Cru3

Lara Fitzgerald's "Small Avalanches", adapted from a story by Joyce Carol Oates, is something of a small miracle - a perfectly realized short film. In little more than twenty minutes the director succeeds in depicting with stunning honesty the lazy nature of a rural summer day and the boredom that can consume a young person in their "tween" years. This achievement alone makes "Small Avalanches" worth watching, but in short order she then creates a progressively sinister scenario of a predatory male's efforts to capitalize on both the naive nature of a young girl and the isolation she finds herself in. Her idle walk home becomes all the more nerve wracking because she isn't fully aware just how bad this big bad wolf truly is. Max Vendrig and David Keely both play their parts without a false note in either performance, and the technical credits are first class. Here's an instance of watching a filmmaker achieve so much from so little, and that is the sort of talent that makes anyone who loves film look forward to enjoying what else they may create.

This is an escapist entertainment featuring a cast of good actors and some commendable production values - all rendered pointless by the director's incessant (and I do mean incessant) abuse of the zoom lens. Whose idea was that? The director? The director of photography? Who holds the blame? It became so nauseating that it effectively spoiled everybody else's hard work. The director is not a novice and yet he allows this same grievous mistake to sink this film as he did the previous 10.5 disaster TV movie. There seems to be a mistaken notion that manipulating the zoom lens equates with directorial style. Jess Franco would even be embarrassed.