Two - Reaction

A poignant silent film (with music and sound effects but no speaking) about a rich kid with many toys and a poor (and darker-skinned) child that lives nearby in poverty with few toys. Excellent. A tale about envy, schadenfreude, one-up-man-ship, and simplicity.

The Inner Eye - Reaction

A documentary about Binode Bihari Mukherjee, a famous painter who goes blind after a failed cataract operation. Could've been much better. For instance, after he lost his sight, the film pans silently over works he later produced. We don't see his struggles with his lack of vision. We don't know how art critics reacted to his post-transformation work.

A Wonderful Night in Split - Reaction

[Croatia]

A brilliant, black and white film covering three overlapping tales of drugs and death. Great recurring musical theme and good music as part of the story as well. Sounds depressing but it's not. By overlapping, I mean stories that take place in the old quarter of Split on the same evening with some of the same characters. By brilliant, I mean the tales are tied together in subtle ways, such as by the usage of the camera and by connections via scenes that originally seem trivial or meaningless.

7th Annual Stanford Alumni Film Festival - Reaction

Series of shorts:

• Stanford Banned: About the antics of the Stanford Band. Bland; could've been orders of magnitude better (e.g., by showing events, not telling about them).
• The Inventor: About an inventor working on a potato cloning machine. Decent; a nice portrait but not that interesting.
• Zanuck-Brown: A Partnership in Montage: Scenes from many movies by these producers. Didn't recognize most movies so didn't care that much.
• Waiting for Anna: Possibly about a woman who steals another's boyfriend. Revenge is enacted with a mask and a gun. Artistically shot -or at least the opening credits were- but not much else going for it.
• Kind of a Blur: A quirky, cute comedy about two ravers who wake up in a cow pasture and try to determine what happened the previous night. Involves the quest of a cow and writing on skin.
• Yellow Hammer: About a man that uses female friend's urine to attempt to pass a drug test and (spoiler) ends up getting told he is pregnant. Way too long setup (8 minutes) for a pretty lame joke.
• Oedipus: The story of Oedipus via stop-motion animation of vegetables. Stars a potato, a tomato, and a piece of broccoli. Well done. As funny as you can imagine. Can be watched online.