Sol Levante (2020)

I’ve come across a lot of movies.  There are maybe a dozen or so in theaters at any given time.  I also have some sets of movies I’ve been reviewing.   In addition to that, I have access to stuff from my cable provider, as well as Hulu and Netflix.  Most of them are good.  Some are bad.  There is occasionally one that I really don’t know what to make of.

Sol Levante is a short anime, clocking in at only four minutes.  It seems nonsensical, as there’s no dialogue, nor are there any title cards.  It’s just a woman moving through various scenes.  I’m not sure if she’s moving through dimensions or teleporting or what.  It almost looks like a coming attraction, which is a shame.  I’d probably watch the movie that it would have advertised.  As it is, it looks like someone animated an LSD trip.

From what I’ve read, it was meant to be seen in 4K.  I don’t know how many people are going to have access to that.  I’m certain some will.  I watched it on my laptop, as I’m not going to hunt down an HD screen just to watch this.  There will always be a better screen to watch it on.

Sol Levante will likely serve as a test run for future projects.  I would think it took more money and effort, per minute, than your average anime.  I have to wonder if Netflix will be willing to invest in these projects, considering that they charge by the month.  There are going to be purists, who prefer traditional anime and those who probably wouldn’t notice, either because they don’t have the eye or the equipment for it.

Visually, it’s spectacular.  But there’s no real plot to speak of.  There’s no beginning or end.  There’s no satisfaction of finding out what happens at the end.  It’s almost like the movie was canceled after making a few minutes of footage and this is all they had to offer.  It’s the very definition of eye candy.  It looks pretty and doesn’t require much thought.  I am genuinely hoping that a larger project comes of this.  I want to see what happens.


IMDb page

Même les pigeons vont au paradis/Even Pigeons Go to Heaven (2007)

I’m always looking for stuff to stream on Netflix.  Sometimes, watching something interesting means renting the DVD.  When I saw The 2007 Academy Award Nominated Short Films, I decided to give it a shot.  I hadn’t heard of any of the films, but it meant getting several of them.  And the were all contenders for the Academy Award in 2007.  How could I go wrong?

The first film I watched was this one, Even Pigeons Go to Heaven.  (Or Même les pigeons vont au paradis, if you prefer.)  The short is about an old man, Mr. Moulin, who is about to have a very serious accident.  It starts with a priest, called simply Le curé, racing to get to Mr. Moulin in time.

He does, saving the man before he hits the ground.  The priest takes the opportunity to offer Mr. Moulin the XV-750.  It’s a spherical object that takes the occupant to heaven.  Given Moulin’s list of sins, his life savings would be a small price to pay.

The animation is CGI, but has the look of wooden puppets.  The action is pretty quick, but works.  I don’t think this would have worked as a feature-length film.  The lack of extraneous details makes for a fairly efficient story.  You get the message without a lot of exposition.  You’re given just enough detail about the characters to know what’s going on.

On the one hand, it does look like an indictment of organized religion.  The priest is trying to take Moulin’s money for the promise of eternal life.  The priest has a long list of Moulin’s minor sins.  And Moulin can’t take it with him.  (Then again, neither can the priest.)  It becomes obvious that the priest is just after the money.

On the other hand, it’s also an interesting story.  It’s maybe not a great bedtime story for children, but I think most adults can enjoy it.  There’s a clear protagonist and antagonist.  It’s also possible to read a few things into it.  I could see this being shown in a class to start discussion.  If you have the ability to see this movie, either through Netflix, the library or some other means, I’d suggest doing so.  It’s only nine minutes and very entertaining.

IMDb page

Atlas (1976)

A lot of things happened in years ending with 76.  I was born in 1976.  200 years before that, America broke away from England.  Also, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, was published.  Atlas was produced to coincide with the 200th anniversary of its publication.

It’s a short video, only 2½ minutes long.  The video shows how Rome grew from a city to an empire and back again.  Most versions seem to repeat the video.  The first time has narration.  The second time is just the animation with music.  (The version on the Eames YouTube Channel has Russian subtitles.)

The animation is pretty simple.  It shows Rome and the surrounding empires and groups, like the Huns, and how each group changed over the corresponding years.  The time frame runs from circa 500 B.C. to A.D. 500.  The short is safe for people of all ages.  It’s just a map with changing lines and either narration or music.

There’s nothing objectionable like fights.  It’s not particularly elaborate, but it is at least somewhat informative.  It helps people visualize what the map looked like over the span of a millennium.  It’s exactly the kind of thing that a teacher might show to a third-grade class.

IMDb doesn’t list who the narrator is and I can’t find any information that would suggest a particular name.  I would imagine that it’s narrated by Charles Eames only because the voice is male.  If anyone can tell me definitively, please leave a comment.

IMDb page

Gôruden taimu/Golden Time (2014)

I don’t imagine it’s easy being abandoned.  A television set is dropped of rather unceremoniously in a junkyard and basically left to fend for itself.  Soon after its arrival, it meets several other abandoned items.  There’s a fan, a windup toy, a chair and a bucket.  Each has presumably been discarded just like the new arrival.

The television has its only useful part, the CRT, removed by a recycling company.  (The TV set appears to be from the 1960s, but what I’ve read indicates that the story takes place in the 1980s.)  The TV set is   lonely and does try to escape, but does eventually find a new purpose.

The animation is only 21 minutes.  While some of that time is taken up with trying to dig under a fence, the five characters do have some interaction.  Most of that interaction is between the TV set and the windup toy, which is ostensibly a cat.

There’s no dialogue  It’s a fairly simple animation showing the five characters in a junkyard..  There’s nothing that parents would find objectionable.  (Netflix has the rating listed as TV-Y.)  It is a little sad at first, as we’re aware that the TV wants to get out, but everything seems to end well for the TV set.

I’ve been hoping to find more short films like this.  I don’t always want the commitment of a feature-length film.  Sometimes, I want something to watch before going to work or just before going to bed.  It can be difficult to squeeze a two-hour movie in sometimes.

It’s a shame that this is the director’s only credit.  I’d like to see more animation from Takuya Inaba.  I’m hoping that more might be forthcoming.  The movie was released only a few years ago.  It looks like there’s a corresponding book.  Amazon has the book release date as April 11, 2014 whereas Netflix has the movie release date as June 15, 2014.  Since animation takes so long to make, it’s possible that they were intended to be released together.  Information on either is nearly impossible to find.  If you come across anything, please leave a comment.

IMDb page

World of Tomorrow (2015)

I remember an episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show, The House of Next Tuesday.  I don’t remember much about the episode itself, as I saw it almost 30 years ago, except that it was a play on the tendency to make something sound futuristic by calling it The Thing of Tomorrow.  I’m not sure how Tomorrow became the standard.  I guess it sounds like it’s coming soon.  The Thing of the Future sounds like it’s postponed indefinitely.  The Thing of Tomorrow sounds like you could get one right away.

I had been putting off watching The World of Tomorrow indefinitely.  The premise seemed interesting, even if it was cliché.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit much time to watching something last night.  Then, I noticed that it was only 16 minutes.

The movie starts with a young girl, Emily, receiving a phone call from an older version of herself.  Actually, the older Emily is a clone of a clone of the young Emily.  (The clone refers to her younger self as Emily Prime.)  You see, in the future, people can have a perfect clone made of themselves.  Emily was impregnated with her perfect clone.  When the time came, her memories were transferred to the clone and thus extend her life.

Emily the Clone transports Emily Prime into the future to show her around.  It’s basically Clone Emily telling Emily Prime about their life.  Clone Emily, for instance, worked on the moon managing work robots who needed to stay in the light to survive.  She fell in love with a rock and was sad when she had to leave.  Not everyone gets clones made of themselves.  Poorer people, like their grandfather, have their memories transferred to little boxes.

While Emily Prime is full of life, as you might expect from a little girl, Clone Emily tends to be less emotional.  This leads to a lot of deadpan humor.  Clone Emily tells Emily Prime how time travel is sill unpredictable and dangerous right before transporting herself to the future.  The movie also goes through some of the clichés of time travel, like having to worry about the position of the Earth.

While Emily Prime’s present is simple, the future tends to look kind of trippy.  It didn’t vary much from what I saw on the cover.  The animation wasn’t distracting, though.  It was effective in helping to tell the story.  You get a look at what you come to realize is the decline of humanity.  You’d think that the world of tomorrow is a happy place.  Not necessarily.

I wouldn’t say that the movie is depressing, but I don’t think it’s going to be for everyone.  It seems to be geared towards people who are at least familiar with science-fiction plots.  I don’t know that it’s exactly satire, but it does play on a few aspects of time travel.  I’m sure certain aspects of the story will be lost on some people.

As a short film, I don’t expect to see it on DVD, at least not by itself.  It would be interesting to get a DVD with several shorts on it.  Those seem hard to find, though.  Netflix doesn’t have a category for it.  I have been able to find shorts there, which is where I found this one, but you have to do it by a more mainstream category like drama or animation.  Perhaps one of these days, I’ll do a ten-best list or something.

IMDb page

The House of Small Cubes (2008)

Sometimes, simplicity is the answer.  Why build a palace when a tool shed is enough?  What good is it to convey your message only to have it get lost in the details?  The House of Small Cubes is a a short that could best be called minimalist.  There’s no dialogue and it focuses on one person, an old man, who has to add on to his house due to rising waters.

The short starts with the Old Man realizing that the water in his world is rising.  The seems to be a recurring event, as his house, as well as all of the surrounding houses, are built up as the water rises.  Each appears to be just one room, but they are all built on much bigger underwater structures, all presumably comprised of similar rooms.

When the Old Man realizes that the water is rising, he gets to work building his new room.  When he drops his favorite pipe down a hole, he has to dive down to get it, which means donning diving equipment.  As he progresses down from one room to the next, he finds things that he’s left in previous rooms.  It might be a wine glass or an old toy.

He finds his pipe quickly, but decides to keep going.  Each old room brings back corresponding memories.  He remembers being with his family.  He remembers courting his wife and raising a child.  No mention is made of what happened to his family.  We’re left to imagine that the wife passed away and that his children moved out.

In terms of style, it looks like the kind of movie they might have shown on PBS or in grade school.  Since there’s no dialogue, there’s no offensive language to worry about.  None of the imagery is offensive, either.  Small children might wonder what’s going on.  It’s never explained why this world flooded.  The only implication is that time, and memory, keep marching on.

I was able to get this on Netflix and, to be honest, I’d like to see more shorts like this.  It’s not the kind of thing a studio might put on DVD outside of a collection and I haven’t seen too many of those on Netflix, as it‘s only 12 minutes.  (There’s no section for short films.)  It was an easy film to watch.  The animation and music are basic and the story was easy to follow.  It’s something you could easily watch with small children, yet be entertained by as an adult.

IMDb page