Review: BAR TALK (2014)

By: Chelsea Opperman 

After a long day of labor, it’s an awesome feeling to go sit and relax with a cheap beer in your favorite honkytonk.  Sometimes the world makes you feel empty inside and you just need to chill out in a dusty bar and reflect.  But then sometimes, a chatty stranger completely interrupts the peace you’re trying to achieve, plunks down beside you, and won’t shut the fuck up.  He insists on telling his life story, and it is completely out of this world.  In this extraordinary short, Lowell Northrop brings an authenticity to scenario, ripe with annoyance and dictated by an over-sharer.  

 

Sometimes you need to watch out for people who sit at the bar stool next to you.  Especially those with a story.  It could leave you completely drained.   

 

Review: CROW HAND (2014)

By: Chelsea Opperman 

Most people pick up pennies when they are spotted on the ground. And why not?  You have nothing to lose.  What if you saw a small crow totem in a parking lot?  Surely that would pique your interest, much to the chagrin of your wife.  One warning though:  If you do pick up the crow, get ready to 5, 6, 7, 8 Dance! Packed with amazingly gross special effects, awesome soundtrack and credits, and gut busting humor, Brian Lonano’s micro short CROW HAND is two minutes of what the fuck and bloody laughter.  

 

Maybe you should think twice about picking discarded objects off the ground, you just might poke your eye out and have it handed to you.  

Review: BURN (2011)

By: Chelsea Opperman 

Inside a gritty woodshed, a MacGyver figure peels an orange.  He speaks of survival to a bloodied young man, who is tied up in more ways than one.  Jerry Pyle’s BURN is a tour de force with exceptional acting, a claustrophobic mise-en-scene, stunning cinematography, and a growing sense of dread.  Revenge flicks can be especially brutal, throwing your mind into a vice, and this short delivers nothing less than a squirm inducing finale.  And this end is written straight out of a Satanic Jigsaw’s book.  

 

Want to play a game?  Make your choice.

Review: RUBY'S SECRET (2013)

By: Chelsea Opperman 

Stiff drinks and a dark bar.  Meeting eyes with a stranger, wet and glistening.  This is a scenario most people know, or have a least witnessed firsthand.  It’s something a little sleazy, a pinch scandalous, and a slew of sexy.  When an unsuspecting gentleman follows his drunken and lustful passion to Ruby’s place, who knows what can happen?  Kalen Artinian’s RUBY’S SECRET is visually stunning, twisting an ordinary one night stand into a visceral mindfuck with an incredible and stunningcolor palette.  

 

As she slips on her Victoria’s Secret, Ruby has her own secret.  And her new playmate is about to witness a tale as old as time, Beauty and the Baphomet.  

Review: ALL MEN CALLED ROBERT (2010)

By: Chelsea Opperman 

The French countryside is stunning.  Sun streaming through the verdant trees, opening up into a straw-colored meadow.  This wood brings such beauty in Marc-Henri Boulier’s masterpiece of a short.  But that serenity is shattered by a naked and terrified man tearing through the countryside, constantly looking back and feeling hunted down.  He instinctually follows the sound of a woman’s voice, calling his name for help.  What will Robert do when he reaches the voice?  And who is chasing him?

 

Maybe if he is quiet, he can hide.  But he hears a twig break behind him.  

Review: SINK HOLE (2011)

By: Chelsea Opperman

This was a curious 60 seconds. Most gentlemen have experienced the most extraordinary 60 seconds at least oncetheir lives, or maybe it was just a great and intense 10 seconds (at least the first time). But how far would you go to feel that again?  Greg Hanson’s minute long micro short is nothing more than brilliant and cringe-inducing.  The sallow color adds to the grim finale.  And words themselves can take on a quite literal meaning.  And Jesus Christ, don’t flip that switch!

 

Someone is about to lose every 60 seconds he could ever experience in his lifetime.  Forever.    

Review: SAVE YOURSELF (2016)

by: Chelsea Opperman

I have always loved movies within movies.  Like “Angels with Filthy Souls” in Home Alone.  Or to go darker than “pumping your guts full of lead”, the werewolf movie in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” amped up the zombie finale nicely.   And of course, lest we forget all the “Stab” films in the Scream franchise (God bless Heather Graham).  It gives the film a self-referential and richer texture, and also adds spoof and a meta take on filmmaking itself.

SAVE YOURSELF (2015), directed by Ryan M. Andrews, begins exactly as this:  A theater filled with horror fans watching tough as nails ladies in a violent “Charlie’s Angels-esque” scene on celluloid.  It is here, at the “film’s” premiere, that we are introduced to our protagonists.  Each of the 5 women we meet (who are either actors or members of the production team) display early in Andrews’s film their distinct personalities -  which is really refreshing.  Often times in ensemble casts, only one or two characters are fleshed out.  Here, we get a motley crew of ambitious and contrasting women, all gearing up to set out for their film’s promotional tour (road trip style).

At the center of the group, veteran scream queen Tristan Risk acts as Crystal Lacroix, the tenacious yet anxiety-ridden director.  She has no patience for dilly-dallying and insists her crew hit the road.  In true horror style, the road trip does not go exactly as planned.  A crew member is soon missing, the car is inoperable, cell phones are rendered useless, and the only choice left is to seek help a “few miles down the road.”  Where this could be stale (it’s an archetype often used in the last 5 decades of horror), SAVE YOURSELF keeps things fresh with characters who actually stay together and fight together.  When they stumble upon a rambling country house in a rural area, their on-screen toughness must manifest itself into a real life thirst for survival.  And there is a kick-in-your-ass twist that ups the ante on any wrong turn or chainsaw massacre, even in Texas.  

Andrews’ SAVE YOURSELF plays a wrestling tongue-in-cheek meet with clichés, slays with an awesome cast, and twists gore and psychological horror into 91 minutes of female-centric badassery.  There is far more than meets the eye here on this country plot.   

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SAVE YOURSELF is screening at our next showcase Monday, May 2 at Screenland Armoud in Kansas City, Missouri. RSVP here.