Gasman

Git off me daddy's lap! Dats myyyyy daddy!

Christmas brings the family together but proves to be only a minimally enjoyable experience. Well-observed in the details, but, overall, this kind of thing is only of limited interest for this viewer.

Lynne Ramsey's third short feature does a really fantastic job at balancing a child's point of view with feeding the audience enough information to see what's coming. It's a vivid depiction of working class Glasgow (the Christmas party alone makes the entire short) and one of the moments that shift childhood perspective towards adulthood.

Another Lynne Ramsay short film filled with despair and hopelessness. The children did surprisingly well but the fact that the dad don't show any affection towards the second set of kids and barely any towards the first pair speak volumes. The kids entertaining themselves in an inappropriate setting while the adults pretty much ignore them seems to be par the course for most places which is sad.

the best of ramsay's early three shorts.

Beginner Lynne Ramsay shows unbelievable mastery of form. Brilliant cinematography, perfect acting, bare minimal text, heartrending climax, all in just 15 minutes.

As a look at broken families and the emotional turmoil this can put kids under it is nothing short of heartbreaking and exquisitely observed, and that we are in the same situation as the children in the early stages of the film - the unveiling of a certain piece of information is initially every bit as surprisingly and perplexing to us as it is to them - makes the film all the more effective.

So, maybe taking the kids to the pub for Christmas wasn't such a good idea after all?

My favorite of Ramsay's three shorts. She doesn't opt to explain whether the father's other two children are from a previous marriage or an affair, but the tension between the two groups is interesting to watch develop. Feels less perfunctory, and more poetic, than her previous shorts.

A moving portrait of single parenthood.

It's kind of interesting to see kids acting. There's some gaps in the narrative that makes it hard to understand the plot.