Jonathan Berry home    List of Films for 2005

Hardwood

We saw the first 15 minutes of this 29 minute short and then the picture froze. DVD hardware problems.

Being Caribou

Run as a double bill with the previous DVD-film. Unfortunately, I left before it began because I needed to be away from the cinema before 9 pm, and even if the replacement hardware arrived and everything went perfectly, the film would not finish until 9:20.

Through My Thick Glasses (short)

Was this a sardonic take on the next film? A youngster's thick glasses put the scene in an out of focus, but what he really wants to see is in the mind's eye: his grandfather's story of his experiences as a boy in Norway under Nazi occupation.

Childstar

Might have been a *** film, but I found the soft focus distracting. OK, peripheral vision shots were out of focus, I'll accept the artistic viewpoint, but only when it is contrasted with razor-sharp central focus. But the best focus there was, was soft, and most of the time it was worse than that. If I wanted that kind of picture quality, I'd use my 12" B+W 30-year-old portable with rabbit ears on Channel 3.

Moon Man (short)

Fun. Good Newfie fun, my boy, my son, my cod.

What Remains of Us

A movie whose scope dwarfs the petty concerns of 95% of features. The moving story of a woman who smuggled the Dalai Lama's message of love into Chinese-dominated Tibet. I don't know if I should start looking more closely at the made in labels on all my chattels. A lot of them are made in China. I think that the message is that we need to make the Chinese know what their government is doing to a heritage that we value. If we do value it, and personally I do. Since 1950, the message of nonviolence does not seem to have helped the Tibetans at all. They have been meek sheep to the slaughter.

I had the idea that it would be good to put a Free Tibet banner in Chinese on my web page. Free
Tibet banner This seems to have been done in person at the medal awards of the Women's springboard in the most recent Olympics, but the best I could find is to the right. My apologies if the characters are illegible!


Being Julia

Thumbs way up. Bittersweet and funny.

The Seduction of Dr. Lewis

As somebody in the audience pointed out, this is a kind of French-Canadian Waking of Ned Devine. Warm and funny. Thumbs up.


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