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Reviews
Unskin (2020)
A unique and visionary masterpiece
A really unique and even groundbreaking short film that plays with form and expectation. Usually with such a film you are going to have different perspectives, but I've always been a fan of films that require you to watch in a different way than you normally watch films, and UNSKIN draws on both narrative and experimental forms throughout its duration.
The core of the story centres on the mysterious protagonist, Roger, who on the surface is an ordinary young man looking for employment in a soulless, corrupted, self-serving, divisive world, but as it is soon revealed, below the calm exterior, Roger has the supernatural power to unleash a hooded alien being who becomes an agent of change in the cold world of this film. Without giving away too many spillers, I believe that the hooded alien figure is an avatar and manifestation of the change that the central character wants to see in the world, and essentially the director draws on the mantra, "be the change that you want to see in the world", as it turns out near the very end of the film, that the hooded alien may just be Roger himself, or his shadow. This is a brilliant and unexpected twist, and the methods used to bring the narrative full circle towards the pay off in a very short span of time is a master stroke.
Technically, the film is faultless. The cinematography and editing are simply sublime and the score is one of the most original I have heard in a long time, even when compared to feature films. In summary, 'UNSKIN' is a short "masterpiece" with a huge potential to become a feature, if the writer-director desires to pursue that course.
Widow's Walk (2019)
A load of reviews won't save this film disaster!!
What happens when two filmmakers walk into a bar? One of them gets drunk first and the other one stays sober, but they both make a movie each. This film was made by the director, figuratively speaking! Stranger still, for a drunken film it is rather sobering in the derivative sense. The acting is rather stilted and the action of the actors always feels premeditated and never natural. For a horror film, even a psychological one, it isn't so much that there is no horror here or suspense for that matter, but not even the sinueux of good drama. How this gets a 9/10 is beyond a joke, unless of course the joke is on us, the viewers.
Beast (2017)
British Middle Class Bore
I really wanted to like this film. The one gleaming diamond in this very rough of a movie is Jessie Buckley, as her performance shines, but otherwise everything around her lacks interest, substance and suspense... just a very average student film glossed over with money... typical of most British cinema these days, missing a heart beat, a pulse... 1/10
Keeping Up with the Joneses (2013)
Poorly shot, formulaic, made for TV
I came across this film on Shorts of the Week, and having watched it, feel like I wasted 30 mins of my time on a very generic film, with some of the worst cinematography I have seen in a short film. The film also plays to type, with generic characters, a gay hitman (how original), and his psychotic partner who happens to be Asian, beats up another Asian and is shot by the gay white hitman... very typical, white, middle class pigeonholing, in a depressing almost hollow shell of film.