman
Stars: Flynn Burdick and James Patrick Taylor

This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions.

This film was an official selection at the Phoenix Film Festival in Phoenix in 2014. Here's an index to my reviews of 2014 films.

Long Way was a big winner at this year's IFP Phoenix Mystery Box Challenge, perhaps the big winner, as it was acclaimed by both the judges and the audience, the latter voting it their favourite and the former ranking it the runner up behind After the Beep and rewarding Josh Kasselman as Best Director. I found it an enticing film that took a refreshingly different approach to its competitors. However, while it's surely worthy of much discussion, something very apparent in the days after the event, it's such a loosely clad framework that there are no answers anywhere to be found, only what questions we bring with us. This means that the piece is akin to a cloud whose shape changes over time but looks only like what we see in it. Like a cloud, it also drifts away from us and we're happy to focus on the next one. I'm interested to see how this one will stay with me; unlike other Mystery Box films that displayed what they were worth and then left, this one has already suggested that it isn't done with me yet. I'm still not sold though.

We watch two boys, well played by Flynn Burdick and James Patrick Taylor. We don't know their names or anything else about them, just that one is older than the other and that they're stuck at school after everyone else has gone home. 'I think she forgot about us,' one says to the other. And so they walk off down the canal. It's daytime but it's also Hallowe'en, so it doesn't take long for other kids to go trick or treating. Our boys vaguely join in, even though they're not really prepared; one has a donkey mask, the other nothing but a spare shirt to put on his head and a pair of swimming goggles. They find some brief enjoyment in the evening, but the excitement fades and worry sets in. 'Do you know where we are?' the little ones ask. Clearly not is the unspoken answer. Eventually we reach the last shot, which could well be the end of our story or the beginning of another one. The script is so ambiguous that we really have no way of figuring that out whatsoever.

The film is capably put together, loose in the extreme but never without something interesting to show us. While director Josh Kasselman has made a few renowned short films, he's also a documentarian; the other film of his that I've seen is Say What You Want, which won Best Arizona short at the Phoenix Film Festival last year. It's strange to see someone so often driven by truth make something as intangible as this. It reminded me of Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Koreeda's searing drama about children left to fend for themselves by their mother, with a similar tone and attention to little details that may or may not have meaning. Nobody Knows benefits from feature length, so we get to know the children and at least meet their mother. Here we just have two boys on one evening, with no context to explain why they're alone. It could be a nod to a similar fate, but it could be a tragic oversight or something else entirely. We have too little information to know anything, so can only focus on the details and wonder.

Silent Treatment (2013)

Director: Mark Lobatto
Stars: Lily James and Bart Edwards

This film was an official selection at the Filmstock Arizona 2013 round of the revolving Filmstock film festival. Here's an index to my reviews of all selections.

Silent Treatment didn't play next to Apparition at Filmstock, but the two films bear many similarities and play very well as a double bill. Most obviously, as the title suggests, this also plays out without dialogue, though it's accompanied by a well chosen score rather than just ambient sound. It's also fundamentally about human interaction and it has a similar focus on disability. Its unnamed leading lady is deaf, which I wondered Natalie might be in Apparition after my accidental experiment with the mute button. Rather than the daily routine of a train carriage, we're given a stagnant waiting room left to fend for itself by a sleeping receptionist. Where the two films diverge is in how the human interaction works out, which is an inevitable failure in Apparition but a quirky and enjoyable success in Silent Treatment, even after the guy and girl swap unusual first words, not only because they're written not spoken. 'A guy who doesn't listen,' she writes. 'That's original.' He replies, 'A girl who won't talk. That's refreshing.'

I liked Silent Treatment immediately, but it improved. By the time the end credits arrived, I knew I had to see it again to find if it would play even better on a second time through. I found that it certainly did. Lily James plays an enticing young lady, whose posture and pixielike movements are delightful and full of life. She's as out of place in a blisteringly mundane waiting room as a Kandinsky in the crapper. She was new to me, though she's doing well for herself, having moved up quickly from a brief role in Wrath of the Titans through a recurring slot on Downton Abbey to the title role in Kenneth Branagh's new take on Cinderella, due in 2015. Bart Edwards is an able foil for her here, as the similarly unnamed guy who takes an interest in her. He's only acted on TV before, with his most notable part being an eight episode run on EastEnders. It wouldn't surprise me to find this buffering up his demo reel and moving him on to something a lot more substantial on film. Both actors are a joy in a room that's bereft of it.

Mark Lobatto succeeds magnificently here in the second short film he's written and directed; I'll search for Comes But Once a Year now, which he made in 2011. It's a playful piece, without the discovery and depth of Apparition but with a delightful quirkiness and joie de vivre. There's so much neat attention to detail that makes the film worthy of a number of viewings. We're given very little to go on, beyond the general assumption that this waiting room is some sort of hospital. We fill in all the blanks ourselves, if we're not distracted enough to see where they need filling in. I love the underling irony, which is never explained but clearly hinted at, that this couple hit it off magnificently, even though the girl is deaf and the guy is apparently so hooked on music that he can't help but sneak a listen of what the next patient has playing on his headphones, though he's wearing two large and bloodstained wads of cotton wool in his ears. Who says they're a terrible match? As in the best romcoms, love will overcome.

Apparition (2013)

Director: Jahanara Saleh
Stars: Rhonda Christian, Ryan Zimmer, Kenneth Applegate, Lou White, Bryan Snow and Julie Ann Penman

This film was an official selection at the Filmstock Arizona 2013 round of the revolving Filmstock film festival. Here's an index to my reviews of all selections.

It took so long for Apparition to get moving that I found myself scrutinising the characters to figure out where writer/director Jahanara Saleh planned for it to go. In doing so, I also realised that I was bizarrely mirroring the characters, none of whom ever speak. They just look at each other and try to figure them out, surrounded by nothing but ambient noise. Everything here is perception and, while nothing really seems to happen, there's a lot subtly going on. I discovered by accident that turning the sound down to nothing adds another element to the story, albeit not intentionally, and certainly makes it stranger still. Who is this odd woman that we're apparently supposed to be watching and why are we supposed to be watching her? We aren't given her name, though IMDb tells us that she's Natalie and played by Rhonda Christian. We aren't given details like her job, her family, her background, anything. All we know is that she takes the same train every day and she's apparently unable to talk to anyone.

We meet her indoors, on what might be a therapist's couch or might just be furniture at home. She has a thick scarf on already, which she may well never take off. She just waits for eight o'clock and leaves, without saying goodbye to the dog. She walks oddly, not confidently. She appears to be worried about everything and everybody that she sees. The dancing guy with earphones who waits for the same train might look suspicious, but then to Natalie, a passing pigeon looks suspicious too. Once on board and in a quiet seat safely away from everyone else, she smiles at unaccompanied men in a vaguely coquettish way, but is freaked out by another woman who stares incessantly at her. She clutches her bag, perhaps both as a security measure and as a security blanket. Eventually, over half way through the brief seven minute running time, we get a breakthrough. The dancing guy helps a woman in a wheelchair and, all at once, Natalie knows how to connect to the world. Next day she wheels up to the station too.

Of course, it isn't that simple and the script takes a couple of neat left turns as subtly as it's set it all up thus far. Clearly Saleh is explaining to us through entirely visual language that people aren't necessarily what they appear to be. Just as Natalie makes assumptions about all the fellow passengers she sees on a daily basis, so do we and we may be just as wrong as her. What makes this such a memorable film is that this happens on a number of levels, not just the cheap first one in which the young lad listening to his headphones is the one who helps the lady in the wheelchair. The last one is the best of all, because it's all internal and it changes everything. Just as Natalie believes she's finally figured out the world, the world slaps her in the face. Christian is excellent as Natalie and her similarly quiet co-stars support her well. It's Saleh who deserves most credit though for conjuring up a highly cinematic film. This wouldn't work in any other medium but it makes for an enticing little life lesson on screen.

The Stretch (2013)

Director: Torrey Inez
Stars: Hannah Nichols, Martin Augustine, Michael Jendza, Ron Eichler and Chelsea Elizabeth

This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions.

It's very clear that the people at Grace North Back Row want to make a Hollywood blockbuster. Whether this came from director Torrey Inez, who also shot and edited The Stretch, James Petkovski, who wrote it, one of the three others who produced the film with them or even all the above, it screams Hollywood sci-fi action blockbuster nonsense and that's what destroys it. Obviously these folk have been watching lots of movies, for everything we see here we've seen before, just done with a much bigger budget. It begins as it means to go on, with a gun battle during a car chase, which I have to say I never expected to see in a 48 hour film challenge entry. From there it feels as familiar as a trip to my bathroom in the night. Everything is derivative, but without the cash to make any of it look flashy; those gleaming cars are as far as it manages to go in that direction. The actors, dialogue, location... even the basic concept is archetypal. The film could have been called Déjà Vu, but hilariously that's already been done.

'You're a monster,' Claire shouts at John, who's been shot while trying to save her life. I think we were supposed to believe he was kidnapping her, but Martin Augustine looks far too nice to be a bad guy. He gets her to safety, but their pursuers will find them, and before they do he has to explain to her what's going on. Eventually the inevitably quirky villain traipses into their new apocalyptic surroundings with a fine line in faux cool gibberish. You just know he has to have cool sunglasses. And... well, you know how this works: there's a standoff and a sacrifice and a twist and all the scenes that need to pepper it with the right beats. I got bored quickly. To be fair, it's capably done on most fronts, but without any style of its own. Everything it has is borrowed. People who can do this should really try to put on something new and see if it fits. Jump Ship Productions may be able to get away with five minute Cliff Notes versions of imaginary features, but most people can't and to do so they need much more substance than this.

The Stretch can be watched for free at Vimeo.

LARPer (2013)

Director: Shane Sandler
Stars: David Weis, Tiffany Vo and Calion Maston

This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions.

It's unfortunate that the fundamental story of LARPer is as generic as it is, because the folk at Incoming! Productions did throw quite a lot of invention into it. At heart it's a non-entity of a picture because it's a romcom that phrases its com in fundamentally nerdy terms and never even gets to the rom. I'm in two minds as to whether it's a playful but accurate romp into nerd psychology or yet another propagation of the stereotype. Certainly Christian fits everything on the checklist: he lives at his parents' house where he spends every waking hour playing games; his only apparent friend is a fellow gamer who he talks to online; his mother has to pry him out of his room, which prompts him to go to a café and continue with the very same game, albeit badly because he's distracted by the cute Asian waitress with blue hair that he lusts after in silence. She looks like an anime cosplayer out of costume, which would be right up his alley, if only he could talk to her. He hasn't got that far in six months even though he calls her 'my girl'.

And with that grounding, we take a detour into comedy territory. Embarrassed to tell Roxy that he's on a MMORPG (hey, if the title is a nerdy acronym, I can throw out another one) or 'role playing game', he explains that he's casting roles for a play he's producing. When she professes interest, he finds himself forced to back up the lie and therein supposedly lies the humour. In truth, there's very little humour to be found in this side of the film. It works out just as badly as you might expect for the precise reasons you might expect and there are precious few laughs to be had as it gets there, though there's irony in Christian playing a live action role to avoid telling Roxy he's playing a roleplaying game, and in the live action role involving casting roles to live action roleplayers. Given that David Weis is playing Christian playing... well, you get the picture; the title is a lot more meaningful than it might seem to anyone just focusing on the dress up antics in the park.

I enjoyed the gimmickry a lot more than I enjoyed the acting or the story. It isn't as sophisticated as it believes it is, but it does ring very true, which is exceedingly rare in the movies. It isn't just CSI: Miami; most use of IT on screen is generally complete gibberish and use of gaming is perhaps even more so. I know a lot of people as relentlessly unmagnetic as how David Weis plays Christian. Social inadequacy comes in a lot of forms, most of which are not as interesting to watch as the extreme nerds we tend to see in Hollywood blockbusters. I liked the way a LARPer battle is overlaid with fighting game graphics. The credits unfold in blocky 8 bit characters and the score mines the various game genres, also going back to 8 bit chiptunes at the end. Perhaps director Shane Sandler overdid the graphic manipulation, but that's the sort of approach that fits this sort of character. It also means that while the film doesn't say or do much, there is more here than a quick glance would suggest.

Menschen (2012)

Director: Sarah R Lotfi
Stars: Dan Cheatham and Connor Long

This film was an official selection at the Filmstock Arizona 2013 round of the revolving Filmstock film festival. Here's an index to my reviews of all selections.

This film was an official selection at the Phoenix Film Festival in Phoenix in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 films.

Wrapping up the high drama set, as well as the entire Filmstock Arizona festival, was Menschen, a war yarn that doesn't play the usual safe cards. For a start, the lead is a Nazi officer, albeit a captain drafted into the Wehrmacht who was never in it for the politics; he especially has no interest in fighting for the Reich in the last days of the war after Hitler's suicide but before Dönitz's surrender. He's only interested in keeping his men safe behind Russian lines in Czechoslovakia, both from the Russians and partisans who are smelling victory. His idea is to find the Americans to turn them all over to and it's a pretty good one, but they're hindered by the unplanned addition to their ranks of a boy with Down Syndrome who was left alone after the death of his mother. Their journey is a complicated one, partly because of the circumstances, partly because of the history and partly because it doesn't really end when it ends, just continues on in our minds because of who the characters are and the context they're placed in.

Hauptmann Himmelbauer is an interesting lead character, not only because of who he is but because of what he does. He looks like the usual Nazi villain with a severe face and sour expression but he cares for his men and for Radek, who he tolerates patiently. The boy is just as interesting a character in support because he's as important to the story and its message as the captain and he's played very capably by an actor who really does have Down Syndrome, Connor Long. He and Dan Cheatham, as Himmelbauer, work well together and prove a surprisingly successful pair to carry the film, given that neither of them has a previous acting credit. Sarah Lotfi, who directed from a script she wrote with Dustin Dunaway and Randy Rodriguez, refuses to do things by the book, highlighting her approach with her title. In German, Menschen means 'people' or, as the poster tellingly translates it, 'human beings'. These characters are examples of those the Nazis destroyed as subhuman and those the Russians murdered after the war.

Himmelbauer is a challenging character and we leave the film wanting to know far more about him. As an officer of the Reich who presumably fought the Allies for years, he's clearly a 'bad guy', but he feels more like a 'good guy'. He's loyal to his men if not his Führer, he openly despises the SS and he risks much to save Radek from a sure death. Radek is another fascinating character, because we don't just see his human nature as well as his condition, we see instances where he's superior to the characters around him; he can hear a sniper before trained and experienced soldiers. Appropriately, Long swam in the Special Olympics during the shooting of this movie. Clearly we're shown Radek as an example of a human being whom the Nazis would have euthanised under their T-4 program, but just as clearly we're given Himmelbauer as an example of a human being who the Russians would have killed off in captivity after the war. If the Nazis were wrong, then surely the Russians were wrong too. And how about us?

Lotfi successfully expands this concept by showing every character in her war movie in shades of grey. The SS are perhaps the only truly black characters and there are no white ones. Most notably, the key American soldiers we see are flawed, whether a triggerhappy rookie or a quick to judge officer. In each scene, there's another reminder that we're not watching the good guys vs the bad guys, we're given a war between human beings and menschen, each with their flaws. It's impressive how Lotfi manages to avoid preaching to us, all the while highlighting that many of us would have brought bad assumptions along with us. She clearly aimed at giving us a war movie with leads who flouted our expectations and supporting actors who did no less. That she did as much as she did in a short film that runs just under half an hour is impressive; it would be fascinating to see what she could do at feature length. Her cast and crew are more than up to the task and clearly so is she.

Spare Real Gun (2013)

Director: Jayme Davis
Stars: Shayne Topp, Kasey Campbell, Damien Haas and Danielle Morrow

This film was an official selection at the Filmstock Arizona 2013 round of the revolving Filmstock film festival. Here's an index to my reviews of all selections.

I got a kick out of Spare Real Gun, which plays with very black humour indeed. It phrases itself as a rite of passage, where a newbie gets thrown in at the deep end and wonders if he'll be able to swim, but all done in a friendly manner, because this is just paintball. As the film begins, three veterans surround a table assembling their weapons like they've done a hundred times before. Ted, the new guy, completes the team of four, but he quite obviously hasn't got a clue and he smiles in the sort of way that people tend to do when they know they're out of their depth and hope that the help they need is about to be thrown their way to save them from embarrassing themselves. His new teammates seem eager to help, but it's all just a little off and the more you pay attention to the little details, the sooner you'll figure out what's going on when the title makes itself clear. The book on the table is the first hint but there are others as the story builds up to its big reveal.

The script is what makes this memorable, though it's certainly more about where it goes than in how it gets there. The acting meets the need without doing anything more, except for Ted, who does manage to sell some of the growing nervousness that crawls over him as everything escalates. However the cast are hindered by the technical issues that surround the piece. The light is overdone, flooding in from the window behind one of the veteran paintballers. The cinematography is hindered by the tiny room and a subsequently enforced lack of movement throughout, though the cunning shot taken from within a cat tree deserves kudos, even if I could easily figure it out. Most obviously, the sound is poorly synched to lip movements, which is the toughest hinderance to the actors. There are subtler issues too, like the fact that while the scene with the beer bottle is well done, it's clearly the only one on the table, so only there as a convenient prop for that particular scene.

The bad news is that all those technical issues are there. The good news is that Spare Real Gun is able to move consistently forward anyway, driven by the script and the neatly distracting way that it keeps ratcheting it all up another level. Many pictures with problems like this can't survive them, but this one may well be an exception for most viewers. Whether you're going to like this or not is far more likely to revolve around your sense of humour than your sense of aesthetics or how much your OCD screams at you because of the sync issues. This is not politically correct humour, the character of Julie intended to mess with our assumptions rather than to throw in a token girl, but it's funny stuff. It's edgy but much safer and more enjoyable in a fictional setting like this than as a set up on a reality show, where I could totally see it be reenacted. It also benefits from knowing its limitations and keeping it short. At only five minutes, our tolerance for issues is tested; any longer and they may have become showstoppers.

Spare Real Gun can be watched for free on YouTube.

Break Down (2013)

Director: Robert Garcia
Stars: Madison Ottinger, J P Frydrych, Eric MacDonald and Greg Bronson

This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions.

Jump Ship Productions were the bright new things of the IFP Phoenix filmmaker challenges in 2012. Not content to merely win awards with their first film, they did so with each of their first three, winning what must have been an unprecedented three of the eight available slots in the finals and nailing the second place of all the year's entries with The Duel. However, now that they're firmly established as the team to watch out for, they've found 2013 a little tougher; Mr Wallace the Great is their weakest short thus far and Break Down feels consistently empty. Perhaps I'm a little more jaded than most when it comes to the horror genre because I see so many horror movies: by choice, through submissions for review or as festival screeners. Many of them are far worse than this, but many are far better too. This one does everything by the numbers, from the overly generic title all the way to the end credits. The only thing that's new is the fact that J P Frydrych doesn't play the main character for a change, just the support.

I should be fair and point out that Break Down does do everything by the numbers rather well. The new Jump Ship stories may be wanting but the Jump Ship production values continue to rise. This opens well with a strong sense of framing and it continues to look good until the very last shot; the worst technical element here is at least capable and I'd be hard pressed to think what it might be. The score won a fair award for Nile Popchock, the lighting and sound are good enough to not be noticeable, the effects are a step up again from previous Jump Ship films, the locations are well chosen and the actors are solid, with the ever reliable Greg Bronson's beard joining the cast to boot. The judges awarded Break Down more prizes at the Mystery Box challenge than any other film and I'd be very surprised if that sort of success rate doesn't continue on in future challenge events. Such consistent competence generally means one of two things; either Jump Ship will continue to rack up awards or they'll all move to LA.

And this all means that it's a little frustrating to see such talent turn out something as routine as this. In many ways, it's a sister piece to The Face of Innocence, in that it feels like an entire feature film distilled down to its essence for five minutes of action, like a trailer that's told in order and without the inevitable voiceover from some guy with a suitably deep and resonant voice. Three young folk are on their way to Las Vegas but, after experiencing sudden car trouble, end up somewhere else; locked in the back room at Wade's place. That Wade is played by Greg Bronson, as natural for backwoods horror movies as he is for western undertakers and homeless guys, is surely no surprise. As befits an imaginary feature shrunk to fit a competition short, he gets far too little to do and that goes for everyone else too, especially with a couple of horror subgenres fighting it out for the screen time. Madison Ottinger does scream capably, at least. I'm still waiting for the killer Jump Ship short, but I'm hoping I don't have long to wait now.

Deep Sleep (2013)

Director: Aaron Hudson
Stars: Lucas Boyle, Elizabeth Vegh, Michael Marmon, Gabrielle Abrams, Hannah Vegh, Nick Gonzalez and Miranda Lane

This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions.

I liked Deep Sleep a lot for the majority of its running time, but it fell apart on me outrageously at the end, so much so that I feel like I ought to hate it. Until that point, it's an ambitious piece for a 48 hour film challenge entry, with more varied shots, more textures and more cuts than I can remember seeing in such a creature before. It's a visually enticing piece, anchored in the problems of the main character, James. He's having strange dreams, particularly morbid ones that tend to include someone's death: his own or people he's never even met but who start to crop up in real life too. He unloads his concern to a shrink, though he can't unload his issues because he doesn't seem to have any, other than the dreams, of course. Lucas Boyle does the job he's given as James, but he's as entirely lost in the visual deluge as his character is in what it does to him. The most obvious success here is the disorienting tone that this approach provides, highly appropriately given the circumstances.

There is another major success too. Deep Sleep clearly belongs to the manipulators in post-production, most obviously Aaron Hudson, who didn't just produce and direct the film, but also shot it and edited it, so it's surprising to find an actor standing out for attention. Most of the acting here is routine but I was highly impressed by Elizabeth Vegh's work as the psychiatrist treating James. Even though she appears too young for the role and there are far too many shots that highlight how short her skirt is, she brings some true class to the acting. She speaks very believably indeed and makes the tough required line of dialogue seem easy. How would you fit, 'If I were a poet you'd give me enough material to write a book' into conversation? She makes it work. What doesn't work is the ending and that really doesn't work. In some vain attempt to wrap up a piece that could easily have run far beyond the eligible time limit, the folk at Midnight Pie Train conjured up a twist that hurts. Maybe it could work as the last fifteen minutes of a feature, maybe not. It certainly doesn't work as the last few seconds of a short.

As writer/director/etc Aaron Hudson highlights in his welcome comments on this review, Deep Sleep is now available to watch for free in an extended cut at Vimeo.