Short Stuff: LFF 2025

Here's a collection of short pieces for films I saw at LFF 2025!

A Chronology of Water

Stumbles off the block, gets occasionally wet. The opening fifteen promised something pretty exhausting, what with the frenetic cutting, tedious voice-over and complete non-narrative. Works for some, rarely does for me, especially with lines such as 'How many miles does it take to swim to the self?' repeated multiple times. Just a tad too self-serious. Eventually finds its rhythm going into the middle third, and Stewart manages to mine plenty of interesting ideas out of seemingly nowhere; one of my favourite scenes being where Lydia goes into the water with her stillborn's ashes, her husband giggling as it covers her coat. Gets to you out of nowhere, that does.

Saying that, and acknowledging Poots is perfect for the material, there's something distinctly debutish here that even in its triumphant moments it can't shake. A vision is clear, but that vision is overly percussive when it needs a lighter touch, and vice versa. Stewart has something, as she does when she's on screen. It just needs tinkering a little bit. Looking forward to what's next.

The Thing With Feathers

Didn't expect Death Note to come to mind watching a lilting British grief horror, but that's just the way the crowkie crumbles. It even acts like Ryuk: the funny little one-liners, the pointed mockery, and that's not even pointing out how obviously silly it looks. It works though, it really works. Whoever decided to use Benedict Cumberbatch's face in all of its poetic, Victorian glory is partly to blame for that. He looks so natural conversing with an 8-foot-tall man in a crow outfit, it's the role he was born to play. And is there better casting for that crow than David Thewlis? Doubtful.

You could probably argue the movie is too simplistic, but it derives a lot from very little. The initial setup focuses on the minutiae well. Mum is dead. Oh, no milk. Where did she put the bowls? How did she do the school run? There's a lot of mileage out of the tiny nothings that suddenly add up to somethings when the other person isn't doing them, and Cumberbatch wears it on his face phenomenally. It's probably his best performance outside of, what, The Power of the Dog? Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? A lot of scenes are him playing off himself, or playing off kids who, bless them, are often mannequins on purpose, and so he does need to be the melancholic thumping heart, which he thankfully does with aplomb.

And if it is at all manipulative in its use of flashback and kids looking sad, it's earned it for being a beautifully economical little nugget of a horror. Likely as we are to see five more movies tackling this subject before the years up, its unlikely we'll find one as heartfelt. Great stuff.

Lurker

It really does help that Pellerin looks like every single 2010s Let's Play YouTuber combined. There's something about that Jerma vibe, that white boy, almost too regular a face, so normal you couldn't possibly pick him out. The ultimate lurker, as it were. Sometimes the movie even feels like a Let's Play. The moves are clear, the actions obvious. If you like your thrillers unpredictable, then go elsewhere because everything you imagine happening in this movie does, and it was really holding it back for me for the longest time. I'm not great with cringe, awkward comedy either, which this is just rife with. Long holds, awkward haha's. Real smarmy shit.

It was losing me until the final ten minutes, when the movie proves itself to have a little more on its mind than just stalking. Recognising the twisted usefulness behind superfans like that intelligently, I did not expect, especially in the manner that it does it. I mean, that music video is actually fucking good, and that's the issue. He gets him. Very interesting. Were I able to sit through one of these without instinctually reaching for the proverbial remote anytime an extended awkward scene happens I'd probably love this, even with its occasional leaps into 'really? That's what we're doing?' territory. It's good!

P.S. The way it accurately treats DSLR cameras and grain as a cover-up for actual talent was very funny.

Train Dreams

Overwhelming. Totemic. Any other number of aggrandising adjectives. Malickian, if that squeezes your juice box. In terms of 'the entire life of one man to represent America' movies, of which there are surprisingly more than I realised, this is handily the best. Manages to stay slight despite its broad ambitions, somehow, and though I've hyped up the text retroactively as this life-altering bible, in the moment it feels lived in? So, so textured. Just look at the cast list. It's character actor heaven! Veloso often shoots their faces tiny in the frame, one of my favourite very early on, a pondering Joel Edgerton stood on the tracks, peering off into the distance, only his head visible, and you need these types of faces to hang heavy onto. Your Kerry Condon's, your Felicity Jones'.

There's another moment (like all great movies, every moment is a moment) where William H. Macy, playing a real honky tonker, is having a conversation with Edgerton, and it's entirely black aside from their faces, lit by the fire. Took my breath away, then again, there's not a frame here that didn't. And as easy as it would be for this narrative to veer off into hopeless despair, it never does. Maybe that says a lot about where we're at right now, that watching a man spend his entire life waiting seems comparatively serene. That even in his knowing that his life's work will not last, will be replaced, and he too with it, his ability to be patient and simply hold the line represents a life well lived. I couldn't stop crying.

Alpha

Nick Cave into Tame Impala needledrops. That's new. All of this is. Starts in a way implying Ducornau's patented body horror, as a little girl traces the sore spots on an addict's arms, his vascularity making mountains. It's an entrancing opening scene. From there, it lurches into this odd high-school drama, this larger AIDS allegory, completely loses its footing, and the rest of the movie is in free fall. Try as it might, it's unable to balance these disparate ideas together: a mother unable to let go of her clearly hurting, suicidal brother, a daughter scared she might be infected, and the entire school running from her, an entire world on the brink of collapse from this disease turning people into stone. It's a lot.

Occasionally, it'll hit its stride, and those issues won't matter. For example, the dance sequence in the club all the way through to the hotel resuscitation is Ducornau operating at the peak of her powers, and it's glorious. Literalising the euthanasia question that runs all the way through in such an open way, it's part of that bleeding heart love that made Titane tick. But it can't maintain, and so Alpha becomes one grand stop-start affair that never has the bravado to embody our titular character's name.

Wake Up Dead Man

Yet another Benoit Blanc mystery, yet another that doesn't quite have that transcendent finale. I don't want to call the first a fluke, because it clearly wasn't; maybe Johnson just has other things on his mind. This one has a lot more questions than the first and second, that's for sure. That'll happen when 60% of your movie takes place in a church, your main character is a pastor, your dead guy is a pastor, all the suspects are Christian, and so on and henceforth. Though not as rapturous as its predecessor, moment to moment this is maybe the best of the bunch, partly because the joke writing is top-draw (that Substack joke got a thunderous laugh in a room full of independent writers), but mainly because Josh O'Connor as a boxer turned upcoming priest is cinematic gold. He holds the screen with an anxious fervour that's delightful to watch, and he bounces off the ever-lively Daniel Craig gloriously.

The traditional pitfalls of the genre do rear their ugly head: overlong explanations of the obvious, characters asking funny, quirky questions to jut something loose, the same and the same. Johnson navigates these pretty well, though, and it really is a gorgeous movie. He uses the light streaming through the stained glass repeatedly, and for a piece so much about hiding in the shadow of the cross, it really pierces. I'm thankful this is not another of the same, but an evolution that feels similar enough to belong in the 'universe' slowly being built. Keep 'em coming.

Bad Apples

For a movie that starts with the most unnecessarily evil child of all time, it really manages to level the playing field. The poster undersells how demented it gets, to the point where calling this a 'dark comedy' wouldn't miss the mark, and to the point where that child at the start actually becomes the most normal one in the whole movie. It's just one great big ladder of 'surely she won't,' and then she does, but then 'surely she won't.' Saoirse is perfect at playing overwhelmed; it's the exact type where you'd be surprised that it's specifically her doing it, and innocent enough that you could probably make some whacky excuse. 'Oh, but he's well fed.' Some of those shenanigans.

Where the movie veers off track is Paulina, a little girl completely obsessed with her teacher: following her home and listening through the mailbox, wearing her dresses, staring at her all day. It's where most of the tension comes from, actually, that this child realises she's able to do anything she now wants because she's got the keys to the kingdom. How she uses her power, though, doesn't really add to the narrative so much as it pauses it for long, extended scenes where she's doing something strange, and it's pure nails on a chalkboard. Played well, so easy to hate, but grinds the movie to a staggering halt multiple times. Aside from that, quite lovely, if you can use that word. Oh, and a perfect title.