Let’s look at more shorts with The Vern.

Good morning everyone or good night for some of you out there.  I have another healthy sack of some short films that I want to talk about.   Thank you very much to the directors who emailed me links to their features and asked for a review.  I hope they will still send me others after they read this post.  Nah, but these are all really talented filmmakers who I would love to see more from.   Now let’s get on with the show.   If you want to see the films featured.  Just click on the highlighted links.

The Stranger

Cast: Rowland Brand, Claire Louise Harris

Writer and Director Jamie Montgomery

In this short a man gets the chance to help save a girl because he was not around when his wife was attacked and killed. This is a good story, and I liked all of the actors that were involved with it. Jamie Montgomery does add a lot of stylistic touches to it which are nice in very small doses. But in a ten minute short film, it’s a bit of an overkill. When we see our main character’s girl being attacked at the start. I found it difficult to emphasize with his loss because it was done in this slow motion kind of style. It was hard to understand the fear she was experiencing. Therefore it was difficult to understand the anger and sadness our main character was having. The visuals in this are very nice and the black and white is a very nice touch as well. If this was expanded out a little bit more to let certain scenes go on a bit longer. I feel that a lot of it’s emotions would have had more of an impact.

Order Of The Ram

Cast: May Kasper, Danni Scott White

Writer and Director: Scott Lyus

In a quiet small town. A young girl(May Kasper) is basically all alone at school. She sits by herself at lunch, and rarely has anyone to talk to.  One day while walking around and taking pictures. She runs into a student who for no real reason  attacks her. When she awakes, she is tied up and is told that she is going to be sacrificed to the devil. It turns out that everyone in her town was preparing her for this day.  Kind of a real shitty way of letting her know.  The way this story was presented and the reveal of the town’s intention was pretty good.  I gotta give some credit to the director for surprising me with that one.  I didn’t suspect it and I feel like I  should have.  The acting from everyone is very good, and I especially liked Danni Scott White in the role of The Mother. Her monologue about why they are sacrificing this girl is both tender and really scary. The only downside of this short is that I wanted to root for this girl to escape and I felt like she barely even tried. Oh she does try to escape and at one point does succeed, but it isn’t long before she is recaptured. I honestly don’t think she even ran that very far to begin with.   Now it’s true that in a lot of horror movies, the main character never makes it towards the end.  But when I’m watch them. I still feel like they could. Since it’s established that this girl was being prepared for this. A good ending would have been to have her take on Mother and her disciples. Only to have her discover that this goes up a lot higher and that there truly is no escape. I am still excited to see what this director will do in the future, because he knows how to get really
good performances from his actors. He also knows how to set a mood and tone for his story, and then have that tone change ever so slightly into something  completely different. But never once did it feel out of place or forced.

 Earrings

Cast: Catherine Warner, Martin McSweeny

Writer and Director: Alex Withrow.

Before you watch this short. I urge you to please shut all other distractions off. Your cell phone, the T.V., everything else off. If that is done, you may now start watching this feature. Why am I suggesting that you do this? It’s mainly to help you to not get confused or frustrated while watching this. I have a feeling that many of you will assume (after a few minutes) that is a story about a girl moping around in her apartment and nothing more. Hell,  I even thought that at first. But as the story progressed I found myself feeling very sad for this character and at the end. I became very optimistic and happy about what her future . Why am I feeling these things for a character that never gave me any full on explanations, only subtle hints.  I don’t know. Director Alex Withrow takes his time to show the emotional turmoil of this character. I liked it very much that we see her going through this ordeal  instead of having her just explain it. Except for one scene of dialogue this is basically a silent film. I don’t want to get into too much about plot details because the fun is figuring out the story for yourself.  I found it to be about a girl who is depressed, but learns to come out of it. You may have a completely different reaction to it and that’s fine.  Catherine Warner is one that many casting agents should be on the watch for. She establishes a lot of different emotions in this and she does it without saying much. That to me is the sign of a good actor.  When you can do a believable character and not rely on just the dialogue. Watching this flick, I got the feeling that this could have been a collaboration with Shane Carruth and Sofia Coppola. I saw elements of both “Upstream Color” and “Somewhere” while watching this. Coincidentally, Sati over at Cinematic Corner wrote a great post comparing this short to Coppola’s tale of fame and isolation.(click on the name of the site to read the article) It’s  slow pace was a bit much to get through at times, and I can understand why many might be turned off by this.   I still found this to be a very engaging short that was made with a lot of effort.

Shark Week by Hand Job Academy.

I never thought a song about a woman’s menstrual cycle would be this funny or even this catchy.  These girls don’t hold back with their depictions about the monthly visitor and even though this made me cringe a few times. I was still laughing a lot too