The director Corey Foxx has created a very interesting short film called Learning to Cuss. The actors are two children, Austin Foxx and Tyler Foxx and the actress that portrays their mother, Gretchen Brocard.

What happens in this movie is that while the children want to begin experimenting with bad words, their mother is absolutely not going to accept that kind of attitude and she is going to show that in a violent way. The movie will show what I described and will end with us viewers assuming the mentioned above violence, since we will not see it but probably hear some of it. I would like to congratulate the director on the choice of actors since the two children that star in the project have very unique physiognomies.


Austin and Tyler Foxx.

In the beginning of cinema all films tended to be really short since the means of production weren’t neither cheap nor easily accessible. Even when the duration of film stabilised as the common duration we come across in feature films, very short comedy films and short animations would still be a thing for a lot of years. As years of cinematic experience have gone by, the art of filmmaking has gone in multiple directions. The short film might have become a means for independent artists to express themselves.

Today we have social media platforms that are literally filled with whatever a human mind can imagine , from an amazing short to an editing and after effects masterpiece and tutorial to an informative video and all that in under a minute. While keeping that in mind and also thinking about the gigantic ocean of creativity that the internet can provide us in 2021, I honestly can not completely understand what exactly this film has to offer to a viewer.

It is of course the depiction of a situation from the directors eyes. It would be for sure descent if it was a commercial advertisement or an exercise of a specific subject at a film school class. I honestly though am incapable of seeing it’ s point and it’s artistic statement when listed as a short film which puts itself in a position to compete with other movies.

I would appreciate this project as a non-commercial ad against child abuse or maybe if it was part of a series of short videos that resemble each other in form but have different content. In any way, this project lacks completion and a purpose, something that will make it much more than ‘cute’, because it is indubitably very cute.

E.Vlachou, MA
Film Critic