Watching the new indie dramedy Stan, which just had its world premiere at the ongoing, 14th annual Dances With Films festival, one could be forgiven, if they were so inclined, for letting their mind wander and recall the title track of Ben Folds’ excellent Rockin’ the Suburbs, in which he bemoans being “all alone in [his] white boy pain.” It’s not, after all, that the movie has no dramatic stakes, it’s just that they seem so small and quaint and, well, adorably solvable. A low-key effort, Stan is more interested in eliciting smiles of knowing recognition than any real laughs, resulting in a movie of such willfully mild temperament as to sort of question its reason for existence.

The story centers on Stan (co-writer John F. Schaffer), a kindly, oafish guy who works at a small orchid greenhouse, occasionally visits a “happy endings” massage parlor, and then combats his metastasized guilt by making trips to a doctor to make sure his penis doesn’t bear any signs of herpetic infection. Mostly, though, Stan suffers the quiet indignities of being in “friendship alley” with Mary (Christina Diaz), a blonde babe who keeps him on standby while also dating jerky Nick (David Michie). When Ann (Gioia Marchese) shows up and gets a job at the greenhouse, she slowly draws Stan out of his shell a bit more, but remains inwardly frustrated with his dopey dedication to a girl not willing to give him any real romantic attention.

All of this could veer into more straightforward lonely-hearts dramatic territory, a la something like James Mangold’s Heavy, but for better or worse Shaffer and his co-writer, director Evald Johnson, eschew much heavy dramatic lifting. It’s quite nice that Stan doesn’t have any forward-leaning over-emoting by actors seemingly trying to get some material for their demo reel, but the characters’ motivations overall seem ill-defined. The filmmakers mostly step back from active engagement or tension, except for the awkward inclusion of a plot strand involving the pervy peeping Tom-ishness of Ann’s boss and boarder, Mr. Frankle (Todd Patrick Breaugh), which doesn’t seem to have a good reason for existing within this framework. There isn’t a deeper insight or emotional identification with Stan’s loneliness or self-loathing; he comes across merely as a guy kind of half-assing it through life.

To be fair, Schaffer’s amiable persona suits this tack of inquiry, which, as stated, is more interested in summoning forth recognition than drawing out laughs. With his quietly expressive eyes, unaffected yet halting speech pattern and propensity for socially sawing himself off at the knees, Schaffer’s Stan seems like a long-lost cousin of comedian Brian Posehn. And cinematographer Michael Off’s work abets this unfussy naturalism. After a while, though, you want to see this bear awake from his slumber, and release some pent-up aggression. After all, even Rockin’ the Suburbs had a song called “The Ascent of Stan.” For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (S17 Pictures, unrated, 88 minutes)

Unfolding in an explosion of primary colors and prodding musical cues, Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer tries and fails to establish a beachhead in the competitive arena of family film franchises. A slapdash exercise in sensory stimulation, the movie has none of the comparative panache and technical accomplishment of Robert Rodriguez’s Shorts or Danny DeVito’s Matilda, exaggerated tales of adolescent adventure that this tiresome effort fitfully seems to want to emulate.

Director John Schultz (Like Mike, Aliens in the Attic) has a healthy history of poorly staged kiddie action sequences, and his work here does nothing to evidence any particular positive growth or development. Given that it’s based on a series of same-named books, a certain brand
name recognition and absence of genre competition may give Judy Moody a
short theatrical window. But negative word-of-mouth from parents and a
lack of any real appeal for tweens will quickly resign it to video
babysitter home viewing rotation, where it should eke out most of its
meager returns. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Relativity, PG, 91 minutes)

An in-competition title at the ongoing 14th annual Dances With Films festival, The Aristocrat tells the story of a traveling salesman who’s spending his final few weeks on the job breaking in his callow, cocksure replacement. A character-based small business drama that eventually morphs into a sort of low-fi back-stabbing thriller, the movie lacks the slickness, skill or psychological perspicacity to deliver on any of its twists or turns.

Set in the late 1980s, and shot on location in Massachusetts, The Aristocrat centers on an aging salesman, Marc Ward (Jeff Gill), who seems worn down and resigned to the fact that he’s basically little more than a human catalogue. Former shoe salesman Eddie Kent (Adam Soule), however, is convinced that he can land big commissions in this new job, so he immediately starts applying his own brand of snake oil charm and pressure in the follow-up meetings on which Marc brings him along. This rubs a couple clients the wrong way, and also upsets things with a woman, Becca (Megahn Perry, an utter delight), with whom Marc has been carrying on a casual, months-long, quite chaste flirtation at a local diner. (This is of course begs the question of exactly what sort of traveling salesman decamps and works mainly one area for many weeks out of a six-month period, but nevermind.)

Eddie’s aggressive, chatty ways finally seemingly pay off with a big-fish client (Paxton Whitehead), and it’s not long before the pair run into an old acquaintance of Eddie’s, an enterprising antiques dealer named Charlie (Gary Henoch). While another job opportunity presents itself, Charlie’s work seems to interest Marc more than even the completion of the rest of his working days, setting the scene for a series of decisions with long-stretching ramifications.

At times, especially early on, The
Aristocrat feels like it could be partially based on some lost, early David Mamet manuscript, which is most assuredly a compliment. There’s a snap to the dialogue without it being ostentatious, and the grooves of generational conflict are nicely laid out, with small glances here and pinprick asides there. Other details seem yawningly under-developed though; Marc is supposedly a salesman in the semi-conductor business, but apart from one backdrop and some willfully vague chatter in a business meeting, this detail is completely unexploited, either literally or metaphorically. Marc and Eddie might as well be peddling Garden Weasels, for all it matters. More problematically, though, a general feeling of static constipation eventually gives way to a fumbling third act that is less narrative overreach than just bumbled execution. For more information on the movie, click here. (Three Times Productions, unrated, 93 minutes)

An Australian, college-set love triangle drama studded with a few supernatural elements, Charge Over You, which just had its U.S. premiere as part of the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, is an earnest, low-budget freshman effort, marked by all the sorts of sincerity and shortcoming which that tag frequently implies.

The plot centers around college student Sarah (freshfaced newcomer Danya Cox), who slips into a seemingly irretrievable funk after witnessing a fellow student pass away. That death, you see, brings back memories of Sarah’s dear, beloved and also recently departed mother, whose death she hasn’t really been able to discuss with her father (Ray Croft). Her teacher (Jacqui Hall) warns Sarah, an aspirant doctor, that she’s in danger of losing her scholarship if she doesn’t buckle down and commit to a “Logic 201” term paper on a creation myth subject (!), but Sarah lets herself be continually led astray, first by Dane (James Lee) — a blond, wraith-like, slightly menacing figure who seems to have stepped out of either the Twilight or Harry Potter franchises, possibly both — and then by UCLA transfer student Mike (Dominic Deutscher), a sort of Central Casting nice guy. Observing all of these goings-on from friendship alley, meanwhile, is Sam (Brenton Thwaites), a bespectacled, wishy-washy do-gooder who’s always encouraging Sarah to study and do her work.

Without truly giving much of anything away, Charge Over You, written by Julia Matthews and directed by Regardt Steenekamp, bears all the hallmarks of a slice of adolescent tortured psyche/imaginary friend cinema, mainly since Dane keeps popping up in Sarah’s room unannounced. Rather than freak her out, however, she always blithely accepts his repeated excuse that her “door was open.” In essence, the movie tips its hand far too early. There’s no suspense or drama or worry about Sarah’s corporeal safety. Dane is obviously less a real character than a figure/device, so the movie unfolds as an exercise of time-whiling, waiting to see exactly how he is outed, and what the motivations might be.

The performances help all of this go down at least a bit more smoothly. Whereas so many young American actors — be it because of television training or myriad other factors — would amp up the emoting and deploy stressed, declarative speech rhythms, the Australian actors here (with the exception of the creepy Lee, who’s acting on advice of counsel one supposes, and in his own separate movie) trade in slightly more restrained and realistic strokes, making for some pleasant, unforced moments of getting-to-know-you (nonsexual) connection between Cox and Deutscher. Unfortunately, Sarah isn’t a proactive enough character, and the material as a whole just isn’t sketched out deeply enough to get its hooks in an audience. But the solid if unspectacular technical credits and narrative reach for something a bit beyond the norm make this a modest and entirely forgivable failure — the sort of calling card first feature film of which its makers need not be overly embarrassed. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Triumphal Pictures, unrated, 84 minutes)

A West Coast premiere as part of the unfolding 14th annual Dances With Films festival, Sweet Little Lies is a nicely photographed misfits’ road movie in which a kid and adult both experience some unlikely maturation.

Bess (Caitlin Kinnunen) is a rebellious trailer park teenager who’s just lost her mother. With only a faded photograph, old address and the story that her estranged father might be working in Las Vegas as an Elvis impersonator, she corrals her younger friend Waldo (Joseph Montes), and alights from Kansas, setting off for points west in the stolen car of Waldo’s half-brother, Paulino (Pedro Pascal). With little money, their quest is soon foundering, but fate brings the pair together with Roach (Bill Sage), a rakish conman who’s just nabbed the wedding ring off his mother’s hand at her funeral.

The trio doesn’t immediately hit it off, and Roach doesn’t seem the paternal or avuncular type anyway. But they eventually reconnect in Las Vegas, where Roach saves Bess and Waldo from Randy (Jesse Lenat), a street singer out to exploit them. With Paulino and social worker Jennifer (Natasha Williams) in pursuit, both Bess and Roach try to bring some order to their upturned lives.

Writer James Windeler’s script was several years ago a semifinalist in the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship contest, overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it’s easy to see why. There’s a certain sweetness and innocence that emanates forth from the movie, embodied in a collection of imaginary wire figures with which Waldo plays (captured in animated form by Duncan Raitt), but also the slapdash manner in which Bess and Waldo escape various jams. While these obstacles flow sensibly and realistically from the actual narrative, there’s no real sense of danger here. This isn’t so much a damning criticism as just a factual assessment of tone.

Sweet Little Lies is wide-eyed and open-hearted; it takes place in a world walled off from cynicism, complexity and fear, in which simple, direct courses of action (be it Bess’ quest to find her dad or Roach’s attempt to procure an engagement ring for his long-suffering girlfriend) are viewed as being able to solve all problems. The audience may know beforehand these things not to be true, but the characters themselves do not. They are naive, but honest and forthright in their yearnings and intentions.

Director William J. Saunders and cinematographer Edward Blythe do a good job of working with available light, and capturing some nice evocative images, as with a desert campfire reflected in the wheel rims of Bess and Waldo’s stolen red car. While many road movies incorporate the outdoors in only perfunctory fashion, the open road and dusty southwest seem a real, believably interwoven part of Sweet Little Lies.

On the flipside, the movie’s staging and editing during moments of panicked getaway and action is far less convincing. The film is best when it stays away from air-quote thrills and hijinks, and just sticks to a more straightforward narrative, with the kids siphoning gas or otherwise devising schemes to help put them one step closer to their goals. In the end, there aren’t really any big answers in Sweet Little Lies, and its ending stretches credibility in the name of peachy-keen, all-is-well settledness. Still, life is an open road, and the lies this sweet-natured indie film tells say much about the gulf between adulthood and the youthful innocence we tend to leave behind. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Anywhere Films, unrated, 80 minutes)

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)