Kisses in the Dark

A compilation of four award-winning shorts, Kisses in the Dark offers a pair of wonderful 10 minute films nestled on either side of two bloated artistic excesses. The opener, Coriolis Effect, a half-hour mess, tracks two squabbling best friends who, while chasing a tornado for meteorological data, run across a mysterious woman who intends to walk into the eye of the (very big) storm. I know it sounds intriguing, but trust me, it's not. Next up, an old staple of 16mm film collections, the charming Oscar-nominated Solly's Diner offers a slice-of-comical-life when a vagrant gets involved in a diner hold-up. The third piece, Looping, is an excruciatingly boring short about--what else?--filmmaking, which is best fast-forwarded to get to the final (and finest) entry, Joe--a purely cinematic (no dialogue) short about an obsessive shoe polisher in a psychiatric ward whose day is--almost--ruined. For my money, the video is worth buying for the last short alone, with Solly's Diner a bonus. Recommended. (R. Pitman)