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“Everyday Horrors” short stories book

Steve Rasnic Tem has written over 500 published short stories. His stories have won awards from the International Horror Guild, the Horror Writers’ Association, and he has won the British and World Fantasy Awards. His novels and writing with his late wife Melanie Tem are also lauded. His short fiction has been compared to that of Franz Kafka, Ray Bradbury and Raymond Carver. Joe R. Lansdale proclaimed him to be “a school of writing unto himself.” As a writer and a teacher of writing, immersing myself in this collection, “Everyday Horrors,” was a treat, but a dark one. This description by another was right on the money: “Steve Rasnic Tem’s large body of tales: imaginative, difficult-to-pigeonhole works of the fantastic crossing conventional boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, horror, literary fiction, bizarro, magic realism, and the new weird.”

With Christmas bearing down on us like a train jumping the tracks, I had to limit myself to three stories a day. The tone of each tale is solemn, grim, evocative of so many depressingly ordinary things in our lives as we age. As a woman in the seventh decade of life, five years older than the author, I could relate to Steve Rasnic Tem’s themes, just as I remember relating to Melanie Rasnic Tem’s excellent short story “Best Friends.”

I’m not sure that a younger reviewer would relate as well to this collection’s themes of death, dying and deterioration. There was a time when I, too, would have glossed over recitations of the indignities of aging. Now, fighting cancer, diabetes, auto immune hepatitis, fibromyalgia, asthma and side effects from the drugs prescribed to make you better (which seem to always make you worse), I could better relate to passages like this excerpt from Steve’s story “The Old Man’s Tale” (one of my favorites):

Steve Rasnic Tem.

“He was so tired of this, having to schedule his life around his unreasonable bodily needs, the toilet, his fatigue, his bouts of worry and anxiety. It was humiliating. None of those had been considerations when he was young.”

Ah, yes, remind me again about “the golden years.”

Or how about this soliloquy on aging from the same short story: “How do you know when you’re old? I really don’t know. I guess when everybody tells you. I look at other people—with their white hair, all their wrinkles—and I think they’re a lot older than I am. But most of the time it turns out they’re younger.”

As that story about a couple traveling to the Grand Canyon goes on, the author muses, “It’s too bad we can’t leave our sorrows there, isn’t it? If everybody drove to that giant wound in the earth and could toss their sadness inside, and walk away to get on with the rest of their lives, wouldn’t that be a great thing?”

The short story “Everyday Horror” begins this collection, a story of Aubrey and Jeff, two brothers who are involved in cleaning out their dead father’s things. The beauty of the writer’s vision is once again conveyed to us with a passage: “Suggestions of death and dismemberment journeyed across the darkening dome of sky. Symphonic wraiths gathered for meaningless consultations.” One of the brothers has inherited the ability to see and hear things that normal people’s senses cannot perceive. The brothers are dividing the contents of the house into a “KEEP” and “BURN” pile. [I must admit that I wanted the end of this story to be a colossal pyre, a funeral pyre, if you will, with flames crying out to the heavens; that’s just me.]

fire

“Fish Scales” followed “Everyday Horror” with the poetic story of Charlie, who has fish scales on his face, and a blind wife. This memorable line lingers: “Sometimes sorrow falls into such a deep place it cannot escape.”

This passage also caught my eye: “When he was a kid, he imagined the night creatures might think him dead if he lay still enough, and so they wouldn’t bother him. The logic of this now escaped him. A dead body was easy prey.”

I smiled. When I slept upstairs, alone in my isolated attic room, and a dream re-occurred, night after night, a nightmare of a man stealthily stalking me, following me down a shadowed street (and whispering my name in ever-increasing volume), fedora hat obscuring his features, I thought that if I kept my eyes shut tight and made my way down the treacherous stairs to where there was light and company, I would be safe. The danger of falling down the stairs (since my eyes were shut) eluded me. Logic, indeed, was on holiday as it is, to a point, in this story.

The young & the old.

“Gavin’s Field” gives us the story of Blackburn’s Field and how Gavin is bequeathed a house in Vermont by his father. Lines like, “The mist transitioned into a needle-like rain” give mood to the story of stone walls and characters like Lawyer Martinson and Whitby, the town watchdog. The gradual integration of Gavin into the Vermont town ends with, “Gavin decided not to struggle when the man-sized insect began feeding the mulch into his open mouth. It really wasn’t that terrible if he let himself relax and accept what he was being offered. The taste—rich and dark and nourished with death—was not at all unfamiliar.”

“An Gorta Mor” began the commentary on our world today, which continued with a story about the effects of the pandemic. As the author notes, “People had become unbelievably cruel, or perhaps they’d always been, and he’d just failed to notice…So much of the world had become poisonous. Poison permeated the air he breathed and the food he consumed.” All of this while waiting for food delivery and fighting a loss of interest in eating anything at all.

Steve and Melanie Rasnic Tem.

“Black Wings,” the story of Harry and Sheila’s marriage, is more a story of Harry’s obsession with birds. Harry has made their home into a temple to birds. Sheila does not seem that thrilled with his hobby: “Despite Harry’s protestations there had always been a stench of death and decay and negligence. But she couldn’t expect to have survived marriage to such a man without some lingering birdish stench.” We learn that Harry was struggling to put (yet another) cabinet dedicated to his all-consuming hobby, the birds, in an upstairs room, when an unfortunate accident ensued. Or was it an accident? Meanwhile, a black bird terrorizes Sheila, and one has to ask if it is karma: “Sheila took a step down, and her bird—all hers, it was too late to get rid of it now and too late to stop—was right beneath her shoe…As she lay there on the floor, thinking about the mess she’d made, something unexpected came over her and she heard herself making this awful sound with notes of both despair and defiance while she flapped her broken arms.” The bird theme may stem from a home that Steve and Melanie Tem bought from a bird enthusiast when they downsized from their larger family home.

“Bags” – Consumerism in all its aspects is criticized: “You buy, you throw away, and then you buy some more. The ‘regurgitating economy’ Dad called it. Dad was as bad as everyone else in this regard, but at least he recognized the problem.” There are other problems, health problems, for Dad. Ascites fluid must be drained. “It was hard to believe in upcoming catastrophes beyond the disaster which was already here.”

“Late Sleepers” – seemed to be a chance to revisit many memorable horror movie scenes. Theater one is closed in the small ready-to-close theater and off-limits for reasons that will become clear. “The stillness troubled him. He didn’t hear anything, but it seemed the noise of nothing was pounding in his head. He breathed deeply, smelling only the stale air.” The theater is closing this very night. Is that his house he sees onscreen?

“A Thin Silver Line” is “for Harlan Ellison;” silver is the color of death. [That’s too bad for me, because I just bought a new silver car that we call “the Silver Bullet.”] “A thin silver line: color of moonlight, or morning fog, the highlight on your grandmother’s lips. The fading borders of the dream just before you discover it is morning. It’s a separation keeping you from the dream, the day from the night, and the fantasy from nightmare. The division is less substantial than mist; you can cross it and not even know.” Bobby and Linda are expecting and then things go awry. Bobby’s father AND Linda are both heard screaming “Get it out of me.'” I’m in Texas writing this, so getting a ruined child out of its mother surgically is not an option in this state at this time. God help us all. Since many of the Steve Rasnic Tem works are going to eventually be warehoused at Texas A&M, this is not news to the author.

“Inappetence” is a term used to denote a lack of hunger. As the story puts it: “They slipped from the shadows to monitor his decline. Impatient, they moved forward to taste the light. All the world was hungry it seemed, except for him. Even the thought of food repelled him.”

“The Winter Closet” – this one was very short and dealt with the memories conjured up by the contents of “the winter closet.”

“Privacy” – “He’d come to understand that in solitude was the way people lived, even if they imagined otherwise. They pretended a knowledge of others they did not have. Now that he was elderly, the anxiety from loneliness had become palpable. He had to lie in bed with fists clenched until it passed. If a manual existed for old age, he would certainly read it.”

I second that observation.

And, “It wasn’t that he wanted to be a hermit. All he wanted was some control over people’s access to his life. It wasn’t that he disliked people. He simply believed they lied about everything.”

In the year of Trump, this certainly seems true. The end of this one may be a bit over-the-top, but the idea of privacy remains paramount.

“Monkeys” – Polly and Maude in a Jack-the-Ripper setting.

“When They Fall” – “He was an adult. He knew life was ephemeral. Each person was given the slimmest shard of time. But children had no idea. They dwelled in the forever now.” This one asks the poetic question: “Are we ghosts hiding within our costumes of flesh?”

A twenty-something Steve Rasnic Tem.

“The Things We Do Not See” – “One evening he became aware of a great shift in gravitation, as if something massive had suddenly entered this world. He could not see it, but he knew it was there.” A character named Cathy seems to have amnesia. Some salient observations about mankind include this: “True self-knowledge is a rare thing, an ephemeral moment of clarity out of a lifetime of confusion. Most of us will never experience such a moment. I wonder if it is even possible. Because our minds latch onto pain and pain consumes us and informs our stories about ourselves. Mental health involves countering those stories of pain with one positive ones. But they are still stories, still untrustworthy narratives of the truth that is out there…We cannot trust our memories of who we once were. Those times, that self, are all gone now. Look around you. See what exists in your world right now. Trust that.”

Dead things start showing up; the dead things keep getting large and larger. A generally open-ended finale to a tale with wise observations.

“Within the Concrete” – Carl and Grace are in this one, which observes: “It seemed he’d been better at solving things when he was younger. Now his brain was like cement slurry, right on the edge of hardening, after which no thoughts might escape.”

Very astute. Certainly relatable. Imagine how lost we’d be if we didn’t have the Internet!

https://www.facebook.com/reel/497657436685488

“The Last Sound You Hear” – Connor, the grandson, visits his grandfather. They listen to their hearts using a stethoscope. This one had a “Sixth Sense” ending. Read it for yourself to find out what is meant by that.

“Into the White” – I grew up in northeast Iowa. I still live in snowy Illinois half of the year with a place in Chicago. A journey back to the days when schools would be canceled because of the white stuff. Since I ran a school of sorts for a while (and had to be the one deciding when to cancel or when to persevere) I enjoyed the descriptions of the snow and the buried carousel beneath. The language is extraordinary for its poetic brilliance: “The sky was so intense, it became a dream scorched into his now.” Or, “His snowsuit began to shred. The emptiness washed over him, embedding itself in his flesh. He saw blood upon the snow. Ahead of him the sky began to tear. He thought at first it was the Northern Lights, but he came to believe it was something quite different.”

“The Old Man’s Tale” – I have referenced this previously, because it hit home and summoned so many memories, mostly of the Covid experience that we all just lived through (and which my mother lived through at the age of eleven, just as my granddaughters lived through it at the same age in 2020.) Steve Rasnic Tem says, “We still feel on the lip of oblivion. I can’t be the only one…Just to see something eternal when so many people we knew were dying, losing their jobs, fracturing inside.”

I remember the Covid experience through the prism of a breast cancer diagnosis (December 2021), a podcast that I had just agreed to conduct upon my return from an Alaskan cruise, and my daughter (a flight attendant) who was laid off for the duration. She moved from Nashville to Austin to join us. While I felt the isolation from others, just as everyone did, I had my WeeklyWilson.com podcast giving me a life-line for talking to others. I received many phone calls from people I had not heard from in literally years.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, I had my entire nuclear family together in the same place for more than just a few days. Since my children were born 19 years apart and my son works from home, as does his wife, the flight attendant daughter was assigned to amuse, educate and entertain the eleven-year-old twins. It was a strange time, watching the daily casualty reports on television from then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was receiving plaudits for his daily reports to the nation. Do you remember when there was talk of Andrew Cuomo running for President, because of his high profile leading the nation at a time when we seemed to be leaderless? No? Well, that did happen, briefly.

Melanie & Steve Rasnic Tem.

In ”Whenever It Comes” the author writes: “It broke my heart trying to keep our children safe. I didn’t want to tell them the world had become a dangerous place. As parents we made mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes, as all parents will. Yet our children still looked to us for answers…I didn’t understand how things worked any more. I didn’t believe anyone did. I no longer trusted people, least of all myself. No one knew for sure what lived inside the human heart. No one knew how this would end…It was a long year of quiet dread.”

In “An Old Man’s Tale” the author touches upon the dilemma of homelessness, as well as on Covid. “I’m not claiming to understand what I saw. I’m just putting it out there. I’m a rational human being trying to deal with the irrational, these phantoms at the periphery of my vision, like someone just arrived, or someone just left, or someone’s waiting there, ready to do some damage, cause some mischief. I don’t want to say it’s related to the pandemic, but maybe everything is, if you think about it.”

“People have changed so much the past few years, don’t you think? Things will be fine for a while, then these pockets of—I don’t know—derangement appear, and they spread through the population.”

Bee Gone, the book

The character’s wife, Jane says, “It’s that awful man they elected. People now think it’s okay to say anything that pops into their heads.”

As a blog dedicated to the whims of its owner with her interest in film and national politics, (and a person five years older than Steve Rasnic Tem), I can definitely relate to his observations. I listened to a University of Chicago professor try to explain all of the unrest and chaos, (and ascribing the change in our nation to the demographic shift from one that is predominantly white to one that is polyglot. The white males, threatened by immigrants and the loss of their preferred status (and their jobs), steeped in nascent racism and distrustful of authority, refused to support a bi-racial woman to lead our country, thereby sticking us with the other alternative, a candidate who lied and postured his way to power, much like a German autocrat of yesteryear. Shall we blame “The Apprentice?”

The lack of affordable housing and the high cost of groceries (which is bound to continue regardless of regime change) tied the vice presidential candidate to the status quo and the attempt by the geriatric incumbent to continue in office past his shelf life date doomed his second-in-command’s hopes. Whether she could have succeeded if President Biden had stepped down earlier, (as he had promised to do) is still a debatable point.

All I know is that book-ending my life with JFK at its political outset (age 15) and DJT near my demise is some sort of cosmic joke. It is these observations in a couple of the stories in “Everyday Horrors” that I enjoyed the most. When spaceships entered stories, I was less interested, but “different strokes for different folks.” The imagination of the writer still gripped me. The poetry of his language was pleasing.

As a blog that still devotes itself to discussing movies and politics, passages like this resonated with me: “We were sitting on that couch watching when the 500,000 deaths from Covid were announced. And we watched that George Floyd video again and again, trying to understand why it happened, and knowing it had happened many times before. We felt helpless as we watched it, and feeling helpless made us feel ashamed….We have seen so many terrible images. Those poor refugees. Children abandoned in the desert, or their bodies washed up on shore. You’ve seen those pictures too? Or am I crazy?

“He waited for an uncomfortably long time.”

Finally, someone in the distance said, “yes,” and another, “Yes, I think we’ve all seen them.”

The author and wife Melanie on their wedding day.

“The true facts of history are going to rise to the top however deeply you try to bury them. If people’s houses are burning, they’re going to find somewhere else to live. The way I see it, fires are burning all over the world.”

Adds Steve Rasnic Tem in words that we should all be able to relate to: “I wish the ones in charge would do a lot of things, but they don’t. The economy leaves lots of folks behind. On top of that, the climate’s changing. We pretend there’s nothing we can do. Pretty soon it will be our own family member, trying to find safety. Maybe you. Maybe me if I live that long. We need to do better if we want to save ourselves. We could start with those (homeless) folks out there…They expect people to cooperate and be on their best behavior during a crisis, but that’s not how people act.”

I enjoyed this collection to the point that I could absorb so much about misery, death and destruction right before the Christmas holiday. [Talk about a contrast in tone!]

There is no good time to dwell on misery. But there is a necessary time. Reading “Everyday Horrors” may be that time for anyone who appreciates mastery of the insightful phrase and a keen eye for commentary, coupled with the word skills to pull it off beautifully.

“Ryan Can’t Read” Is 2025 Oscar-Eligible Short

By Connie Wilson

On December 11, 2024

In Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Reviews

Lewis Ian Bray as Ryan in “Ryan Can’t Read.”

“Ryan Can’t Read” is a depressing 2025 Oscar-eligible short that tells the story of Ryan, who, as the title suggests, is illiterate. Since there are estimated to be at least 8 million others in the United Kingdom who cannot read, Ryan is not alone. Lewis Ian Bray plays Ryan. Lewis is “neurodivergent” in real life. Another way of categorizing the neurodivergent is to say that they are “on the spectrum.” For nearly 40 years of my life I worked with students who were autistic or on the spectrum in a variety of ways, including ADD and ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity), dyslexia, and many other ailments. For several years we were the only entity in a community of half a million residents qualified to work with patients with traumatic brain injury, so this touching and timely short hit close to home.

CAST

Ryan (Lewis Ian-Bray) and his best friend (James Nelson-Joyce).

Ryan (Lewis Ian-Bray) and his best friend Tyrone (James Nelson-Joyce.)

The production rests on the shoulders of Lewis Ian-Bray portraying Ryan and James Nelson-Joyce as his best friend Tyrone. Rhys Chapman directed the short and co-wrote it. Chapman is known for “Wonderkid” and Sir Ian McKellen assisted him in getting this short made. James Nelson-Joyce has appeared in “The Outlaws” with Stephen Merchant and Christopher Walken and in “Time” with Sean Bean and Stephen Graham. He is also set to appear in next season’s “Black Mirror” and in Disney’s “One Thousand Blows.” However, it is Lewis Ian Bray who embodies the title character, who is struggling with daily life because of his disability. Lewis Ian-Bray also co-wrote the film and was awarded the Best Actor award for his performance at the Tokyo Short Shorts Festival.

PLOT

The 19 minute 35 second story takes Ryan through the trying hurdles that anyone would face if unable to read, including an interview for a job and a frustrating and futile attempt to read his own mail. The city is Liverpool; there is a reference to eating scouse. Scouse is a type of stew typically made from chunks of meat with potatoes, carrots, and onion. It is particularly associated with the port of Liverpool; hence, the inhabitants of that city are often referred to as “scousers.” The word “scouse” comes from lobscouse, a stew that was commonly eaten by sailors throughout northern Europe in the past.

Ryan and Tyrone in “Ryan Can’t Read.”

Ryan’s friend Tyrone keeps encouraging him to attempt to learn to read and cheers him on throughout the disquieting departure of his mother, who writes to Ryan, saying, “Never stop being yourself. Don’t be scared. I will always be by your side. Don’t think I’m not watching, because I am. I am so proud of you, my son.”

CONCLUSION

“Ryan Can’t Read’s” music is by Bill Ryder-Jones and K.E.E.M. “Don’t Be Scared; I Love You” plays over (and over and over) the end credits. The cinematography by Borja Lopez Diaz captures the frustration of the subject, well-acted by Lewis Ian Bray. Why Ryan finds himself on his own, battling life with only his friend Tyrone encouraging him in person, is left a bit murky. A longer film might have explored Mom’s absence more thoroughly, but this is a short. It focuses on Ryan the non-reader and Lewis Ian-Braye does a fine job in both writing and acting the title role.

“Marion” Is 2025 Oscar-Eligible Short

By Connie Wilson

On December 8, 2024

In France, Movies, Reviews

Caroline Nogues- Larbere, France’s only female bull-jumper.

“Marion” is a story about the only female bull-jumper in France, Caroline Nogues-Larbere. Who knew that France had a sport called “La Course Landaise” which looks a lot like a bullfight, except that the bullfighters don’t kill the bull but simply jump out of the way of the charging animal?

DIRECTORS

Joe Weiland and Finn Constantine wrote and directed the story of Caroline, here called Marion. Joe Weiland was BAFTA nominated for his first short, “Gorka” and has won the Young Director Awards at Cannes. Constantine is affiliated with the art magazine “Plaster” but is moving into film. The short was executive produced by Sienna Miller and Cate Blanchett.

CAST

Team member who assists Marion in donning her suit of lights.

The attractive Marion is shown dressing for facing down the bull, and is assisted by a male bull-jumper. When her husband shows up with their daughter, she is forced to park the young girl in the locker room with directions not to leave (which, of course, the daughter does.) There is some harrowing footage of Marion being dragged by a bull. The refrain “Protect her; watch over her” echoes throughout the intense face-off with the charging animal.

We also see the other members of Team Nogues in the locker room: Matthew Nogues, Nicolas Vergonzeanne, Romain Beyris, Kevin Ribeiro, Louis Ansolabehere, Gilles Beguery and Frederic Vergonzeanne.

CONCLUSION

The only female bull-jumper in France had never acted before, but she was a strikingly beautiful and courageous athlete facing down an animal easily 5 times her size. I was apprehensive about her wandering daughter and what she might see of her mother in the arena, but to detail that scene would be telling.

It was interesting to learn of this little-known French version of bullfighting and I wondered how Sienna Miller and Cate Blanchett got involved with the production.

“Sister Wives” Is 2025 Oscar-Eligible Short

By Connie Wilson

On December 4, 2024

In Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews

“Sister Wives.”

“Sister Wives” – Director/Star Louisa Connolly-Burnham plays Kaidence, the wife of a polygamous husband (Mormon) who must welcome a new wife, 19-year-old Galilee, into her home. Galilee is played by Mia McKenna-Bruce. This is actually streaming on Channel 14, which, I assume, is British, as it has qualified for Best British film and Best Actress at the Iris Prize competition and was picked up for distribution. It is eligible for the Oscars and the BAFTA, which makes it the fifth of the five female-directed films I have most recently reviewed to qualify for the 2025 Academy Awards.

There is a plan to develop this story of love emerging between the two sister wives into a full length feature film in summer, 2025, with the Director/Star reprising her role. Connolly-Burnham is known for the HollyShort film “How to Have Sex” and is currently working on the Netflix adaptation of an Agatha Christie work, “The 7 Dial Mystery” with Helena Bonham Carter and Martin Freeman. The series was inspired by Broadchurch Creator Chris Chibnall.

PLOT

We learn that Kaidence was married to their mutual husband Jeremiah (Michael Fox) at age 14. Galilee is only 19, but she has a more adventurous spirit and actually has a cell phone (verboten in the community). Jeremiah is called away to Nevada for four weeks because Brother Amos is sick. While he is away, the sister wives play. Kaidence goes skinny dipping and learns that there is a whole world outside of her marriage, waiting for her.

The film was dark, making some things difficult to precisely determine. Director of photography was Angela Zoe Nei and the film could have beneifted from more light in some of the scenes. We certainly can understand why the girls decide to bolt and strike out for freedom. Galilee, who had said, “I’ll be very happy here” instead makes both downtrodden women happy when she suggests escape. I did find it difficult to understand the ending scene with Galilee, Kaidence and a car. Whose car is it? How did they get it? Is someone assisting them in their desire to flee? Many questions.

“Sister Wives.”

CONCLUSION

I grew up in Amish country in Iowa. This one was not hard to believe or imagine.This was the fifth short directed by a woman. It didn’t involve filming entirely in a car, but there is a scene at the end where the two escaping wives take off in a vehicle. I wish them good fortune!

“Motherland” Is 2025 Oscar-Eligible Short from Jasmin Mozzafari

By Connie Wilson

On December 2, 2024

In Local, Movies, News, Pop Culture, Reviews

"Motherland," a 2025 Oscar-eligible short.

“Motherland,” an Oscar eligible short.

“Motherland” – This 24 minute 21 second short dealt with a couple–an Iranian man and a girl from Iowa— who are meeting the girl’s in-laws for the first time. The Jasmin Mozaffari film is set against the backdrop of the Iranian hostage crisis, which took place in 1979 and lasted for 444 days during the Carter administration. It was inspired by Jasmin’s father who married a woman from Alberta, Canada.

WRITER/DIRECTOR

“Motherland” was named as the Best Canadian Short Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. Mozzafari was named Best Director at the Aspen Shortsfest and her debut film “Firecracker” debuted in 2018 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Her short YASAMIN, based on her mother’s story of immigration, was a Grand Jury Prize Nominee at the 2018 AFI Film Festival. In 2022, she associate produced the short documentary “Longline of Ladies” which world premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and won the grand jury prize at SXSW.

Jasmine’s father, in real life, married a woman from Alberta, Canada. The New York Times compared Mozaffari’s directing style to “a young Andrea Arnold.” For those not familiar with Andrea Arnold, she directed “American Honey” in 2017, which won a BAFTA as Outstanding British Film of the Year. In 2022, Arnold was a nominee for the Best Documentary of the Year for “Cow,” a chilling look at the life (and death) of a cow on a dairy farm in England, with no dialogue and an absolutely chilling end for the cow of the title. Andrea Arnold was named “Most Promising Newcomer” in 2007 for her film “Red Road” and shared a 2010 Bafta for “Fish Tank” for Best British Film. Arnold directed “American Honey” in 2017 with Shia LaBoeuf and Riley Keough. It was a big winner at Cannes and in London at BAFTA, but the film was overlong and meandered.

If Jasmine Mozaffari is being compared to Andrea Arnold, she is in very good company.

PLOT

Babak, an Iranian medical student in school in Iowa, portrayed by Behtash Fazlali, is in love with Katie and they are on their way (in a car, like 3 out of 5 of these shorts) to meet Katie’s parents for Thanksgiving, 1979. As the film opens Babak—who resembles Al Pacino in “Serpico” with the full beard as the film opens—is being harassed by the locals in a confrontation with Americans who are incensed at the invasion of the embassy in Tehran. One of the Americans holds a poster that says: “Nuke ‘em until they glow. It worked in Japan. It’ll work in Iran.”

The couple meets up with, initially, just Katie’s mother at a dance hall type building that would be more at home in Texas or Oklahoma than in Iowa. I grew up in Iowa. Neither the landscape around the dance hall nor the dance hall itself seemed authentically “Iowan.” The surrounding landscape looked much more like Texas, from where I am while writing this.

CAST

"Motherland" is a 2025 Oscar-eligible short from Jasmin Mozaffari.

“Motherland,” a short from Jasmin Mozaffari.

Katie’s mother, Ruth, played by Birgitte Solem, is polite but cool to the young man escorting her daughter. Katie’s (Oriana Leman) father doesn’t show up at all, at first. Later, her father, Werner Summer—extremely well-played by John Ralston—makes it clear to Bobak that “My daughter will not be your effing green card.” Bobak—who has even begun calling himself “Bob”—has, by this point, shaved his beard and is trying very hard to make a good impression. However, much like immigrants from other countries who are demonized, tensions were running high and much of the animosity was not based on reality, but on hearsay or propaganda. Originally, the Iranian students protesting the Shah who took over the Embassy had no intention of occupying it for long periods of time. It is interesting that many of those in positions of power that day went on to become highly-placed governmental figures.

I don’t doubt that there was hostility towards Iranians in the United States during this tense time in history. I lived through it as a teacher; it probably happened more in the cities, whereas I was in a relatively rural area in Illinois. I was teaching 7^th and 8^th grade students and had known one of the Iranian hostages from Jesup, Iowa. My students and I were very aware of the crisis and very concerned for the safety of the hostages.

CONCLUSION

Fourteen months later, on January 20, 1981, the Iranian hostages were released. This was announced by Reagan, although it was negotiated by Jimmy Carter. The protesters were angered that the United States allowed the Shah to enter the U.S. for medical treatment for cancer and that they would not return him for trial. $7.9billion in Iranian assets that had been seized was released to facilitate the release of the 52 hostages, not counting those who escaped posing as a film crew, as depicted in the film “Argo.” Nov. 4, 1979 was the beginning of the Iranian hostage situation; the end was January 20, 1981.

In “Motherland” I could not tell if the romance between Babak and Katie was going to go forward or if her parents’ hostility had killed it. They are (once again) in a car and the Thanksgiving, 1979 meeting with Katie’s parents did not go well. I can only assume that, since Jasmine’s father, IRL, did marry a Canadian woman, they work further on their relationship and rise above her parents’ opposition to it.

“His Mother” Is 2025 Oscar-eligible Short

By Connie Wilson

On December 1, 2024

In Local, Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews

Bethany Anne Lind in “His Mother.”

“His Mother,” a 13 minute and 39 second short film that is Oscar eligible, stars Jennifer Lawrence look-alike Bethany Anne Lind as the mother of a young man who is threatening violence at his college, Southern Tech. Young Harrison Miller, age 19, 5’ 10”, has left a variety of clues that he is about to explode, saying things like “The end has come” and “None of you ever gave me a chance.”

Maia Scalia wrote and directed this high tension race to save lives, She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of Art and has worked on 2022’s “Call Jane” with Director Phyllis Nagy and star Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver in 2022, a film about the fight for abortion rights in pre-Roe days, which would be just as timely right about now. Ms. Scalia’s choice of Bethany Anne Lind to play “His Mother” is fortunate, because she does a believable job as a half-hysterical mother on her way to try to save her son from committing murder

Bethany Anne Lind played Grace Young in “Ozark” and Sandra in “Stranger Things.” It is a tribute to Bethany Anne’s emoting while behind the wheel of her car and racing to the scene of the potential crime that this short works at all. It was the third (of five) that had significant—or all, as in this case—portions shot inside a vehicle. Having written a few screenplays, I understand how tempting it is to use a car or a truck for the setting, as it certainly helps keep expenses down and frees up the set decorator and art decorator and lots of other sorts (not much need for unique costumes, either) and, consequently, helps keep the cost(s) of a production down.

We never actually see her son, Harrison, or his preoccupied father, Jason Miller, whom Bethany Anne talks to on the phone. The voice of father Jason is D.W. Moffett, a Chicago native who has played roles in “Traffic,” “Falling Down,” and “Friday Night Lights.” The voice of Harrison, her son, is Ben Irving, who played Bobby Freeze in Ben Affleck’s 2020 film “The Way Back.” Officer Davis (Evan Hall of “Orange is the New Black”) and the emergency dispatcher (Aleah Guinones; Keisha in 2023’s “Shrinking”) are the only other voices in the piece, and we never see them.

“His Mother” Oscar eligible short.

Sound effects (bullets and sirens, for example) become important in this short piece. The music by Eli Keszler is crucial and the cinematography by Matt Clegg is mostly close-ups of Bethany Anne Lind’s face. I found myself wondering how his mother telling the authorities to look for her son in a blue Accura was viewed by Ms. Miller when the authorities caught up to her son, who had posted videos that led to him being sought as an “active shooter at large.” Phrases like “This is his only choice” are countered by his frazzled mother’s plea “Please help me understand.”

This one was tense and dramatic and takes place completely inside a car. I saw five in one sitting; this was my favorite.

“Buscando Alma” Is 2025 Oscar-Eligible Short

By Connie Wilson

On November 30, 2024

In Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews

“Buscando Alma,” a short about immigrants’ separation from their children at the border, has qualified for the 2025 Academy Awards.

“Buscando Alma,” a 15 minute 21 second short, has qualified for the 2025 Academy Awards in competition in Atlanta. It is also a timely subject, given the Trump administration’s vow to deport millions of immigrants. It is directed by a woman and stars a trans-gender female, also topics that are current.

“Buscando Alma” was written by Maiv Flores and Melissa Fisher; Fisher directed. It is a heartwarming tearjerker. The synopsis sums up the plot this way: “A Honduran immigrant is given the chance to meet her mother after nearly two decades of separation. As she grapples with the uncertainty of their reunion, she is confronted by tumultuous memories of her past.”

The short film won the 2024 Jury Award for “Best Drama Short” at Out On Film: Atlanta’s LGBTQ Film Festival, qualifying it for the 2025 Oscars®. Having just finished reviewing films at the Chicago International Film Festival where I saw the Errol Morris documentary “Separated,” the story of children separated from their parents at the border during the first Trump administration. I related to this one. Children who lose their connection to their parents are enveloped by a sense of longing and often suffer major psychological trauma. Separation has “left a hole in their hearts.” “Buscando Alma’s” heartfelt message hit home after seeing “Separated,” a sobering revisiting of one of our nation’s most shameful episodes. (The “Separated” crew actually rebuilt the cages the immigrants were placed in at the border to revisit the Tom Holman-supervised incidents of man’s inhumanity to man, infants ripped from their mothers’ arms). After nearly two decades apart, Cristina (Carolina Gutierrez) is finally able to locate her mother with the help of an attorney, but their long-awaited reunion comes with trepidation as she confronts memories of her past.

DIALOGUE

With lines like, “I want to know if she looked for me the way I looked for her” and “I have been searching for you my whole life” from lead actress Gutierrez, you’re in for a sad commentary on today’s headlines, with the Trump administration’s vow to deport millions. More chaos and heartbreak to come. As “Separated” made clear (based on reporting by the New York Times) the Trump administration intentionally kept very poor (if any) records of family members separated at the border. A child of immigrants flew in from Miami to tell us her own personal story. A teenager, she did not see her father again for five years after they were separated at the border. The actress playing the mother in this short (Neher Jacqueline Briceno) says to her daughter upon their reunion, “You are my life. I love you with my whole soul.”

DIRECTOR

Melissa Fisher is a Los Angeles based writer and director. She is also a member of the International Cinematographer’s Guild and has worked on Academy and Emmy Award winning films and television series. Melissa went from camera PA on Michael Bay’s “Pain & Gain,” to camera assist on films like “La La Land.” She headed up the camera department on hit television shows like “GLOW” and “The Dropout.” She is currently working on a new Amazon Prime series, “Ballard,” that is scheduled for release in 2025.

LEAD ACTRESS

Lead actress Carolina Gutierrez.

Lead actress Carolina Gutierrez is a Bravo award-nominated Los Angeles based trans-gender actress born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She played the role of Marissa on the TV Show “L Word Generation Q.” She also played the lead role of Sofia on Amazon Prime’s web series “Starlet Diner,” a supporting role in the Web Series “The Good Samaritans,” and appeared on the Amazon Prime hit show “Goliath.” A proud Latina transgender woman, Carolina has utilized her platform to advocate for trans rights. Carolina has also appeared in several television shows, movies and national commercials, including her role as assassin Emma Ruiz on NCIS LA, Sara on La Costilla de Eva in Colombia, and the lead in a national car commercial with Nissan.

OTHER CAST

The sets for “Buscando Alma” particularly impressed me, whether a church, a deck, or a kitchen, Mars Feehery was responsible for the sets. Matt Schwartz also has done a great job on sound design. Music was composed by Simon Franglen and the Cinematographer was by Boa Simon.

Scott Beck & Bryan Woods Talk “Heretic”

By Connie Wilson

On November 16, 2024

In Interviews, Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews

One of the most interesting and well-scripted films out now is “Heretic,” a horror/suspense thriller written and directed by the boys from Bettendorf (Iowa), Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who gave us “A Quiet Place” back in 2018. During my interview with them at SXSW on March 10, 2018, I wrote, “I’m predicting ‘A Quiet Place’ will take off like a rocket, helping Beck and Woods receive even more deserved recognition.” That prediction is holding up well with this third film from the dynamic duo. The film earned back its production costs in its first weekend. It was sitting at $22 million in revenue, worldwide, as of November 14, 2024 for a film that cost less than $10 million.

“Heretic” depicts two Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton (Chloe East of “The Fabelmans”) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher of “Yellowjackets”) accepting an invitation to share their faith with a seemingly kindly older gentleman named Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). He tells them his wife is busy in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie, when inviting them into his house. Since missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would not enter his small home if there were not a woman present to chaperone their discussion, the rest of the film becomes a game of cat-and-mouse, belief and disbelief, control of the two girls by a man who may or may not be diabolical.

Scott Beck, Connie Wilson, Bryan Woods (L to R) in Austin at SXSW 2018.

(Left to Right) Scott Beck, Connie Wilson and Bryan Woods at SXSW (Austin, TX) on March 10, 2018.

When “A Quiet Place” opened SXSW in 2018, I interviewed Scott Beck & Bryan Woods in Austin. We talked about our mutual hometown area and how it contributed to the phenomenal success of creating “A Quiet Place” and then handing off their creation to John Krasinski (who contributed to the script). Beck & Woods have moved on to give us another wildly original and well-plotted current film, “Heretic,” starring Hugh Grant. Two young female Mormon missionaries pay a call on Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) and place their lives in danger while discussing their faith.

Anyone who has seen “A Quiet Place” knows that, dialogue-wise, it is spare. The creatures might hear you and come for you, so mum’s the word. The 2023 sci-fi outing “25” that Beck & Woods did last, starring Adam Driver, was also more action, less talk. This one is dialogue heavy and Hugh Grant pulls it off beautifully.

Hugh Grant in “Heretic.”

SCRIPT

With “Heretic,” Beck & Woods have created an original script for a film that is a very in-depth talk about religion and life-after-death. It’s all couched within a horror movie concept. Talk—and deep concepts—dominate the movie. As Scott Beck told Matt Grobar of “Deadline”: “Heretic was something that Bryan and I had just been scratching at—the idea of religious ideologist Trojan horsing into a genre movie—for years and years.”

Bryan Woods: “We started writing the film 10 years ago, and got to the young missionaries meeting Mr. Reed. They sit down with him. Mr. Reed opens his mouth, and immediately we kind of stopped dead in our tracks, because he has a genius-level IQ. He has studied all the world’s religions, and we felt like we had not done that work yet. We’ve been interested in religion and cults our whole lives, but we hadn’t sat down and read the Quran or the Book of Mormon. We hadn’t filled our heads with enough information. So we spent the last decade just enriching our point of view—speaking with a lot of people, sitting down with missionaries, reading a lot of atheist thinkers and ingesting their points of view. The reason we picked up the script again and kept writing wasn’t so much that we reached a point of, ‘We did it! We’ve solved religion! or, ‘We’ve read enough to understand Mr. Reed.’ It was actually a confluence of personal and professional events.”

Woods said, “Every time we’d write a line, we’d have to stop and then go to Wikipedia to research something. It just felt inorganic, and so we did some fun research over the course of 10 years so that it could be a first language once we got further into writing Reed.” Woods told the “Hollywood Reporter” (David Brians, Nov. 9, 2024), “We also set out to make a movie that was deeply personal in terms of our relationship with the subject matter of belief and disbelief and what happens when you die. So, after pouring out all our neuroses and spilling our guts into this movie, it’s very exciting to see it connect with audiences, to say the least. We read interesting thinkers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. It wasn’t rigorous research every night at the library, but we read a lot of atheist thinkers and contemporary philosophers, as well as holy books we’d never read like the Book of Mormon or the Quran, just so that it could be a first language once we got further into writing Reed.”

GENESIS

Sophie Thatcher & Chloe East in “Heretic.”

Sophie Thatcher (L) and Chloe East in “Heretic.”

Woods: “It was just in our lives we had hit this emotional low point where it seemed like everything was going wrong. At that low point, my father passed away unexpectedly from esophageal cancer…It was that kind of pain and depression. Confrontation with these large questions of, ‘What happens when you die? Is there something? Is there nothing?’ It was that moment where we were like, ‘It’s time to finally pick up the script and write it.’ Because we were feeling so raw emotionally. We always felt that “Heretic” needed to be one of those projects that’s just embarrassingly personal, and we’ve always dreamed of doing a movie like that. It was time to express all of our fears and anxiety about what happens when you die and the mystery of death. So that’s where it came from, and once we sat down to write the script in earnest, it just poured out of us.”

Scott Beck: “We wanted to swing in the opposite direction of “A Quiet Place” and “65”, two films that are void of dialogue and are straightforward thrillers. For “Heretic” it was all about how we could weaponize dialogue and ideas about theology to create something that hopefully feels as scary a ‘A Quiet Place.’ There’s a line in the movie that goes ‘The more you know, the less you know’ and the older we get (they are 40), we find ourselves gravitating to the philosophy that life is a mystery. And what happens when we die is the greatest mystery, but there’s something beautiful in not knowing. There’s something beautiful in the pursuit of the truth of knowing, while also embracing the fact that you won’t know until it’s too late.” As the young men pointed out in various interviews, almost every horror movie has fear of death as a catalyst and plot point.

The pair told the University of Iowa alumni magazine, “Every scary movie is about the same thing. It’s about our human fear of death and this question of what happens when you die. We wanted to turn that conversation that we’ve been having since we were eleven years old (when the pair began making small films in the Iowa Quad Cities) into a movie.”

Bryan Woods (left) and Scott Beck at SXSW in Austin (TX) on March 10, 2018.

FILM FINANCING

Scott Beck: “I think it’s our responsibility as filmmakers not only to think creatively about the story, but to think creatively about how do we get movies made in this landscape right now, especially coming from the viewpoint that we love movies that aren’t based on anything else and ostensibly are original stories. I think about ‘Heretic’ the same way I think about ‘A Quiet Place.’ When working on the script for these movies we didn’t think either were necessarily a home run, meaning we needed to protect ourselves to just have the means to make each movie. So each movie was written in the spirit of, can we make this for $50,000 in our home state of Iowa? And best case scenario, can we get it made at the studio level with proper resources? ‘Heretic’ was certainly something, because of the content of having a theological debate in the vessel of a thriller, that we felt it may not be a home run, But, if so, a home like A24 could incubate that in a responsible way, both creatively and financially. I think it’s in our interest, also, when creating these movies, to make sure that it feels like there’s a demand to see the movie in a theater. So, while certain people have compared ‘Heretic’ to a stage play, we’re very adamant about the fact that it’s a piece of cinema. (It should be noted that the pair now owns “The Last Picture House” theater in Davenport, Iowa, where “Heretic” premiered on November 8^th with one of the film’s stars, Chloe East, in attendance.)

“The Last Picture House” in Davenport, Iowa.

Bryan Woods: “There is a conversation, though, right now, that we’re picking up on in movie culture right now, this feeling of, ‘Oh, if only movies were cheaper then they would be more financially responsible and, therefore, more successful.’ It’s an interesting question to be asking, but, also, we would caution against that a little bit because you do want to preserve this feeling of spectacle, this feeling of going to a theater and seeing something special. Big movies and studios that spend a lot of money on movies, that’s a great thing. I think what’s not a great thing is just how boring it’s all gotten. It’s gotten too easy to make white noise, and so taking risks on a big level, for us, it is a great thing.” Woods added, “With movies, they haven’t quite replicated that experiential feeling of going to a cinema, watching a piece of work with 200 strangers.” (to Matt Grobar, “Deadline”).

HUGH GRANT AND OTHER IMPOSSIBLE GETS

“Heretic” movie poster

Scott Beck: “We feel like one of the movie’s secret weapons is Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant is an actor who has charmed worldwide audiences with his romantic comedies, and yet this movie, we kind of weaponize that good will that he’s formed with an audience. Partly because of that, the movie keeps you guessing. ‘Am I in a dangerous situation or am I just perceiving danger that’s not really there?’” Beck & Woods shared this marketing tactic with the University of Iowa alumni magazine in an interview. Grant, himself, during an appearance on ‘Late Night with Seth Meyer,’ said of this uncharacteristic role, “I spent months building up a huge biography for the character. I don’t know if it helps at all, but it seems to calm me down. It’s better than Lorazepam. He (Mr. Reed) is not exactly charming. What’s so fabulous about this is that it’s so different. What I was aiming for was a kind of groovy professor—a bit of a twat is the word. He’s a prankster who just, for some reason, is not very popular so he over-compensates by being a bit too fun.”

Chloe East & Sophie Thatcher approach Mr. Reed's house in "Heretic."

Chloe East (L) & Sophie Thatcher (R) in front of Mr. Reed’s (Hugh Grant’s) house.

Commenting on his co-stars, Chloe East as Sister Paxton and Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes on “Late Night,” Grant praised their performances, saying, “They are properly good and very three-dimensional and likeable. It could have happened that they came off as zealous Mormon boors.” As Beck & Woods have acknowledged, “Much of this movie is about dialogue and philosophical thoughts and ideas, a man who’s talking, almost mansplaining, but also two women who are trying to basically have a conversation between each other just on their faces. Learning about how much people say when they don’t say anything has always been a good tool to have in our writing toolbox.” The two told me back in 2018 that it was a class in American sign language on campus at the University of Iowa that sparked “A Quiet Place” and, once again, the 2007 graduates of the University of Iowa in communication studies credit a class they took at Iowa on nonverbal communication with helping to inspire their storytelling style. Both of the female leads grew up Mormon.

Both Steven Spielberg and Steven King have weighed in as admiring “Heretic.” Spielberg called up producer Stacey Sher, because Spielberg had cast Chloe in “The Fabelmans” and wanted to see where she had gone in her career. Beck & Woods asked Sher, producer of “Pulp Fiction,” to help them get permission to use all of the cultural touchstones they wanted in the movie, such as the rights disputes between Radiohead, Lana Del Rey and the Hollies. There were also references to games like Monopoly. Said Bryan Woods, “There was no back-up plan! We were terrified. When we wrote that scene, we were elated and so proud of it, but then that feeling was instantly followed by: ‘This will never get off the page. We will never get Monopoly cleared. We will never be able to air Radiohead’s dirty laundry.’ So it became a depressing moment, and that’s when you pick up the phone and you ask Stacey Sher to please help produce this movie with us. We asked her to help us do what felt like the impossible, which was get all of these pop cultural touchstones into the movie, so there was absolutely no back-up, and we were sweating it even up until three weeks ago. There was some last-minute wrangling about rights,” Bryan Woods told Brian Davids of “The Hollywood Reporter.”

OTHER CAST

Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed.

Chang-hoon Chung, the man who shot “The Handmaiden” and “Oldboy” did great work cinematically with the interior of the house. Topher Grant (“That 70s Show,” “BlacKkKlansman“) portrays Elder Kennedy. Also a huge help to the film’s success was Phil Messina, production designer and art director. Messina had worked on “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” (2013) and “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” (2015) and “Mother” (2017). As Woods told Matt Grobar of “Deadline,” “We’re very visual writers, and I mean that literally. Like, our script for “A Quiet Place” had certain pages that were completely blank, and then just had one word on it to emphasize a certain sound effect, or would have images and diagrams to help sell the concept of a modern-day silent film. With “Heretic” we’re using the Monopoly board images in the script. We’re putting them in, how we see them all lay out. And to that end, the house layout as Scott and I are writing, we’re diagramming and drawing up the bad version of what the house looks like and how it connects. It’s funny. We write in a kind of dream logic, and there’s two of us. There’s two brains, and sometimes we wonder if we’re like right and left brain, and then the two of us equal one brain. It’s funny how, when we write, Scott will diagram something out. He’ll have a door be on the left side and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, interesting. I always saw it on the right side.’ So a big part of our process is drawing and diagramming so that we’re imagining the same movie. Then you bring in someone like Phil Messina and he elevates it and helps us clarify some of the dream logic.” The house is like a Mobius strip and plays an important role in the plot.

THE ENDING

Chloe East in “Heretic”

Chloe East as Sister Paxton in “Heretic.”

Beck: “How do we finalize this ending and communicate an ambiguity, but an intentional ambiguity, so that it can anchor in people’s interpretations of the movie, in terms of their relationship with either being religious or non-religious, and the way they see the world. The butterfly felt like it was a proper symbol for that.” The open-ended interpretation of what happens (or doesn’t happen) reminded me of “Twelve Monkeys,” which was able to be interpreted in more than one way and set off many discussions among fans and critics. The pair told CinemaBlend’s Eric Eisenberg: “Well, the ending, the mark was always to present a larger question that’s a take home for the audience. Our ambition with this film is that it’s a conversational starter. Everybody has their own relationship to belief or disbelief, atheism, to being staunchly religious. And it felt like this movie, if anything, can hold a mirror up to the questions of like, ‘Why do we believe what we believe? How do we come to our own convictions?’ The end of the film presents, I think, that question in a very ambiguous way, but may be very overt. There can be three, four, five different interpretations of how you walk away from that movie. And the hope is that your interpretation of that reflects upon your own contradictions or your own reasonings to why you believe what you believe.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

“We have movies at different scales and passion will win out. And we love writing things that we don’t direct. So I hope it’s not going to be, we’ve got five great projects and only one of them comes to life. The next one we’re directing will probably be whatever scares us the most,” said Bryan Woods to “Deadline.” “We were terrified of making ‘Heretic’ because the whole conceptual framework of ‘Heretic’ is, can you replace the jump scare that we had been bored with and became our usual bag of tricks. Can you replace that with a philosophical idea? Can a line of dialogue about religion be just as scary as the monster that’s hiding under your bed? A movie that’s wall-to-wall talking, that’s still somehow engaging, felt really hard to do. So, I think whatever we do next is going to be something that we look and go, ‘This is insane. Nobody’s going to want to make this movie, especially us. That’ll probably be the one.”

Five Oscar-Eligible Shorts

By Connie Wilson

On November 10, 2024

In Movies, Music, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews

Here are 5 more Oscar-eligible shorts in an attempt to acquaint audiences with some of the contenders for this year’s Academy Awards: “Moeder,” “Then Comes the Body,” “Fireline,” “Will I See You Again?” and “Sunflower.”

“Moeder”
– This 20 minute film, directed by Salomon Ligthelm focused on the deaths of 298 civilian passengers when the Russians shot down Malaysian Airlines MH17 on 7/17/2014. The flight, filled with civilians who were primarily Dutch citizens, was 50 kilometers from the Russian/Ukrainian border in Donetsk when a surface-to-air missile took it down, killing all aboard. Apparently, the Russians thought the plane might have arms or ammunition aboard, as it was close to the fighting. A phone from the plane fell to Earth and landed in the back yard of one of the locals. Vitalik Ivanov picks it up and hears a woman’s voice say (in Dutch), “Daniel, can you hear me?” The fellow who found the still operative phone (and the corpse?) of a Dutch victim in his back yard is a Rozspyne miner. He and his fellow miners are sent out into the fields to locate the bodies of the victims and to mark them with long white-flagged poles. The hero of this film finds a dying horse fatally wounded by falling debris. Vitalik has to finish the job the Russians started and dispatch the injured animal, which is traumatic for him. None of Vitalik’s co-workers (miners) are happy about being assigned this non-work-related task, either. One of them mutters, “We’re miners, not soldiers.”
“Moeder”

The landscape for all of this action is like a background for a Ukrainian Gothic portrait in the manner of American Gothic. It is a beautifully photographed bucolic, pastoral setting. In just the opening moments there is a shot of the miner, smoking, silhouetted in the frame of the back door of his home, a beautifully composed shot. Vitalik has just heard the sounds of bombs or falling debris hitting the ground. His wife (Yeva) says, “It sounded like the end of the world. And perhaps it was, for some.” The sound effects were exceptionally well-done. The couple is offered $100 for an interview. Yeva is pregnant. She says, “We can use the money.” Vitalik struggles unsuccessfully to remain composed throughout the interview. He ultimately translates a few Ukrainian words into Russian and sends the mother of the Dutch victim (“Moeder” translates to “Mother”) the bad news of her son’s death in his back yard, via the phone that fell from Flight MH17.This was a riveting, well-done, timely short. It made me feel even more concern for Ukraine after our November 5^th Presidential election. The sound, cinematography, and acting were all top notch.

Nigerian ballet dancer dancing atop the roofs of busses.

- Nigerian ballet dancers in “Then Comes the Body.”
  “Then Comes the Body” – Jacob Krupnick has filmed the story of ballet in Nigeria. The enterprising individual who taught himself ballet from YouTube videos has founded a Nigerian Classical Ballet Company in Lagos, Nigeria, called Leap of Dance, to teach ballet to other Nigerian children. Daniel Owosoni Ajala has taught several talented Nigerian youth to dance, and they have become so good that other nations are offering them scholarships to study ballet in places like Belgium and South Africa. The film had its World Premiere at Tribeca in 2023, It had its International Premiere in Melbourne and its European Premiere at Cameraimage. It was named Best Short non-fiction and short shorts in Tokyo and Krupnick’s work became a viral sensation during the pandemic. The 14 minute, 44 second short had excellent sound, edited and mixed by Zach Egan, with a score by Martin Veloz. The primary dancers are Olamide Olarwe and Precious Duru. The film’s message: “First comes the heart; then comes the body.” That message has been my guide in selecting which of these 5 Oscar-eligible shorts is most impressive. “Then Comes the Body” has heart and plenty of it. The last few in this set of 5 films didn’t have as much “heart.” They were done well, but the top two had way more heart.
- “Fireline” short.
  3 inmate firefighters in “Fireline”
- “Fireline” – “Fireline” was a 13 minute 23 second short about incarcerated firefighters. It was directed by Robin Takao D’Oench, a Japanese American writer/ director/ producer from NYC. Robin is a Film Independent Project Involve Directing Fellow and a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. These Wildland firefighters were photographed by Ming Jue Hu and the script was written and directed by Robin Takao D’oenoh. Lena Waithe (and 3 others) executive produced this story of Otto Reyes (Bobby Soto), an incarcerated inmate who has just learned that his request for parole has been denied. Not long after learning that he is not getting out of prison early, he and the others are called to go battle a fire. Joshua Caleb Johnson portrayed Shawn Davies and Fabian Alomar was Primo. Otto has secured an illegal cell phone, which he wants to use to call his daughter to wish her a happy birthday. The visual effects of a fire bearing down on the firefighters are excellent. It seemed very short in comparison to the others, which, in fact, it was. This film was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival and was part of the official selection at HollyShorts, and was made as part of Indeed’s Rising Voices program – an initiative set up to discover, invest in and share stories created by BIPOC filmmakers and storytellers. Rising Voices was created in collaboration with Lena Waithe, Hillman Grad Productions, Ventureland and 271 Films. “Fireline” has qualified to be considered for the 2025 Oscars®. Robin is a Film Independent Project Involve Directing Fellow and a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The acting was fine. The special visual effects were better than in the Angelina Jolie 2021 film “Those Who Wished Me Dead” and on a par with 2018’s “Wildlife.” (Cary Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal).

Nick Wechsler as Paul Jensen.

“Will I See You Again?” – Michael Perez-Lindsey, a queer Mexican-American director, has helmed a well-acted vignette that depicts the funeral of a former friend that brings two former lovers back together after many years. The deceased friend, Jim Turner (Robert Okumu) has left an inheritance for the two former lovers, but they can only inherit it if they each answer 5 questions honestly while hooked up to lie detectors. [What could be unrealistic about that scenario—right?] The Black former lover is portrayed by Hosea Chanchez as Max Palmer. His former white love, Paul Jensen, is portrayed by Nick Wechsler. These two gave it their best shot, but the entire set-up seemed hokey, to me. The song that played at the end, performed by Jalen Ngonda, who co-wrote it with Mike Buckley, was similarly cheesy. It was a very Barry White-esque rendition of “Come Around and Love Me,” which seemed desperate. Having the two leads grasp each other’s fore-arms at film’s end (24 minutes 13 seconds) might have represented a happy ending, but the best way to sum up what was not working with this one would be to use the words of “Then Comes the Body”: “First comes the heart.” This one lacked a realistic premise. I don’t read (or write) heterosexual romances because they are too cheesy for my tastes, so I was not the right audience for this sentimental-but-unrealistic project. That said, it had a very professional sheen and the gay community certainly might enjoy the theme of reconciliation and love recovered despite 20 years of alienation.
“Sunflower” short
Sunflower – This 16 minute, 26 second short from Mateusz Balcerek was based on a true story about Danuta Gorecka, the director’s grandmother, and what happened to her during WWII in 1944 as a child. (Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom and the U.S. collaborated). The little girl who played Danuta (Martyna Zazula) was very cute and did a very credible acting job. She was told to hide under the bed while soldiers entered her home and shot her grandfather dead. There is another close call in the yard, when Danuta and her mother Alicia (Sylwia Boron) are almost apprehended while building something that I suspect was a coffin for the dead grandfather. The music by Roberto Mengoli was good. The Guildhall London Symphony Orchestra and the London Music Central Kids’ Choir performed beautifully. The motif of a sunflower (Slonecznik) used animation and repeated as a linking motif throughout the film.

“Here” Closes the 60th Chicago International Film Festival with Director Robert Zemeckis “Here”

By Connie Wilson

On October 28, 2024

In Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews

Robert Zemeckis often produces movies at the fore-front of technology (Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), The Polar Express (2004)). The Chicago native returned to his hometown for closing night of the 60^th Chicago International Film Festival with “Here.” “Here” is also cinematically ground-breaking. Since the entire film is shot in the same living room from a single camera angle in the home of Alan and Rose Young (Rose and Al were the real first names of Zemeckis’ parents on the South side of Chicago), it is a multi-generational look at the Young family. Richard (Tom Hanks) and Margaret (Robin Wright), the reunited stars of Forrest Gump (1994), are the primary couple followed in the most depth.

A.I. DE-AGING

The A.I. de-aging (Metaphysic A.I.) really works well here. There were complaints when I first saw it used in Scorsese’s “The Irishman” in 2019. I heard none after “Here,” 5 years later. Zemeckis at age 72, with a career that began in 1972, has 35 films as director, nearly as many as writer, and 55 as producer. Other directors who started out in Chicago with their first films include Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Taylor Hackford and William Friedkin. Zemeckis is in storied company and this is another classic cinematic achievement in his long career.

ONE ROOM

The set of Robert Zemeckis’ “Here.”

“Here” is shot in one room from one camera angle. That sounds like a play, but picture-frame-like boxes are super-imposed on the screen at various points to depict other families in other eras who have lived in the same house. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Eric Roth and Zemeckis and told much in the style of the acclaimed graphic novel by Richard McGuire on which it is based, the story travels through generations. Tom Hanks and Robin Wright are the primary stars of this tale of love, loss, laughter and life, all of which happen right “Here.” Because the camera is in one spot, at times the actors walk towards it like we might see television hosts on late-night talk shows walk up to the camera. It’s new and original. Like the split-screen technique (which I remember in 1968’s “The Boston Strangler” with Tony Curtis, although it was first used in “The Parent Trap” by Disney in 1961), I wouldn’t want to see every single film done this way, but when something works, it works. With Zemeckis at the helm, it worked in “Here.”

FOUNDERS AWARD

Director Robert Zemeckis (L) accepts the Founders’ Award from Michael Kutza (R), retired founder of the Chicago International Film Festival.

Zemeckis received the Founders’ Award from retired Chicago International Film Founder Michael Kutza, who started the festival in 1964. The award correctly applauded Zemeckis for his “impeccably crafted and deeply moving stories,” which includes the five mentioned above, as well as “Castaway,” “Flight,” “What Lies Beneath,” “Romancing the Stone” and a host of others. Zemeckis has directed three films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant: Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Forrest Gump (1994).

DESCRIBING “HERE’S” UNIQUE STYLE

In presenting Zemeckis with the Founders’ Award, Michael Kutza declared “Here” to be Zemeckis’ “Lawrence of Arabia.” If that accolade doesn’t resonate with you, consider that the unusual original use of a picture-frame-like box, insert atop the screen highlights everything from the dinosaur age to the present, which keeps the audience from getting the sense of claustrophobia that some of us experienced in 2022’s “The Whale,” when Brendan Fraser’s character never left his living room. The boxed skipping to various generations prevents that. It also highlights, briefly, other families who have lived in the same house all the way back to the time of Benjamin Franklin. It is a little like thumbing through a photo book and recalling the moment in time when each was taken, or turning on the radio to hear a favorite tune that instantly takes you back to a specific time in your life.

The choice of moments to guide the audience was spot-on. We see the Three Stooges and Red Skelton on the living room television set. Jane Fonda is seen doing aerobics. The “Theme from a Summer Place” saturated the air waves in 1963. Margaret is wearing the “flip” hair-do when Richard takes her home to meet his parents, a 60s give-away. The news on the television set in the background tells us that the Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor. Thanksgivings of yesteryear are revisited and there is even drama in the living room, from characters having medical emergencies, as there would be in a home occupied all the way back to Indian days in America. Out the picture window and across the street is a house where Benjamin Franklin once lived, so we can infer that this is Philadelphia. That East coast location is further borne out by the snow that periodically falls outside the window, most memorably during Richard’s apology to Margaret for basically ignoring her throughout their marriage. Zemeckis has said, “You can examine the truth about something that happened in the past, because you’ve been able to look at it through the prism of time.” And that is what “Here” is doing.

MUSIC

(L to R) Director Robert Zemeckis, CIFF founder Michael Kutza, Lesley Zemeckis and Zsa Zsa Zemeckis, at the closing night of the 60th Chicago International Film Festival screening of “Here.”

Alan Silvestri has worked on every Zemeckis film since “Romancing the Stone,” a 40-year partnership. The music in “Here” is wonderful and adds immeasurably to the film’s appeal. It is, once-again, Oscar-worthy. Silvestri has had 2 Oscar nominations (for Zemecki’s “Forrest Gump” in 1994 and for “The Polar Express” in 2004), 2 Golden Globe nominations, 3 Grammy and 2 Emmys. Silvestri at 74 and Zemeckis at 72 utilize their maturity in this film. They have lived life and can relate to the young wife or husband whose youthful dreams are dashed as real life happens while they’re making other plans.

THEMES

The life experiences of Richard and Margaret serve as a stand-in for those of us in the audience. Richard is a talented artist. In his youth, he wanted to attend school to become a graphic design artist. Instead, Margaret gets pregnant and Richard ends up selling insurance. Later, Margaret will ask Richard why he quit painting. He answers, “I had to make a living…Do you think I wanted to be done with my life when I was 22?”

Margaret always wanted to travel. She also wanted her own house, but ends up having to settle for living with her in-laws for many years. As old age takes its toll on Al and Rose, Richard and Margaret are called upon to help them, as family does. Any time Margaret brings up her desire for a house of her own, Richard will say that it is too expensive, to the point that Margaret eventually goes to work. To his credit, Richard does draw up house plans once, but, like everything else, those plans are pushed aside until later. As the script says, “You always find a reason not to do something.”

Richard will ultimately apologize for ignoring Margaret’s desires so many times over the years. (This was the second film at CIFF where husbands apologize to the wives they habitually ignored; the first was “Nightbitch.”) Among the truisms that will be articulated by a character or characters in the film are “Time flies” and “We did the best we could.” Satisfaction that their children are realizing their own dreams comes through in the voices of the proud parents when Vanessa (played by Zsa Zsa Zemeckis, Zemeckis’ real-life daughter) goes to law school and becomes an attorney.

CONCLUSION

Director Robert Zemeckis with his Founders’ Award at the closing night of the 60th Chicago International Film Festival on October 27, 2024.

In 2007 “Entertainment Weekly” magazine named Robert (Bob) Zemeckis Number 18 on its list of “the smartest people in Hollywood.” From his first start (with co-writer and collaborator Bob Gale) when they sold an episode of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Chopper (#1.15) in 1975, Zemeckis has experimented with digital movie-making (“The Polar Express,” 2004) saying, “I just love all types of movies, but I was especially interested in digital cinema. I was interested in films that could be done in digital.” On October 25, 2012, when Zemeckis came to Chicago to screen “Flight” (his 2^nd showing in Chicago) he said, “All film techniques should disappear and be there to serve the characters and the story.”

Zemeckis has well-served the characters and the story in “Here” with this new film technique. The picture-frame technique and the improved de-aging were original, unique never-seen-before methods to create another iconic Zemeckis film. Miramax releases “Here” on November 1, 2024. It should attract fans of “Forrest Gump” and all other classic Zemeckis films.