★★★ Directed by #CiroGuerra Written by #JMCoatzee Starring #MarkRylance #JohnnyDepp #RobertPattinson Film Review by George Wolf In the forty years since J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians was first published, world events have continued to re-frame its thematic relevance. Now, the novel finally has a big screen adaptation, amid a tumultuous political climate that again makes Coetzee’s tale feel especially prescient. In a vaguely historical era within an unnamed “Empire,” the Magistrate (Mark Rylance) governs his desert outpost population through moral conviction and a delicate harmony with the land’s indigenous peoples. Conversely, Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp) – the soft spoken and sadistic head of state security – believes “pain is truth.” Joll arrives at the outpost to carry out random interrogations of the nomadic “barbarians” and learn the truth about an attack on the outpost that he feels is imminent. The Magistrate protests this view of the natives and the Empire’s directives, drawing the ire of Joll and later, his more overtly cruel lieutenant, officer Mandel (Robert Pattinson). Coetzee’s debut screenplay adapts his own novel with delicate grace and an understated foreboding. But as relevant as the theme of creeping fascism remains, its bite is dulled by ambiguity and broadly-drawn metaphors. The urge to speak more universally via an unspecified name, time and place is understandable, but it hampers the intimacy required to feel this warning in your gut. The Oscar-winning Rylance (Bridge of Spies) almost make up for this by himself, with a tremendous performance of quiet soul-searching. The film’s summer-to-the-following-autumn chapter headings paint the Magistrate as an obvious man for all seasons, and Rylance makes the Magistrate’s journey of fortitude and redemption feel almost biblical. Depp and Pattinson provide worthy adversarial bookends. As Joll, Depp’s only eccentricity is a pair of sunglasses, but again he requires minimal screen time to carve an indelible figure. Mandel is an even smaller role, but Pattinson makes him the eager realization of the ugliness Joll keeps bottled up. It’s another interesting choice for the gifted Pattinson, and another film that’s better for it. Director Ciro Guerra utilizes exquisite cinematography from Chris Menges for a wonderful array of visuals, from beautifully expansive landscapes to artfully orchestrated interior stills. Though the film’s first act feels particularly forced, Guerra (Birds of Passage, Embrace of the Serpent) gives the remaining narrative – especially the Magistrate’s attempts at penance with the tortured Girl (Gana Bayarsaikhan) – the room to effectively breathe. Waiting for the Barbarians is not a film that will leave you guessing. But the decades-old message remains painfully vital, and in its quietest moments of subtlety, the film gives that message sufficient power. #GeorgeWolf

★★★★★ Directed by #KellyBlatz Written by #KellyBlatz #IsadoraKosofsky Starring #TomBower #AnneGeeByrd #MarlynMason Film Review by Hope Madden Co-writer/director Kelly Blatz announces his presence with authority, creating a minor cinematic miracle with his feature debut, Senior Love Triangle. Inspired by co-writer Isadora Kosofsky’s remarkable longterm photo essay of the same name, the film delivers a candid look into the intimate relationship among three elderly characters: William (Tom Bower), Adina (Anne Gee Byrd) and Jeanie (Marlyn Mason). The film is equal parts charming, frustrating and heartbreaking. More importantly, it takes its characters seriously. In an era where veteran actors entertain us via “those crazy old people!” vehicles (watching Diane Keaton become a cheerleader in Poms sapped my will to live), Senior Love Triangle feels gloriously anarchic. The magic of Blatz’s film is that it offers a character study of the sort we simply never see. Thanks to thoughtful writing and breathtaking performances—neither of which rely for a moment on shorthand—we get to know three unique individuals. William is an irascible, arrogant, 84-year-old charmer. His sophisticated lady love Adina indulges his ego, but when her son has him kicked out of Adina’s posh retirement high rise, William finds himself in a lower-quality establishment. Not to worry! He’s just finishing a lucrative deal that will set him up so he can buy a mansion and get Adele away from those Nazis in her building. (That is to say, he’s being routinely scammed.) In the meantime, over at his new digs he meets exuberant flirt Jeanie. (Mason’s performance is a particular triumph.) Blatz, with an incredible assist from Kosofsky’s work, sees the characters’ humanity, their sexuality, their courage and weakness. He sees their loneliness, their vulnerability to outside forces and to each other, their need. These are complicated characters, vibrant and alive. Senior Love Triangle offers an underseen perspective on aging (the perspective of the aged themselves) without romanticizing. Dangerous misconceptions about masculinity weigh as heavily on their safety and happiness as their own physical deterioration. The film is a heartbreaker that just does what it wants to do. Just like William. #HopeMadden

★★★★ Directed by: Sian Carry Written by: Sian Carry Starring: Nadhia Porcelli, Georgia Parker-Aiken Film Review by: Jason Knight Plenty of balloons, beautiful piano music, unpleasant situations and no dialogue. These are the experiences Sian Carry's surreal comedy drama short film A Very Bad Day will present to the audience. The concept is quite interesting. Set in a world where people constantly carry a bunch of balloons with them wherever they go, the plot follows a young woman (Porcelli) as she seems to be having a rather unpleasant day. And every time she gets upset, she uses a pin to pop one of her balloons. A cyclist nearly hits her while she is walking and she bursts a balloon. A male co-worker she fancies turns out to be gay: pop goes another balloon. Another customer buys the muffin she had been eyeing in a sweet shop: pop again! Although the poor girl goes through a lot, things take a turn for the better later. The heroine played by Porcelli has an unusual appearance. She I wearing a beautiful dress and hairband, resembling a princess in a fairy tale. And Porcelli delivers a very entertaining and convincing performance as a girl who appears to be carefree and constantly grinning. As mentioned the film has no spoken word and therefore all actors use face expressions and body language in order to express their characters' emotions. And Porcelli does that very effectively by showing feelings of joy, frustration and anger, without uttering a single word. What the balloons represent in the film could be open to interpretation. Balloons are often used at birthday parties and other special occasions. They represent celebrations. They represent happiness. Therefore by holding balloons in their hands, the characters in the film are showing that they are happy. And when a balloon gets popped, it could mean that their positiveness is decreasing. Composer Rebecca Hooper has created a magnificent score that adds great value to the film. With the exception of balloons bursting, the music is the only other sound heard throughout the film. With this technique the viewer is brought back in time to the silent film era, only with colours. A Very Bad Day is a very interesting piece of filmmaking that will most likely provide the audience with a pleasant experience. #JasonKnight

★★ Directed by: #Meosha Bean Written by: #Alan Delabie Starring: #Alan Delabie #Myles Cranford #Merrick McCartha #Venilda Cintron #Dane E. Connor #Kaye Williams #Christina Okolo #Eric Roberts Film Review by: Joshua Calladine There is something to be said for a low-budget US indie film that hosts a diverse cast, moves between American and European locations and features multilingual dialogue scenes, some in English, some in French. Anatomy of an Antihero: Redemption is the continuation of a Netflix series of the same brand, and features a largely similar cast of characters to the show. Viewers hoping to come from the series to the film and meet their favourite faces will no doubt be pleased. But this being said, newcomers are going to be confused. Meosha Bean’s directorial work is a hectic and hyperactive syntax of scene-to-unrelated-scene, characters flung in along the way for good measure, and star actor Alan Delabie’s writing is littered with confusingly unannounced happenings. It is not always clear if the events of the film would be easier to understand with the context of the Netflix series, or if the plot-holes are as inexplicable even with this familiarity on the viewer’s side. Fortunately, the neo-kitsch feeling of the film holds together many of its (highly) flawed aspects. The seams are clearly showing in scenes of amateurish composition, flat acting, and unoriginal camerawork. All of this is forgivable, and even adds to the very indie aesthetic. But the cardinal sin is the uneven sound design and poor ADR. Nothing removes the viewer so much as the sudden leaps or falls in volume. The film is crowned by an impressive display of nunchuck wielding set to an electro-synth backing with inspirational flashbacks, but the fighting here is for display purposes only. No actual character-to-character combat occurs in this section. However, the pinnacle fight scene takes place in the final act, in an industrial warehouse, and is impressively and fiercely choreographed. This is by far the strongest scene in the film, and the editing is of such a higher quality as to wonder whether the editor woke up especially for this scene alone. After something of a curveball kiss-scene, the film ends in a montage that finishes with a confoundingly Christ-like shot. The protagonist is alone, crying blood on the city shore. Again, it remains to be seen if all of this is easier to understand within the context of the Netflix series. For anyone not already familiar with show, this is a probable miss. For fans, it is surely a fun jaunt through a set of familiar and diversely cast characters, despite some-time cliches. Even fight-film enthusiasts may find something to enjoy here in some well-choreographed scenes. But overall, this is a decidedly not-for-everyone cup of tea.

★★★ Directed by: Adam Giles Starring: Rhys Dickinson and Hannah Baxter Film Review by: Robert Stayte Mount Everest is one of the most over-explored places in media. There are movies, documentaries, books, tv shows and other forms of entertainment that cover people traveling up and around this mountain. Embrace Everest is a documentary that shows the journey of a group sponsored by a charity for abuse victims, who fly to the Himalayas to complete a trek to a boot camp located on Everest. This documentary is hard to judge, because on the one hand it does succeed in it’s aim to document the long and arduous journey that these people take to a boot camp. There is a lot of detail for a condensed version of this days long trip and anyone interested in the environment of the Himalayas will learn about it. It is also well made, with good production values, decent pacing and cinematography that is very impressive, especially with the drone shots at the beginning. Finally, there are some moments on the journey that have a lot of genuine emotion, especially towards the end. But this documentary cannot help but feel like a missed opportunity. Given the charity and given how it opens with Rhys and Hannah describing the horrific abuse they faced as child at the hands of their parents, one would expect this to be the focal point of the documentary, maybe showing how these two are emotionally and/or mentally changed by their experience going on this journey. But the film makes a couple of fundamental mistakes. Aside from one other time, these two are never shown talking about their experiences again. For most of this film, the fact that two of the group members had a traumatic upbringing really does not matter to any of the situations we see them go through. Whilst I understand that they probably did not want to constantly talk about it and that the film is trying to show them accomplishing something, these intentions are further undone by how, rather than focus on these two alone, the film focuses on several other individuals who are a part of this group. None of these people give out any personal backstory, all they do is either explain things about the location or describe what is going on currently, so you wonder why they were given more screen-time than the people that the film opens with. It’s a documentary that feels insubstantial overall and as a result you wonder why it felt like bringing up the subject of child abuse if it wasn’t going to explore it or pay much attention to the survivors. Embrace Everest might not have the benefit of being a fictional story that can be controlled by a write, but since the filmmaker could not find a substantial story within reality, then all you are left with is the equivalent of a 90 minute guided tour. That aspect is done acceptably, but overall, it could have been more interesting.

★★★★ Directed by #SteveShill Written by #DavidLoughery Starring #IdrisElba, #BeyonceKnowles, #AliLarter Film Review by Rochelle McLaren Directed by Steve Shill, Obsessed, tells the story about a married man Derek, (Idris Elba) who becomes friendly with a new young blonde temp, Lisa (Ali Larta) at his work, the two form a neutral friendship, however Derek’s life will soon turn around as he will learn that Lisa is not at all what she seems. The film begins showing Derek and his wife Sharon (Beyonce Knowles) moving into their new house with their young son, Kyle. When introduced to both characters, the audience gets an insight of their relationship. The audience will see that they are a happy, loving married couple who seem to have their life sorted out. The audience will also learn how the couple met which is significant to the plot of the film. When watching the film, the audience will learn that Derek’s character is intelligent, hard-working, friendly, loves his wife and overall, he is a family man. Sharon’s character comes across as someone who is easily loved, she is loving, smart and will do whatever she neds to do to protect her family especially her son. When being introduced to Lisa, she comes across as someone who is easy to speak to, she is pretty, however the audience will learn that she is manipulative, smart, sensitive and very much deluded. When introduced to Lisa, the use of dramatic sound effects lets the audience know that she is the main character in the film and that she is bad news. Throughout the film the director uses sudden dramatic sound effects to let the audience know when something is about to happen. The use of sound and lighting engaged with the audience as it would make their heart race to what will happen next, this is a way that the film meets with its genre, thriller. Performance wise all the characters did a great job, their acting brought out a realistic scenario which engaged with the audience. The plot of the film is realistic however when Lisa attempted suicide she was very lucky that it didn’t kill her. When the audience gets to know Lisa, they would question her back ground, such as if she has a mental illness or if she has done this kind of thing before. The audience would perhaps question if it was a coincidence that Lisa got the job as a temp in Derek’s work place, maybe she had been stalking him before. When watching Obsessed the director likes to capture a few significant locations, which the audience would learn that they have been shown for a reason, such as the attic in Derek and Sharon’s house. A significant moment that the camera gradually captures is when Ben (Jerry O’Connell) first mentions to Derek that he thinks that Lisa fancies Derek. The use of the camera movement, sound effect and even the script enhanced the effect on this scene. This film is worth the watch, it will get the audience heart racing and will leave them with a few questions. As for the audience members who are a Beyonce fan, Obsessed is known for Beyonce’s famous fight scene. #RochelleMcLaren

★★ Directed by: #AndrewButcher Written by: #AndrewButcher Starring: #AndrewButcher,#RyanNicholson, #JackBeales Film Review by Lucy Clarke If anything has defined the cinematic landscape in the last decade – it’s superhero films. They’re filled to the brim with glamour, awesomeness, and badass characters. Supers are most definitely in vogue – and they’re going to stay around for a while. Last year’s record-smashing Joker has become incredibly influential, and it’s the basis of director Andrew Butcher’s Jack & Bruce; a retelling of the relationship between the manic villain and the biggest superhero in Gotham. Jack & Bruce takes place in a universe where Bruce Wayne (Ryan Nicholson) has a brother, Jack Wayne (Andrew Butcher). They are like chalk and cheese. Bruce is incredibly successful; while Jack sits at home plagued by his bad mental health. Bruce decides to kick Jack out of the family business, which only enables Jack to fester in his anger and his jealousy. Jack plots his revenge, but these men are no ordinary brothers. Bruce is crime-fighting Batman, while Jack slowly morphs into his alter ego: the maniacal Joker. There’s a level of finesse in modern superhero movies that an indie short film on a small budget would struggle to achieve, and this is all down to big blockbusters’ extortionate budgets. It’s ambitious to make a film based on an action blockbuster, and it’s not the director’s fault that Jack & Bruce can’t possibly look as polished as a DC film. However, the result is still rather amateurish. This is Butcher’s debut as a director, but the whole movie never seems to take itself seriously. The camera movements are disjointed and unfocused, and it was hard to tell whether the shots were artistic choices or if the camera had just fallen over. The cinematography isn’t particularly inspiring, but neither is the central relationship between the two brothers. In its thirty-minute runtime, no attention is given to the brother’s relationship and, as a result, the falling out between them seems rather meaningless. Bad American accents obscure Nicholson and Butcher’s acting, and between these brothers, there's a relationship lacking in substance. Butcher’s film is fanfiction. As a medium, fanfiction can be incredibly useful for writers and directors to develop their voices, but there are many limitations posed by them. For the audience, they can be frustratingly inaccessible if they aren’t part of the fandom. Although Batman and the Joker are cultural icons, Jack & Bruce doesn’t establish them as characters and the audience relies on a fact sheet they’ve complied from other Batman adaptations. The film is so strongly influenced by these films, that several of Butcher's scenes are copied directly from Joker. Like Joaquin Phoenix, Butcher dances down the stairs, pulls his mouth into a frown and comically applies clown make-up. The voiceover at the end seems to be directly lifted from Joker’s ending. This short film doesn’t add new dimensions to these characters, but it just reminds you of Phoenix’s stellar performance. Rather than telling an engrossing superhero story, Jack & Bruce is a weak homage to the Joker. Jack & Bruce lacks the swagger and cool which dominates modern superhero films. Instead, it focusses on trying to be a homage to Todd Phillip’s Joker, and unfortunately, it doesn’t add anything to the superhero conversation. It seemed as though the crew had a blast while on the set, but I only wish that their audience enjoyed this film as much as they did making it.

★★★★ Directed by #EliBDespres #JoshKriegman #ElyseSteinberg Starring #DavidHo #LeeGelernt Film Review by Matt Weiner No disrespect to taut legal thrillers, but after watching The Fight it’s safe to say nothing will stack up to the real thing during the Trump administration. What began outside a New York court just days after the inauguration in 2017—the night the ACLU scored an early victory against the administration’s first version of what would become the “Muslim ban”—inspired documentary filmmaker Elyse Steinberg (Weiner) to follow the legal organization’s urgent and frequent races against the clock to challenge the administration’s advances on just about every key issue the group defends. Surprisingly, given the marquee cases the group has been involved in over the years, this is the first time they allowed access inside their offices. Much less surprisingly, that turned out to be a smart move under this administration: the filmmakers (Steinberg, along with co-directors Eli Despres and Josh Kriegman) have no shortage of legal battles to follow. Steinberg knows how to humanize her subjects. (She made Anthony Weiner almost sympathetic, after all.) The ACLU lawyers followed in the film are big names in their practice area, and recognizable faces to cable news watchers or the kind of person who has a favorite vice president. But it’s the less guarded moments that reveal the full gravity of this work: Dale Ho flubbing the lines in front of a mirror that he’ll later deliver to the Supreme Court, or Brigitte Amiri celebrating a major win with “train wine” on the Northeast Corridor. It’s equal parts grim and joyful. To both the filmmakers’ and the ACLU’s credit, there’s acknowledgement that the headline wins are tempered by the reality of the American legal system. Even the wins might only be temporary, as the administration endlessly finds ways to retool the laws in ways that pass muster with a sympathetic Supreme Court. In these moments, the film’s main players seem to tiptoe up to a line of nihilism. But only just up to that line. We hear lawyers sigh that arguing the merits of a case doesn’t always matter in front of the nation’s highest court. And then there’s the criticism from those within the organization itself over their role in Charlottesville, and what free speech and democracy look like in this era. Ultimately though, this cri de coeur isn’t looking to dismantle the entire system… yet. (Let’s see how disheveled they look if there’s another four years of this.) The film’s subjects refuse to jettison small-d democratic values, or a belief in the foundation on which these laws are built. It’s inspiring, in the way that Charlie Brown thinking he’s going to get that football this time is also a testament to the human spirit or something. The filmmakers are aware of this contradiction too, though. It’s why the most powerful moments don’t take place in august courtrooms like the generic biopics these cases are bound to spawn some day. Instead, it’s with the individual people at the heart of the cases—the lawyers, eschewing private practice to go from airport to airport forever in search of a phone charger, but especially the anonymous people who found themselves in life or death situations with their fate hanging on the decision of a handful of judges. For one of these cases, “Ms. L” v. ICE, the camera crew is present when the asylum-seeking mother reunites with her daughter after being separated by the government. She sheds tears of joy, but also lets out a shocking, endless wail. These cases might have good endings, but not happy ones. #MattWeiner

★★ Directed by #AndyTennant Written by #BekahBrunstetter #RhondaByrne Starring #KatieHolmes #JoshLucas #JerryOConnell Film Review by George Wolf It might be a different type of faith-based flick, but Dare to Dream most definitely earns my usual disclaimer: judging these films is less about what they are preaching, and more about how well they tell a story. Here, the gospel is the Law of Attraction, and the storytelling is unattractively dreadful. The Secret first arrived nearly 15 years ago as a documentary and self-help book, both written by Rhonda Byrne, and each detailing how positive thinking can directly influence your life and bring you whatever it is you visualize. Director/co-writer Andy Tennant (Hitch, Fool’s Gold) visualizes a narrative treatment that finds Vanderbilt professor Bray Johnson (Josh Lucas) ignoring hurricane warnings and driving down to New Orleans with an important message for one Miranda Wells (Katie Holmes). Miranda is a widow with three kids, a boyfriend (Jerry O’Connell), and character development consisting of a succession of old graphic tees. She finds Bray before he finds her, by rear-ending him in traffic. Bray’s original mission is quickly sidetracked, and soon he’s fixing Miranda’s car, the hole in her roof, and whatever else his laid-back, dimpled philosophizing can help with. Even before this handsome stranger effortlessly fascinates the wide-eyed Wells children with an example of how magnets work, not a lick of this bears any resemblance to real life. Paper-thin characters recite banal dialogue carrying all the depth of a pop-up greeting card. Family strife about storm damage and money trouble is only dire enough to be a manufactured setup for Holmes to give a cute sigh and wonder, “What now??” while her kids pine for a computer or a pony. Bray’s mission is never in doubt, and the film’s ultimate resolution becomes a tidy, manipulative pinch from the Nicholas Sparks playbook, right down to the throwing of a shameless trump card. Whether you think The Secret is nothing but entitlement masquerading as feel good drivel, or a truly uplifting approach to finding happiness, a resonant film needs an attraction beyond preaching to the converted. Or does it? Dare to Dream doesn’t really seem interested in finding out. #GeorgeWolf

★★★ Directed by: #FernandoGonzálezMolina Written by: #LuisoBerdejo, #DoloresRedondo Starring: #MartaEtura, #LeonardoSbaraglia, #PacoTours Netflix Film Review by: Lawrence Bennie Director Fernando González Molina wraps up his screen adaptation of Dolores Redondo’s Baztan trilogy with Offering to the Storm. Debuting on Netflix on 24th July, Molina’s intricate thriller sees Maria Etura reprise her role as Policía Foral inspector Amaia Salazar. When a man is arrested after fleeing with the body of his dead baby, Amaia is called in to investigate. Discovering that the sudden death was in fact murder, Amaia and her team uncover a further terrible truth; that the father himself was responsible with the intention of making his child a sacrificial offering. As Amaia probes further, she discovers the haunting superstitions enveloping Baztan, whilst searching for her missing mother and reigniting an affair with judge Juez Markina (Leonardo Sbaraglia). Delayed to the COVID-19 pandemic, Offering to the Storm is a lengthy conclusion to Redondo’s series which offers a myriad of twists and turns in its 140 minutes. Despite the length, Molina keeps the action moving fluently and concludes with a predictable but satisfying resolution which at least answers the questions posed by Redondo and Luiso Berdejo’s convoluted script. As Amaia, Etura is reminiscent of Luisana Lopilato in Alejandro Montiel’s Perdida series, or perhaps even Clarice Starling from Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Letcter novels. Sbaragilla is suitably enigmatic and the climatic revelation between him and Etura is almost evocative of the chilling finale of Rosemary’s Baby, even if we can admittedly see where everything is leading. The echo of Polanski’s classic is elsewhere in Molinal’s film, most obviously with its central plot of an evil cult taking babies for satanic rituals. There are other connections too. Like Polanski, Montiel refrains from overindulging in supernatural spectacle; the true chills of the piece lie in the contrast between its settings. Here, the outwardly idyllic Baztan shields the unimaginable horrors which lurk beneath the surface. Throughout the film, Molina also signals the iconography of Catholic Spain as Amaia probes further into the uncomfortable truths hidden deep in the dark Baztan streets and graveyards. The result is a quietly atmospheric thriller which follows in the tradition of the best of the genre; that the very ideas of the things we don't see is where the real terror lies. With its tale of child murders, Molina's largely journalistic approach and lengthy running time, Offering to the Storm is not necessarily an easy watch. Redondo’s fans though will no doubt relish this meaty conclusion to the trilogy which might not send pulses racing but certainly makes for a compelling enough crime thriller. #LawrenceBennie

★★★★ Directed by #RonHoward Film Review by Brandon Thomas It’s an indisputable truth that we’re living at a time when the effects of human civilization are having a massive impact on the environment. Climate change is all around us. From stronger hurricanes and cyclones in our oceans, to half of Australia burning, the catastrophic change we’ve caused is something that’s become impossible to ignore. While climate change and humans’ impact on it continues to be a political lightning rod, there are real people all over the world suffering the effects. Rebuilding Paradise tells the story of one such town and its residents. On November 8th, 2018, an enormous wildfire overtook the small northern California town of Paradise. The Camp Fire, as it became known, destroyed most of Paradise and much of the surrounding area. Many residents were left without homes and jobs. Most of the city’s schools were either destroyed entirely or severely damaged. Eighty-five residents lost their lives that day. A lot of people would’ve left and never looked back. For many of the residents of Paradise, turning their backs on their community wasn’t an option. Finding Paradise opens with a harrowing series of videos shot by Paradise residents. As they flee, the footage shows nothing short of an absolute hellscape. Propane tanks explode in the distance as panicked families try to decide the safest route. At one point a resident asks another, “Are we going to die?” As a viewer, this devastating footage makes it all the easier to understand the PTSD that residents felt in the weeks and months following. In the last decade, director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) has started to dabble more and more in the documentary field. His first two efforts, Made In America and Pavarotti, showed an already confident filmmaker finding his groove in a new genre. With Rebuilding Paradise, Howard’s confidence is solidified. It would’ve been easy to make Rebuilding Paradise an exercise in tragedy porn. Instead, Howard builds the film as a tribute to the strength and the resiliency of the people of Paradise. The utter devastation at the beginning of the film is beautifully bookended by extraordinary acts of kindness. A community bends over backwards to make sure the few graduating Paradise seniors get to walk across the football field at their own high school. People open their doors to estranged family members who lost everything in the conflagration. Howard’s insistence on focusing on the people of Paradise allows the film to stay deeply personal. Some of the worst that nature has to offer allows us to see just how decent, hardy, and inspiring people can be when pushed. #BrandonThomas

★★ Written & Directed by: #ZacharyAborizk Starring: #JaronJammer #LutherDerricks Short Film Review by #ChrisBuick #Shortfilm The Mannequin Dreams from writer/director Zachary Aborizk tries its best to create something of a surreal metaphor, but ultimately seems too preoccupied with trying to create something that looks cleverer that it actually is. Sisyphus (Jammer) finds himself plagued by the inescapable memory of a horrific tragedy, struggling to cope with the premature passing of former lover Merope (Derricks). Unable to face the harsher reality of the present, he now seems trapped in some kind of weird and twisted reality, where inexplicable mannequin parts keep making their way to him, leaving Sisyphus faced with the daunting task of quite literally trying to pick up the pieces of his broken self in an effort to confront his loss. Part of the problem here is just how long the film takes to actually start going somewhere. It’s not until well over five minutes into the films already precious twelve-minute runtime that The Mannequin Dreams even begins to start alluding to any kind of point or story, and even then it’s a plot so incredibly threadbare that we don’t really get to witness anything other than Sisyphus’ aimless meandering about or a tedious slew of monochromatic close-ups of plants, waves and other pointless randomness, meaning the inversely impressive hard work that has been achieved with some beautiful cinematography is wasted without any form of compelling plot to tie it all together in order to create some semblance of a narrative. This also means that there is very little at all for either of its cast members to work with in order to inject this piece with something worth sitting up for, that being said what they do get to do is done perfectly well. The fraction we see of what once was for the relationship between Sisyphus and Merope comes across from both actors and says what it needs to, as does Jammer’s despair-ridden heartbreak, but it’s a shame that with nothing else to feed off, there are no other levels for him to go to. However, as mentioned, while The Mannequin Dreams may be lacking in any sort of tangible storytelling, it certainly gets marks for the sense of tone it somewhat creates through its experimental framing and unsettling score. The almost entirely monochromatic imagery creates the spot-on sense of loneliness and melancholy that brilliantly captures the desolate nature of Sisyphus’ soul. But again, without the right balance of substance to counterweight an impeccable style, after a while it starts to come across as pure pretentiousness. The Mannequin Dreams deserves some merit for what it does achieve in most of the technical areas, but its inelegant and minimal plot unfortunately gets in the way of all that, meaning it never really hopes to interest or allow the film to fulfil its full potential. #ChrisBuick The Mannequin Dreams is now available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.