Change Your Image
MikeScholtz
Reviews
Birdy in the Cage (2003)
A Free Range Film Festival favorite
Here's director Greg Carlson's recipe for one of the funniest short films I've ever seen:
1) Take four twenty-somethings bored out of their pretty little skulls. 2) Add one old square dancing record. 3) Watch as they try to follow along. 4) "Now flip this thing over and we'll really do some square-dancing!"
But seriously, this is just a fantastic little movie. Filmed entirely in downtown Fargo, North Dakota, this is the best thing to come out of that city since Peggy Lee. Actors Rob Garland, Adam Hagen, Jodi Hedstrom and Sally Jacobson effortlessly capture the essence of the post-college doldrums. I only wish a soundtrack was available, so I could recreate the fun at home.
After-School Special (2004)
In junior high no one can hear you scream.
In a stroke of diabolical genius, the makers of "After-School Special" cast a group of twentysomething actors as junior high students. Perhaps they thought this gimmick would be good for a few laughs. Instead they've inadvertently unleashed some of the most disturbing images ever seen in the history of moving pictures. To this day, I still have nightmares about junior high. I often wake up in a cold sweat after forgetting my locker combination, bringing the wrong textbook to Math class and running afoul of the 300-pound, six-foot-tall, hairy-faced resident bully. Sometimes, the only way I can force myself to crawl out of bed in the morning is by reminding myself that I'm a grown-up now and these kinds of things can't happen to me anymore. But in "After-School Special," they do happen. And if full-sized adults just like these poor b***ards can suddenly find themselves reliving the horrors of junior high, I guess there's no hope for the rest of us, either.
"After-School Special" might be a charming, funny, creepy little movie. But director Aaron Baker should still be ashamed of himself.