Orin O’Brien is clearly talented and impressive. Hell, throughout this film, I found her charming and likable too. I can see why her niece Molly likes her so much. What I cannot understand, though, is why Molly made this film about her.
I cannot complain about the music - I have listened to my friends and family play music long enough to know that Orin is doing something special with that instrument. I can also tell her student, that man…
This documentary manages to ask a question without actually asking a question, which is always the best kind. They never need to say, “Should we be using the death penalty in our society?” for us to hear that question in our head during this film. Perhaps I am biased - I have been against the death penalty for years - but the fact that this film helps us sympathize with people from all sides of the issue, in a very…
For the first five minutes of this film, I was locked in. It was funny, and charming, and seemed like it was prepared to take me down a path of amusement and absurdity that the Academy Award-nominated short films rarely traverse. Could this simple premise be carried out to something with a satisfying conclusion?
Unfortunately not. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this film, but it’s way too much for a twenty-odd minute venture. Absurdist comedy, questions of…
It’s a tense, urgent, and timely little film. When you get to the end, you feel like there should be more, but that’s most likely on purpose - the choices made seem both nonsensical and completely logical given the situation presented to us, and we don’t see what happens afterwards (although history tells us exactly what happened). It’s frustrating to watch unfold, and but even more poignant is our protagonist’s face as the train gets rolling again, beginning to process…
