February 2022: Short(er) Films
Not in the mood for a full length feature but still craving a bit of cinema? These short(er) films should hit the spot.
Kirk’s Rec
Daisies (1966)
Some people already start yawning when you suggest an older film, especially a foreign one, but I always recommend this Czech New Wave classic for anyone that wants to delve into something different. Daisies has everything that most films don’t - it’s plotless, weird and nonlinear. However, it’s a total BLAST. Funny, outlandish and also a brisk 76 minutes, Daisies will change your mind about avant-garde cinema. Not everything outside the norm has to be so stuffy!
Jesse’s Rec
Elephant (2003)
Of all the crimes a movie can commit, making a 2022 audience bring their attention spans for 150 minutes of wayward storytelling stands as one of the more grotesque. A truth that’s rarely respected enough in film is that short movies rarely feel short, and Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant gives a perfect example of this dynamic. Coming in well under 90 minutes, this hyper-realistic depiction of a school shooting delivers a punch both through the intensity of the subject matter as well as the brevity of the feature. It delivers the emotional message, and allows the viewer time to add context as they see fit without any hand-holding or unnecessary grandeur. More movies can do this, more movies should do this, and streaming algorithms stand as our biggest enemy in bringing back the clarifying power movies that pack you full of exacting content and push you back into the real world for digestion.
Chris’s Rec
Duck Soup (1933)
69 (minutes) dudes! Who needs contemporary feature-length when the fabled Marx Brothers bombard you with gags every two seconds? If you’ve never seen the Marx Bros, this is the film to start with. It has all the chaotic, anarchic, psychotic comedy that made them admired and inimitable. Benito Mussolini hated this film so much that he banned it from Italy, and we all know how things turned out for him. Don’t be Il Duce, watch this movie! If you accent the “e” in “movie” properly, that last sentence rhymes really well. Honk honk.
Dylan’s Rec
Red Eye (2005)
As directors get older their movies tend to get longer. Think Eyes Wide Shut, The Irishman, 2021’s West Side Story. Not Wes Craven. His third to last film Red Eye is a tight 85 minutes, not a frame wasted. Taut like a guitar string, the film pivots from basically a rom-com to a political thriller, weapons range from a pen to a rocket launcher, and Cillian Murphy goes through as much physical trauma as Wile E Coyote. And you can watch it all before your plane even begins to descend.
Stephanie’s Rec
The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)
Children’s movies always tend to be on the shorter side, maybe because children have shorter attention spans, or because these films typically have smaller budgets…but The Peanut Butter Solution is packed with unexpected twists and turns that take you for a 93-minute ride that feels much bigger than its small duration. This spooky comedy fantasy started as a bedtime story that director Michael Rubbo would tell his kids, and it feels like the kind of irrational and bizarre plot that would come from a child’s imagination. The movie is only enhanced by its ethereal score, done entirely by a 17-year-old Celine Dion!