Bob Doto [Film Festival 11.15.08] movie review news scifi horror



1. Boxhead
Randall Kaplan, 21 min

Mmm… BOXHEAD. I’m not sure if I just happened to be around a specific group of people at the festival, but this film seemed to have a little buzz going for it, and understandably so. Boxhead is the Kafka meets Lynch meets Burroughs (via Cronenberg) tale of a man tortured by his inability to embrace life by an oddly-domed “thing” in his apartment. The acting is swell, and the lighting…let’s just say, may all filmmakers have such control of heavy contrast B&W. The characters are of the highly stylized variety (hence the aforementioned patriarchs of the alien macabre) and lend the film a very nude-and-not-quite-grounded-dream-like quality. It’s quality stuff.


2. Martians Go Home

Dan Moreno, 20 min

Martians Go Home is a great 1980s period piece that utilizes every effect, lighting cue, and shot angle from the me-generation of horror. The story revolves around a horror obsessed techy teenager who builds a theremin in order to contact both the late great Sarah Clockwork (shunned theremin virtuoso) and a handful of Martians. The film includes a well-staged bedroom filled with all the fixins of the 80s introvert (Zombi II poster, WWF wrestling back back, etc), some neon green-eyed Martians that ooze neon green ooze, and a rockin' theremin/guitar/megaphone combo, which is used to defeat the Martians. The film is really well done and the dialog (English subtitles) is hilarious!

3. Circulation

Kurtis Spieler, 6 min

Experimental approaches to art will often take a single idea or concept and exhaust it at the expense of clouding the experiment with outliers. While I wouldn’t consider Circulation an experimental film per se, I do feel that its singular narrative definitely takes its cues from the minimalism of experimental art. So please allow me to consider Circulation the Donald Judd of blood and brains. However, because the story is so simple (I mean that in the best way) that means that if I tell you the story I give away the punch line. Let’s just say, suicide never proved so difficult.

4. C/O Flap Jackson

John Lustig, 6 min

This is a really well done stop-motion animation film with some really impressive writing. It’s funny, it’s dark, and the character of the uncle is just spot on. C/O Flap Jackson tells the story of a young man who receives a package from his uncle and is told not to open it until his uncle gets in touch with him. There’s a dingy animated NYC apartment, a black cat, and some great flashbacks. Six minutes later you’ll be very pleased. Everyone in the theater seemed to be.

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Anonymous (12 years ago) Reply

FYI The 70's were the "Me Generation".

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