Caught

A Grand Slam!---both aesthetically and emotionally. Straight-forward and unpretentious. It's nice to see a baseball movie avoid the usual clichés and delve into more serious subject matter. As NYC is a baseball city, it's nice to see the borough of Brooklyn, home of much baseball pain, as a backdrop, not the cornfields of Iowa, where they really only follow college football. The cast seems earnest and authentic to where they live. The writing is tight and the editing is competent---much needed with short films. Most of all, it seems to connect with the audience. I hope to see more productions from Lori A. Martini and her cast and crew in the future, especially of a longer length.

I have never seen a short film before, so I didn't really know what to expect. I absolutely loved this. I was able to identify with it a little bit and Lori Martini's acting was phenomenal. It was like I could feel every emotion that she was going through. I also liked the timing of when the story would go back in time. It was like you understand years of what went on in only 18 minutes. The only thing that I would change is that it would be longer so there could be a happy ending and she could finally get that break. I can definitely see why it won an award. I hope to see more of her films in the future. Lori Martini is definitely a Star

One of the best short films I have ever seen. Great plot that pulled me into situations that I could relate to with my own family life. The acting was natural with fresh dialog. The director with clever writing had the film flowing in a way that I wanted to follow where it went next. It was shot so cleanly with a nice look that made me forget i was watching a "short". The story had me thinking of certain points in my own life and had me wanting to "guess" what was going to happen next substituting what I did in my situation. All the actors are sure to have break out careers. It was a great ensemble with great writing and great direction. I can see this being full length feature.

Writing a time-line type of story in only 18 minutes is really hard to do, however Lori Martini pulled it off. The flashbacks to key periods of the main character's life are perfectly executed in order to build the storyline. Using the game of baseball is a great parallelism if someone has had a tough life, as the game leads itself to failure more than success. Martini's performance clearly sticks out. The whole cast was fantastic and made for a totally believable story both on and off the field. This could easily be made into a full length movie one day. I will be following the career of all involved to be sure as this short film was quite memorable.