Live Action Shorts

The After

This film stars David Oyelowo,  as a father who seems happily married to a little girl. A  random gunman starts shooting people and kills his wife and child. This drives the man to despair and mourning. He has a job as an Uber Driver and he starts to see meaning again. This is a sad story which is available to watch on Netflix. It shows the loss and devastating pain these Lone gunmen can cause innocent civilians. If there is something causing pain to yourself you need to get it. Console a friend and ask for advice from family, friends, or coworkers.  You are not alone. The film is written/directed by Misan Herriman and co-written by John Julius Schwarbach 

4 stars

Red White Blue 

This story focuses on a single mother, Rachel Madalin Johnson (Brittany Snow), who lives in rural Arkansas She’s a waitress at a diner and has two kids. She is struggling with bills and is desperately in need of help. A woman at the diner gives her a big tip.  She takes her daughter on a girl’s trip in a beat-up old Chevy Chevette. She’s trying to get an abortion. This story hits home for a lot of women.  It’s not one to take lightly.  This sort of thing happens a lot in abusive relationships and it’s not right. The film is written/directed by Nazrin Choudry. 

4 stars

Knight of Fortune

This is a Swiss Film with subtitles, It features an old man Karl(Ieif Andree), who visits his wife, Karen, in a hospital morgue. He can’t handle the grief so he goes to a bathroom where he meets another old man Torben (Jens Jorn Spottag) who lost his wife, Jettee a few years prior but goes to the morgue to pay his respects to others. They sing a Rocazino song together called Knight of Fortune. It was an awkward exchange.  They both pay tribute to Lotte, another woman, and her family walks in. This film was written/directed by Lasse Lyskjaer Noer.

3 1/2 stars

Invincible

This film was Inspired by a true story. It is French and features  Marc (Leokim Beaumier-Lepine) who is a boy crying in a car, police sirens are in the background, and then the film flashes back to the boy jumping into the water with his sister Justine. He smokes and listens to rap music, and it shows him in a boy’s prison/detention center. He’s in a hot cell, and so he sets the fire extinguishers off. This gets him in trouble with counselor Luc (Ralph Prosper). He doesn’t know what to do with the boy.  He has a friend Shakib, and he shares poetry in class. This is part of his everyday ritual of being locked up but he does have some freedoms because he’s still underage. The film catches up with the beginning as we find out he ran away/ escaped, and stole a car. There are photos in the credits that show the real 14-year-old Marc Antione-Bernier 1993-2008 This movie is written & directed by Vincent Rene-Lortie.

3 stars

The Wonderful Life of Henry Sugar

The Wonderful Life of Henry Sugar is part one of an anthology film from Wes Anderson and stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Rupert Friend, and Richard Iyoade. It’s based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name. Henry Sugar tries to master magic to cheat at gambling. This is a typical Wes Anderson-style film with deadpan humor and long passages of dialogue said by his cast. He’s gotten in this rut of doing his stories this way the past few years and it’s not as much fun as I’ve gotten out of his films earlier in his career. Wes Anderson fans will surely love this first installment of four in this anthology. 

4 stars

By Dan Skip Allen