3 Short Paragraphs: Time Lapse

2014, Bradley King -- download

In the continuing, but unintended, series of off-Broadway (straight to video on demand) movies, we get a time travel movie that Marmy anticipated I would enjoy. Well, not time travel but more a window into the future. The primary scifi element of the movie is that the neighbour of three millennials (one is Danielle Panabaker, from The Flash and Sky High) has created a giant instamatic camera that takes pictures of the future. For some reason, he has it focused on their front window, like a mad scientist peeping tom. One of the roomies is the super and notices said Mad Scientist has not been around for a while. When they investigate, they find the technically-correct "time machine" and Mad Scientist's dead body. Hey, its a machine that is playing with time, right?

There is a noticeable difference between movies created to fill an empty slot on the distributors shelf, and movies made because someone actually wants to. King has been chosen, as many directors are these days (and good on you Hollywood!), because he made a couple of popular & well-respected shorts. Despite being regularly invited to a short film festival (sorry James), I rarely see shorts unless they end up on a pop culture blog. Either way, you can tell they are working sincerely on this movie. The actors and directing care. It shows. And it means something.

With 24 hours into the future in hand, they do the first thing that all time related stories do, they make some money off it. Pill popping and not doing much but gambling, roomie Jasper wants to make his buck off the machine before it inevitably has to come to an end. Roomie Finn is suspect of it, but dives right in when he realizes it lets him continue painting. He gets a thumbnail of what he is going to paint, and paints it. And girlfriend and roomie Callie dances between trusting the boys and getting in between them. Of course, things cannot go right, for Mistress Time is not fond of people messing up her plans -- I think its rude we always call her a bitch. In a fun, but entirely expected ending, the machine becomes the downfall of the trio. But it was fun while it lasted.