FILM
Rituals & Resolutions is a lurid little piece of pulp fiction: The dialogue is terse, the actors' smiles are treacherous, and director Michael Stein imbues the short film with an ambience of mayhem.
With a twisting narrative, Stein ties together five cocktail-lounge losers and three vignettes of betrayal. That, plus the vaguely Vegas setting and Christmas tchotchkes, may set some viewers to hollering, "It's like GoodFellas meets Go! with fewer guns and more irony!" But pulp filmmaking isn't about originality so much as the color of the drapes and the cut of the characters - most notably, Angela Featherstone as a brittle waitress and Bodhi Elfman as a compulsive gambler who could be the kid brother of a seedy misfit played by Vincent Gallo. When Elfman curses and spits at his bookie, it sounds just like something you'd overhear in a dive bar.
If Rituals ran longer than 29 minutes, the film might not hold our attention, but as a short, it's just right: the online cinema equivalent of a trashy paperback thriller.
Rituals & Resolutions: free download. AtomFilms: www.atomfilms.com.
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