At Bright Wall / Dark Room, Joel Mayward writes a lovely, thoughtful piece on Hundreds of Beavers (2022). “Hundreds of Beavers begins with an on-screen title featuring one of Augustine’s prayers: ‘Lord, grant me chastity…but not yet.’ It is the plea of a pilgrim who feels lost, a man who has striven to overcome his vices by his own effort and cannot. It is also the doorway through which we enter into the gut-busting hilarious cinematic world that writer-director Mike Cheslik and writer-actor Ryland Brickson Cole Tews have created. Hundreds of Beavers is not only an indie DIY pastiche of silent slapstick, looney Chuck Jones-esque animation, and Let’s Play video game walkthroughs—it’s also a subversive, quasi-religious parable about the transformative power of pilgrimage.”

Read more here.