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.

Antonio, who fled Naples many years ago, has built a family and a successful career in Milan, far from his mother Angela — a woman excessive in both her virtues and her flaws, irresistible, old-fashioned and hostile like few others — who has come to visit for Christmas and seems determined to stay. Christmas Eve dinner becomes an emotional battlefield, at once comic and fierce, bringing to the surface a past of impositions and misunderstandings. With a stubborn capon that refuses to end up in the pot, a daughter whose arrival remains uncertain, and an unexpected distinguished guest, the evening turns into a reckoning between mother and son destined to change the meaning of their bond forever: a love that burns like a fire within, one that never dies out — not even by leaving.
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 trainwreck is hot but tame.
Like all modern societal phenomenons, it started with a meme. This one highlighted that when there’s a mom in a Pixar film, she is almost without fail given striking curves that highlight the bottom half of her body following a minuscule waist. From Elastigirl to the skeletal Mama Imelda, the animation giant’s artists seem to have a fixation on making exaggeratedly curvy maternal characters.
This is ambitious horror filmmaking, and in a lot of ways, I fully admire its ambitions. For me, the film’s sloppiness defines its overall quality.
'Barbarian' is horror infused with something ridiculous that makes the whole thing entertaining.
Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame is a unique film coming from the same studio that brought us The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. While it does have its silly moments to maintain Disney’s family-friendliness, it also carries themes that stick to audiences years after its release.