Today I received a short I requested from a fellow filmmaker. I had seen the trailer online, though I forget exactly how I came upon it. Anyways the film, titled LOSER, written and directed by film school grad Nicholas D. Feitel, follows the plight of a young man(Donnie, played by Zephyr Benson) on a slow jog towards adulthood. For him, growing up and escaping the gauntlet, known to most as high school, can't come any sooner. He is picked on, beaten up, and oh yeah, he's Jewish. His life is so bad, that we catch him in the opening moments of LOSER, hiding in a bathroom at his own Bar Mitzfah. Touches like that are nice. To that I have to applaud the writing, in which small strokes can be more telling than broad ones when painting character. Granted, the film feels rushed in the sense that too much ground tries to be covered within the 12 minute run time - this is one of the few short films that could benefit from being expanded to maybe 15 or 20. The look and tone of the film is great! I love the naturalism, and grainy beauty of the 16mm stock. Though not quite great, LOSER definitely labels Nicholas D. Feitel as a filmmaker to watch. He knows his stuff, now he just needs to fine tune his style and structure. I encourage you to check out his channel on vimeo(http://www.vimeo.com/channels/43565), where he has another short up that I highly recommend. It's called THE BIG NIGHT.
Grade: B
