The photos below were taken on my tablet. I was the guy holding up his 8.4-inch tablet to take a picture. I'm so sorry.
Before we get to that, a mini-index of shorts and features seen on the seventh:
"Tugger the Ship"
Matt Mercury
"Omega"
"Moon-Lite"
"Painting the Way to the Moon"
The History of Time Travel
Uncanny
Suicide or Lulu and Me in a World Made for Two
At least not posting until tonight means that I can mention that the director of Matt Mercury sent me an email today and seems to be a genuinely nice guy who was just thrilled to have his movie play somewhere.
From left to right, festival director Garen Daly and "Painting the Way to the Moon" producers Adam Morrow, Jacob Akira Okada, and Carlyanna Taylor; Okada also directed. It was an interesting conversation, in that there wasn't a lot of extra information to be had, but they talked a lot about balancing the movie: That Ed Belbruno was great, but he is the sort of hyper-confident person who will assert his version of events strongly enough that you need to see it through another's eyes as well.
Christian Carroll, writer/director/star of Suicide or Lulu and Me in a World Made for Two, was last up. Not quite the as much fun a conversation as earlier - this audience is not, as a whole, really into the artsy sort of movie he made - but there were enough folks who liked what he did to have a conversation before going home.
Okay... Now that the shameful use of tablets as cameras has been admitted, hopefully the rest will get done more quickly (although I want to write up the Oscar shorts first).
"Tugger the Ship"
* * 1/2 (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
It's no surprise that "Tugger" writer/director Kevin Bertazzon has a background in visual effects and animation; his short has a lot of that, and while it's not necessarily the most eye-popping you'll see, it's bright and colorful in a way that matches its one joke after another pace. Even when the gags are strained or some other shortcoming rears its head, "Tugger" tends to be fun to watch.
That's no small thing. Bertazzon and his cohorts are cramming absolutely everything they have into something the length of a TV sitcom, and the dashing from one thing to another can get to be too much. Of the cast, only one or two are really what you'd call good actors - Reid Koster plays things fairly straight while the rest tend to ham it up, and gets some of the bigger laughs that way - and it sometimes feels like the filmmakers have to frantically introduce new things because the plot and running bags aren't sustainable. But they keep ahead of collapse, and that's more than can be said for a lot of comedies like this.
Matt Mercury
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
Attending any genre film festival means you will probably get hit with parodies claiming great affection for science fiction films and television from the 1950s and 1960s but which wind up accentuating their weaknesses or playing as shallow imitation rather than recognizing what made them exciting. Matt Mercury may not be the worst of the bunch, but it's among the more leaden I've seem lately, dragging more in its sixty-five minutes than many serious movies do in twice the time.
The titular Rocket Ranger (Matt Lavine) commands a ship with a fairly small crew - blue-haired navigator Sparx McCoy (Lauren Galley), robot chief engineer Jinky (voice of Heidi Hughes), and an uplifted gorilla science officer. Their latest mission is to stop Professor Brainwave (Bill Hughes), who has been given a massive cranium and a desire to pull the Earth out of its orbit after encountering a group of extra-dimensional aliens. He'll need the help of not just Brainwave's former colleague Dr. Syfer (Rick Corrigan), but his former first officer and lover Mulkress Dunner (Chantal Nicole).
There's enough blame to go around for why Matt Mercury is not much good, and the usual impulse is to not come down too hard on the people onscreen who are likely doing the movie more for love and fun than anything else, but there's little avoiding that star Matt Lavine is a weak link as the title character. He gamely wears a goofy uniform and hairstyle and cheerily plays the fool, but just doesn't display the comic timing or inflection necessary to make his playing dumb funny, and doesn't fare much better when the script tries to paint him as having some emotional complexity. He's not necessarily the worst of a weak cast - most of the actors could use some seasoning - but he's in the most scenes with the least personality on display.
Full review at EFC.
"Omega"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
There's a temptation with short films like "Omega" to discuss them less in terms of the short itself than the feature version that the filmmakers would clearly like to make. This one sets up characters (a combat vet and his worried doctor girlfriend), a situation (a two-talked comet that may actually be a spaceship heading toward Earth), and a cliffhanger, and then cuts off. Wouldn't it be great to know more? Sure! And, heck, maybe an agent or exec or future festival programmer in the audience will feel the same way, leading to money and visibility for such a feature. There are worse strategies in the dog-eat-dog world of independent film financing.
This one is probably a little more deserving than most; director Peter Ninos has a pretty good eye and puts a nice-looking film together. The action isn't big or unusually polished for the film's likely budget level, but it's clear enough for Ninos to be showing what he can do than trying to hide what he can't. Adam Schmerl and Kate Englefield give decent performances, and that helps "Omega" feel a lot more like a real movie than a calling-card demo.
And then you get to the script, which has some problems. It's frequently clunky, giving the cast very basic scenarios to play out and then really stretching to tie them together. Maybe a feature version would be more developed needing to worry less about every second and having an actual ending to build toward. As it is, the gaps are pretty clear. Too bad if the feature never happens, although it's not a bad place to start.
"Moon-Lite"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
Writing a children's book is harder than it looks (or at least it must be; I can't say that I've ever put serious effort into doing so). Making a live-action movie, even a short one, that feels like a children's book is even harder. David Dibble does a fair job of it with "Moon-Lite"; what's going on is obvious from the start but there's enough good cheer to make it kind of fun.
As with a lot of movies that try for this sort of flavor, I would kind of like to see it with actual kids to see how they react. I found something a bit of in its sorry of a harmless eccentric ignored by the locals except for one curious youngster; it's so focused on using its characters to impart an idea that it make them I individuals with personalities rather than quirks. Maybe it doesn't need to - it succeeds in what it sets out to do - but I think that could make it more entertaining to adults and perhaps even get kids to empathize more, too.
"Painting the Way to the Moon"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
In a lot of ways, Ed Belbruno's story isn't that different from that of other scientists whose creations are worth discussing: He has a notion, it turns out to be true and useful, but both it and the means to come up with it are unconventional enough to be sidelined - at least until he's recharged his batteries in another endeavor and the ballistic transfer math he specialized in process necessary. It's the details that make it fun.
For instance, Belbruno attributes his mathematical genius to a batch of magic mushrooms that he ingested as a young man. He also claims to have seen a UFO while driving across the country in 1991, and is a creator of a ballet meant to explain how the Earth's unusually large and iron-deficient moon formed. Next to that, the fact that he is also a painter worthy of note beyond his astronomical influences can seem very conventional.
That director Jacob Akira Okada manages to cover that entire spectrum in just under an hour is an impressive feat; longer and less complete documentaries have certainly been made about similarly multifaceted people. There are two keys to this, I think. First, Belbruno himself is not just gregarious and anxious to talk, but good at it. Not all scientists or artists can communicate w what they do without it becoming a lecture, but he describes the periods and cons of the standard Hohman transfer usually used to get shops into lunar orbit along with his fuel-efficient but time-consuming ballistic transfer clearly. It's fun science that doesn't take the focus away from the scientist who is the film's actual subject.
Okada also does a fine job of keeping the movie fun while also acknowledging that Belbruno can often be a stop or two past lovably eccentric. Belbruno will often get just enough time in a segment to come off as a little bit of a loon, and the filmmakers will often cut to other interviews to not necessarily rebut his version of events but give other perspectives. There are plenty of chances to look at his work, which really is rather nice, especially if one has interest in the science influencing it, and scenes of that ballet being performed by a class of kids that really is worth seeing.
Neil deGrasse Tyson appears toward the end to contrast the way Belbruno's two careers manifest, summarizing the previous hour nicely. That doesn't diminish the rest of the material; after all, knowing information is a different thing than seeing the expressions that come from it.
The History of Time Travel
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
Mock documentaries are inherently gimmick movies; it is a rare one that does not crash hard up against the form's limitations, and when that happens, it doesn't matter whether the disappointment comes from the filmmaker having to cheat or the presentation just fizzling out. The History of Time Travel inevitably paints itself into a corner, but unlike most cases, that's where it wants to be.
Writer/director Ricky Kennedy presents it as a production of "History Television", and like many productions of the channel's real-world analog, it starts out in World War II, postulating a second letter from Albert Einstein to Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning of the Nazis' plans to invent time travel along with the atomic bomb. Unlike their colleagues in New Mexico, the "Illinois Project" doesn't find success during the war, but it's cheap enough that it, and particularly scientist Richard Page, continues to receive functioning from the Pentagon, although it may fall to Page's soon Edward to complete his work. Which he does, obviously, as they are making a documentary about the history and ethics of this invention.
If it were just that simple, of course, we would just have to be impressed with how well Kennedy and his cast & crew recreate this sort of program while slipping bits of sly humor into the mix. It's a straight-faced pastiche with plenty of clever detail in its archival photos, interview footage, and other elements that help create a believable world, with very few cracks, although one's mileage may vary on that (for instance, I am okay with using an Atari 2600 in the design, but can't begin to guess why you'd have a Pitfall! cartridge in the slot). It may not be a perfectly slick imitation, but the details are generally well-done, especially the various experts who hit types pretty squarely in the center but still don't come across as bland or generic.
Full review at EFC.
Uncanny
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
Uncanny jokes about the Turing Test casually enough to make even longtime science fiction fans marvel a bit at how the phrase has started to enter the general lexicon in the last few years. The go-to reference for this short of thing used to be the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner, and its goal of trying to identify a genuine emotional response is the one that takes center stage here. Am interesting setup, to be sure, but also kind of a problem.
The film is built around tech reporter Joy Andrews (Lucy Griffiths) being given an seven days of access to the lab space of David Kressen (Mark Weber), a prodigy who had been designing the future since graduating college at the age of eighteen seven years ago. He shows Joy a bunch of cool stuff - lightweight bone replacements, synthetic skin, prosthetic eyes - and then introduces her to Adam (David Clayton Rogers), who is what you get when you connect all of those innovations to a cutting-edge artificial intelligence. He's evidently sophisticated enough to become envious when Joy starts showing more ingest in the scientist than the science project.
It's hard to figure out exactly why, though, even without playing the stereotypical "she's an attractive, accomplished woman and he's a real nerd" game. David just isn't very charismatic at all, and even without the readily-apparent irony of Adam seeming like the warmer one of the pair, his clumsy social-stuntedness never comes off as endearing enough to really buy Joy being attracted to him enough for it to become a major cog in the plot. It takes all kinds, sure, but there's a spark missing, and neither director Matthew Leutwyler nor writer Shahin Chandrasoma quite seems to have a handle on what Joy seers in him.
Full review at EFC.
Suicide or Lulu and Me in a World Made for Two
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, digital)
Christian Carroll hits a couple of things I really like in Suicide or Lulu and Me in a World Made for Two, enough that I can overlook its faults, probably better than many would. It's a nifty little movie, although there are one or two things that make it a little hard to entirely love.
It starts with Louise McPhee (Adeline Thery), a mute amnesiac staying at the home of her boyfriend Jorge (Carroll) somewhere near Oklahoma City. They met in Paris, where Louise was a street performer whose married boyfriend had just dumped her and Jorge was working on special photographic projects. They fell in love, and together created amazing art. Or at least, that's what's in the vials of liquid material that Jorge users to restore her memory.
That McPhee resembles silent film star Louise Brooks, especially the iconic haircut, is no accident, and is kind of morbidly funny, then, for her to spend large chunks of the movie mute, in addition to the film being shot in black and white. Or, more likely, a filter is applied; that's what is more likely these days, even in a movie that very specifically fetishizes silent films in general and Pandora's Box in particular. That one features Brooks as a woman in a highly mutable relationship, which means Carroll is kind of meta on top of meta here, with the style and the brainwashing and both obscure camera tech and steampunk-inspired virtual reality as the means of control. It can be a little over-clever and extends the metaphor and tendency toward cooler-than-you references toward the end, but if you like this sort of material, you'll probably find Carroll does it fairly well. It's not empty reference substituting for a story.
Full review at EFC.
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