MOVIE REVIEWS
Big screen love, zombies

   The First Look Film Festival held its opening night last Thursday at the Starz FilmCenter.

   A total of seven short films were shown, ranging from a nostalgic love story to a disturbing display of violence.

   The theater was sparse, with roughly 40 in the audience. Wade Gardner, one of the festival’s founders, said the lack of patrons on opening night was common in past years, but he expected better attendance in the days to come.

   Ashley Lyle, a graduate student from Columbia University in New York, screened her love triangle comedy, “Dirty Dewey Decimal.”

   “ I hope you don’t hate my movie,” Lyle joked to the audience prior to the screening. They didn’t, as her film won the Audience Choice Award on Sunday.

   The 38 films included in the festival were selected from over 400 entries. Gardner and co-founder Josh Weinberg said they selected the films based on the predicted enjoyment of the audience.

   Sean Wilson’s “Mercy Me” is a captivating portrait of a recycler named Ken Kyle in Humboldt County, Calif. and his borderline obsession of collecting glass bottles for a living. The film takes an intriguing and microscopic view of the character’s private obsession.

   Ian Ogden’s “Copperhead Road” was about the violence a young woman endures at the hands of a corrupted police officer, who pulls her over after a New Year’s Party. The graphic acts of violence, an open ending and the constant uneasy feel of the film left the audience stunned as the credits rolled. One enthusiastic patron tried to start a round of applause, but to no avail.

   “ My Backyard was a Mountain,” directed by Adam Schlachter, is perhaps the sweetest film ever made about a goat. The drama tugs emotional strings as a young boy has to leave behind his pet goat and a blossoming love with his childhood friend as his family prepares to relocate to the United States from Puerto Rico.

   Despite a few small technical glitches early on, the First Look Film Festival kicked off with a bang, showcasing a number of truly memorable short movies.

— Joe Nguyen • nguyejos@mscd.edu

 

   Cinematic zombies descended on the sixth annual Starz First Look Film Festival Friday night, bringing with them a supernatural and eerie atmosphere that is a staple of horror films.

   The dead-alive movie monsters, however, weren’t what we’re used to in more traditional zombie flicks. The featured student filmmakers from universities all around the nation definitely stretched the limits of the zombie theme.

   These zombie films ran the gamut of scenarios, from a more traditional scene of two non-zombie soldiers stuck in a Russian nuclear testing sight infested with everything from flesh-eating zombies to sex-crazed zombies. Even the Cookie Monster was thrown into the mix as a stalker and Jesus Christ made an appearance as a resurrected zombie (I guess you just had to be there).

   One of the more far-fetched films included sexually driven zombies controlled by an S&M-addicted dominatrix, who took to the streets surging with sexual energy and gyrating hips. Abstinence Man proved to be the foil in Chris Obal’s “Abstinence Man and The Orgy of Death.” These situations are definitely not what one may be used to seeing in a typical zombie flick, but nonetheless, they are funny as hell.

   A film that could have been left out of the lineup was “I’ll Meet You in Your Womb,” directed by Brian Davila, which was 25 minutes of prescription drug-induced sexual hallucinations, lots of blood and utter confusion as to what the point really was.

   They saved the best for last with “Penny Dreadful,” directed by Bryan Norton. “Penny Dreadful” focused not on zombies, but on ghosts of the future haunting Penny’s newly inherited home. The quality of the film was excellent and the plot enticing and suspenseful. The film succeeded despite a few technical glitches, which left the audience waiting for the disc to be cleaned before the film continued.

   Not on-the-edge-of-your-seat scary, but definitely entertaining, this year’s late-night horror show was a success in all its masochistic, sex-crazed, flesh-eating, zombie glory.

— Nicole Queen • nqueen@mscd.edu