(1990)
Dir - Stig Bergqvist/Martti Ekstrand/Jonas Odell/Lars Ohlson
Overall: GOOD
One of the many shorts produced by the Swedish animation company Filmtecknarna, (who also pump out commercials and music videos on the regular), Exit is a compelling and surreal dystopian nightmare lightly portrayed as a black comedy. Taking place almost entirely in a hedonistic amusement park that seems to have virtually every unhealthy, cruel, or sinful vice you can think of, it is full of fascist, generational, and indulgent symbolism. Some of the decadent imagery is uncomfortably cruel, (like the senseless butchering of animals exaggerated to look as Disney-esque adorable as possible), and the characters trapped in this strange universe that presumably consumes all who enter it are almost frightfully pathetic. It is intentionally provoking though, made more strange and subtly unnerving by the traditionally cartoony animation.
(1994)
Dir - Jan Kounen
Overall: MEH
Eh, whatever. Netherlands-born French filmmaker Jan Kounen's Vibroboy is a wildly obnoxious something that is jacked up to eleven for practically all of its twenty-eight minutes. It is impossible to tell what on earth can be happening or at least any sort of reason for what on earth can be happening since all three characters and one in particular are screaming all of their dialog while the frantic camera work spends all of its time trying to disorient the viewer. Who are these people, where are they, what previous relationship did the transvestite have with the other two, what is with the cat in the fridge, what is with the stuffed animal, and is the insane husband just the world's most unstable asshole or is a phallic, Aztec statue making him so? None of this seems to be important and instead the movie appears to just want to pummel you with how loud and dirty it can be.
(1996)
Dir - Vincenzo Natali
Overall: GOOD
A year before dropping his first full length Cube, Vincenzo Natali made the similarly-toned short Elevated, (which also stars David Hewlett). Instead of people being trapped in, well, a cube, this time they are kind of trapped in, well, an elevator. Wisely, Natali and Karen Walton, (who would go on to script Ginger Snaps), leave the real menace of the movie unexplained, instead offering up a couple of possible, disturbing scenarios. As was a problem with Cube, the characters here get a little too screamy and excitable, but at least in the former they did not get so revved up while only a few minutes in. There is also one scene that may or may not be unintentionally funny, but besides these minor flubs and annoyance, the fact that it is quite unclear what is going on again works to the film's benefit, making it a decent, heart-racing bit of horror movie-making.
HOW WINGS ARE ATTACHED TO THE BACKS OF ANGELS
(1996)
Dir - Craig Welch
Overall: GOOD
Mournful and rather mildly eerie, Craig Welch's How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels takes an interesting look at control and possibly the suppression of longing. Animated with a mixture of detailed, black and white sketch work, Terry Gilliam's cartoon style, and rotoscoping, it follows a linear yet surreal structure where a thin, lonely, and presumably wealthy man seeks to demonstrate what is posed by the film's title. With mostly flowing camerawork where particular images within complex machinery and the rest of the setting seem to transform into each other, it all appears rather precise even as an ethereal woman emerges that emotionally effects the unnamed man. The style is quite engaging and one can get a lot of mileage from pondering some of the meaning here, making it an alluring enough art film to applaud.
(1996)
Dir - Craig Welch
Overall: GOOD
Mournful and rather mildly eerie, Craig Welch's How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels takes an interesting look at control and possibly the suppression of longing. Animated with a mixture of detailed, black and white sketch work, Terry Gilliam's cartoon style, and rotoscoping, it follows a linear yet surreal structure where a thin, lonely, and presumably wealthy man seeks to demonstrate what is posed by the film's title. With mostly flowing camerawork where particular images within complex machinery and the rest of the setting seem to transform into each other, it all appears rather precise even as an ethereal woman emerges that emotionally effects the unnamed man. The style is quite engaging and one can get a lot of mileage from pondering some of the meaning here, making it an alluring enough art film to applaud.
(1999)
Dir - Peter Tscherkassky
Overall: MEH
Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky's Outer Space reinterprets footage from Sidney J. Furie's The Entity into a scratchy, seizure-inducing cacophony of disorienting noise. This was Tscherkassky's second experimental short to utilize material from other movies and anyone who is familiar with Furie's aforementioned original will be able to interpret a narrative here, even if it forgoes such conventions when looked at individually. The spastic presentation is admirable to a point and Tscherkassky seems to be going for an expressive nightmare assault on the senses, but even at ten minutes, it becomes a tiring if not cumbersome watch. Such cinematic deconstruction is deliberately aggressive which fits the context of Furie's film about a woman who is sexually assaulted by demonic forces, but it works better as a curiosity of editing than anything thematically profound.
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