It’s more Best and Worst of madness as Film Threat recounts the best shorts of 2006 and more…
Best Short Films of 2006
Short films usually get glossed-over when it comes to best of lists, but not here at Film Threat.
1. Pardon My Downfall
The prolific Zellner Brothers deliver another short film gem, this time a tale about the legendary Jibcutters’ fall from grace during a cocaine binge.
2. Quiet
It’s a short slasher flick, from the audio perspective of a girl who has recently been struck deaf, and it’s an intense 15 minutes.
3. Morbid Curiosity
Destiny has an overactive imagination, one she likes to put into use by imagining the demise of people she sees. The problem? What she imagines usually comes true.
4. Batman’s Gonna Get Shot in the Face
Never before has anyone pointed out how weak a member of the Justice League Batman actually is when compared to his more powerful allies.
5. Chalk
An artistic ponderance on the power of words, and the unseen creator amid it all. Pretentious? Try inspired.
6. K-7
Job interviews can be intense affairs, made even worse if you find out that you’ve gotten the job… as a professional assassin.
7. Boxed
A metaphorical experience where a box, symbolizing past problems and hang-ups, becomes painfully tangible.
8. Robota
Stop-motion, Lego-powered genius involving a cockfight and leg-replacement surgery.
9. Socks and Violence
Rodney, which is a girl, is in love with Lemora, who is the demon-lesbian-human embodiment of Santa’s reindeer Blitzen. All is great until Cupid, another of Santa’s reindeer humans, also a minion of Satan, shows up to cause trouble. It’s as insane as it sounds.
10. Rosa
Dad didn’t go out for smokes and never come back, he left with a truckload of roses instead.
Top Independent Films to Look Out for in 2007
These films had a strong showing on the festival circuit throughout 2006, and should be finding their way to a theater or DVD retailer sometime in 2007.
1. Sasquatch Dumpling Gang
A quotable coming-of-age cinema classic about the tracking of Bigfoot in a suburban neighborhood, and other summer activities. Look for a completely unrecognizable Justin Long as the leader of a heavy-metal duo trying to come up with different money-making schemes to save their beloved Camaro from repossession.
2. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
This is a serial killer who has done his homework, and he wants to go down in history as the greatest killer ever, beating out Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers. Darkly comic, and gruesomely brilliant.
3. God Grew Tired of Us
Uplifting, inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time, this documentary tells the tale of those few lucky Lost Boys of the Sudan who are given the opportunity to start a new life in the United States.
4. Darkon
This doc about grown men playing a live-action “Dungeons and Dragons” (and consequentially beating the s**t out of each other with foam weapons), is more compelling than the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
5. The Cassidy Kids
This film is too multi-layered to sum up in one of these brisk commentary sentences, but the short jist is that a group of children solved a mystery, they became the basis of a television show about children solving mysteries, and then they grew up, and that’s where we come in. Outstanding effort, hunt this one down if you can.
6. The Trials of Darryl Hunt
No film quite destroys all credibility the justice system may have, nor re-builds said credibility, as amazingly as this documentary about wrongful inprisonment and ultimate redemption.
7. TV Junkie
It’s the natural progression of things nowadays, videotaping every aspect of your life as if you’re on a TV show. Of course, TV shows can be edited, your life can’t, and all the dirty details of former “Inside Edition” star Rick Kirkham are on display here.
8. Small Town Gay Bar
A wonderful documentary about tolerance in a time when ignorance just shouldn’t be an excuse anymore.
9. The Hamiltons
Such a nice incestuous family of psychopaths, so innocent and full of bloodlust.
10. Chalk
No, this is not the same as the “Chalk” that graced the shorts list, this is a mockumentary about high school teachers in Texas. Sheer hilarity, in the style of “The Office.”
11. Summercamp!
It’s a sweet documentary about a simpler time in life, when we were children going to that summer hell known as camp.
Most Overhyped Films of 2006
The films we heard about for months and months and then, when the big day arrived, didn’t quite deliver as advertised.
X-Men: The Last Stand
The supposedly final film in the “X-Men” franchise gave us moving bridges, naked Rebecca Romaijn and the most understated death of a major character in comic book cinema history (hey, I found Cyclops’s glasses, I wonder where he is).
Superman Returns
He returned, and he came back as a creepy stalker. But he did lift a lot of heavy stuff, so perhaps it wasn’t all bad.
Snakes on the Plane
The flavor of the internet was so overly hyped that anything less than a $100 million box office opening was going to be a failure. And “SoaP” didn’t even get that close.
And thus, Film Threat shuts the door on 2006, and embraces the remaining days of 2007. If you’re unwilling to move on just yet, go ahead and start over from the beginning with Film Threat’s Best and Worst Films of 2006.
