When Stanley is told that he only has 1,500 words to live, he works incredibly hard to keep himself and his marriage alive using as few words as possible.

1,500 Words is a pleasing short film that is warm, funny and really well made.

1,500 Words’ success stems from a sharp and witty script penned by Menzies, which is packed with one liners and brilliant quips; “the silence filled the house quietly, like a gas leak” is a particular highlight. Michael Smiley’s narrator is allowed to shine most with this brilliant material, which is not to say that the other performances aren’t fantastic either! Marcus Garvey is great as protagonist Stanley, he manages to exploit the inherent ridiculousness of the set up without over-performing and Eri Jackson gives a quiet and controlled performance as Stanley’s unfortunate wife Julia.  These performances all stem from Chaplain’s assured and confident direction.  1,500 Words is a very good short film indeed.

Written by James Menzies, Directed by Andrew Chaplin, 8 minutes

Little Pieces tells the story of Michael and his brother Eric as they try and navigate the trials of adolescence with an alcoholic father.

Things will take dramatic turn when Michael’s girlfriend, Cheryl, and her boss, Jerry, have a chance encounter with Eric.

Little Pieces is a film that feels like it is trying too hard to make us care.  The script is overstuffed with themes of domestic abuse, violence, issues of abandonment and addiction to alcohol and power, when a more restrained approach could have been more effective.  Instead of being a gripping social realist drama in the vein of David Mackenzie’s Starred Up (2013), it is much closer to an old fashioned melodrama, in which flimsy characters interact in artificial situations.  The dialogue is so tinny that you can hear coins rattle around in it; it would probably feel at home with Dorothy and the other characters on the Yellow Brick Road.

The film, thankfully, isn’t as bad as the script; it really comes alive in moments when dialogue isn’t being delivered.  The running scenes and the scenes in the ice rink are much more credible.  Some of the performances are a little too hammy and others are a little underplayed but for a low budget film, this is excusable.  Finnain Nainby – Luxmoore (Michael), Matt Jones (Eric) and Isabelle Glinn (Cheryl) do as good a job as they can with what they are given to work with.  Jerry, Cheryl’s boss, makes the average BNP voter look like a pussycat and is played with annoying relish by Peter Oliver, sometimes to the detriment to the film.  Finally, Imraan Husain’s superb original score supports the film wonderfully and Ellis Leigh’s convincing make up should also be applauded.

So, Little Pieces is a film built with strong performances and a convincing visual style.  It is just a shame that Nelson’s sharp eye for strong visuals isn’t matched with a good ear for dialogue.

Conceived as a companion piece to 2012’s The Act Of Killing, this picks up where Joshua Oppenheimer’s doc on the ’60’s Genocide under an anti-communist regime closed. The metaphor of the Interviewer being a door-to-door Optician isn’t lost, as he goes about asking the surviving members of the regime whether they regret the part they played in the Genocide and the murder of his older Brother with his last strains of hope spiralling away.

Admittedly, it’s not a barrel of chuckles but the grotesque truths being put to the screen in such fashion and so heart-on-sleeve really can’t be put to task for being depressing, bone-chilling or indeed stomach churning….though they undoubtedly are.

Traversing the psychological landscape of torture and murder in the name of “Politics” is draining but it’s an important film that begs to be viewed and when the protagonist says at one point: ” I think You are avoiding Moral Responsibility” to one of the many “Elected” officials caught on film, you don’t for one second think it’s grandstanding, the threat is hinted at, real and still there.

This is cinema at it’s most honest, raw, important, powerful,profoundly beautiful but above all else…….harrowing, harrowing stuff.

5/5

Thomas Cailley’s assured debut is a weirdly self-aware yet self defeating affair, seemingly looking to take on the tropes of the trite and tested Rom-Com’s and give it a Nihilstic Doomsday prep makeover but never manages to get past the point of lacing up it’s combat boots and becomes a ploddingly, pedestrian outing. Given the gag-reflex testing title “Love At First Sight” over here, we’ll stick with the French ‘un.

The vaguest of plot goes with: Happy-go-lucky young lad( Kévin Azaïs – the wettest of lettuce here) meets curt, confident, Extremist young girl( Adèle Haenel – a crackingly self assured performance), both join a military camp and romance (kind of) blossoms all set to a recession-era backdrop. Touching upon the extinction of species’ on the planet and the crumbling of society as a sub-plot while throwing our way a piss-warm romance is a solidly safe mis-step, it lacks the courage of it’s convictions.

As playful and full of energy though it strives to be, what we’re left with is a thankfully short (running at 98 minutes or thereabouts) and flimsy effort that invokes better, promises little and under delivers. Rite of passage?

Shite of passage mate.