Greetings humans, Monki here with my last batch of reviews from the Bermuda International Film Festival.

It's hard to put in words how awesome the entire festival was. The films were entertaining, the people were friendly, the panels were informative and the island was beautiful. Everything you could ever hope for in a film festival.

This film could be the start of a new genre of movies. Director Dale Kutzera dug through the national archives and pulled out vintage World War II films and seamlessly blended the older footage with new scenes shot explicitly for the movie. What you get is a biting satire based on the U.S.'s military strategy of 'attack first, find evidence later.'

The film acts as an extended news reel sequence you might have seen in Starship Troopers, only set here on Earth in the 1940s. In fact, Patrick Muldoon (he had his brain sucked out in front of that chick from Wild Things at the end of Starship Troopers) is the lead male actor in this film and the narrator sounds strikingly similar to the "Would you like to know more?" voice from that movie as well.

Military Intelligence and You! could certainly lead filmmakers to going back into the archives and digging up footage. I mean, how else will you get to have Ronald Reagan in one of your films? (Yes, the former president makes an appearance in this film.) I've read somewhere about someone thinking of remixing films (Mike Meyers, I think) and this film seems to be the first successful attempt.

If you pay attention you will also find little nuggets of hilarity, pay close attention to the dialogue between two pilots making an attack run, Red Leader and Gold Leader in particular.

Military Intelligence and You! is a fun poke at the state of naivety in our country right now, I had a good time with it.

The Bermuda International Film Festival is one of about fifty different festivals that have received accreditation from the Academy Awards for short film recognition. Basically, the winner of the short film award at BIFF gets a shot to make the short list of the Academy Award short film nominations. That being said, the short film program at BIFF is excellent.

I won't go into every short film I saw at BIFF, but I just want to highlight a few.

Freedom Days was the only short film in the festival that drew an audible gasp out of me. South African filmmaker Quinton Lavery chose to create a film about the struggles that continue in the post-apartheid nation.

What he has created is an intense short that keeps you anxious the entire time. From the opening scene to the final frame you are on the edge of your seat, truly remarkable for such a brief piece.

Quinton is another South African filmmaker we should keep our eyes on. With Neill Blomkamp still circling the Halo franchise, who knows, maybe we are on a run of South African film.

The film opens on a pristine beach on the coast of Ireland. That beauty is broken rather quickly with the inclusion of Dylan Moran trapped in a pair of cement shoes. You know Dylan as David from Shaun of the Dead.

We gather that Dylan's character was involved in some sort of mob activity and is now just waiting for the tide to roll in to take him to his ultimate demise.

This film begs the question, if you knew you had about eight hours to live and were confined to a single location, what would you do? Great little film.

T.O.M. is an animated short that follows the adventure Tom takes every morning on his way to school. Included in this journey are removing his clothes before he makes it to the school, visiting a dead woman in a local shop and generally being hilarious.

T.O.M. is one of those films that just doesn't make sense, but you don't really care as you laugh the entire way through.

This film was as close to experimental as we got in the series of shorts I watched. It begins with a stop motion animation of a guy going from completely bald and shaven to having a full beard and head of hair. The sweet part is, his hair growth meshes with the sound, so at peaks in the music his hair would reach it's full length and then recede with the quieter moments. I guess that is kind of hard to explain but trust me, the effect is cool.

The man then goes to a woman who accompanies him to a barber shop where he is shaven clean. The woman picks up all of his hair, he escorts her back to her apartment, he returns home, and then the loop begins again.

That's it. The same process repeats a few dozen times in quicker succession with a cool music track laid down over it all.

This one is worth checking out just due to the awesome stop-motion techniques used throughout. Good times.

This was the only film I was kind of 'meh' about. Have you seen Napoleon Dynamite? If the answer is yes, then you've seen the characters that exist in this movie.

Don't get me wrong, this is a cute film with some funny moments, but all in all it just felt like a retread of the universe that exists with Uncle Rico, Kip and Napoleon.

The main character in this film is a woman who falls for a man while working at a fast food chain. She exudes all the social awkwardness that we would expect from a geeky fast food worker. For some reason she falls for a man who has a job at a local video game store and cares about nothing more than himself and his quest for revenge on a man who picked on him in high school.

The two do get together and the second half of the movie deals with their relationship and trying to figure out how to make their unique personalities mesh.

Unfortunately for the film, the male lead never really comes across as redeeming in any kind of way. He is always weird but our heroine never really seems to mind. Eh, love is blind I guess.

Seriously though, if you dug the hell out of Napoleon Dynamite you will probably like this one. It is the cousin to that film. The younger more inept cousin.

So that does it for my coverage of the Bermuda International Film Festival. I had a wonderful time and I can't wait to make it out to next year's program.

My two favorite moments of the fest:

1. Sharing a boat with Richard Dreyfuss and having him say, I kid you not, "We're going to need a bigger boat!" Geek-gasm.

2. Carrie Fisher giving her "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope" speech live at a panel. Geek-splosion.

I'd like to thank everyone involved with the festival, you made my trip an experience I won't soon forget. Special map-props go out to the hero of the festival, our driver Dean Ming. You haven't lived until you've been in the back of a van traveling across Bermuda with your driver singing a lovely song about the beauty of the island. Excellent.

That pretty much does it until next year. I've got a crapload of gaming news to catch up on here for the site, so stay tuned for more of that. Until then though, back up the tree I go!

-Monki