Wednesday, May 03, 2006

The Removers – 2003 (short)

     Yeah, I know. Why the hell did he get a SHORT, for god’s sake? Good question. This is yet another example of a movie in my list that I have no recollection of how it got there. I wonder if I should start a spreadsheet of my queue, and when I added what, and why. I have a spreadsheet tracking my Netflix queue. It shows when it went into my “At Home” section, from what position, and the dates that it

1. moved into At Home


2. Shipped


3. Arrived


4. Mailed back


5. Received


6. Came From (i.e., address on the envelope)

I’m doing this to track the affects of throttling in the most objective manner possible. I know, I know, I’m WAY too anal. Yeah, “it’s a fair cop”.

Anywho, Removers. This is a serious weird little flick, made for the grand total of $25K. And not a bad effort at all. It’s a SF (Science Fiction, I hate the expression SciFi, including the channel) short with lots of computer generated effects. What it doesn’t have is dialogue. It’s silent, except for sound affects and music. There are a total of two lines spoken in its entire run. So that makes it kind of freaky right from the start. But the visuals are entertaining, and it never drags. I think shorts can get away with a lot more weirdness than a feature length, ‘cause almost anything is entertaining for a little while. Shorts never last more than a little while. Be that as it may, I liked it.

There are three Making of Featurettes, which are very instructional. During one, I don’t remember which; the director/writer says that he was going for the “Trippy acid flick”. All I can say is, SUCCESS!

There is also a commentary, which is less instructive, but more entertaining. There is also a bonus short called Mr. Sunshine, which is also “dialogueless”. And an acid trip. In many ways, it’s even less coherent. At least with The Removers, after the commentary, it makes some sense. There’s no sense to Mr. Sunshine. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable. It just doesn’t make any damn sense. But you know what, who says it’s got to, if the images are entertaining.

Three beers out of five. Nudity would definitely have helped this to a four.