Sylvie Made it Adrien Orville,
London, Paris, and Calcutta all share the same cubicle space when running the numbers in customer service. I joined a company called Netnet; it filed for bankruptcy within 24 hours of my employment, so I ended up in an utter free for all for retention schemes and redundancies. I found the only way to get through the calls was by feeding my honesty on a short-term basis to try and earnestly help people. Sylvie has been in this hell and mindscape to the point it jaded her, but to see her family and aspire to a better afterlife, She dives deep into a well of experience to better her situation only through beating others. It’s a harsh lesson in a place based on points of an arrogant mind and mismanagement. It is filmed superbly, lit, and Sylvie is no angel, but you can’t root for her at every turn. A great call.
The Fourth.Johnny Kirk
I once went for training about gang prevention in a college in south London. The police officer waved a large textbook about ethnography and showed us clips from ‘the wire’ One teacher made the point that he wanted more to help train the students regarding their rights shoulda stop and search occur. This was not addressed. There are documentaries on the subject; one, in particular, I recall being an interview with a father and son. The father prepped his son to leave early for appointments, always wear bright clothes, never loiter and go somewhere with a purpose. The fourth takes the lead who is trying to do all those things and shows the fallacy of these cheat codes in the face of a life lived virtually as a second-class citizen in the USA, with a small-scale event escalating to gun violence and corrupt authority. We are compelled in a way only a film can. We may be here to be entertained, but at what cost to the life of others?
Robutler. James Button
A light breeze of a film with a sharp end, James quickly takes the 48-hour challenge and endures with crisp editing. You get an eyeful of comedy. His punt-open Cwnt Jones and hapless Robutler grapple with the mundane and the mechanical together. It’s minimal and well thought out, with the humour being the hardest to time right in a film, but James definitely hits the button with this one. Worth popping on while waiting for a hardboiled egg.
The Virtual Llama. Tom Cozens
I have an older brother, 7 years apart. Regardless of your relationship, siblings prove the difference between nature and nurture to such a great degree as so much is shared, and conclusions can be radically different. As mementoes of the past when one moves away or in an other direction. It’s hard to see life without that reflection. Tom captures this interplay as one chooses a virtual world while wanting the organic life for her sister. The potential for a maybe family instead of preserving an actual one is a hard choice, and the results in the middle of the field will stay with you, and you will also want to hold onto something warm and tight after. Search it out.
The Irish Indian Times. 