an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

In South African writer-director Hanneke Schutte's 10-minute short film Willem Dafoe plays a loner who still isn't over the fact that he could not compete at the table tennis Olympics several decades ago due to a simple cold. That is why he never leaves the house. When his bird gets sick, a young female vet diagnoses that he is just reflecting his owner's depression. So she gets the original Olympics Gold medal winner to the house and Dafoe's character finally gets his big say. Of course the vet has a father with interest in table tennis, so she makes this personal. And of course, Dafoe's character goes immediately out of the house after staying in for 10 years before (according to his neighbor) and not even being able to get the newspaper properly.In the end he recovers and so does the bird. Nice little story if you don't think about it in depth, but as a whole it really felt a bit superficial and ridiculous occasionally. I'd only recommend this to Dafoe completionists and fans of the series "Awkward!" for Nikki Deloach.