Will "Before I Disappear" be as good a film as "Curfew"?

I'm drawing up my grocery list in preparation for a day of cooking turkey, but I just saw that Shawn Christensen's film Before I Disappear is opening this week and I had to say a few words. I saw his short film Curfew, which won more than 40 film festival awards before taking the Oscar for short film in 2012. It was very funny and clever and an example of what a writer can come up with if his take on life is prefaced with "What if....?"

Before I Disappear is Curfew taken to feature length. Here's the gist: "At the lowest point in his life, Ritchie gets a call from his estranged sister, asking him to look after his 11-year-old niece, Sophia, for a few hours." (The film actually opens with Ritchie in the bathtub cutting his wrists. I will say no more.)

Christensen has added a few name actors to the feature, like Ron Perlman, but he still stars himself as Ritchie and has retained Fatima Ptacek as Sophie. I actually thought Ptacek was the weakest link in the short, because she seemed too much a show-biz kid, too much 10 going on 30. We'll see how she does in the feature.

The big question is, can you expand a short, snappy comedy and still make it work? We'll see. So far the feature has won 12 festival awards and the critics are mixed but generally positive. A lot of those who saw the short can't wait to see it. Me included.

Christensen graduated from the Pratt Institute in New York with a bachelor's degree in illustration (of all things.), but is proving to be a natural screenwriter, actor, and director....an immense talent who is going to have a long and successful career in film. Whether it's writer, producer, director, star, or all of the above...who knows? But you are going to see his name a lot.