Austin Film Festival 2007 – documentary shorts/A Bloody Aria/The Ungodly
“Cute kid. In a couple years she’ll be just my type.”
DOCUMENTARY SHORTS
Directed by: Kat Mansoor
No, this isn’t a collection of Eric Clapton videos. It’s actually a rather un-imaginatively titled doc about watch makers. It’s quite good, though, and totally made me want to buy a watch made by a real person. The watch makers make a great case against crappy corporate watches and how we’re losing touch with ourselves by buying these things. “There’s something about having to touch your watch every day to wind it up.” Yes, there is.
Directed by: Dan Vest
This would make a GREAT title for a semi-pornographic animated short. Instead, it’s about an Asian guy here in Austin who is one of the top martial arts teachers in the country. He learned it as a child to stop being beat up by girls. And, really, that’s about the only insight I got into this guy. I’m sure he’s a pretty interesting character, but this ultra-short movie didn’t do him justice.
Directed by: Joe Leonard
Leslie Andrews has an obsession with death. She takes pictures of herself in different death poses. This is actually the reason I wanted to see these shorts. The picture with the synopsis was awesome: her head is “crushed” by a stereo. The pictures in the film aren’t quite as interesting, but it’s still a cool film about a girl who sees death as a horrible experience, but wants to control it with her pictures.
Directed by: Alan Woodruff
A man is trapped inside of a refrigerator car on a train. He dies, but not before he writes all of his final thoughts out on the walls. This film is made up of archival footage of a British man reading a transcript to a reporter, trying to figure the death out and re-enactments of the man’s final hours. The funny thing is (and the thing that makes me doubt the validity of the “documentary” status of this film) that the car didn’t work. It was only 68 degrees inside. Discuss.
A very interesting film, but I don’t know. I found the story on another website, but I think it’s an urban legend. Snopes doesn’t turn anything up, either.
Directed by: Isaac Brown/Eric Flagg
What is our obsession in America with grass? Nicely mown, green, watered lawns? When did it start? And what is the price? This would actually be a great full-length documentary subject, but Issac Brown knows what he’s doing and gives us 27 minutes of pure gold. It made me realize that lawns are just about the biggest waste of time (not to mention money, water and pesticides) in America. He makes a good case for artificial turf lawns and makes people who worry about their lawns (and the lawns of others) look like fools…as it should be. Should be shown to everyone who is about to buy a home.
Directed by: Shin-yeon Won
Written by: Shin-yeon Won
In Korea, there are apparently many, many bullies. I didn’t know this, so I had no clue what this movie was really about.
A professor is giving a ride to a pretty student. He decides to take a detour after having a run-in with a cop. After trying to rape the girl, he finds out that the country folk in this part of Korea don’t like his type too much. The girl runs away and he gets roughed up by some pretty mean dudes. One of them, of course, runs into the girl and inadvertently brings her back to the professor.
Chaos ensues.
There’s a lot of blood and beatings going on here. The hicks have a high school kid tied up in a bag. They apparently beat him quite a bit. So much that he actually doesn’t seem to know what to do when they aren’t beating him.
Oh, and the cop does return.
I spent most of the nearly two hour run-time of this film trying to figure out what the hell it was trying to say. I finally kind of got it at the end, but I don’t know enough about Korean society to know the bullying that everyone apparently takes. So, yeah. The movie was pretty well lost on me.
Oh well. It was kind of fun to watch. And, while the story itself kind of made sense (although, I think it was a bit predictable at times), I didn’t really latch on to the meaning.
THE UNGODLY aka THE PERFECT WITNESS (2007)
Directed by: Thomas Dunn
Written by: Mark Borkowski/Thomas Dunn
A young filmmaker named Mick (Wes Bentley) is obsessed with a serial killer (Mark Borkowski who co-wrote the movie with director Thomas Dunn). So much so that he follows him one night and video tapes him killing someone. He then uses this tape to blackmail James into being the subject of a documentary that will finally get him out of the rut he’s in.
But, of course, things go horribly wrong when he accidentally lets slip where he lives with his mom.
I really wanted to like this movie a lot. It has everything: good acting, a great premise and serial killing. Unfortunately, it actually starts off a little too fast. We don’t give a damn about these guys until almost half-way through the movie. By then, though, we’re kind of sick of both of them. They’re both assholes.
Then, just as it starts to get really interesting (especially with all of the mother issues), it turns into Weirdsville. Mick is a recovering alcoholic, we learn early on. What we don’t know is that he will apparently take whatever is around. He starts out drinking. Then he pops some pills. Then he’s doing heroine! Not only that, but he’s doing it at the least opportune time. In fact it’s at a time that even this guy wouldn’t be doing it. Totally made me lose any kind of sympathy that I was gaining for this guy.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re supposed to look at Mick as ourselves…and then be totally turned off by him. Maybe, even then, we’re supposed to see a bit of our voyeuristic selves in him.
Unfortunately, I liked him so little that I couldn’t see myself in him. Even as little as I like myself, I liked him a LOT less.
It was interesting to have James be, besides the whole serial killer thing, a nice guy. He works with kids at a local hospital. He’s always willing to help people out when they’re in trouble.
I also think it would have been a lot MORE interesting if James had been more normal. Maybe with a normal childhood instead of being the product of a horribly abusive mother. Fuck that. Seen it far too often.
One big question, though: was his sister in on the whole thing? She certainly seemed to be at the end. She knew about James kidnapping Mick’s mom, but she didn’t seem to know that he was a killer. Huh?
Watch for Beth Grant from Donnie Darko near the end.
