"MAnIC" a film By: KLIP IT PRODUTION

I like how you desaturated the present-day scenes and kept the flashbacks so colorful - a nice touch. The handheld work in the beginning was a little too frantic for my taste, and it took me out of it a little bit, but nice work overall. As many others have said, your lead was excellent.
 
It's LATE, but I made a commitment to watch, rate, and comment on all the films before nights end. At this point, I've only got time to watch & rate, so I'm simply letting you know I've done so for yours.

If you'd like a specific review of your film, please just PM me to catch my attention, and I'd be glad to come back here & post a review. :)
 
Okay, sorry I couldn't post my review earlier this AM ... was just too tired & had to get some sleep. So, I'll post now what I would have posted at the time after watching it:

I will be surprised if this isn't a finalist. I'm also very surprised there's not been more feedback/discussion on this film. It's a solid, SOLID piece of work!

--------------SPOLIERS AHEAD---------------


The premise kind of reminds me of 50 First Dates, with Drew Barrymoore (sp?) and Adam Sandler ... that every day starts out the same, with a total loss of what's happened. What a HORRIBLE way to live! It'd be like a nightmare version of Groundhog Day (with Bill Murray).

Your actor is GOOD! And I don't just mean good, but excellent. The writing was also solid on this ... at first I was questioning why the guy who got shoved against the tree wouldn't be more inquisitive, but in the end I get it ... this dude understands what's happening to the lead, knows about the past, and doesn't want to be the one to try & explain it all again to him. Our lead, in a sense, is now the town nut. The one everyone feels sorry for, but is too afraid to help, or simply don't know how.

The only thing story-wise that I question is why the lead isn't doing more to call 911, after coming back from the park, etc. I can understand possibly being in such a panic that when he sees the board with the writing to quickly hang up & handle it himself witout waiting for anyone else (something a guy might do), but wouldn't he recognize his own hand writing, and more importantly once he came back from the park, wouldn't he begin dialing then anyway?

But, that's fairly minor, really.

Lastly, my only other critique on this is the look. For my personal tastes, the blacks were crushed too much, so a lot of detail/information was lost. I really dug the look of the flashbacks, and DO like the contrast of how things looked when things were good & happy, however that could just as easily have been produced with a desturation vs so much crushing, etc.

Also, the shot angles ... for much of the film I just felt claustrophobic, and not in a 'it helped benefit the film' sort of way. It was fairly constant throughout, so I felt like I could never really breathe, even in the happy memory shots ... so perhaps more mid shots would have benefited the overall film, and then use close ups & extremes with more decision to propel moments where you wanted it. An example of what I'm talking about is when we see a close up of the guy's butt sitting down in the park. I saw no motivation or reason for that shot, so all I got was a close up of his butt, with no other information (i.e. there was nothign of importance in the frame for us to focus on, etc.).

All that said, I rated this highly, and thought on many levels it was very well executed, though it could have gone just a TAD bit higher (in my opinion) with some of the above addressed.
 
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