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Leave It to Beaver: Beaver's Electric Trains (1962)
Great one liners once again
Beaver: "How does a kid know when to stop acting like a kid?" Mathers meets the acting challenge of acting like a pre-adolescent.
Dow wants to flirt but holds back. A brilliantly nuanced scene. It's got all the Wally mannerisms: hands in the pocket, licking the lips, shuffling the feet.
Gilbert: "Why d'ya have to go and have them lover boy for a brother? " Gilbert is especially excellent in this episode. This kid has such a bright acting style. It's no wonder he grow up to be a successful filmmaker.
Ward lectures, June on the need to relax when he comes home from work. Classic. Always teasing and clever, never unkind.
Iconic American life once again rendered in perfect one-liners.
Thing from the Factory by the Field (2022)
A charming dry satire with a terrific ensemble
Joel Potrykus has put together a wonderfully dry and funny satire that teases about teen talk, conspiracies, heavy metal culture, with a smattering of old time religion. The young actors play the script with perfect deadpan so the writing never feels forced or overdone. Each actor has found a distinct convincing personality to play. I even loved the costuming and hairstyles.
There's nothing mean or cloying about the story and as it progresses and the humor gets dark and weird while the film remains charming. It's a lovely balance. The 'Thing' is revealed in bits so we ache to see what this thing actually is. The camera always shows us just enough. With patient editing and a leisurely pace everything in this small film works to a satisfying whole.
I've got to see what else Joel Potrykus has up his sleeve. I hope these actors see some real success.
Tim Jackson III on IMDB
Reviewer at The Arts Fuse in Boston.
Lambing Season (2013)
a perfect little film
This short is beautifully shot and filled with unexpected details that unfold casually and believably. The performances are just great. The casting a wonderful group of great looking talent. Nice cinematography of Ireland, too. It has all these little side details that eventually sort of add up. But it also requires filling in all kinds of assumed details. It's not incomplete. It does give you everything you need to know to make it a great character study. It refuses to telegraph much which really lets the viewer get involved. The whole metaphor of sheep and birthing and family is quite clever.
A perfect gem of a short story. It was a highly pleasurable surprise to find this at the Boston Independent Film Festival.
Another Earth (2011)
Dazzling, simple, and uplifting
I thought this was a wonderful combination of a kind of philosophical sci-fi and human drama. More than playing on the likelihood of an event like this being remotely plausible, it maintains itself with some dazzling, endearingly low tech images and set pieces. The inciting incident car crash took my breath away. Gazing at the second giant earth has all the possibilities of imagining heaven, or that there is possibility beyond Plato's cave – an often alluded to allegory (try American Beauty!) The scene where the professor plays a saw with a bow for Rhoda as she closes her eyes to drift away past her fears into her imaginings perfectly caught the contrast of the grounded human drama as it plays against the more ethereal metaphor of 'another earth'. The other earth is a nifty device that raises our compassion, and poses questions of how we heal and deal with enormous grief or loss.
But holding the whole thing in check are two things. First are the fabulously subtle compositions, framing, editing, and segues from shot to shot – all by Mike Cahill. It an accomplished and cohesive piece of film-making, The other, and maybe more obvious, is the amazing Brit Marling. She has a face that seems to effortlessly register everything we are compelled to understand about the character. It may my own preference, but I could interrogate (if I may use the word!) a great face for hours. It requires not only natural beauty, but real feeling, subtlety, and skill from the actor. Isabel Huppert, Michelle Williams, and Emily Watson all come to mind. Brit Marling seems to me, to be one of those actresses. If Cahill and Marling remain a creative couple, I can't wait to see what's next.
And the very last moment of the film – just when I really couldn't imagine what larger idea they would shoot for – caught me aback. It's wonderful. Make of if it what you will. Is it metaphor or plot, I'm not sure, but it is a stunner!
Kick-Ass (2010)
It does kick ass
Kick-Ass This comic book adaptation, full of violence, obscenity, computerized blood splashing, beatings, knifings, and wild stunts ends up as one of the best super hero comic adaptations I've seen. The half a billion-dollar Spiderman series directed by John Favreau could learn something from this simpler film. In part it's the great casting and cleverer attention to character. Obviously Favreau is hired to make sure the wise guy persona of Robert Downey and quality acting of the cast balance an effects laden production. But those performances still feel gratuitous and studied. Kick-Ass, on the other hand uses lesser-known actors to build more grounded characters, at least in the sense of nerds belying superheros. Its literal secret weapon is the outrageously wonderful 12 year old actress Chloe Grace Moretz (Let Me In) as Mindy/Hit Girl, and a cautiously underplayed Nicholas Cage as Her cartoonist-father/Big Daddy. Along with nerd specialist Christopher Mintz-Plasse, hunk-playing-geek Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass, and a ripe posse of convincing goons, the movie leaps wildly from wild violent choreography to sweet cartoonishness. The fresh cast combined with the extremes of emotional commitment to a ridiculous plot are satisfying and continually surprising.