Saturday, June 18, 2022

Fun in Shorts: Tutti Frutti (2022)

Fun in Shorts: Tutti Frutti (shorts program)
Saturday, June 18, 2022, 11:00am Castro
Sunday, June 26, 2022, 11:00am Castro
+Streaming
(note: the shorts are listed here in the order they were presented at the June 18 screening, which may vary from the order on June 26 or on the streaming platform)
  • 桶妝仙女 (Tǒng zhuāng xiānnǚ • Tank Fairy) 💖
  • The Syed Family Xmas Eve Game Night 😒
  • Unicorn 😑
  • Grindr Baby 🙂
  • BRUTAL 😊
  • Fernanda 🙂
  • Tell Me Something I Don’t Know 👎
  • F^¢k ’Em R!ght B@¢k 👏
“桶妝仙女 (Tǒng zhuāng xiānnǚ • Tank Fairy)” dir. Erich Rettstadt, 2021, USA/Taiwan, 10m. in Mandarin Chinese with full English subtitles 💖
Winner: Jury award, Best Narrative Short

child dressed in pink fabulousness

The “tank fairy” delivers cylinders of cooking gas, a necessity of everyday life, but they also deliver a dash of glitter and glamor to young Jojo, a boy who wants something more fabulous than being bullied on the school playground. It’s an inventive premise, cute and sweet but also fierce, with a remarkable performance by the child actor portraying Jojo. Definitely a must see.

“Tank Fairy” is just the first episode of a planned web series about splashes of fabulousness in Taiwan.

“The Syed Family Xmas Eve Game Night” dir. Fawzia Mirza, 2021, USA, 11m. 😒
A young Pakistani woman brings her Puerto Rican partner home for the annual family game night. It’s a premise rich with potential for drama and comedy, but the execution is kinda clunky. In particular, the older sister is an obnoxious bitch just to be a bitch, with little else to round out the character. Cute but unsatisfying.

• IMDb Page • Trailer •
“
man lying on a bed with a neon sign above saying “Good vibes only”

Unicorn” dir. Matt Porter, 2021, USA, 14m. 😑

A “unicorn” is a third person who connects with an established couple to provide a little sexual spice but in a non-threatening way. In this case, though, the uni­corn gets rather more than he bargained for when it turns out the couple has a macabre hidden agenda. More than a little weird, with an unsatisfying ending.

• IMDb Page • (no trailer) •
“Grindr Baby” dir. Gaby Dunn, 2022, USA, 5m. 🙂

couple bickering

The filmmakers, a real-life couple, play a non-monoga­mous queer couple. One of them gets pregnant from a Grindr hookup, leaving them with the weighty question of whether to keep the baby, an issue inflected with a couple of significant new angles. I have a hard time watching scenes of bickering couples, and this film certainly has some of that, but the fresh take on, as the program description put it, “Knocked Up but if Seth Rogan was pregnant,” is worth seeing. An expanded feature-length version is in the works, and hopefully that will have more funny and/or poignant moments in proportion to the bickering. Recom­mended.

• IMDb Page • Trailer •
“BRUTAL” dir. Sam McConnell, 2022, USA, 13m. 😊




man in a suit with a goat on his desk

In this satire of television news about politics, a cable news host receives a video of Senator [bleep] from South Carolina doing various NSFW things with a group of men and a male goat. Very little if any of the footage has any chance of making it past Standards & Practices review, and even a verbal description could have a tough time. So what do you do when you have a juicy political scoop that you can’t air? You’ll have to tune in to find out. Highly recommended.

Best line: “You spent the entire broadcast yelling about human death camps while massaging your nipple.”

•  IMDb Page • Trailer •

“Fernanda” dir. Mary Angélica Molina, 2021, USA, 13m.
(also screening in “Oh! You Pretty Things”) 🙂

people dancing on the sidewalk
Fernanda
Fernanda is “an angry Latinx dyke in her twenties [who] wants to make the world a better place, but can barely keep her own life together.” She works at a publisher, but her boss is a big part of why she’s angry. She vents to her roommates, who offer … unusual takes on the situation. Pretty good satire of white cis-het male “allies”; a bit clunky but pretty good. Recom­mended.

• IMDb Page • Trailer •
“Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” dir. Neal Mulani, 2022, USA, 15m. 👎

three people by a swimming pool

A joylessly annoying narcissist decides for his 25th birthday to invite some friends to join him at a lux­u­ri­ous weekend rental, but with a hidden agenda: he wants them to tell him everything they hate about him. Well, what I hated was this film. Not recommended.

• IMDb Page • Trailer •
“F^¢k ’Em R!ght B@¢k” dir. Harris Doran, 2022, USA, 12m. 👏

Black man singing into a microphone

Sammy wants to be a rapper, but for the time being he has a day job with the city of Baltimore, mostly to get the health benefits. His boss is out to get him, using as her weapon random drug tests. Sammy gets dosed, given an edible that he didn’t know was “loaded,” so he goes into panic mode, especially because he needs to take two days off work for his upcoming mini-tour of Delaware. He and his friends scheme a way to fuck the system right back. Well done, highly recommended.

•  IMDb Page •  Trailer •
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