Off The Rack Film Festival Review: Off Track

2016 for me is already starting off with a local film festival called “Off The Rack”, where nine shorts are presented in the Historical Texas Theater, followed by an award ceremony that’s built by the audiences’ votes.

This is a small event taking place in a small, calm theater, perhaps too small, but we’ll get to that in a little bit. We arrived at the theater a little late, but the process of getting inside was quick an easy. Only “The Wildflowers” was missed, but the rest of them are as follows and briefly reviewed:

#2 Bad Day: An angry husband gets in a heated argument with his wife that doesn’t end in his favor. Its something that begins as what you expect, then ends in an attempt to spread the message of watch what you say or do while being surreal and comedic, but isn’t very clever or the fun kind of random. The lack of a strong personality prevents this short from being anything more than a missed opportunity!

#3 The Package: A really old couple’s really young daughter gets kidnapped by a group of drug cartels. The couple hires a generic secret agent to go in and bring back the daughter alive. This short really wants to be taken meets the Daniel Craig era of James Bond…and it sucks.

The acting is dull (I mean the mom looked very excited to hear that her daughter was missing, or the agent trying wayyy to hard to be Daniel Craig) and there’s nothing fun or interesting about these characters. Just like Bad Day, it tries to tell a complex narrative within a short time frame and ends up not succeeding. This short ends with a confusing plot twist that stops an actually decent fight scene from happening.

#4 Clubbers Heroes: A mini documentary about a new local day-care program opening up for low functional students in the ages 13-22. I really wanted to like this one, being one who’s taken care of these types of students back in an 8th grade gym class, but the sound killed any powerful impact that this short could have made (aside from my ears bleeding, literally).

At this point, I was actually thinking to myself “Was this really worth the five dollar price of admission?”. And then, an actually good short came up.

#5 The Promise: A couple of teenage girls try to figure out how they are going to get through their next big events. One of them realizes that her father has never been around to support her, and wonders what means more to him, his job or the success of his daughter’s career path.

Now, it can be argued that the daughter may be a little dramatic and yeah you would be right, but there’s something realistic about this story that makes it effective. You would actually have to take this short by the father’s perspective in order to understand how clever it really is. I really enjoyed this short, charming and effective!

…but then we transition back to Crapville.

#6 The Last Kill: A thug is tasked to murdering someone and bringing back their body to his ring leader. Unfortunately, he is not the brightest assassin out there. I like the idea of having a dark replication of a loony toons cartoon…except this film suffers from one massive editing flaw that manages to destroy the entire experience.

Where with Clubber Heroes, it was sound. With this, its performance. The film runs like a sideshow throughout the whole runtime, which was unbearable to witness. Just another example of why editing/rendering is a crucial importance to making a film. I realized that this won best short by the critics choice…I guess running your films in a glorious 5 frames per second is innovation…

#7 Hidden Secrets: A man confronts his dad at his house for sexual assaulting his son. A mixture of The Last Kill’s performance with The Package’s acting. While I find the premise of the narrative something that could have touched on a serious issue occurring today, you feel so disinterested in these characters, let alone with some 3rd grade stop motion and bizarre cinematography. This one’s a huge pass!

Then, the theater went dark for a while as folks walked out of the scene, something I was tempted to do, but I patiently waited for a better short instead. The good news, the rest of the line-up was super solid when it finally came back on!

#8 Deranged: A man wakes up in what appears to be a noire interrogation scene representing hell, not remembering how he got here. The intimidating interrogator gives him a set of tests in hopes to jog his memory and allow the satan figure to preserve life. Creatively shot, beautifully acted, terrifically paced and full of tension. The narrative tells it story very well within the given time frame and by conclusion, you feel the excitement pumping through you, ready for more!

#9 Kumar & Jen Go For Dinner: Probably the second best short I’ve seen and a great way to end the line-up. A couple of racially diverse lovers get ready for an engagement dinner with Jen’s parents. Problem is, Jen’s mom and dad are unaware and disapprove of their daughter’s choice to date a guy with a different skin color. This is a clever comedy short that deals with the subject of racial acceptance in a non controversial or obvious format. All of the punch lines land on target and are delivered through great acting and convincing character development. If there’s anything I can pick at, it’s that the short ends with some unanswered questions and would be the least clever aspect of the film. Otherwise, a strong finale!

Back to the festival itself…

Now we go to the festival’s biggest problem. For a competition in which some of these shorts were ment to be spread and advertised, THERE WAS NO ONE ELSE IN THE FREAKING THEATER! I just have to picture this in my head that almost the entire audience of the festival were the folks who worked on those films.

As cool as it was to meet some of the greater actors in the program, it makes me wonder what did some of these filmmakers accomplish other than the experience of working on a short. I left before the awards were announced, but its great to hear that the actors were open and honest, rather than just voting for themselves. So the winners ended up being Kumar & Jen Go For Dinner, which congrats to them and its a shame I didn’t get to meet them.

Conclusion:

The festival is off to a rough start. While I did love coming out there and meeting some wonderful new faces in a friendly community, I did feel like I got more out of December’s big Texas Theater presentation, Expose UX, which was free (though also terribly flawed). Most of the shorts were either really bad or ruined due to a fatal technical flaw, but the ones that were good left a memorable experience. Despite the lack of an actual audience, I met some incredibly interesting people, who I hope to run into the deeper I dive into the film scene.

I had a good time, just maybe not a fantastic time. Hopefully, the technical flaws in the presentation will improve, the film line-up will be better, the audience will be bigger and maybe not have this happen at night in downtown Dallas. Regardless, it was a needlessly fun experience, just not quite at its best!