Pomona Rewind

TWO PEOPLE EXCHANGING SALIVA Could a quirky black and white French short film about a dystopian world where kissing is outlawed win an Academy Award? It seems it could do, with directors Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh scooping up awards left, right and centre including at film festivals in San Francisco, the American Film Institute and Clermont Ferrand. The winner of the Cesar for Best Live Action Short, it stars Luana Bajrami as Malaise, a shop assistant in a luxury fashion store. In a society where goods are exchanged not for money but slaps across the face, Malaise finds a customer, Zar Amir Ebrahimi's Angine who keeps coming back to her and who she develops an attraction to. As Malaise delivers blows across Angine's face, her colleague Aurelie Boquien's Petulante bristles with envy as Angine was once a valued customer. Because kissing is outlawed, people live in fear as young women are seized off the streets by guards and are placed kicking and screaming into tape...

A FRIEND OF DOROTHY Right from the moment Stephen Fry appears onscreen, you can see why Academy voters were swayed enough to nominate the English 21 minute comedy 'A Friend of Dorothy' for Best Live Action Short. A sweet natured tale of an unlikely friendship between Miriam Margolyes' pensioner Dorothy and Alistair Nwachukwu's Afro-Caribbean teen JJ, Lee Knight's short has a cheeky title for a start. It has two British national treasures as well in the shape of Margolyes and Fry. But there's also a delightful English eccentricity to it. In Knight's short, Margolyes' Dorothy Woodley first encounters JJ after he kicks a football into her back garden and knocks on her door to retrieve it. Inviting him inside her house to retrieve the ball on condition that he also opens a can of prunes for her, they quickly bond as he waits for her to retrieve her keys and marvels at her collection of plays in her bookcase. Noticing his interest, Dorothy elicits from JJ tha...

  THE SMASHING MACHINE At the start of awards season, it seemed like there was a clear path for Benny Safdie's 'The Smashing Machine to be a real Oscars contender. It's easy to see why. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson underwent a physical transformation for his role in the biopic of  MMA fighter Mark Kerr  and really tested his acting prowess. Emily Blunt also waded into new territory as well as Kerr's girlfriend. But despite securing Golden Globe nominations for both stars, Safdie's film never quite built momentum during awards season to land nominations at the key ceremonies. As a result, the film landed justbone solitary Academy Awards nomination for Best Make Up and Hairstyling and deservedly so. Should Safdie's movie, however, have landed more? 'The Smashing Machine' charts the downfall of Kerr, a two time MMA heavyweight champion. Sporting a wig, Johnson plays the Ohio MMA fighter whose reliance on painkillers tore him down from the heights in hi...

THE SINGERS As anyone who has ever dropped into an impromptu musical session in a bar can tell you, sometimes the most memorable renditions of a song can come from the most unlikely of people. That's the basic premise of Sam A Davis' Netflix acquired Best Live Action Short Oscar nominee, 'The Sinners'. Based on a short story from the 19th Century Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, Davis' beautifully filmed tale transposes the story to a sad looking, isolated blue collar bar in the dead of winter. As the regulars prop up the counter, one patron, Will Harrington's construction worker badgers the others for money to buy drink. Irritated by his behaviour, Mike Yung's bartender cuts a deal with him and Chris Smither's frail customer. Whoever sings the best will win a $100 note he has stashed away in a cluster of  dollar bills decorating the bar. And so after a few feeble starts, a game of musical one upmanship emerges with the ailing man impressively belting out ...

JANE AUSTEN'S PERIOD DRAMA In 1995, Scottish actor  Peter Capaldi shared the Oscar for the Best Live Action Short  with another competitor Peggy Rajski for his 23 minute comedy ' Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life '. With its tongue in cheek title, the film starring Richard E Grant and Ken Stott was an amusing tale about Kafka's struggle to write his daring 1915 novella ' Metamorphosis '. Its tie with Rajski's ' Trevor ' showed an eye catching title could go a long way with Oscar voters who 12 years later awarded a statuette to Ari Sandel's musical comedy 'West Bank Story' about the rivalry between Palestinian and Israeli falafel restaurants. Now Julia Aks and Steve Pinder are hoping to do the same with their mischievously titled 'Jane Austen's Period Drama'. A spoof of ' Pride and Prejudice ,' ' Sense and Sensibility ' and other English costume dramas, it stars Aks as the heroine, Miss Estrogenia Talb...

WEAPONS What would it be like if Paul Thomas Anderson made a horror movie? It's an intriguing notion that sits in the back of your head while watching Zach Cregger's supernatural mystery horror 'Weapons'. Cregger's film may not be an Anderson movie but it's got a multi layered narrative that tells its horror story from several perspectives. The central premise is what happens to a community when all but one child in a third grade class disappear overnight? The class in question is taught by Julia Garner's Justine Gandy in the Pennsylvanian town of Maybrook. With no obvious explanation for the childrens' disappearance, wild conspiracy theories abound.  Josh Brolin's angry parent Archer Graff leads unproven accusations that Justine must have had a central role. As the town starts to look at Justine for some kind of explanation, uncomfortable truths start to surface about her past and her messy personal life. This impacts Alden Ehrenreich's married ...