Short Film Review: Hang Up! (2018)

Watching Hang Up! is like unintentionally allowing a sense of sheer darkness to envelop you. The story of the film is concealing simple - Gary, a middle-aged man accidentally drops into the phone conversation that his wife Emelia is having with another person.

He tries to get her attention but fails, but before he can hang up, his entire day, week, month, year and even life change forever.

The movie is focused on the barest and most minimal cinematographic elements. Most of the 13-minute run time is simply the narration of the man’s wife and the other person on the line, followed by the silent’s husband’s reaction and shots of his office. Yet, saying that this mixture becomes a combustible material in the mind of the viewer is an understatement.

It’s more similar to nitroglycerin, where the viewers enter a sinister and explosive world that is on the verge of detonation. I’m amazed by the speed with which Hang Up! Defines unravel its ominous playing field. In the first 30 seconds, the short film punches hard with only one single line of dialogue uttered by Emelia. From there on, this macabre tale becomes more and more sickening and disturbing as the plot unwinds.
Richard Powell, who both write and directed the film does a marvelous job with the story tension and the buildup of something I can only describe as evil and engulfing energy coming from one of the characters. Powell even uses the non-present characters, like the young daughter of the couple who is only referenced and shown in the pictures at Gary’s desk. After a few minutes of her first mention, she is as much a part of the film as the shocked Gary and unseen Emelia.

It should be also noted that the cast also does a very commendable job. Robert Nolan performs his numb role perfectly, while the voices of Astrida Auza and Jane Pokou provide the ideal setup for his silent descent into real-life hell. As this dark tale turns even darker, and the music and sounds signal a terrible end to it all, the audience is left enthralled by the immense, but believable and oddly mundane horror of it all. Hang Up! is an exceptional short film and one of the best such films I saw in the previous year.

Documentary Review: Minding the Gap (2018)

Copyright: Hulu

Growing up might be hard, but skating towards adulthood seems to be even harder in Minding the Gap. This documentary came about through 12 years of footage of the kids who lived and breathed skating in their hometown of Rockford, Illinois which was even then considered one of the prime Rust Belt locations.

Driven by dysfunctional families where violence was an apparent norm parent-children relationship, three friends try to find an emotional valve, a meaning of life and a chance for a better future in each other and their wheeled boards.

Bing Liu, the director of this fascinating documentary, managed to take the notion of a skate video and blew it up out of proportion in the best possible way. The movie opens like any film shot on a skateboard that follows people riding their own.

It’s about freedom and friendship, goofing around and having the means to be unchained from the grim everyday reality of a place that is in the middle of the US, but at the same time, it could be in any failing states around the world.

In other words, it is all there, but at the same time, for Kiere, Zack, and Bing, it might as well be in some other world they can only see, touch and skate upon, but not really experience. For them, only broken homes and piled-up bedrooms await once the wheels stop rolling and the drunken parties end.

This is how the film turns in on itself, showing a process of maturing to adulthood that is difficult and straining, while at the same time it opens wounds, some of which can make new ones on other people. It does not provide the answers, only chronicles this process with the utmost tenderness and caring for its subjects. Some might see a chance for a new start in the film's end, while others will see only a new cycle of the quiet family suffering where the abused kids of yesterday becoming men (and abusers) of today.

But, regardless of that, Minding the Gap is an incredible film about that intangible process where kids become adults, bridging that unfathomable gap where they lose everything and hopefully find themselves at the end of the journey.

Two-Paragraph Review: Bird Box (2018)

There’s one thing you need to know about Bird Box and my review has to start by focusing on it: it’s fun to watch and engaging as a well-crafted horror at its most basic cinematic level. However, saying that, I also have to underline that the movie is not by any means an above-average post-apocalyptic film. In fact, it includes many things that make it something of a high-budget B-movie with cheesy dialogue and senseless characters. This is seen in the film's dorky humor and unnecessary exchanges between the characters that occur when the apocalypse starts - the event represents the appearance of invisible creatures whose sight makes the same person immediately commit suicide (unless you’re a homicidal psychopath, then you’re just employed as interns by the same demons/aliens/something else).

The flashback moments are in contrast with those segments where the plot takes place in the present time, where Sandra Bullock's Malorie tries to save herself and her two kids - here, Bird Box resembles the much better A Quiet Place in many ways, working as almost an homage. But, the flashbacks to the start of the event are worthy of the worst moments the worst films that M. Night Shyamalan created, including stupefying and forced drama, there to complement one-liners straight from scriptwriting hell. However, ultimately, the film is still enjoyable as a horror survival and there’s no way to deny this.