MIFF 2017 - Day 8

Animation Shorts

Always a mixed bag, but always a few gems too. There were a couple of spectacular ones this year though.

Birdlime was a cool puppet stop motion about a wild bird captured and seemingly domesticated. Full of humour and heart.

Catherine was a darkly funny story about a girl who keeps killing her pets, and the taxidermist in love with her.

The Burden was an amazing stop motion musical about the trials of life. Very well observed and sharply written. Kind of like a Roy Andersson film, which is the highest praise I can give.

Nocturama

Ugh. Why do I still fall for MIFF hype? The first act of this is pretty excellent, as a Benetton catalog's worth of multicultural youth orchestrate a massive terror attack on Paris. Then they hole up in an upmarket department store to bore the audience shitless. Basically, it's a well polished turd with nothing interesting to say or do.