Shuffle

This is a captivating film. I was thankful that the opportunity came my way to see this, which was pure luck really. At the last minute a friend invited me to the LA Festival at the Laemmle Sunset 5. This was the third Film Festival I've been too and will go ahead and add that the other festivals I did... Well they were sort of were hard to take. This one though I found invigorating and seeing this film SHUFFLE, was one of the reasons. First of all it felt very lush in quality and the storyline resonated for me. The way the story played out kept me involved and the photography was stunning. I would think it would be a trial to do a hit-man story in the short form without it stumbling into the typical stereotypes, which I so often see in regular full-length movies. I liked the characters and the acting was superb and very subtle and found small moments that were just damn good. It was a well-told story and I am happy to have tripped into it both literally/ figuratively.

The swift exposition immediately engages and hooks the audience with an unexpected and compelling conclusion. Rather than forcing a contrived and spelled-out thematic idea down the viewer's throat, the film respects the audience's intelligence enough to leave us wondering what we'd do in the situation.

The purposeful and graceful cinematography works smoothly in conjunction with the well-written script to bring the story to life without being too over-the-top. The images subtly build on each other not only to create the tone of the movie, but it also smartly furthers character development as well.

I highly recommend taking the time to watch this short film.