Forgotten Silver

Look up "droll" in your dictionary and see if you don't find a reference to this movie, a mock-doc by Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners) and Costa Botes that's more clever than funny, but very clever indeed. Detailing the career of an imaginary New Zealand filmmaker named Colin Mackenzie, whose numerous cinematic innovations were forgotten by an indifferent world, it's most entertaining when parodying the conventions of silent epics--the lengthy clips from Mackenzie's alleged masterpiece, Salome, are too accurate to be hilarious, but they're still great fun--and the studiously hushed tone of the typical documentary voiceover narration dead-on. Slight but agreeable, and at just slightly over an hour it doesn't remotely wear out its welcome. Recommended. (M D'Angelo)