Rebel Scum, Strength & Post-It
Review by Paul Preston
Welcome to Today I Watched…, a series of posts documenting my new challenge – watch a movie a day for the rest of my life. Keep coming back to TheMovieGuys.net to find out what I watch each day…and get my take on it.
When I see a movie that’s a new release in theaters or on demand, I’ll give it a proper review in the “Reviews” or “Home Viewing”, otherwise, I’ll write about it here.
May 17, 2017 – Rebel Scum
I can’t believe I haven’t seen more fan films for my movie-a-day fix, but I caught a Star Wars one today, the story of a rebel pilot on Hoth after his Snowspeeder crash lands. He encounters an Imperial probe and eventually a Snowtrooper, and then there’s a will-he-or-won’t-he kill the Imperial soldier. Fan films are interesting ‘cause they all seem to share the same embedded value of being just off in all their tech elements, but Rebel Scum comes the closest to the originals I’ve seen in a while. First of all, the production team in the comments noted that they shot on location in Canada and that pays big dividends. The music in these fan films is usually borrowed, too, so in the end it comes down to – do they have a good story? I’d say Rebel Scum does, and it almost justifies the title by the time credits roll. Check it out here:
May 19, 2017 – Strength
No time for a feature-length film today, it’s my wife’s birthday. So, I took in a short by Inanna Sarkis called Strength. It’s got a bajillion hits on YouTube, which makes sense, ‘cause the movie is full of people who would watch YouTube a lot. It opens with a girl on her phone and there’s one character who goes over to a guy’s house to sleep with him because he has a lot of Instagram followers. I hated all of these characters. Except one.
There are three stories playing out about women in turmoil – the girl headed to a desperate and dangerous one-nighter with the Instagram guy, a depressed girl living with an asshole cheater and a third girl who is being bullied. There’s something noble in the film’s final moments, where one woman’s bold move has a ricochet effect across all three storylines, but the delivery of the message was a mixed bag. There is obnoxious use of music and an over-abundance of sound effects. Was it reality TV that started this? People can’t move or do anything without accompanying noise to accentuate it.
It’s clear Sarkis (who looks like Mila Kunis if she never smiled) wants to tackle lofty themes, but this is a short film made for a demographic I’m just not in. The hand of the filmmaker is too present to have elicited a real emotional response out of me. This trend has gone beyond the filmmaker enacting a personal style to basically making a music video out of the entire story, which, for me, waters down the effect.
The dialogue also felt a bit stilted, which I find in short films a lot. It’s gotta be tough to get your point across quickly and still bring elegance to the writing, but it didn’t happen here. And did I mention I hated all the characters? Except the one who was being bullied.
May 20, 2017 – Post-It
Post-It is a short film, but you wouldn’t know that the way the first part of the movie unspools. A man with sits at a bus stop with a box full of various items. A curious girl asks what he’s carrying, then they launch into some quite stilted dialogue. Stay with it. A third character comes along and adds, I don’t know, comedy or something? Kind of a pointless character. Stay with it. Stay with it because the reason he has the box and the finale of the movie are both satisfying. At seven and a half minutes, it could’ve been four, but the payoff will have you wanting to emulate the main characters actions immediately.
