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Escape From Tomorrow

by M. Faust
“This movie will never be commercially distributed” was the standard reaction of most everyone who saw Escape From Tomorrow at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. They weren’t referring to the film’s surrealistic weirdness but to the way it was made: First-time director Randy Moore shot most of it at Disney World without bothering to say, “Mother, may I.”

Still Mine

by George Sax
Poignance and inspiration pervade Canadian filmmaker Michael McGowan’s affecting Still Mine, but this small-scale movie’s sturdy, uncomplicated humor, and McGowan’s sure handling of his material, prevent it from descending into sentimental simplicities most of the time. Still Mine is also helped by its real-life grounding. It’s nothing like a docudrama in tone, but it does track fairly closely to the story of an actual rural New Brunswick, Canada couple’s struggle with aging, illness, and their local officials’ restrictions on the husband’s individualistic attempt to provide an at-least partial remedy for their increasingly difficult situation.

The Legend of Six Fingers

by M. Faust
I’m sure that when Roger Corman, who is still active after nearly 60 years in the exploitation film business, first heard the title Snow Shark, his immediate reaction was “Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?” But he didn’t. A young filmmaker in Lockport named Sam Qualiana did, and if the micro-budgeted feature he made is never going to appear on any AFI Best 100 list, it got Qualiana attention and a national DVD release. (And if imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, he might feel good about the impending release of a Canadian production called Avalanche Shark.)



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