Short Film Review #60

Conversation Piece

 

 

Absolutely inspired work – it’s best just to watch Joe Tunmer’s short without any advance knowledge as what it does, it does brilliantly.
 

Going Commando

 

Pat Benatar once told us that ‘Love is a Battlefield’ and so it is in Mike D’Rews’ Going Commando where as the bell for last orders is rung in a busy bar, five friend devise a battleplan to hook up with the girls from a nearby table. It’s a little overextended but the premise is really well executed as the clichés of war films are employed by the increasingly desperate guys and amusingly exploited by D’Rews. Well worth the watch.
 

 

The Lift

 

Kenny Evans’ The Lift is a little bit of a cracker – hugely ambitious in scope and execution yet almost entirely self-funded, it has the sci-fi chops of a Doctor Who episode in the making and the freewheeling excitement of a You Me Bum Bum Train-type experience as office junior Daniel finds himself trapped in a terrifying personal odyssey based around the lifts he hates to use. Starring a fresh-faced Luke Jasztal in the lead (one of my new favourites) it really is quite the compelling piece of storytelling that taps into so many primal fears as well as uncovering the issues in Daniel’s own psyche.
 

 

Making Rosebud

 

A drama school project by Jonathan Reid-Edwards that just happens to have Damien Molony in it? Yes please. It has its raw edges to be sure but it is all the better for it.
 

 

The Sickie

 

Rupert Jones’ The Sickie makes a virtue of Toby Jones’ predisposition for a hangdog character as put-upon office manager Douglas, whose life is a never-ending series of thankless administrative tasks. After a particularly arduous day involving Marion Bailey wielding a leg of jamón serrano, he decides to pull a sickie and look after number one but it doesn’t prove quite that easy to switch off. There’s no earth-shattering insight here but a quietly amusing and quietly depressing look at life that ought to ring major alarm bells for anyone who has worked in an office and/or finds themselves taking work home with them.

 

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