The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Features  |  Reviews

Review: 2011 Art House Project Shorts Program

Surreal poetry
By PETER KEOUGH  |  January 18, 2012
3.5 3.5 Stars

main_EaglemanStag_480

Short films are the art of omission, and those in this outstanding Sundance program transform non-sequiturs into surreal poetry. Like Mikey Please's animated The Eagleman Stag, which relates the life of an entomologist and explores the meaning of life by way of the title beetle. Lauren Wolkenstein's The Strange Ones skips the beginning, end, and most of the middle in its story of a man, a boy, and a swimming pool, and is all the creepier for it. Somewhere between Kristen Wiig and Miranda July lies the comic vision of Lake Bell's Worst Enemy, about a woman trapped in a girdle. Zachary Treitz taps into Florida weirdness with We're Leaving, as a pet alligator complicates a couple's relocation from a trailer park, and cramped submariners confront a dead woman in Ariel Kleinman's Deeper than Yesterday. Meanwhile, Trevor Anderson's The High Level Bridge and Ruben Östlund's Incident by a Bank are the token docs, sort of.

Related: Review: The Sun, Review: La Danse: Le Ballet de L'Opéra de Paris, Review: Did You Hear About the Morgans?, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Short Films, Film reviews, Swedish,  More more >
| More

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 01/21 ]   "Big Catholic Guilt- Resurrection" Screening  @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
[ 01/21 ]   Boston Chamber Music Society  @ Kresge Auditorium at MIT
[ 01/21 ]   Cantata Singers  @ First Congregational Church
ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: YOUNG GOETHE IN LOVE  |  January 19, 2012
    In Philipp Stölzl's fanciful portrait of the artist as a young scamp, the future genius (Alexander Fehling) introduces himself as "Goethe with an 'oe'," earning a reputation as a pratfalling screw-up.
  •   REVIEW: 2011 ART HOUSE PROJECT SHORTS PROGRAM  |  January 18, 2012
    Short films are the art of omission, and those in this outstanding Sundance program transform non-sequiturs into surreal poetry.
  •   INTERVIEW: WIM WENDERS TAKES 3D ONE STEP FURTHER  |  January 18, 2012
    Some are surprised that Wim Wenders, like fellow veteran of the '70s New German Cinema Werner Herzog, has embraced something as newfangled as 3D.
  •   THE OSCARS LOOK BACK IN LANGUOR IN 2011  |  January 18, 2012
    This year, perhaps in hopes of diverting audiences with a different format, the Motion Picture Academy has again changed the number of Best Picture nominees.
  •   REVIEW: THE FLOWERS OF WAR  |  January 17, 2012
    In 1937 the invading Imperial Japanese Army killed and raped thousands of people in the Chinese city of Nanjing. The atrocity has recently inspired two Chinese films, including Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death and this unimpressive outing from Zhang Yimou.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed