Well, life made sure I didn’t get to see every film on my Slamdance watch list, but there were some good ones.
Here’s the last installment of films I managed to screen.
Hopefully, next year will be more “normal” and that pesky “life” won’t get in the way as much.
Narrative
Taipei Suicide Story
Director: KEFF
Cast: Vivian Sung, Tender Huang, Chin-Yu Pan
Synopsis:
A receptionist at a suicide hotel in Taipei forms a fleeting friendship over the course of one night with a guest who can’t decide if she wants to live or die.
This is actually a… cute?… little love story.
How can we know what’s important, what’s not important, whether life is worth living or not, without actually living and experiencing?
A methodical little film with an interesting premise which is well-executed.
Man Under Table
Director: Noel David Taylor
Cast: Noel David Taylor, Ben Babbitt, Danny Lane, Alisa Torres, Frank Perry, John Edmund Parcher, and Katy Fullan
Synopsis:
In an anachronistic dystopian landscape, a beleaguered young man attempts to navigate his way through the indie film scene in LA.
Literally, one of my favorites. From the bizarro comedic sense to the spot-on depiction of how movies are greenlit/developed (at least to the general public, at any rate), Man Under Table checked all my boxes.
All of them.
Every. Single. One.
Especially, and I can’t emphasize this enough, because I’m a frustrated writer, myself.
Breakouts
A Black Rift Begins to Yawn
Director: Matthew Wade
Producers: Matthew Wade, Sara Lynch, Mylissa Fitzsimmons, John Schorg
Cast: Sara Lynch, Saratops McDonald, Luke Massengill
Synopsis:
As two former classmates dig into their deceased professor’s set of cassette tapes, which possibly contain recordings of strange signals from beyond the stars, they begin to feel memories, the chronology of time, and their identities slip into obscurity.
If the writer had spent as much time developing the story as the director/cinematographer spent designing really “pretty” shots and cross-fades, this movie might have done something –anything! — for me.
As it is, it feels like it was made simply to put the final monologue/reading in a film.
And it wasn’t enough.
Not for me, at least.
Narrative Shorts
Autoscopy
Director: Claes Nordwall
Cast: Ulrik Munther
Synopsis:
A displaced ambient musician goes on a disorientating voyage on mushrooms. This takes him deep into the heart of nature and ultimately, deeper into himself.
This feels like it could be a concept piece designed to sell an update/rethink of Altered States.
And I would 100% okay with that.
Comforter
Director: Cameron Bruce Nelson
Synopsis:
A woman gets so stoned she disappears.
“Disappears” isn’t exactly the most accurate word, but this feels more like an indie improv performance art piece than a film I’d like to see more fully developed.
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