A world premiere, in-competition title at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, Trophy Kids is that rare independent film that turns its lens on the moviemaking process itself, and doesn’t morph into a self-congratulating circle jerk of air-quote misunderstood artistic grievance. Instead, it’s ambitious and playful, flirty and mysterious, puffed-up and yet also nervous and candid about its ambivalence and uncertainty toward storytelling form, and what makes a film a true work of art. In short, it’s the sort of indie movie that, well, gives indie movies a good name.

Co-written and produced by Brandon Yankowitz and director Josh Sugarman, the film takes its name from the coddled millennial generation (loosely defined as those born after 1975) whose every little action is applauded and rewarded. Max (Ryan Eggold, sort of the physical embodiment of Adrien Brody by way of Justin Chatwin) is a listless, seemingly shallow nightclub owner/party promoter who’s living well in New York City in no small part to the financial underwriting of his parents, who operate an unusual online university. Playwright Reid (David Gallagher, late of 7th Heaven) is a somber young guy, serious about his art and seriously broke at least in part as a result of that passion. While crashing with a friend, Reid meets Quinn (Australian-born Tahyna Tozzi), who conceals from him the fact that she’s a department store heiress.

Later, when Max gets it in his head to become a movie producer and make a film about his own life, he enlists the help of Quinn, who in turn turns to Reid. Quinn pitches Reid as a unique talent, and urges him to take the script-for-hire assignment from Max — which also involves moving in with him — so that he can get a place of his own and better fund his art. Slowly, Max is revealed to be a bit different than Reid first thought, and his contemptuousness evaporates. When Max keeps delaying in paying him and Reid also finds out about Quinn’s (white?) lie, however, he becomes both suspicious and angry. Will all his work for Max turn out to have been for nothing?

In its own to-scale fashion, Trophy Kids manages to be audacious without being ostentatious. Sugarman and Yankowitz open their movie on a scene of heightened drama and then rewind the narrative, working back to this point in a sly fashion that reframes its meaning. Throughout the film, there are subtle shifts in perspective which at first seem lazy or incongruous, but ultimately underscore different characters’ views of moviemaking and storytelling.

Fine work by cinematographer Austin Schmidt abets this cause, as do some solid performances. Gallagher ably captures the artistic restlessness of a guy who thinks he’s smarter than everyone around him, and doesn’t understand why that in and of itself isn’t enough to secure his future. But it’s Eggold, watchable and effortlessly charismatic, who takes Max from callow and untested to something verging on mature. He looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, sure, but there’s a sly and unexpectedly pleasant depth to his performance.

Trophy Kids isn’t fully dazzling as some sort of dizzying, deconstructionist cinematic treatise; it has its mind set firmly on entertainment as well. To this end, there is a considerable loosening of intrigue and hold in the third act. Yankowitz and Sugarman seem to have had an end point for their story, but no clear road map for how to get there from its big second-act pivot. Still, like New Suit, The Blue Tooth Virgin and The Scenesters — a trio of other shaggy, affectionate, low-budget indie releases that each in their own way had fun creating a mixed fruit salad of genre elements and inside-Hollywood noodling — it’s original, striving and kind of darkly playful, a combination of qualities sorely lacking in American independent cinema at the moment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (Yasu Media, unrated, 104 minutes)

An in-competition title at the ongoing Dances With Films festival, gritty indie film Less examines the intra-personal struggles of a recently homeless man, and the woman who awkwardly attempts to come to his rescue.

While mental illness has a lot to do with the situations of many homeless individuals, San Francisco’s Finn (co-writer Zak Barnett, who also nabs a co-directing credit) has, for his own dark reasons, actually chosen to live on the street. He wants to dramatically change his perspective and unburden himself of what he feels are the entanglements of possessions, but after several months the rough conditions seem to have taken a toll on his mental health as well. When the audience meets him, Finn is busy taking Polaroids of inanimate objects (manhole covers, parking meters, trash cans) and then attaching said photographs to them. He also engages passersby in weird, fitful fashion, and occasionally hands out change to strangers instead of asking for it.

Mia (Rebecca Noon, above left), mousy and unhappy, works at a small cafe near where Finn hangs out, and one day sees a randomly posted Polaroid in which he has declared himself “invisible.” She attempts to interact with him and Finn finally relents, accepting an invitation to come home with Mia for dinner. The next morning, though, Finn is back out on the street, where he eventually crosses paths with Gunther (Lew Levinson), a fellow homeless guy who convinces him to perform a strange bit of street theater. While Mia tries to understand why Finn — seemingly intelligent and not insane — won’t more fully engage with her, Finn tries to reconcile the still-raw hurt of his recent past and his desire to remain aloof with this strange new woman who keeps extending her hand in friendship, and more.

A little of Less goes a long way, even at a lean, sinewy 77 minutes. Directed and photographed by Gabriel Diamond, the movie has the gritty, defiant personality of much outsider cinema; it relishes the distance between its uncommunicative putative protagonist and the audience, because that distance is a correlative emotional placeholder for all the very same societal engagement and connection that Finn is consciously rejecting. It’s a shame, then, that the character of Mia isn’t more convincingly developed. If her unhappiness and isolation were acute and full-bodied (there are two thinly sketched scenes of her at work interacting with her manager, and one of her alone at home), viewers would have an appreciation for her desperate connection to Finn, and might be more forgiving of some of Less‘ dawdling.

The acting here is quite solid, if not of the knockout variety. Diamond, trading in close-ups and unique framing, is interested in highlighting what he views as the core emotions of scenes without necessarily doing the narrative lifting to get his characters to that point. Barnett, who resembles a scuffed-up Josh Duhamel, ably communicates Finn’s standoffishness, and loosening grip on what could be loosely characterized as society’s reality. With his piercing eyes, one gets a sense of his fractured psyche in a way that flashbacks and voiceover later rather needlessly flesh out. Noon — who looks a bit like a theoretical younger sister of Miranda July, and perhaps could have drifted in from one of her movies — is lovely as a wounded bird. It’s just that the joint repair Less proposes for these two damaged souls isn’t quite as convincing as its makers would have us believe. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Outside Films, unrated, 77 minutes)

Infidelity and sexual temptation are understandably rich and frequently utilized dramatic devices, but writer-director Massy Tadjedin’s evocative and engaging Last Night is a much more interesting, intellectually ambitious and emotionally honest exploration of refracted desire than almost all of its recent cheating-hearts cinematic brethren. A well-acted dramatic roundelay of enticement starring Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes and Guillaume Canet, the film stands out as a rare example of a work more interested in evoking universal thoughtfulness than telling its audience what to think.



In her feature directorial debut, Tadjedin, the screenwriter of The Jacket, shows a remarkable psychological insight into both men and women, as well as considerable trust in her material, by having all of her characters speak relatively openly and honestly. She’s interested in neither subterfuge nor judgment, but instead the human condition. Last Night is characterized by honest adult exchanges about romantic and sexual craving, and there’s an erotic charge to the dialogue without it ever becoming tawdry. Tadjedin also spotlights in savvy fashion two different types of temptation — the potential thrill of someone new, and the allure of someone with whom circumstances never quite properly aligned. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Tribeca Film, R, 93 minutes)

There’s a natural drama and tingly anticipation that marks all reunions of once thick-as-thieves adolescents, which is why of course the subgenre of movies that specifically trades in anniversary gatherings is so healthy and robust. Another filing in this category arrives in the form of writer-director Aaron Metchik’s 10 Years Later, a low-budget, character-based thriller of sorts in which a high school reunion goes awry, and ends up with a kidnapping.

The movie unwinds in a small town in California, where Josh (Jake Hoffman) still lives locally in his boyhood home, his once-promising potential arrested by anxieties that have resigned him to life as a pizza delivery guy. Aspiring actor Adam (multi-hyphenate Metchik, above left) and uptight white-collar professional Miranda (Kathleen Rose Perkins) are a couple, while nervous Becky (Senta Moses) is still in pain from discovering that her significant other has been cheating on her. Big-man-on-campus Darrell (McKinley Freeman, above center) is now a professional football player, with a young son in tow (apparently a babysitter can’t be found). And then there’s Kyra (Rachel Boston). She’s the straw that stirs the drink, a stripper who’s tried to bury the hurt of her past by adopting a vibrant, cheery, anything-goes exterior.

Everyone gets together in the afternoon at Josh’s house, and after some genial back-slapping some slightly more revelatory yearnings and inclinations get trotted out. When Kyra and Becky run out for cigarettes and refreshments prior to their evening reunion proper, an incident with Garrett (Cabin Fever‘s James Debello, gagged above), an old classmate who nastily forced himself on Kyra, quickly spirals out of control. After smashing him over the head with a bottle, Kyra and Becky load Garrett in the trunk of their car and return to Josh’s place. Naturally, the rest of the gang freaks out, and debates what to do. Compounding the problem is the fact that Garrett is now a police officer. Needless to say, some Four Loko, beer pong and a good-natured group game of Parcheesi do not ensue.

10 Years Later, which just screened at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, draws upon a rich lineage of more talky, urbane high school and college reunion flicks — from the notable, like The Big Chill, to other festival works, like Seven and a Match — but it also blends in elements of the “accidental kidnap drama,” as found in The Ref or the forthcoming The Perfect Host, starring David Hyde Pierce. Its plotting is fairly rangy. The movie stretches its legs and works through an inquisitive appearance by Garrett’s sheriff father, an escape attempt, an incident with another interloper who could identify the group and, eventually, a fire. But as often as not, these naked stabs at drama elicit more shrugs than nervous emotional involvement, or certainly thrills. The twists herein feel reactionary in measure, a collection of goosing pivot points rather than the logical extension of characters’ actions.

Metchik’s film feels like it would be more interesting if it had a more settled soul, and just let its characters talk through some of their individual and collective issues — or, conversely, it introduced a sustained, single outside investigatory force/threat (like Garrett’s father) earlier on, forcing the group to come together and present a united front. Attempting to vacillate back and forth between buried emotions and supposed action thrills doesn’t do the performers many favors, creating a tonal imbalance that makes it hard for them to stay on the same page. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (S10 Productions/BP Cooper Pictures, unrated, 97 minutes)

For all the visual thrill that modern studio moviemaking provides, there’s still a special charge that comes from discovering or submitting to, essentially, just a wordsmith — someone with a fresh, canted comedic perspective, damn any sort of slick camera razzmatazz. It’s just that sort of loose-limbed joy one finds with Stags, a New York-set, sort of Jewish-inflected version of Swingers, in which an on-the-prowl group of guys approaching 40 cope with a friend’s marriage and sudden death. The feature film directorial debut of television veteran Jamie Greenberg (co-creator of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, and story producer on Michael Moore’s TV Nation), Stags just world premiered at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, and could easily find wider embrace in arthouse distribution, among that cross-section of cinephiles who enjoy watching men act a bit like cads, and then defend or justify ,their actions in hyper-articulate fashion.

Because every group must have one, Snedden (Mark Giordano, above left) is the confident ladies’ man of Stags. A member of the “Oy Meets Girl” dating site, Victor (Matthew Rauch, above center) is the nebbish of the group. Price (Jesse Joyce, above right) is a jaded, cynical stand-up comic who unceremoniously destroys his relationship from the stage. The movie’s narrator and central figure, meanwhile, is Jack (Benim Foster), a frizzy-haired trophy store employee who in a pinch could serve as a stunt double for Michael Richards. Owing in significant part to the fact that she doesn’t understand how her name relates to the national Democratic ticket of 2004, Jack’s friends regard his girlfriend, Keri Edwards (Kimmy Gatewood), as something of a dim bulb, and he doesn’t much disagree. In fact, he loathes even calling her his girlfriend, and when a longtime pal returns from Los Angeles and springs his wedding on the aforementioned quartet, Jack weasels out of even asking Keri to accompany him.

When their friend suddenly passes away on his wedding night, however, Jack and his pals are thrown for a loop. It doesn’t bring about teary reflection and maturation, though, even after an awkward shiva. Emboldened by the newly discovered fact that their pal was a porn star, Snedden decides to “screw his way through the alphabet,” while Jack strikes up a friendship (and possibly more) with the quasi-widow, Amber (Jessica Faller). Victor, in the mean time, ponders procuring an escort. Against this backdrop of pitched lunacy, the guys individually and collectively spin their wheels, kicking and screaming against the sort of benchmarks of adulthood that they, in unspoken fashion, fear as death by papercuts.

Greenberg’s writing experience is on ample display, and gives Stags its lift. There’s some terrific observational humor throughout (Snedden muses about olives’ “little anuses,” while Price assays the tendency of liberal white guys to say “man” to blacks working in retail or service industry jobs), and the rapport between the lead actors is solid. Though it’s definitely nowhere near as black-hearted, the movie sort of recalls something like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where there’s a value placed on the pace and connectivity of the patter itself, above and beyond any emphasis on its emotional content. Stags bears the mark of a sitcom soul, in other words, though that’s hardly a disqualifying sin in this context. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Stags Films, unrated, 101 minutes)

A world premiere presentation at the just underway Dances With Films festival, The Millennium Bug boasts a simple, streamlined concept, and features poster art that strongly echoes Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, so one could be forgiven for prematurely celebrating the birth into the genre world of a groovy, gory and blissfully self-aware new creature feature. Unfortunately, writer-director Kenneth Cran’s film, while admirably incorporating some low-tech elements, never has any fun with its zonkers conceit, and even touches let alone rises above the sum of its clichéd parts.

The movie is on New Year’s Eve, 1999, as Byron (Jon Briddell) takes his new wife Joany (Jessica Simmons) and 18-year-old daughter Clarissa (Christine Haeberman, the second runner-up on VH-1′s Scream Queens 2) camping. Hoping to escape the Y2K computer glitch (aka “the millennium bug”) that he believes will cause the civilized world all sorts of problems, Byron drives his family deep into the Sierra Diablos mountains, to an abandoned lumberjack town known as Mason’s Grove. What he doesn’t count on, however, is a rampaging clan of in-bred hillbillies, who — in part since Pearlene (Ginger Pullman) has recently birthed another deformed monstrosity — abduct the trio and drag them back to their secluded cabin in an effort to replenish their stagnant, infested gene pool.

While Byron and Joany are held elsewhere, the family prepares Clarissa for her “wedding” to young Billa (John Charles Meyer), the group’s hotheaded leader-in-waiting. What none of these folks know, however, is that a giant, fanged bug — a phenomenon that excited cryptozoologist Roger Patterson (Ken McFarlane) has been tracking for most of his adult life — is about to be born in their neck of the woods, and enter the world none too peacefully.

Unfortunately, while its inspiration may lay in movies like The Evil Dead and The Hills Have Eyes, as well as a rich litany of Japanese creature features, The Millennium Bug wears a lot of these influences too readily on its sleeve. The hillbilly characters especially (and all their behaviors) are just a yawning collection of things seen many times before, from an old man picking feverishly on his banjo to a deformed, Quasimodo-like sibling. The characters shout and hoot and holler in menacing fashion, and there’s no particular rhyme or reason to the mock-creepy set design of their rotting cabin. Other tidbits, too, don’t track or follow, as when Billa curses, is admonished not to do so by a fired shotgun… and then immediately curses again, free of consequence. It sounds idiotic, simplistic and perhaps more than a little unfair to criticize a movie like this for being all surface and no clever subtext, but The Millennium Bug never deepens in intrigue in any fashion that might grab or focus your attention beyond the fleeting moment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Squire Film Shoppe/No CGI Films, unrated, 89 minutes)

A world premiere, in-competition title at the just underway, 14th annual Dances With Films festival, writer-director Steve Garrett’s Wake is a rangy, philosophically-tinged drama that connects mostly on the value of its production design, which gives the movie a certain grungy Venice Beach authenticity.

For a while it looks as though Wake may be a low-fi companion piece to Lords of Dogtown, chronicling the So-Cal skate scene. Bobby (Jerad Anderson) is a talented but emotionally isolated skater who’s trying to scrape together enough money to procure a better life for his stripper girlfriend Carmen (Monica Pitpit), and her little kid from a previous relationship. Unfortunately, her psychotic ex, Tony (Joseph Raymond Lucero), is still in the picture, and not always at the discouragement of Carmen. Lacking sponsorship deals, and facing pressure from Carmen, Bobby is forced to attempt a series of dangerous jumps for pay. One of them goes awry, paralyzing him from the waist down.

When he gets out of the hospital, Bobby goes to live with Carmen’s grandmother, Chelo (Renee Victor), and ponders what he’s going to do with his life. While there, he’s witness to a backyard brawl involving Tony, and gives assistance to a seriously wounded guy, seemingly healing him. This catches the attention of Father Tom (writer-director Garrett, pulling triple duty), who believes that Bobby has been divinely blessed with the ability to heal the sick and wounded.

In this regard, Wake is very much of a piece with the recently released Sympathy For Delicious, in which a cynical paraplegic (Christopher Thornton) fitfully connects and withdrawals from a skid-row priest (Mark Ruffalo) trying to similarly channel (some would say exploit) his faith-healing gifts. One of the differences is that in Wake, though, Bobby is actually able to heal himself, and so in short order he’s standing, walking, and then even skating again. While Father Tom pushes for him to continue using his gifts, though — including to benefit Paula (Janna Bossier), a young girl stricken with some vague terminal illness — Bobby is more concerned with recapturing his burgeoning skating career.

Working in HD video, cinematographer Sacha Riviere captures a fair amount of nice outdoor images, and he and Garrett bring to bear their ample commercial experience to convey a realistic backdrop, and also showcase the movie’s skating bits in a way that is engaging without being ostentatious. Anderson, too, has a nice, relaxed screen presence. While a lot of young actors would attempt to overdial the emotion, he never gets too high or too low.

Still, Wake isn’t rigorous enough in its plotting, design and execution to really sink its emotional hooks into an audience. And while the story covers a lot of ground, the ways its pieces fit together don’t always make immediate sense, and the film’s end twist isn’t the knockout blow its creators believe it to be. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Always Moving Pictures, unrated, 81 minutes)

Above-the-line stars get most of the credit and glory for Hollywood successes, but dozens if not hundreds of other specially gifted artisans labor on most big-budget productions, often going their entire careers without so much as an acknowledged tip of the proverbial cap from the moviegoing public at large. Director Craig McCall’s fascinating documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, then, attempts to right this wrong, shining a light on Cardiff, who on March 25, 2001 — more than five decades after winning his first Academy Award, for his stunning work on Black Narcissus — became the first cinematographer ever presented with an honorary Oscar, for his exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences.

If there’s a strike against this picture, it’s that it unfolds in a very linear and somewhat unimaginative fashion. Cameraman lacks a real spine, and doesn’t delve at all into Cardiff’s (doubtlessly fascinating) personal life. More about what shaped him in his young, formative years (there’s one scene that touches on this, but it seems the tip of an iceberg), as well as how Cardiff coped for so long with the itinerant lifestyle of a cinematographer and director, would have given McCall’s movie a much-needed extra dimensionality. Regardless, as is, Cameraman is a captivating look back at a transitory time — before basically all movies were made in color — when cinematography was slightly more welded to the emotion of the material, and used unabashedly to heighten the effect of genre elements. That Cardiff’s unique role in this era, and spanning the periods that both preceded and followed it, finally receives its own recognition is indeed a special thing. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Strand, unrated, 94 minutes)

Bill and Kate (Michael Sheen and Maria Bello), a married couple already on the verge of separation, find their lives torn completely apart when their college-age son, Sam (Kyle Gallner), goes on a shooting rampage at his school, and then takes his own life. In the pained weeks that follow, as they avoid an inquisitive media by first staying with family and then holing up a dingy hotel room, the tragedy both brings them together a bit while also exposing the seams of old grudges and wounds.

The rawness and unprecious nature of the lead performances in Beautiful Boy help director Shawn Ku’s film achieve a certain hold, enough so that fans of Bello and Sheen, or merely engaging, quality drama, will certainly find some reward in this low-fi offering. Cinematographer Michael Fimognari’s lingering handheld camerawork abets this restrained tack, which largely (though not entirely) eschews calculation and pointed drama in pursuit of something more melancholic and ephemeral.

Still, Beautiful Boy cries out for if not a stronger parental investment into delving into Sam’s anguished past (a thread which Ku clearly wants to avoid), then at the very least a more crisply observed final unraveling or more direct and sustained outside pressure upon these characters. (A burgling of the couple’s home by a souvenir-curious teen seems utterly contrived.) There are some pockets of intrigue, including a writer, possibly with ulterior motives, cozying up to Kate, who works as a proofreader. But for the most part the audience is a step ahead of the film when it comes to other conflicts (like the stress involved in Bill’s return to work), and thus left to only bob along in an ocean of nondescript grief. (Anchor Bay, R, 100 minutes)

Writer-director Mike Mills’ Beginners is the sort of movie that you never really stop wanting to love, even as it flits about and tests the boundaries of your attention. Warm, full of life and little tidbits that illuminate the bonds of love in a more elliptical yet realistic fashion than the plodding literalness of most conventional Hollywood relationship dramedies, it is distinctive — the product of a singular point-of-view, not some canned corporate mandate for surefire emotional response.



When Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a quietly grief-stricken graphic artist, meets unpredictable actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent, above) at a party, it triggers memories of his father Hal (Christopher Plummer), who passed away several months earlier, after a battle with cancer that followed his coming out of the closet after 45 years of marriage to Oliver’s mother. As the pair try to craft a relationship, Oliver thinks back over his own life, and ponders the lives of his parents.

Mills (Thumbsucker) has a canted sensibility that gives his movie a handcrafted, idiosyncratic feel, unsurprising since Beginners is based on personal experiences that dovetail with the narrative. Interweaving scenes from Oliver’s childhood with other narrated bits, and sequences with both Hal and Anna, Mills crafts an impressionistic snapshot of a guy fumbling toward a greater contentment. Scene to scene, this makes for some magical moments that capture how life lessons often arrive on tape delay, occurring long after some inciting incident. Mills, too, has a superb instinct for low-key comedy, evidenced in the sardonic subtitled interjections of Hal’s forlorn Jack Russell terrier, which Oliver takes in.

But there isn’t much of a sense of destination here. Despite ample chemistry, the love story between Oliver and Anna never completely sets sail, at least not in a way that rips and tears at a viewer’s heart, in pained identification. And while some of the maladies or hang-ups that plague the pair seem elucidated, there’s also a nagging feeling that they aren’t given a full, substantial airing and accounting by the characters themselves. This is a messy valentine — fitfully wonderful but also incomplete. (Focus, R, 104 minutes)

There’s a special type of moviegoing misery to be found in self-important period pieces, and that’s just the sort of screaming boredom that Empire of Silver, the nearly impenetrable, emotionally arrested feature film debut of essayist and playwright Christina Yao, delivers.

A drama focused on a powerful banking family in the late imperial/early Republican era of China, the movie rather gorgeously establishes its setting, but never locates a single compelling character or imparts any sense or sort of reality of what its subjects’ lives must truly have been like. The monkish lifestyles forced upon the mid-level financial managers that populate the movie’s telling of a son’s attempts to follow in his father’s business footsteps would seem to offer up a world of rich contrast and resentment, compared to the more lavish ruling class. But Yao never exploits this, and with the minor exception of Tielin Zhang, the acting here is all so wooden as to invite unfavorable comparison to a collection of popsicle sticks. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (NeoClassics Films, unrated, 112 minutes)

A delicate tone poem ensemble set in Portland, writer-director Matt
McCormick’s Some Days Are Better Than Others is an unfussy rumination on
modern human disillusionment and connection. The so-called “mumblecore”
genre has gotten a bit of a bum rap for the dawdling pace and seemingly
lesson-free nature of many of its entries, but there’s a pleasant and
refreshing sense of cinematic rejuvenation that comes with submitting to
a film that feels entirely of a piece in all its elements, but also
unburdened by any sense of desperate, dutiful narrative shock. If, in
their plotting, most movies roughly resemble a river current, Some
Days Are Better Than Others is like a thin, burbling brook, winding its way
across a varied landscape without even the intention of carving out its
own path over and through its surroundings.

Recently selected to play New Directors/New Films, the prestigious film series organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, Some
Days Are Better Than Others centers around Eli (James Mercer, above, frontman of acclaimed indie rock band The Shins), a listless would-be substitute teacher who can’t return to college and procure his degree because of some crippling student loans. To pay rent for the house he shares with his roommates, Eli takes odd jobs through a local temp agency, though even this work is often dependent on the availability of the car he borrows from his step-grandfather Otis (David Wodehouse), a kindly old soul taken with the kaleidoscopic images he can conjure up by placing soap bubbles under a microscope.

Eli’s story is interwoven with two other tales that loosely intersect the same small world/emotional space. Katrina (Carrie Brownstein, late of Sleater-Kinney), who works at a pet shelter and harbors dreams of being cast on a reality TV show, finds her world turned upside down when her boyfriend callously dumps her. Camille (Renee Roman Nose), meanwhile, works at a Goodwill-type donation center, and is unsettled to the point of preoccupation when an urn containing the ashes of a young girl shows up in a batch of bequeathed items.

Some
Days Are Better Than Others is a sensitive and soulful film, populated by characters recognizably weighed down by both circumstance and a greater, free-floating ambivalence. On their (unrelated) song of the same name, from their 1993 album Zooropa, U2 opined that, “Some days take less but most days take more, some slip through your fingers and onto the floor.” The feature film debut of music video and short-form director McCormick embodies just this sense of encumbrance. Plenty of movies track the wandering, distracted anxieties of randy young twentysomethings, overwhelmed and uncertain of where their lives are headed. It’s a much greater degree of difficulty, pegging the ennui and melancholy of thirtysomethings and those (like the character of Camille) even older, but McCormick does so by not injecting contrived crises or false, over-articulated panic into his story. Reminiscent of the works of Miranda July, the target at which the thoughtful, engaging Some Days is aiming is a smaller one than most modern mainstream movies even attempt to hit, and it does so in beautiful fashion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Palisades Tartan, unrated, 93 minutes)

The laboriously quirky low-fi coming-of-age comedy Spork, from writer-director J. B. Ghuman, Jr., serves as a reminder that the words “original” and “good” are not necessarily interchangeable. Heck, this low-budget offering isn’t even all that original, in fact, just constructed of parts to bait one into the false feeling that it is so.

Spork centers around a frizzy-haired, small town junior high outcast (Savannah Stehlin) — so nicknamed because her absentee mother told her before splitting that she was a hermaphrodite — and her bangle-bracleted attempts to fit in, despite the bullying and antagonism of a mean-girls cabal inclusive of sneering, bouffant-haired tweens with names like Betsy Byotch (Rachel Fox, above center) and Loosie Goosie (Oana Gregory, above left). With the assistance of her trailer park neighbor, Tootsie Roll (the charismatic Sydney Park), and new, pint-sized pal Charlie (William Arnold), who has two gay dads, Spork decides to tackle a school dance contest, both for the cash prize and side benefits in self-esteem.

In both tone and style, Spork unfolds sort of like an ever so self-conscious mash-up of Napoleon Dynamite, Youth in Revolt and Dear Lemon Lima, another precious and colorful festival circuit staple from a couple years back that had the benefit of a smarter screenplay and much more engaging characterizations (as well as Beth Grant in a nearly identical role, as the school’s principal). In this regard, Ghuman manages to do something rather remarkable — take a uniquely canted personal story of self-actualization and uplift, studded with some nice production design, and make it boring and grating. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Underhill Entertainment/Neca Films, unrated, 86 minutes)

The angry, dirty and unforgiving streets of New York City have over the course of several generations taken on an almost mythical role in American independent cinema, fueling some artists, creatively bankrupting many more, and driving others into the arms of more lucrative, mainstream projects. An exhaustively comprehensive oral history of outsider cinema from the late 1970s and into the mid ’80s, Celine Danhier’s Blank City unfolds in all the hazy, erudite specificity of some breezy, memories-laden conversation between your parents and a bunch of their friends at some holiday party from your youth. Meaning, you ask? Meaning it’s kind of interesting in retrospect, or on a theoretical level, but also somewhat impenetrable, given everyone’s penchant for inside jokes and thorough (and thoroughly unedited) recollection.

Against the backdrop of economically bombed-out Lower East Side landscapes, powered by cheap dope and speed and inspired by the cinematic rules-breaking of the French New Wave, a certain DIY ethos took root in the latter days of the Ford Administration. A renegade collection of aspirant filmmakers, musicians, amateur actors and other artistically-minded misfits would, over the next dozen years or so, crank out all sorts of stark and provocative outsider films, in what would come to be known as the No Wave. Some filmmakers and performers (Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi) would go on to greater fame with more accessible work, while others (Deborah Harry) would almost reluctantly find success in other arenas. Most, however, found their potential careers (to the extend they regarded them as such, and anything more than a way to fill their time) eventually derailed by jealousies and recklessness. The quirky work they left behind, though — long on alienation, often short on production value, rich in deadpan humor, and blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction — holds some interesting lessons for would-be independent filmmakers of future generations.

Neophyte French director Danhier has an obvious passion for the material, but lacks the ability the form a cogent narrative spine from all of her interviews. As such, the movie unfolds in largely lurching fashion. Some of the anecdotes are amusing, and fascinating for the simplistic yet radical notions they hold at their core. Director James Naren talks about craftily arranging to see a property he had no intention of renting (or of course even the means to afford), then surreptitiously leaving the windows unlocked, coming back later that evening, climbing up the fire escape with his friends and cohorts, sneaking in, and shooting part of his avant-garde Rome 78. Later, Naren also talks about a lack of overt manipulation being of paramount importance to he and most of the rest of his filmmaking peers, and if bad acting or filmmaking was resultant from that, so be it, that was fine.

The widescale (at least within this group) embrace of this sort of seat-of-your-pants filmmaking makes for some interesting sidebar speculation amongst cineastes, especially if there had been more formalistically and narratively adventurous parties pushing back against some of their peers. But Danhier has trouble taking this microclimate — one interview participant describes the area between 14th Street and Houston, and Avenue B and Bowery as his entire world — and making it matter to the layperson, or connecting it in meaningful and convincing fashion to the cinema of today. Bolstered by film clips from literally dozens of No Wave offerings, Blank City proves itself several times over a vital document of this outsider movement, even if mainstream interest in such a trip down memory road is likely to remain at a significant remove. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Insurgent Media/Pure Fragment/Submarine Entertainment, unrated, 94 minutes)

In 2000, Bryan Singer‘s adaptation of the X-Men comic book series gave the modern superhero genre a kick in the pants, seeding action thrills with deeper ethical conflicts, and laying the groundwork for both the commercial success and some of the more artistic-minded noodling of a wide variety of genre followers. A prequel to the original films, and presumably the beginning of a story arc that could stretch out over a trilogy of its own, X-Men: First Class doesn’t quite touch the inspired blend of brain and brawn that the best of its predecessors had to offer, but neither does it embarrass itself. It’s a slick piece of pop entertainment marked by smarter than average characterizations and some solid performances, and it shows that mainstream studio films can indeed, with some effort, accommodate muddied heroic intentions.

In particular, McAvoy and Fassbender each deliver fine, captivating turns. The former ably communicates Charles Xavier’s goodheartedness with a bit less on the written page than one might like, while burgeoning talent Fassbender, showcasing an appealingly dangerous, quicksilver charm as the man who would become Magneto, forever settles the actor-versus-movie-star argument surrounding him: he’s both. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 132 minutes)

For all their amazing feats, athletes, even those of ferocious
competitiveness and incredible and finely honed individual skill,
sometimes evince a lack of joy, perhaps because their profession is
dictated to some degree by body shape and size, pedigree, or simply the
fact that it was drummed into their head long ago that their self-worth
was entirely tied to this game or that. For me, that’s why amateur
sports — particularly something like college basketball, where rivalries
often span generations — possess such a special allure. There’s an
innately human joy in bearing witness to someone doing something they
truly and deeply love, no matter the money, and also do it well — especially if they’re a youngster. And that joy is on ample display in
Make Believe: The Battle to Become the World’s Best Teen Magician, a
superlative new documentary that absolutely radiates a positive energy.

Of a piece with 2003’s Spellbound and 2007’s The Kong of King: A Fistful of Quarters (no surprise, since it’s executive produced by Seth Gordon, the man behind that hit documentary), Make Believe puts a death grip on one’s attention not because of any grand understanding about the allure of magic that it imparts, but because these are bright if somewhat differently focused kids with a depth of insight and a remarkable amount of self-awareness. Ergo, it’s rewarding to listen to them talk about their interest in magic, and how it makes them feel.

As with any number of other comfortable, more conventional teen narrative features, the dramatic arc here tracks a few months of practice leading up to a contest — in this case the teen-classification finals of the prestigious World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas, sponsored and endorsed by various organizational bodies and world-famous magician Lance Burton. Of the five subjects on which the film focuses (one is actually a pair, from South Africa), there’s not a rotten apple in the bunch, including 14-year-old Colorado native Derek McKee (above).

The winner of the Best Documentary Prize at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, Make
Believe could be more comprehensive and detailed with regards to its putative subject of inquiry, certainly. Still, watching the movie, one’s heart sings, caught up as it is in the dreams and aspirations of these talented kids. It’s a reminder, too — removed from the harsh glare of peer judgment — that all the kids with the quirkier interests and hobbies in high school were probably actually the coolest at the time, and stand a far better chance today of making their own unique way in the world as adults. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Level 22/Firefly, unrated, 91 minutes)

Base-line expectations, just as in real life, can sometimes be a
powerful determinant when it comes to movies. Given that the Twilight
craze has made all things vampire hot once more, one could certainly be
forgiven for settling into We Are the Night with a sleepy yawn, thinking it no
more than a hollow, hyped-up European genre exercise owing its entire
existence merely to a recent trend. On the contrary, German filmmaker
Dennis Gansel’s movie is an engaging, well sketched, punky romp that, in
telling the story of a hedonistic all-female vampire clan whose
delicate balance is upset when they add a new member to their cabal,
actually has some interesting things to say about feminine
competitiveness and relationships.

Not to be confused with We Own the Night, the New York-set crime film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Eva Mendes and Mark Wahlberg, Gansel’s film centers around Lena (Karoline Herfurth), a 20-year-old Berliner and petty thief who in a pinch could stand in for either of the protagonists of Run Lola Run or La Femme Nikita. When the audience first meets her, she’s fleeing a cop after pinching a wallet. When the police officer, Tom (Max Riemelt), finally catches her after she tries to change guises, she smashes him in the face and makes a daring leap to safety off of a bridge, flashing a victorious middle finger to add insult to injury.

Later that week, at an underground club, Lena meets the striking if vaguely Aryan Louise (Nina Hoss), who turns out to be a 250-year-old vampire. An unfortunate bathroom encounter leaves Lena bitten but alive, so she becomes one of them, later cautiously seeking out and joining up with Louise and her two other friends — wild child Nora (Anna Fischer, above left), who likes to collect fancy sports cars, and ex-silent film star Charlotte (Jennifer Ulrich, above right), who smokes cigarettes through a long-stemmed holder and seems to harbor a swallowed disdain for everyone around her. Louise lays out the particulars of their situation: the only vampires left, numbering around 40 in Europe and 100 worldwide, are females. The men were “too loud, or too stupid,” more easily hunted by humans and then finished off by the peeved lady vampires.

After a brutal training session acclimates her to her new reality, Lena for a short while basks in the unadulterated glow of consequence-free excess. Her tattoos melt away, and her short, closely cropped hair blossoms beautifully, as if from a shampoo commercial. Lena is also privately heartbroken, though, when her mother doesn’t seem to even notice that she’s been gone for two full days. And while Louise seems to think destiny has brought she and Lena together, Lena isn’t so sure. Things get more complicated when Tom locates Lena, and starts asking questions. After she and the rest of the girls are linked to a recent murder, a police dragnet threatens to rip the group apart — if not literally then certainly in terms of the bonds that keep them together.

A spunky mash-up of vampire flick and police procedural, with just a dash of doomed romance courtesy of the burgeoning relationship between Lena and Tom, We Are the Night feels like it could be a Luc Besson genre movie; it’s smart, well photographed and thoughtful without being too serious. The plotting eventually succumbs somewhat to genre expectations, and a more direct conflict between Louise and Lena, but the acting is strong and consistent enough throughout to more than make up for the familiarity of the movie’s third act pivots. If there’s a big drawback, it’s that the film arrives Stateside in dubbed form. While this in theory may widen its potential audience, in reality it robs We Are the Night of a piece of its original voice — literally and metaphorically. Some things translate quite well universally, and vampires are one of those things. No need to switch the language. Note: in addition to its theatrical release, the film is also available nationwide on VOD. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (IFC, unrated, 100 minutes)

One of the downsides of the digital revolution and shrinking production costs is that the removal of various financial and technical impediments to feature filmmaking makes every emboldened Tom, Jane and Harry think that their ideas truly need to be shared with the world, and that their genius is now only one festival screening away from being discovered, launching them into a stratosphere of artistic embrace and appreciation. This is often manifested in gimmicky dramatic conceits that fail to possess much in the way of intellectual examination. Witness State’s Exhibit A in this line of reasoning: The Abduction of Zack Butterfield. A woefully inept and entirely pointless air-quote psychological thriller which throws together two characters in a potentially hot-button narrative design and then does absolutely nothing of consequence with them, the movie is a wince-inducing, across-the-board collection of substandard elements.

After a bit of scene-setting teenagedom to sketch out 14-year-old Zack’s innate decency as compared to his hornball friends, the film, set in upstate New York, plays its abduction card and pivots, ostensibly, into a kidnapper-hostage drama, wherein the victim begins to (possibly) display signs of affinity for his captor. A former Army solider and Blackwater — excuse me, Dark Creek — independent contractor who served several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as some hot-shit commando, April (Brett Helsham, above) nabs Zack because men are pigs and, as she puts it, “I figured those teachers you see on the news are on to something.” Putting a necklace rigged with explosives around his neck and locking Zack up in a room filled with a strangely substantial number of miniature sports balls, April proceeds to try to woo him in a naughty schoolgirl outfit, before finally proceeding to tell him all about her damaged childhood.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Butler (co-writer Stephen Ryder), ever the investigative genius, has a series of increasingly (unintentionally) hilarious conversations with Zack’s parents (Aaron Letrick and Lisa Gunn), and two FBI agents show up on the case and advise them to “move on.” Of course, Zack can only resist the power of his adolescent boner for so long, so he eventually yields to April’s amorous advances, which leads to one of those sex scenes where the camera stays locked on the bed’s edge for 90 seconds, while articles of clothing are tossed into frame. There’s also (seriously) a two-minute guitar sing-along, before things eventually culminate in a close-quarters “fight scene” that’s no more complex than the scuffle you and your seven-year-old brother once had over who ate the last piece of Black Forest cake.

The script here is terrible, in both dialogue and exploration of the basic conceit, and director Rick Lancaster reveals himself to be… well, a less than masterful stager. Oh, then there’s actually the acting, too. While Helsham and Plunkett are both novices with technique, and thus have trouble in some of the scenes requiring more emoting, it’s the wildly amateurish supporting acting in particular that dooms The Abduction of Zack Butterfield to depths of risible mockery from which it cannot escape. If there’s a fate worse than being kidnapped, one feels by the end of this movie’s running time, it’s being kidnapped by these filmmakers, and forced to participate in one of their low-fi cinematic parlor games, which never should have escaped the realm of the theoretical. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Thunder Hill/Metropolis Films, unrated, 91 minutes)

Director Andrew Lau takes a break from the crime thrillers and martial arts period pieces for which he is better known Stateside to tackle more tender affairs of the heart with A Beautiful Life, an uncommonly well sketched romantic drama about the tractor-beam allure that a certain type of wild, damaged women possess for a particular corresponding type of lonely men. Unfolding in present-day Beijing, the movie uses an appealing visual palette and solid performances from Shi Qi (above left) and Liu Ye to communicate and luxuriate in universal feelings about longing, love and connection. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (China Lion, unrated, 122 minutes)