Smith's Verdict

Smith’s Verdict: ***1/2

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

As tough as it is to admit, something a lot of people will be curious about every New Year’s Eve is whether or not thousands of birds will suddenly drop in Beebe, Arkansas. Ever since Beebe made international news in January 2011, when more than 3,000 red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky and roughly 85,000 drum fish were washed up along the Arkansas River shore, it drew concern and investigation afterwards, even when it happened again in the beginning of 2012.

These mysterious bird & fish deaths are the topic of the 40-minute documentary, “The Night the Blackbirds Fell.”

Directed by Will Scott and written by Brian C. Campbell and Gustav Carlson, “The Night the Blackbirds Fell” presents the investigation of these mysterious animal deaths in a crafty, entertaining way. It uses a mix of sketch drawings and computer animation to present fictional characters looking up real-life media coverage, documenting first-hand testimony and explanation, and connecting theories and facts together to gain answers. It’s an interesting narrative flow, as the animated characters dig deeper into the mystery surrounding what killed the birds and the fish.

It begins as Danny (voiced by Matt Duncan), a university student developing a thesis project, walks alone from a New Year’s Eve 2010 party when he comes across a fallen blackbird, which he names Virgil, before encountering a shower of falling birds. As he watches TV and laughs at the jokes made by Jon Stewart and SNL, he quickly realizes how serious it is when he watches news coverage of the strange phenomenon. He decides to create a website as his thesis project, called “The Night the Blackbirds Fell,” as he investigates the wildlife deaths and adds new interview footage to the site.

Among the interviewees are Beebe residents, scientists, roost landowners, and anyone else who has an opinion on what happened and how it happened. It seems that everyone has their own theory as to how the blackbirds fell and how thousands of drum fish were washed ashore. Oil, toxins, military conspiracies, roost relocations, fireworks, and even, the grand consensus given by the media, the beginning of the End Times (I’m surprised Harold Camping wasn’t mentioned at all during this). You name it, someone has thought of it. It’s a puzzle that Danny must piece together as he (and the actual documentary crew) research and visit these different places and people, including a nuclear power plant and a Wal-Mart where a birds’-thicket once was (that’s a nice environmental message there). There are also two interviewees that give some input and who only agreed to be a part of the documentary if their faces and names were never revealed (one of them has his voice changed in post-production). One of them claims to know “who” killed the blackbirds.

Are the bird deaths and the fish deaths connected? Danny believes so, but Betty isn’t so sure. “The Night the Blackbirds Fell” has a clever mix of fiction and documentation with the mixture of interview footage and scripted animated sequences. The animated scenes are presented with a certain quirkiness that works well for the most part. Sometimes it’s funny when Danny and Betty’s reactions to most of these are about the same as the audience’s, and Betty’s snide commentary works for comedic effect. But other times it can seem a little forced, like an educational TV special, particularly when the film cuts back to the two and they recap on the footage they just watched. Mostly, however, it’s engaging enough to keep your attention. Some of the lines are good too—I love when Danny watches the SNL Weekly Update that shows Andy Samberg as a “lone-survivor blackbird” (with a heavy Southern accent), and reacts laughingly, “He sounds like my aunt!” And I admit it was a cute idea to have the bird, Virgil, as the “Lassie” of the situation, always pointing Danny towards important clues.

There are two shots that stay with me after seeing this documentary. One is a beginning wide shot that features the Beebe roost landowner, Lee Hayes, standing in the middle of the land and watching thousands of birds flying around. Another is an ending shot of more birds flying near a McDonald’s arch pole. These shots speak volumes as they indicate the possible extinction of blackbirds, as well as environmental threats to nature and people in Arkansas. It’s as if the film is saying that we need to rethink our connection with wildlife and by the end, it challenges us to consider the way things are now and how they may turn out to be in the future, especially if we’re going to keep checking on Beebe every year and see if more of these incidents occur, without actually contemplating them.

“The Night the Blackbirds Fell” is a well-crafted, intriguing film that entertains with the graphic-novel-style segments, involves/educates with the documentary aspects, and leaves the viewer thinking about it afterwards.

Smith’s Verdict: ***1/2

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

Originally, Eric White’s short film, “Homefront,” was part of a series of Vimeo videos that served as vignettes that show in more detail the background of the world within Jarrod Beck’s University of Central Arkansas graduate thesis film project, “Perfect Machine.” “Perfect Machine” is a science-fiction story that takes place in a dystopian future where all citizens are forced against their will to comply to the new system of government for a perfect society. Two vignettes show what happens to noncompliants. Another vignette showed how people are matched together. White’s vignette, titled “Homefront,” takes a more dramatic approach, showing two characters on the run from the ominous Administration.

Now, “Homefront” is a stand-alone two-minute short and has recently screened at the Little Rock Film Festival. How does it stand as its own thing? For what it is with its very short running time, and the way it’s shot and edited, “Homefront” is pretty damn strong. Luckily, you don’t have to know about what happens to those who don’t comply to this system; here, it’s hinted with one powerful line, “Is it better to be dead or to not know you’re alive?”

With a two-minute running time, the film is edited like a trailer (though the two characters, played by Johnnie Brannon and Kirby Gocke, don’t appear in the finished “Perfect Machine” film). It’s a story told through music, visuals, and narration, as a couple, living on their own in a secluded forest for some time, consider their future together. We see shots of them living off the land and staying in a cabin intercut with a couple closeups of an approaching militant force’s arsenal. Through it all, we hear Brannon’s voice as he talks about how limited his and Gocke’s choices are in the future. Near the end, we see Brannon and Gocke in the cabin, as he delivers that aforementioned pivotal line of dialogue, as they sit next to two glasses of water with drips of red liquid (presumably poison) dropped into them. What will become of them if they stay, go, or get captured by the Administration? The short ends with a great final shot that allows its audience to think about what lay ahead in their own futures if they don’t control them.

It also caused me to think about it if it was a teaser trailer. If it was, I would be excited to see its finished film. I’d be interested in knowing more about this couple and how they live away from this aggressive society; I would expect a good, gripping story. And maybe that’s the biggest problem with “Homefront.” To me, as a vignette for an upcoming 20-30 minute film (which will have different characters/actors and probably a different situation with elements introduced in other vignettes), it’s too good. Get Eric White and his crew (which includes Beck as cinematographer) to create a longer piece (10-20 minutes, at least) with the premise, and…wait, we already have Beck’s “Perfect Machine” for that (which White is the cinematographer for), minus Brannon and Gocke (though Brannon is working as the film’s casting director and 2^nd assistant director).

“Perfect Machine” may turn out to be as good, or maybe it will be better. But that’s not the subject of this review. If I’m going to review “Homefront” as a film, I say it’s effective on its own. It’s well-photographed; it’s well-acted; the music serves it well; it moved me; and it got me to imagine possible outcomes for the characters, as well as look forward to seeing similar elements in the final version, “Perfect Machine.”

Check out the film here: https://vimeo.com/186520240

Smith’s Verdict: ***1/2

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

Some people say classic film noir is easy to parody, but to me, that’s like saying comedy is easy to write. That being said, I found Michael Ferrara’s 10-minute short film “Citizen Noir,” which is a noir film parody, to be well-written and very funny. This is a strange, offbeat short comedy with originality within the usual elements of what it’s parodying…for the most part. Instead of parodying the complexities of the stories within noir films, “Citizen Noir” decides to make fun of the obligatory basics of the usual formula. Yes, the film is in black-and-white (with color only at the beginning and end, as the B&W represent a flashback). Yes, there’s a whodunit. Yes, there’s a solemn hero/narrator. Yes, there’s a mysterious run of characters who are practically forced to wear black and act suspicious. But the narrator is purposefully comedic-deadpan, the characters are delightfully odd, the whodunit is quite unusual as we’re informed from the start, and the B&W…well, that just makes the film look better.

“Citizen Noir” begins as Mark Crane (Alex Huey, who delivers a great comic-deadpan personality), a downtrodden private eye, is given his next case to follow. What is it? A little girl’s (Kwynn McEntire) cat, Mayor McMeow, has been murdered and Crane has to find out who did it. (And yes, the little girl, when she goes to see Crane about the case, is dressed in black.) As he investigates, he encounters a series of weird characters, including an attractive, sultry artist (Sabrina Runge), a strange man (George Zumwalt) obsessed with small animals, and a wannabe gangster (Matt Martens) whose private hideout is his own personal toilet stall (take a guess as to how Crane is able to get answers from him).

“Citizen Noir” is strange but in a good, funny way. The characters are suitably weird for us to laugh at them and the lines of dialogue are even more hilarious. The best lines come during the voiceover narrations as Crane analyzes things in his own way. I won’t give away any of the best lines, but my favorite line came as a response to a certain 12-letter word.

I don’t really know what else to say about “Citizen Noir.” It’s just very funny, befittingly offbeat, fun to watch, and also smarter than I may have made it out to be. I can see that writer-director Ferrara went all out for this short film and thought about the story as well as the jokes, and so he tried to make it as original and weird as possible (again, while keeping certain film-noir standards). As a result, he’s crafted a well-made, well-thought-out, funny short.

Smith’s Verdict: ****

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

Some of the most interesting genre pictures are those that are dramas with quiet elements of fantasy, science-fiction, or horror that help serve the story. Caleb Fanning’s 20-minute short film “Origin” is an example of such films. At the surface is a dramatic love story about loss and starting over, while there is something else to make it unique. In this case, that “something” is the “creation-gone-wrong” element. Everyone knows this particular topic—man plays God, man loses. It manages to fit into this story well.

The story for “Origin” centers around a distressed woman (Mandy Fason) who is ready to grieve the loss of her husband (Wade King) when a doctor (Kenn Woodard) claims he has an experiment that will prolong his life. When the man dies, he is reanimated some time after. He seems like the same person and is hardly fazed that he’s been to death and back; it’s as if he’s come out of a coma. His wife welcomes him back and they pick up where they left off. But as time goes by, there seems to be something a little off about him, as he seems like he doesn’t belong in this world.

One of the most fascinating aspects about “Origin” is how well this story works. This is a husband and wife who try to continue with their lives and their relationship, but because of this unusual experiment, something seems to be missing this time around. It causes the woman to wonder what is the true reliable feature in this world—science or nature? She encounters the doctor again and he tells her some background about the experiment, and how this man was the first successful test. Then she wonders if the whole project was a good idea to begin with, and that maybe she could have let nature take its course if her husband died.

What has the man become? A dream (or rather, nightmare) sequence suggests something grisly. We can assume that he has become something that is one-part the man he was, one-part something else. And maybe the latter part is taking over slowly. The film ends ambiguously, so there isn’t a clear answer as to what has happened with him by the end, or what is going to happen. But it doesn’t seem man will stop playing God anytime soon. If this experiment continues, who knows what will happen?

Mandy Fason and Wade King do great jobs at making us care for this couple. I cared about their characters, feared for them, and by the end of the film, I felt sorry for them. One particularly strong scene is when Fason’s character knows she has to let go of what’s left of her husband and looks at a photograph of the two together, and weeps over it. It’s chilling because we believe the situation and Fason’s tears seem genuine. She’s terrific here, and so is King who has an equally difficult role of the man in question—if his transformation didn’t work, the whole film wouldn’t work.

Even though I wouldn’t have minded a little more clarity about certain ideas in the film, particularly in the final act, I still liked “Origin” for what it implies. And for people out there who search for new ways of changing the world as we know it, just be sure you know what you’re doing.

Smith’s Verdict: ***1/2

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

David Bogard’s short film “A Matter of Honor” is a war drama that premiered in the Little Rock Film Festival. And how odd is it that it screens in the same festival as another made-in-Arkansas war drama, Taylor Dan Lucas’ “Watch the Rhine?” Both shorts are exercises in setting, acting, and writing, and they don’t rely on cheap gimmicks to make their audiences feel something they couldn’t already. They’re both small films that rely on something more—the performances, the location, and the script. They’re both very strong pieces of work.

I’ve already reviewed “Watch the Rhine,” so if you want my further thoughts on that, check out this link: https://smithsverdict.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/watch-the-rhine-short-film/

While “Watch the Rhine” took place during World War II, “A Matter of Honor” occurs on the night of June 2, 1864, during the American Civil War. Three Confederate soldiers (Ed Lowry, Tom Kagy, and Elliot Gilmartin) are sitting around a campfire in the middle of a forest talking about what they should expect in the future during the war. The youngest one (Gilmartin) is fighting for vengeance after a Union soldier killed his father, while the two older soldiers don’t feel like they know what they’re fighting for anymore. After one (Lowry) leaves the other two, a young Union soldier (Jason Willey) comes along to arrange a trade of scarce goods, such as coffee and tobacco. The two Confederates agree to it, and they enjoy a moment of friendly banter with the soldier. But when a gruff Confederate officer (Scott McEntire) comes across them, the situation takes a serious turn and leads to a deadly encounter. The only solution they can think of in the moment tests their honor.

“A Matter of Honor,” which runs for 19 minutes, is a powerful short. The reasons for this are many: For starters, the actors are all solid as they exhibit the true emotions of what their characters are going through. It’s a dialogue-heavy short; the conversations these people have are perceptive and convincing without being too heavy about the themes and conflicts. The flow of each talk is convincingly handled, even when the soldiers from each side meet and talk around the fire; their banter about how they’re going to handle battling on opposite sides the next day is not only insightful but also humorous, which is a refreshing move. The character arcs, while we’ve seen them before, are well-done and suitable for the material. The film, shot on RED, looks good, and the cinematography is great. I like that it’s held in one outdoor location (like “Watch the Rhine”). The costumes look convincing. And when the Confederate officer comes to resist the Union soldier’s appearance, I felt the suspense; I must confess even though I probably knew the resolution, I didn’t know how this scene would play out.

There’s much to like about “A Matter of Honor.” And when all is said and done, if you can get into the talks, the characters, and the conflicts, then you can get into how the film plays itself out after the climactic encounter. You have five soldiers, different in many ways but similar in one in that they fight for honor, in the middle of a war and of a scenario that isn’t seen in most war films. It’s effective and very well-handled.

There’s one thing I didn’t like about “A Matter of Honor.” Without giving it away, it features characters practically taking turns during a grisly act. The way it’s handled, you’d think it was a “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” performance. But it’s not very long and the film bounces back with its complexities afterwards. That’s one flaw in an otherwise well-executed short war drama.

Smith’s Verdict: ***1/2

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

“Watch the Rhine” is writer-director Taylor Dan Lucas’ University of Central Arkansas undergraduate thesis film, and it’s considered a smaller project than one might expect to come out from the school’s digital filmmaking program. But “smaller” does not mean it’s any less effective. It’s quite a strong short film, and its minimalism works in its favor. It gives more of a lasting impression because we’re not watching a film as much as living it. The execution is intimate, the actors are extremely convincing, and there’s a great deal of atmosphere throughout.

What I mean by “smaller” is that it’s mostly a two-character piece set in one location, which is unusual, considering it takes place in World War II. But this is not a war epic, and there’s hardly any action to be found here. It’s just a short drama about two soldiers from opposite sides and how they react, and even relate, to each other. That’s it. And you know what? That’s actually pretty good.

“Watch the Rhine” takes place in a forest somewhere in France, 1944. The story begins with Jim (Schafer Bourne), an American soldier, awakening alone in a foxhole. Alone and confused, he frantically hikes through the forest in the hopes of finding his unit. Soon, he comes across Curt (Nick Lewellen), a German soldier/medic. Jim sees that Curt is unarmed and seemingly alone, so, not knowing what to do, he holds him and forces him to trek along with him. As they go further, they come to trust one another and even form a sort of bond.

That’s the main idea that Lucas goes with in this film, and he manages to make the simplicity of this premise quite effective. He’s aided by two very convincing actors in the central roles, the costumes they wear which look authentic, and a great amount of atmosphere, thanks to the film’s directors of photography, River Shelman and Corey Shelman.

Something else that works in the film’s favor is the lack of music score. I got to see the original rough cut of this film months ago, and I heard that Lucas and the film’s producer, J. Cole Lansden, were planning to arrange a score for the finished film. I was concerned because I thought the film would have been stronger without it, because the cut I originally saw was pretty damn solid. And it pleasantly surprised me that there was no score in the end. Honestly, the film doesn’t need it. If the execution and acting is great, then the film doesn’t need music to tell how the audience is supposed to feel. That was a good move on the filmmakers’ part.

If I did have a problem with the film, it’s that I would have liked it to run a little longer. The ending comes a little too quickly, which you could argue shadows abruptness of this type of situation and environment, and I feel there’s a key shot missing. I don’t know; maybe I would have liked to see more of these two together. But that’s just me nitpicking, and this does add to tragedy of this situation/environment. You accept what you can get, and what I got was a very short but nonetheless very powerful drama.

You can watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/92346956