Short Film Review: “Michael Solace” Contemplates Selling Out and Selling His Soul
The film blends reality and the supernatural world together, leaving the viewer unsure of what’s real and what’s merely a figment of Michael’s agitated imagination.

The great Sonny Chiba stars as Goro Saionji, a drifting thrill-seeker. Out to investigate a suspisious plane crash in the Red Valley, he uncovers a plot involving yakuza and a shady land developer to evict an old farmer off of his land to build a sky resort. Goro must now help the old farmer and his daughter and take those criminals on.
The film blends reality and the supernatural world together, leaving the viewer unsure of what’s real and what’s merely a figment of Michael’s agitated imagination.
This film is based off of The Diary of a Young Girl, which was written during the Holocaust period.
There is a lot of controversy around Q-force. It’s certainly not hard to see why—the series is quite hyperbolic. I will say, that was the first aspect I noticed on my initial watch. Right from the get-go Q-Force barrages you with gay joke after gay joke. This is hit or miss throughout the series.
The genres of science fiction and fantasy are not exclusively masculine territory. Over the last few decades, female directors have brought to the screen some of the most visually stunning, intellectually daring, and deeply moving works of speculative fiction. From big Hollywood productions like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel to independent low-budget films, women filmmakers are making a name for themselves around the world.
The Bluff unravels its mystery slowly, opening on the capture of a ship captain named Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the swift execution of his entire crew. Then, viewers are treated to a tranquil British settlement in the Cayman Islands in the 1850s, where a mother bakes a coconut birthday cake for her son in a house suspiciously rigged with makeshift tripwires and burglar alarms. As it turns out, that mother is Priyanka Chopra’s quick witted and resourceful ex-pirate Mrs. Ercell Bodden, and her husband’s captors are on the way to the island to hunt her down for abandoning them and stealing their loot. The pirates of the Libertas land on the beaches of Cayman Brac, and the scenes that follow show a Viking-esque slaughter of half the island.
Facing the world with our fair share of uncertainties and/or apprehensions, many of which, sadly, may be well-founded, is nothing to sneeze at. Influenced and buffeted by the constant barrage of social media, fake news, and general upheaval present in our contemporary reality, what IS real and what's not becomes a blur.