Bad Moon Rising (2009)

Director: Scott Hamilton
Stars: Anthony Edwards, Todd Levi and Jared Robinsen

This film was an official selection at the 8th annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival in Scottsdale in 2012. Here's an index to my reviews of 2012 films.

Only eight minutes long, this Aussie short manages to merge two genres very well indeed. For a little while, it's a tough thriller centered around an interrogation. The man chained to a chair in a presumably remote location is Adam and the man beating him up is Rico, who obviously relishes his work. Calling the shots is Chastel, as calm and professional as Rico is wilful and sadistic. Todd Levi and Jared Robinsen make for a believable pairing, different but consistent, and it's easy to see how they'd make a successful team in this line of work. Sure enough, Adam eventually cracks under their attentions and tells them everything they want to know, but naturally Rico carries on anyway, just for the fun of it, leaving his victim bloody and unconscious. That's when we shift from thriller to horror because the full moon shining through the bars of the window rejuvenates our hostage by transforming him into a werewolf. And so the tables are turned.

This is a simple little short with very little plot to speak of. It's much more of a vignette than a story, with the scene set immediately, a change introduced halfway and the actors tasked with changing with it. What there is is handled well. The acting is confident and assured, each of the three dealing capably with their changes in fortune, Anthony Edwards being especially solid as a believable victim who transforms well into something very different. The effects are excellent, both the creature work and the violence. The scenes in the dark are clean and well shot. It's all done about as well as something that has so little to say can be done. Sure, some of the setups are expected but they're still done well for that and it remains stylish and effective throughout. Writers Scott and Peter Hamilton, presumably relatives, have three films behind them that look far less traditional than this one. I wonder if this was aimed at being more than just a vignette.

Follow the Sun! (2011)

Director: MK12

This film was an official selection at the 8th annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival in Scottsdale in 2012. Here's an index to my reviews of 2012 films.

Follow the Sun! isn't your usual horror short. It's a subversive and experimental animation that almost by definition would fit perfectly at the beginning of any set of horror shorts at a festival. It's also surprisingly inevitable and I'm surprised nobody has done this sort of thing before, or if they have why I haven't seen it. It's a freaky take on the reels that used to screen before movies to bludgeon us into buying more refreshments by unleashing hordes of anthropomorphic drinks and hot dogs whose only purpose in life was to gleefully convince us to eat them. Come to think of it, they were pretty freaky to begin with, cannabilistic sacrifices designed to lull us into a zombie state where we hand over our dollars in a glass eyed, slack jawed stupor. If they weren't nightmarish to begin with, this short adds whatever was missing, showing us in inevitable detail just what happens when things go wrong in a land where everything is inherently happy.

For a minute and a half it's horrifying only in traditional ways, the familiar imagery and hypnotic music eating into your brain like a consumerist cancer. It's well animated and neatly aged and coloured too, making it feel like a much used reel that doesn't know how to quit. Three minutes to showtime, folks! Still plenty of time to... visit the refreshment stand! And then it happens: one cutesy mascot treads on another cutesy mascot and the tone changes utterly and irrevocably. It somehow becomes a metaphor for the fall of man, the loss of immortality and the introduction of death. It becomes angry and helpless as these mascots, the epitome of imbecilic glee, find that they aren't equipped to deal with anything bad. I love the hellish relentlessness of it all as they try but fail to escape, to find a happy place where no such thing exists. Like one cute little bag of popcorn, you might just stab your eyes out with a jagged shard of crisp. But you'll love it.

The Uncanny Valley (2011)

Director: Dean Law
Stars: John Vizcay-Wilson, Sally Richards and Dave Zwolenski

This film was an official selection at the 8th annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival in Scottsdale in 2012. Here's an index to my reviews of 2012 films.

I've been seeing mention of the uncanny valley cropping up all over the place lately, especially in the film world. It frequently accompanies discussion about The Adventures of Tintin, a highly realistic animation that Steven Spielberg shot using motion capture, as recommended by Peter Jackson. It came up with regards to Jackson again recently, when he screened previews of The Hobbit at the usual 24 frames per second, because of the negative reaction he received when previewing it at the 48 frames per second he plans to release the film at. It was too real, people said. You see, the better technology gets, the closer visuals approach reality, and we as human beings tend to appreciate that; yet when things become almost real but don't quite reach it, we find that revulsion kicks in. Our minds tend to see 'almost real' simply as wrong and that turnoff is what Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori termed the uncanny valley.

I was initially a little turned off by what writer/director Dean Law does with this film but the more I paid attention, the more I appreciated just how much he managed to do in only fifteen minutes. The first time through, what stands out is the linear storyline that follows Alex, a young man who has always felt a deep kinship to robots. When he was a young boy, his parents bought a robot for the house, a sexy female Asian maid robot to boot. His brother Michael promptly undresses her during a recharge but he's just a curious boy. Alex is attracted on a more fundamental level and he goes on to draw robots for comic books. This storyline has to do with Alex growing up and it feels unsatisfactory in a set of science fiction shorts because it equates a concept dear to the hearts of many science fiction fans with immaturity. Robots are for kids? That's not as overt as William Shatner telling die hard trekkers to 'get a life' but it feels like the same message.

Yet behind this is something much deeper, a meditation on humanity that is deceptively astute. Science fiction has often explored a world in which the non-human has grown so close to human that the two are almost impossible to tell apart. In Blade Runner it took an expert to examine the responses to a set of emotional and empathic questions to tell a replicant from a human being. In Ridley Scott's director's cut, the boundaries between human and non-human are stretched by the implication that Deckard, who hunts replicants, might be a replicant himself. What Dean Law adds to the mix here is the concept that Alex, who we are assured is a real live person, somehow doesn't feel quite right, to the degree that even his friends aren't convinced that he isn't really a robot. The outsider status that he feels because of this is mirrored by his choice of profession as comic book artist. Maybe the uncanny valley is all the more uncanny when you're stuck inside it.

I really like this approach that pairs the traditional robot that seems almost human with the more innovative human that seems almost robot. The clinical feel of the film, aided by clever lighting, backs this up to the point that we start to wonder, even with the assurances we're given. There's a great scene outside a robot brothel where some sort of security guard or cop mistakes Alex for a robot and has to check his eyes before apologising profusely. Imagining that situation helps put Alex's experience into perspective, because he's never been outside of it. No wonder he feels closer to robots than he does to people, but is he any less human because of it? I'm still not sure about where this film takes us in the end, but the more I watch it, the more I'm fascinated by the journey. There's a lot here in a mere quarter of an hour. I'd love to see this expanded to feature length, as long as the result asks more questions but doesn't give more answers.

Solaria (2011)

Director: John Hoey
Stars: Richard Sherwood and Daria Kalista

This film was an official selection at the 8th annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival in Scottsdale in 2012. Here's an index to my reviews of 2012 films.

The biggest problem Solaria has is that it's really obvious how it's all going to unfold. You'd have to be one of those people surprised by revelations in Scooby Doo episodes to not figure this one out. That's unfortunate, because almost everything else is really well done. The look and feel is exactly right, beginning with the space photography that accompanies the title and introductory text; it continues looking wonderful as we hop inside the Solaria research station. The first shot inside sets the stage well: obviously futuristic, but very analogue with a cool colour palette. Even when we see the huge digital screen in front of Dr Alex Russell, with its requisite shiny graphics, there's a host of old school physical tech all around him: sockets, cables and industrial material. He shuts stuff down by pulling levers and turning wheels rather than just pressing buttons on his console and the great ensuing physical noises contrast well with the space age computer voice.

Even the story, apart from being obvious, unfolds smoothly. Alex is shutting stuff down because the Earth is so low on resources that it can no longer maintain space research stations. He asks for more time, but he's already had as much as can be given; at least his station is the last to go. He wants the time because he shares the station with Rachel, a test subject who fell into a coma decades ago but has ceased to grow old. She's apparently in her fifties but she looks to be in her twenties. The potential for scientific breakthrough is astounding, especially for a talented young geneticist like Alex, but it's all about to end because the shuttle coming to pick him up only has room for one passenger. 'One has to pay dearly for immortality,' he explains, and the full impact of that doesn't take long to be outlined, given that this is a twelve minute short film. The running time and the effective cast of two combines to provide the inevitable surprise ending.

Inevitability aside, this is a strong little short for such an inexperienced cast and crew. There are only two actors, neither of whom have any other credits. IMDb lists five crew members and the film's website adds a sixth, but again, this is the only film any of them seem to have worked on. Yet they all do fine work. On screen, Richard Sherwood dominates proceedings as Alex, partly because his co-star Daria Kalista has very little to do for the most part except to simply lie there and look cute, but also because he manages to convey both that he's a capable scientist and that he has strong feelings for his subject. Some may wonder where all the space age gadgetry is but there's no need for it. I liked the old school approach taken throughout that earns this Irish short a kinship with 2001: A Space Odyssey, though the score is ambient rather than classical. The film's apparent success bodes well for what John Hoey and his crew will do next.

The Detective's Lover (2012)

Director: Travis Mills
Stars: Travis Mills, Dean Veglia, Scott Scheall, Rob Edwards and Cara Nicole

In some ways, The Detective's Lover, the second feature from Arizona writer/director Travis Mills and Running Wild Films, has much in common with its predecessor, The Big Something. Both are phrased as mysteries, with Humphrey Bogart and Philip Marlowe dropped into dialogue in under ten minutes as overt reference points. Both task a fair sized ensemble cast with playing a wild variety of characters weaving their respective ways in and out of a complex plot. Both are built around a central male lead, not a real detective but someone who stumbles through some sort of investigation anyway that he only believes he understands. Both begin with music to colour our introduction to this lead character who only begins to find any real direction some fifteen to twenty minutes in. Phrased like that, you could almost mistake them for the same movie, but really the tone couldn't be more different. This time round, we really get a film noir.

Even if you don't know the term, you'll recognise the style. It's shot in black and white. We begin in a bar, with live jazz playing in the background. The two characters we focus on are a journalist and a private dick. Even the opening credits highlight the genre: The Detective's Lover stars four men and a lady. It has to be a lady, rather than simply a woman, because she's a femme fatale, guaranteed, and she'll be elegant and beautiful, but also morally ambiguous, if not outright evil, deep inside. Even the story focuses on noir as a theme. The journalist is Scott Miller, sick of the newspaper that's stifling his talent so starting instead to write a book about detectives. That's why he's here, to meet Dave Goodman, private eye. Miller is a heady mix of bored and driven, which helps us pay attention, and he's played by Travis Mills himself, doing a pretty capable job for someone who's also focused on writing and directing.

All these characters, Miller's colleagues on the paper and the detectives he interviews at the jazz club, are grounded and naturalistic, a far cry from the quirky folk in The Big Something. Before too long, we reach the most grounded of them all. Goodman sends Miller to see John D: the best of the best, he says. Unlike his other interview subjects, John D doesn't make much eye contact. He's not interested in stories. While Miller wants to expose the last hurrah of a dying breed, John D couldn't see it more differently. He calls himself ordinary, his job boring as hell. He has a wife and a kid and that's all he cares about. He's Rob Edwards, who shone so brightly in the last film, and he does no less here, however much he channels Harvey Keitel rather than Bogie. 'Stick with the lies,' he tells Miller. 'Nobody's going to pay you for the truth.' Then, to top it all, he vanishes while Miller is in the bathroom. Of course he's going to be hooked! Who wouldn't be?

And so he starts to follow the trail, to find out who John D is, now that he's found what he feels is a real story. Even now, he's a journalist playing at being a detective and that point is hammered home in scene after scene, with only Miller not paying attention. Nobody watching from Arizona is going to fail to recognise a few of the places that this trail takes him through, from The Living Room in Chandler to the San Carlos in Phoenix, from half of the stores on Main Street in Mesa to the corner in Winslow, Arizona that that the Eagles sang about. It's probably telling that I don't recognise the cougar bar but I do know the antiques store well. I've even been out the very back door that Miller uses to escape from a mysterious cop. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, we need to meet Chris. Christine Appleton is the femme fatale that the credits promised and she's a peach because she's played by Cara Nicole, who I'm used to seeing in spandex as AZ Power Girl.

The reason that this story works as well as it does is because we can't figure Chris out. Sure, it's obvious that Miller is being played every which way but loose and it's just as obvious that Chris is the key to it all but we don't know why. We also don't know whether it's just Chris leading him on or whether someone else is leading her. If she's a puppet too, who's the puppeteer and does she know that she's dancing on his strings? The setup is really well constructed, though surely Rob Edwards benefits most given that he gets to see a heck of a lot more of Cara Nicole than we do. The story proceeds well too, though it's not quite so labyrinthine that we can't figure out a good deal of it before the finalé, which turns out to be as well done as the setup. It's in between that the story has problems as we can't always buy into Miller being quite so dense. Of course he falls for Chris; that's how film noir works, but this quickly and this strongly? That's a stretch.

Mills does well with the part, though it's not the most believable character he's written. He starts decently, gets better in the middle as escalating events give him an edgier feel, then goes back to decent again. He's especially good when doing first person narration, as his voice is just right. He's backed up by a solid cast, many of whom return from The Big Something and, often, many Running Wild short films. Rob Edwards is a standout again. This marks four times that I've seen him now, in four completely different roles, and he's been excellent each time, or at least he has in the three I can place. I still can't picture him as a hitman in A Man Called Nereus but I'll surely be keeping my eyes open next time I see it. Unfortunately all these are small parts: supporting, albeit pivotal, characters in features with the only lead role being in a very short short film. I'd very much like to see more of his work and fortunately he's been doing quite a lot of it lately.

He isn't the only standout here. Dean Veglia, Garry Myers and Scott Scheall play utterly different roles to those they had in The Big Something. In that film, Myers and Veglia were an outrageous father and son pairing, but I found that I preferred both playing it straight here, Veglia as Dave the detective and Myers as a carefully spoken, down to earth, motel owner. Yet, while Scheall is very good here as Eddie Adams, Miller's best friend, sanity check and little angel on shoulder, I liked him much better as the delightfully wrong cop in The Big Something. And after quick nods for Will Burkhart and Mark Shannon as characters so different that they're near polar opposites, that leaves Cara Nicole. She's good but not great, with little female competition in a very male film. It's a tough role though, having to combine the elegant lady who sings jazz with the sleazy chick who seems to sleep with everyone she meets. She deserved more time to develop.

On the technical side, there's improvement from the last film. The camera movements are much smoother, while cinematographer Dave Surber finds almost as many clever angles and framing shots as Jason Cowan did in The Big Something. The night shots are far better, suggesting more sophisticated Running Wild equipment, though not enough so to dabble in expressionistic light and shadow. The saxophone soundtrack works well, though it's a little obvious for the material. Of course, the bar set for music last time was so high that it wasn't going to be matched here anyway, even if Mills got lucky, won the lottery and flew in Miklós Rózsa. Maybe if he landed T-Bone Burnett instead. In any film noir, the dialogue should be almost its own character and while there are some good lines here, they generally fall short of the iconic stature they was aiming at. The best line may be the simplest: 'It's not safe,' Chris tells Miller and he's hooked.

On the downside, the sound inside moving cars needs work, but we only have two such scenes to deal with. The gunshots are cheap, which is disappointing but easily overlooked. I found the back and forth camerawork overdone when shooting conversation scenes between two people. It's a well worn technique to build disconnection but there's just too much of it here. Then again, it got overused even more in Miller's Crossing and, for some reason, that's consistently rated as a masterpiece. I don't get it. More importantly, one late scene completely failed to make sense to me, its internal logic seemingly jumbled. That scene aside, I enjoyed this journey back to the noir era though it didn't find as solid a feel as its predecessor. While much of it felt tough like a forties noir, much of it felt exploitative like a seventies remake and the two approaches were sometimes at odds. I'm glad I saw this, but I'll go back to The Big Something before this one.

The Big Something (2011)

Director: Travis Mills
Stars: Michael Coleman, Mina Mirkhah and Rob Edwards

With the third and final screening of The Detective's Lover, the second feature film from Running Wild Films and director Travis Mills, coming up at FilmBar in Phoenix on Thursday night, I felt it was about time that I got round to reviewing its predecessor, last year's The Big Something. I saw this on the big screen with a large crowd at the premiere at Tempe Pollack Cinemas and I thoroughly enjoyed its quirky charm. Sure, it probably cost less money to make than I have in my wallet right now but that didn't hurt the film, which was a pleasant riot of bizarre situations, outrageous characters and wild ideas, built more on a theme than a real plot and infused with an agreeably offbeat sense of humour. The lack of funding also meant that the music is all public domain but the result is the most enjoyable soundtrack I've heard, outside of perhaps only Léolo and O Brother, Where Art Thou? The only thing it didn't have was a dull moment.

What I can happily report is that it's just as fun on a second viewing. What surprised me is that it's just as fun in precisely the same ways as the first time through. Most films tend to get better or worse with foreknowledge of what's going to happen, not only because grand reveals and twists lose their potency but because repeat viewings usually either enhance the successes, emphasise the failures or do both at once. This is that rare creature, a film where it really doesn't matter how much you know or how often you watch, it just remains what it is. Its failings are just as obvious but they're also just as easy to overlook. Its successes are just as successful, without any hidden depths springing out to tap us on the shoulder but also without any new annoyances showing up either. Perhaps it's the fact that the plot, while overt, is really meaningless. Sure, it takes us places but they aren't usually the places characters expect to, or even want to, go.

You see, it wears its key influence proudly, in the title. There are many Big films out there, that will take you from The Big Blue to The Big Chill via The Big Easy, if only you can get past The Big Boss. However The Big Something is a riff on The Big Sleep, not just because it's a euphemism for death, which sparks this story, or because it's phrased as a mystery, as our hero investigates that death. It's because it's all about the journey not the destination, just like Humphrey Bogart found as Philip Marlowe in 1946. In that film, Marlowe was a hardboiled professional private dick; in this one, our investigator is a dim witted record store employee called Lewis. Yet both these characters follow the clues and pursue their resolution, without really having any idea what's important or what's true or even what's related to the investigation at hand. In both cases, pun not intended, they really just stir things up until the answer makes an appearance.

If The Big Sleep is the framework for this picture, the phrasing is more like Slacker. Mills, who co-wrote the story with Ryan Gaumont, doesn't go for a noir look or feel at all, instead beginning as a silent slapstick picture of all things. It's contemporary in tone and very southwestern in setting, with Lewis a small figure in big scenery as he walks to the record store he's been sleeping in for six months. In fact, once Lewis literally climbs into the story, from the roof into the crime scene below, the back room of the store with Marcus, his boss, dead on the floor, everything just floats around for a while with no particular place to go. Instead of a plot, we just enjoy the characters we meet: April, the bitch of a store manager; Melinda, the boss's widow who didn't really know him even though they talked each other to sleep every night; Det Quinn, a cop so lazy that he wears a Hawaiian shirt; even crazy Harlan, who tries to shoplift a record from the crime scene.

Michael Coleman doesn't look like a leading man, never mind one as iconic as Bogie (who gets namechecked twice, just to reiterate the connection), but he stakes his claim to dominance early with a spirited defence of Travis Tritt in the back of a black and white and a cheesy grin while validating his alibi. He's contagious because he's so nice. He's willing to talk to anyone, even a bum who handcuffs him by a dumpster and runs away, or April, who promptly fires him the day they reopen the store. He's also homeless, a refreshing situation for a leading man, though the film doesn't aim at the sort of political statement They Live did. He also stands up for others, as he does when Melinda, who lets him sleep on her couch, as much out of loneliness as kindness, starts to break from her loss. And it's here, 25 minutes in, that the story decides to start. Neither of them believe that Marcus killed himself and it's Lewis who decides to find out the truth.

And so we follow Lewis and April, strange partners to be sure, as they follow vague leads. Don't try to figure it all out before the last scene, not only because you won't but because it isn't that sort of movie. Lewis conjures ideas out of nowhere and runs with them; some of the clues could be classed as deus ex machinae if they ever really led anywhere. He takes little things that he hears and makes them much bigger or just writes them down on his hand in case they might turn into clues later. 'What does it mean?' April asks him at one point. 'I honestly have no idea,' he replies, and that's a good summary of their progress. He can't think anything through before acting on it; the shot where they follow a man in a wheelchair by car is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Yet Lewis thinks he's making progress and who are we to say he isn't? He does have more luck than intellect, that's for sure. Gradually he blunders his way through the plot.

What I should emphasise is that this is actually a good thing, one of the film's many charms. That isn't to say that there aren't problems because there are a whole bunch, mostly because the budget, or rather the lack of it, can't be hidden. The sound is sometimes dubious, which doesn't help the naturally quiet voices of Sandy Kim and Reavis Dorsey. The camera movements aren't always as smooth as they could be. The lighting has issues outside at night. There are occasional glitches in the delivery of lines, as tends to be the case in microbudget pictures. The end result would certainly have been better had all these been fixed, but none are important in the long run. This is about a glorious off kilter feel, about a world a heartbeat out of whack from our own; and the more we pay attention, the more we wonder whether it's really our own and we've just been too caught up in ourselves to notice up until now.

Each of the many characters has their own moment in the spotlight, often quite a few of them, and each of the actors lives up to the challenge to add another quirky aspect to the mix. It's in each of these little moments that the film shines brightest and the biggest success that it has is that they never stop coming. The biggest standout has to be Rob Edwards as Murphy, the main character after Lewis and April, as he has more depth than either. Lewis isn't just a dim witted music fan and April isn't just a bitch, but we don't care too much about what else they might be. Murphy is half Hacksaw Jim Duggan and half batshit crazy brain fried bum; and he's magnetic from the glorious scenes where he handcuffs Lewis and follows him, in beautifully framed long shots. He gets great dialogue and others get great dialogue when talking to him. I've also seen Edwards recently but utterly failed to recognise him as the father in Shine Like Gold.

Dean Veglia is even more out there as Harlan and Michael Harrelson is great as Cliff, knowing yet vaguely suspicious. I've seen both in local short films but it's been a while. Sandy Kim has little to do as Melinda, though perhaps I lost track while trying not to look up her skirt. She looks great but it's way too short for her to be leaning back on a couch and expecting us to focus on whatever she's talking about. Scott Scheall is delightfully wrong as Det Quinn, a part that could easily have been much more substantial. Garry Myers, Reavis Dorsey and especially Eddie Jones all wring characterful moments out of precious little screen time. Kasim Aslam does too, though he's aided by what seems to be some magnificent improvisation from offscreen. Spencer Carey has so much fun doing an simultaneous impression of both Jason Mewes and Corey Feldman that he has trouble keeping a straight face. Yet Michael Coleman and Mina Mirkhah stay on top.

If the actors shine, even when hesitations slip in unwanted, it's partly because of the dialogue and situations that Mills and Gaumont gifted them with. Like Mel Brooks did in Blazing Saddles, they threw so many wild ideas at the wall that enough were always going to stick, and amazingly many of them came from real life. Apparently Mills based many of the characters on real people he met while working in a local record store, Zia's in Tempe. Is the Ed Sullivan fetish real or the croquet mallet torture? No, that's not what you think it is. I wonder also whether that's where he heard the music selected for the soundtrack. It's great old time stuff: ragtime, blues and boogie woogie. I don't care if it's used because it's free, every film should have some Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton or Louis Jordan. It's live and kicking stuff that fits both the setting and the tone. This is the most uplifting murder mystery I've seen and I'd be happy to watch it again tonight.

Flight of the Melvin (2011)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Isaac DeNegris, Laura Durant and Shane Dean

After reviewing Parallax, this year's peach of a Paul DeNigris film, I felt I should follow up with this one. It's as frivolous as Parallax is serious but, while it's certainly not of the same quality, it's a heck of a lot more fun. It's also notable because it has his son, Isaac DeNigris, in the lead role of Melvin, graduating from supporting slots in so many of his films, and because it has Shane Dean, who I still see primarily as the neo-Nazi in Death Factory: The Bloodletting, however many of his films I see, playing every one of a whole host of little green men on a flying saucer (oh, and the yellow and blue ones too). Yes, it's that much fun. Both of them must have had a blast filming this seven minute comedy, as their enjoyment is so contagious that it reaches through the screen at us. It's a family friendly affair, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's some sort of soporific Disney picture with cutesy singing candlesticks. It's so much better than that.

Melvin is a space nerd in Pleasantville. He has the glasses and the models and he knows how to use the tools. His only flaw is that he never remembers to clean the birdcage, but this ripping yarn renders that unimportant. He builds himself a jetpack with cool wings and flies up into the sky for an adventure as predictable as it is fun, just like the score which is suitably uplifting and optimistic but exactly what we'd conjure up in our heads if we turned off the sound. If it wasn't for the CGI, it would feel like a fifties film. Certainly Melvin would be a better fit there, with its emphasis on engineering over video games, than here today. The biggest flaw is that it ends; I want to see a Melvin feature, albeit one with a more expansive storyline than this little slice of adventure. After that, it's the rear projection which isn't as good as the jetpack, the flying saucer and especially its doors. The fun overrides that though. I dare you to leave this without a grin.

Parallax (2011)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Cavin Gray and Ayman Samman

This film was an official selection at the Phoenix Film Festival in Phoenix in 2012. Here's an index to my reviews of 2012 films.

Paul DeNigris, Professor of Digital Video at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, is no stranger at Apocalypse Later. I first experienced his work through Cowboy Dreams, a hilarious short comedy western with a cast to die for: Danny Trejo, Bill Engvall and David Staley. I didn't meet him until 2010, after his post-apocalyptic short, Fallout, showed at the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival. He gave me a DVD of Cowboy Dreams, so I could watch some of his older shorts and a year and half later I got round to reviewing them, from the poor and prototypical The Hard Way to the glorious and gleeful Stabbing Stupidity. Now, I wonder if there's some sort of unwritten rule that there must be a DeNigris short screening at every festival I visit, from the most prestigious to the most tangential. This one, a thesis film which helped him receive his Master of Fine Arts in Digital Cinema, may be his most ambitious and successful film to date.

At 22 minutes, it's an epic short film, with everything you might expect from a feature except length. In fact, it has everything you might expect from an Oscar winning feature except length: it's a timely political statement, a call for cultural education and a plea for humanity; it's a war movie, an action picture and an effects flick; and more than anything, it's a story of redemption. No wonder it made it to the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival this year. If Paul keeps growing like this, pretty soon I'm not going to be able to afford to get into the festivals screening his work. The film's message went down well at the Phoenix Film Festival, though I can see that it won't be as popular in some circles because it's an anti-war movie, albeit one that's carefully as anti-Saddam Hussain as it is anti-American invasion. The politics here are not overt. Nothing is red or blue except blood and sky, the colours being visually and metaphorically desert colours.

The story follows Daniels, a US infantryman on a tour of Iraq and a rollercoaster of a story arc. It isn't a true story and Daniels isn't a real person, but they're both fashioned from real experience, courtesy of story consultants Alexander Snyder and Hiba Al-Fatle. Daniels may be fighting to free a foreign nation from tyranny but he has as much hate for that nation's people as for his actual enemy. He confuses the two, through ignorance, habit and the situation he's in. It's not an easy situation, as he quickly finds when he's blown out of his Humvee by an improvised bomb set by a child, but he wakes up in the home of an Iraqi civilian who has apparently saved his life. That, to him, is no less easy to deal with. Through survival instinct and a gradual understanding that there's a reality wider than the one he thought he knew, he finds common ground with Hassan and his son Jabir, which shapes how he and the story move on.

The writing is excellent here. Though Daniels does start out painfully obnoxious, it's probably not unrealistic and the growth of the character is superb. This is no Disney film, so the progression is both believable and worthy of a 22 minute short. While initially we're emphatically on the side of 'the enemy', the depth that emerges from both lead characters helps us as much as Daniels to see the complexity of the situation. It helps that the leads are superb, with young debuting actor Evan Ananian providing a grounding as Jabir for both Cavin Gray and Ayman Samman to build on. Gray is no stranger at Apocalypse Later either. Purely by coincidence, I'd reviewed every film he'd made. Now that he's made three more, I find that I get to review all those too, Paranoia and Covet coming shortly. While there's a consistent thread in most of his roles, they become varied as they evolve. Samman is new to me but he's a great foil for Gray and is even better here.

Egyptian-born Samman gets much of the best dialogue, Daniels having to grow as a character before he really deserves any. We're drawn quickly into the situation and evalute the motivation of both leads. Nothing here is black and white, those muddy desert colours being an appropriate basis for so much of our evaluation. While it's obvious that Hassan saved Daniels, the soldier is unable to find any reason why he might do so. It's an alien concept to him, but it's really simple. 'Does your Bible tell you to do the right thing only when it is convenient?' Hassan asks. 'Neither does the Koran.' My favourite line follows a revelation about the bombs that killed Hassan's wife and daughter. 'Was it us?' Daniels asks. 'Does it matter?' is the response. With each response to each reminder that we're never far away from violent conflict, we grow with Daniels, though I'd hope that most viewers don't have as far to grow as he does.

Beyond the acting and writing, much of the success here comes through just how immersive the characters' surroundings are. We're believably in Iraq, though the desert that we see is far closer to home than the Middle East and pretty much everything else was shot against greenscreen. It's testament to the skill of Gray and Samman that we're drawn so quickly into this world, but also to DeNigris's effects wizards. So many sci-fi shorts I see are built entirely on sucky effects work and I feel I should send their filmmakers to DeNigris's class to learn how it's done. Sure, he has better equipment than them, but he's not shooting in a state of the art Hollywood studio either. What we see here isn't always perfect but it's easily good enough and occasionally outstanding. With attention given equally to acting, writing and to the variety of sets, greenscreen, CGI and 3D models, this is a textbook for young filmmakers. It's proof that it can be done and done well.

Come Follow Me (2011)

Director: Devon Dresback
Stars: Natalie Cadieux and Dakota Battle

This film was an official selection at the Phoenix Film Festival in Phoenix in 2012. Here's an index to my reviews of 2012 films.

As if Wish Inc and Paranoia weren't enough presence for Arizona Filmmaker of the Year, Diane Dresback, at the Phoenix Film Festival (she directed the former and wrote the latter, as well as producing both), she served as the executive producer on this film too. That's understandable, given that it was directed by her son, Devon Dresback, who is apparently taking a leaf out of her book and getting prolific: this is only one of three films he wrote and directed in 2011. Another film that was part of an IFP challenge, the Breakout Film Challenge, it picked up a cupboard full of awards, winning for Best Film, over Awesome Guy: A New Identity, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Emerging Actor for 12 year old Dakota Battle. Given that it focuses on two characters, that's a win for both of them. It wasn't just the IFP judges: in his Phoenix Film Festival roundup of Arizona Shorts, William Pierce, film critic at examiner.com, called it 'the best short film of 2011'.

All this makes me wonder what I missed. I enjoyed it but it didn't stun me like it seems to have stunned others. It should be available online sometime in 2013 after its festival screenings, so I'll make a note to track it down and watch again to see if it grows. It could be that it suffered a little from an unfortunate slot in the selection: last but one in a long list of good films, following the bubbly Wish Inc and preceding only Parallax, the film that many were waiting for and which won for Best Arizona Short Film. It's a far more subtle piece than the bright and colourful Wish Inc so it may have faded a little as a follow up. It also doesn't have the epic feel, strong characters or special effects of Parallax, which sucked in its audience for a 22 minute ride that overrode the 6 minute film before it. It's really about an idea, one which I felt was too obvious, though that may well be less a judgement of the film and more of why Dresback felt it had to be made.

It centres around the wisdom imparted by a Teutonic teacher to her young audience after she realises that she's losing them. They're bored, painfully so, and she combats that boredom by taking them outside to talk about life. Nathalie Cadieux is excellent as the teacher, even though she's from Montreal not Munich and has far more experience on stage than she does on screen. What she tells them is the sort of thing you might see laid over a graphic that people circulate on Facebook, but it's not trite or cutesy. It's a very valid commentary on risk, notably important in the 'won't you think of the children' America of today, which makes me wonder if the decision to go with a very German teacher was a copout in setting like V for Vendetta or a subtle comment on immigration and diversity. This is all well done, if a little dry, but the emotion is reserved for what happens when it starts to rain. Carpe diem. Devon Dresback obviously has.

Wish Inc (2011)

Director: Diane Dresback
Stars: Stephanie Mello, Kane Black and Bivás Biswas

This film was an official selection at the Phoenix Film Festival in Phoenix in 2012. Here's an index to my reviews of 2012 films.

Like many of the films that made the cut for the Arizona Shorts selection at this year's Phoenix Film Festival, Wish Inc was was made for a film challenge. A3F, the Almost Famous Film Festival, has an annual Musical Film Challenge in which teams are given 72 hours to make a short film. In 2011, the restrictions were to centre around a broken promise, include both a coin toss and a specific line of dialogue, and also feature at least one musical moment. Director Diane Dresback created Wish Inc with a team that were all over the Phoenix Film Festival this year. No wonder she won an award for Arizona Filmmaker of the Year. Lead actress Stephanie Mello was producer and assistant director on Awesome Guy: A New Identity, whose director, Bob Marquis, plays her husband in Wish Inc. Bivás Biswas played the Wish Master but also directed Paranoia, written by Dresback and starring James Ray, another Wish Inc actor. Maybe Dresback is really Kevin Bacon.

The Wish Inc of the title is a corporation that grants wishes, a pretty cool thing for a corporation to do in this day and age, you might think. However, when Hope signs up to join the company, she finds that it isn't quite that simple. Her job seems to be easy, merely to read coins tossed into wishing wells, approve or deny their wishes and then send them back to Accounting. What she discovers, when the all powerful Wish Master summons her, is that wishes can't always be granted, that wishing won't change the world and that wishing and hoping aren't the same thing. But she's Hope, right? How the story unfolds from there is not entirely unexpected but ought to raise a smile nonetheless, even if, like me, you're not a fan of musical comedy. Mello is superb and the script and cast back her up well. Even the songs aren't overly cheesy. It's an ambitious film for a 72 hour challenge but it's a successful one too.