Aliolio
9 Reviews
Reviews
Fraternity Milk
Full points for ambition and scope and an eye-wateringly vivid aesthetic. The sound was a little muffled at times, but this was the story of the greatest race of all told with uniquely psychedelically animated pictures. Educational? Watch it if you get the chance and you decide.
Cut Rate
This was clever and well acted and I liked it a lot. A hapless duo have a hard time finding a new flat in Wellington's overheated rental market, and end up taking on a place way out of their budget. They discover various 'hazards' about the place to convince the landlord to give rent reductions, until (inevitably) they go too far. There maybe a bit much splat for me in the splattiest sceen (very vivid sound effects and screams!), but everything and everywhere in the film looks great, and genre is nailed perfectly.
Love, Pain and Chow Mein
I'm always amazed at they ways people making 48hr films add whole layers of extra complexity and work for themselves. Team Green Square's central character spoke Chinese, and the story was told from his point of view, with subtitles for the rest of us. Overall this was competently put together. The characters were all teenagers played by non-teenagers hamming it up, and it looked like the cast were having a very good time. Story wise, the hero liked a girl, but needed the help of a friend to communicate with her. They conspired to kidnap(? trick?) her, so the hero could serenade her with bad karaoke for rather too long. Although the actors were perfectly charming, the plot irritated me, that ol' "boy obsesses about girl based on how she looks, tries to force her to pay attention to him" trope is one I don't find so funny any more.
Psylent Night
Golly heck this looked spectacular! The camera tricks and lighting effects paid homage to every strung-out-on-drugs movie ever. There was a hint of a plot, but mainly this was eye candy of epic proportions. Glad I got to see it in all its glory on a big screen.
I am ball 2
A sequel with the most simple of central characters, her self-hood declared in the title, a . . . ball. Who dreams of adventures beyond the highrise windowsill where she's been left. Short and sweet, making full use of an adorable small child actor (nice shot from the balls point of view under the sofa). I would have loved to have seen more of the cutout puppets, as the transition from those to the live action was maybe a little jarring. But a perfectly worthy 48hours effort!
Mary's Descent
So much ominous music! So much mysterious sinister threat!! Pretty obvious how this was going to end once an innocent bystander entered the scene and just wouldn't be hinted away, but still felt like a twist . . . many plot questions left unanswered, but that's okay.
Tea is for Teleport
Great fun - lots of shifts in pace, starting with quiet domestic life, cut to romcom confusion, then tense action drama including a chase scene, some suspense, and back full circle. It felt nicely complete and used it's simple scifi premise (teleporting going wrong) well.
Polly
Appealingly awkwardly mawkish musical romance, ending with a suitably bitter twist. I rather liked the dance sequence using the overhead shot, echos of Bollywood for a few seconds there, in the look if not in sound. Some brave choices.