A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Nannette Burstein, “Hillary (Episode 1: The Golden Girl)” (2020) Ostensibly a four-part series on the life and career of Hillary Rodham Clinton, this work is never…
Australian and New Zealand Films
Matt Richards, “The Disappearance of Willie Bingham” (2015) A truly unsettling short realist film about a bureaucracy gone insanely inhuman, pandering to the lowest common denominator…
Max Silver, “Trunk Space” (2016) As surely as the sun rises in the east, birds fly in the sky and fish swim in the oceans, so…
Christopher Todd, “End of Decay” (2017) A pulpy body-horror update on Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” novel, this short film has the sketchy and…
Jamie Monahan, “Lucid” (2018) The film’s title refers to so-called lucid dreams in which the dreamer is aware that s/he is dreaming, that the action in…
Justin Giddings, Ryan Welsh, “Outpost” (2020) On the very edge of the known universe, the last survivor of Earth’s Interplanetary Diplomatic Service, a fellow known as…
Ben Alpi, “Hashtag” (2015) A smartly presented sci-fi short, “Hashtag” demonstrates how a science fiction film made with a tiny budget and minimal special effects can…
Bhargav Saikia, “Awakenings” (2015) Inspired by and closely based on Henry James’ famous novella “The Turn of the Screw”, this short film is conventional in its…
Seung Yeob Lee, “Thicker Than Water” (2015) Modern South Korean families, in particular the relationship of mothers with their sons and the extremes the mothers will…
French and French-language Films
Thierry Lorenzi, “On / Off” (2013) This short space-exploration thriller film had been doing the film festival circuit for a number of years before DUST channel…