I’ll preface this review by first saying that 1) I don’t write a review anything I don’t like in at least some way (there are enough people writing bad reviews of bad films) and 2) I generally don’t like potty humor and frat-boy comedy…

That said, I enjoyed Self Helpless. The film does not pretend to be or aspire to be anything more than what it is, which is a charming, low brow slacker-buddies comedy.

The gaffs, goofs and scenarious are often ridiculously absurd and the characters — played by the filmmakers themselves — so goddamn silly and loveable that you can’t help but care about them, even if you find yourself laughing at their expense.

The characters, Simon, John Candy, Felix and The Drake were believeable as underchieving, accident prone, delusional, sex-obsessed slacker miscreants. More importantly, the bond of their on-screen friendship is believeable. It’s a small town; you often must accept the flaws of folks in order to have friends.

Devin-the-Dude, who has collaborated with the likes of Snoop Dogg, makes his debut as a supporting character. His line, “You got yourself one of them CEO bitches…” is one of my favorites. Devin also contributes much of the music used in the film.

There’s ample ingenuity behind the camera as well. Within the first 30 minutes I took note of a half-dozen clever sight gags so subliminal that you might consciously overlook them, though your subconscious will not. The language is gaudy and obscene, as one might expect, but often clever and funny.

There was an instance where a “ho” is accidentally hit upside the head with a beer bottle. Turns out, it’s a drunk Simon, the friend of John Candy who’s trying to spit game on the ho. However, instead of getting upset with Simon, John Candy merely looks down at the unconscious woman and screams out, “Blaow, bitch!” I literally laughed out loud.

Perhaps I should mention that I was working on my second glass of white wine when I sat down to watch it. In contrast, my wife came home, sat down for ten minutes, then left. She didn’t like the language or the humor. Self Helpless isn’t a movie for everyone.

I noticed a few things; there were times when the camera placement, shot selection, framing, editing, etc bugged me. Story points were not where i expected — but nothing turned me off. Then again, I am not the film snob that some of my peers are. Ultimately,I came away feeling very proud of these guys for doing it.

www.selfhelplessmovie.com

Patrick Cassidy contacted me November 2009 after he read my review of Ink – one of my favorite indie films. We chatted through email and I’ve always supported his endeavors for the film. For so-called newbies, the Self Helpless folks have smartly navigated the labyrinth of indie distribution and list building. They’ve created a decent model for indies living outside of LA and NY. I recently read the email list they’ve comprised is 50,000 strong. Exceptional by any standard.

I couldn’t help but see a bigger picture while watching Self Helpless. Filmmakers in NY, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Portland, Miami, Austin, et al have a difficult time dealing with regulations, laws, and the all too aware public. We can barely shoot in a friend’s house without that friend asking for our insurance certificate and $350/hour. But the folks behind Self Helpless shot in Vermont and parts of Mexico. The locations were large, spacious, scenic and at times epic. It’s hard to do that in LA or NY without spending $10,000. The budget for Self Helpless was $10k.

I couldn’t help but think that in the near future some filmmaker will arise out of the obscurity of his/her small town with an astounding microbudget film that could only have been made outside of the mainstream. Perhaps they’ll have the folks behind Self Helpless to thank.

A heart-warming drama with splashes of comedy, Broken Hearts Club is an absolute triumph in independent film-making.

It is one of the best independent films I have ever seen.

Read more…

David and I swapped DVD’s over the holiday. I sent him a homespun copy of Broken Hearts Club and he sent me his professionally designed DVD copy of Mission X. I’d seen trailers of  Mission X on Twitter and on David’s official website for the film — http://www.missionx.co.uk/ — and I’ve been interested in the film for a long time.

The film did not disappoint.

Mission X plays like a carefully crafted docudrama with elements of a reality series, things that bode well for the film. In short, it feels real, like the viewer is participating in the action as it happens.

In Mission X, Grant, a naive film school student lands the perfect assignment: he’s allowed to interview mercenary cum patriotic terrorist, Ryan (David Baker). Any film school student would kill for a chance for such a scoop, but Grant soon learns that Ryan is in the midst of gearing up for a full blown attack — a possible suicide mission for all involved.

The film is perfectly cast from top to bottom, with the characters Grant, Ryan, Mad Dog and John leading the way. The crew Ryan assembles  is scary. Real world scary, not like the cardboard cutouts we see in most studio films. They are edgy, unpredictable and when armed — scarily capable of doing tremendous damage. More than once I said to myself, I’d hate to meet these folks in real life.

Mission X is a low budget (or no budget) film, but it embraces that with pride, giving us gritty images and manhandling traditional documentary styles for the sake of drama and dynamic cinematography. However, David manages a to provide the viewer with a balanced mix of shaky cam and standard close, medium and establishing shots. This mix works because when the camera moves it creates tension — anxiety — and the build-up to the climax is satisfying.

Shot on location will enough stolen exterior shots to make a guerrilla indie filmmaker cry with jealousy, Mission X also has a fair amount of art direction. One scene in particular, the blue room, was cinematically gorgeous and haunting. I stopped the film more than once trying to figure out how I could emulate the outdoor AK-47 gun battles without getting stopped by the local police here in Los Angeles.

Most imporantly, Mission X works because of the performances. David Baker’s Ryan is engaging, intense, unpredictable and charming. He mesmerizes Grant with dizzying platitudes about life, justice and honor — while assembling a devastating mini army. Like Grant, the viewer almost forgets that we are watching a deadly mission unfold. David is a force on screen, and as a filmmaker myself it’s nice to see him balance a strong performance with solid film direction.

One of the last tweets I received from David when I mentioned that I received his DVD was, “Cool! I hope you understand the accents man. Cheers.” To that point it took me 9 minutes to fully assimilate the strong Scottish accents, to the point when I no longer had to rewind to catch a phrase I didn’t understand. I thought it was particularly humorous that I understood most of the other characters more than I did David — and he and I tweet back and forth all the time. But as with similar films like, Scratch and  Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, once you’re drawn into the film the comprehension comes. To me it’s part of the joy of watching a foreign film, per se.

Mission X also serves notice: This is what you can do with less money if you plan carefully and use smart strategy to get what you need.   I enjoyed the scenes in the Hummer because they are essentially exterior shots reaping the benefits of dynamic backgrounds and you don’t need a city film permit. Mission X is definitely a how to movie that many indie filmmakers can learn from.

Well done.

It’s 1AM in the morning and I’m sleepy, but I wanted to write a film review on Jamin Winans’ INK while it was still fresh in my head.

Earlier today a my UK Twitter friend @IndieMoviemaker posted a tweet about post on the Double Edge Films blog. I read the post, read the comments and immediately added my own two cents. The blog in question was entitled A 360 Degree View of Internet Piracy and the impetus for the blog seemed to be the madcap bittorrent download of INK to the tune of 500,000 downloads, skyrocketing the film to #16 on IMDB. The comments and responses were educational and you would do well to take a look at the blog. It’s a good read.

Scan ahead several hours. It’s quiet at home. The kids are asleep or in their room watching Ice Age 3. My wife hits the rack and I’m left up alone. I should get my ass in bed but instead I remember the blog about INK. More importantly, I remember it’s on Netflix.

Thirty minutes later I’m 28 minutes into the film and I’m sitting at my kitchen table watching my laptop, excited like a little kid. In short, I loved INK. Loved it. It was entertaining, visually stunning, has a well-crafted emotionally wrenching story — and the performances and martial arts sequences are phenomenal, authentic and believable.  INK reminded me of the surreal feel of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales — and it looked just as sharp and creative with about 1/1000th the budget. I think someone from Fangoria magazine called the film, “Poetic.” Trust me, that’s an understatement.


Cinematically, the manner in which the parallel story lines and parallel universes weave in and out of each other was perfection –  and signals a virtuoso performance by the director, editor and cinematographer.

Jessica Duffy

The actors were the kind of actors we indie directors dream of finding for our low budget film projects. Jessica Duffy as Liev was remarkable. Her performance was stunning and powerful in the best understated way. She has a gorgeous face and the appeal of a classic Hollywood beauty ( in this way she reminds me of Charlize Theron). Yeah, I might have a wee bit  of a director crush on her.

And someone please tell me where the hell did the producers find Quinn Hunchar who played Emma? She’s cute. Charming. Bold. Unafraid of taking chances with her performance decisions. Ms. Dakota Fanning? It’s a good thing you’re getting older because Quinn would be kicking your ass right about now.

Chris Kelly

Chris Kelly was phenomenally hateful and inspiring as John – and I mean that in a good way. I hated his ass at first, then I found myself rooting for him with vigor and screaming at him like a coach would do to his star player.

Two things happen to me when I watch a film. These things distinctly tell me whether I am fond of the film or if I hate it, or if I am putting up with it. The key for me is the  feeling that happens around the 45-minute mark. Around that time I know the film is gearing up for its ending. It’s inevitable. But at that 45-minute mark, if I find myself wishing that the film never ends, or more accurately, if I feel as though I can watch the story unfold all day — literally — I know I’ve found a keeper. This feeling happened to me when I watched J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek. It happened to me as I watched INK.

In fact the feeling was so powerful that I went to the INK website and donated money. There was a link to donate cash for all the folks who downloaded (read: pirated) INK this week. Perhaps my little donation covered one or two Internet pirates.

Next up is the INK Deluxe Bundle, which includes a signed DVD, T-shirt, and a movie poster. Yeah, I get to have those cool-ass glowing eyes looking at me as I work on my next film.

Buy the film, rent it or donate to the producers today. If everyone who downloaded the film paid just $1 the filmmakers would be grateful — and they’d be working on the next film.

Trust me. Do it today. Right now. http://www.doubleedgefilms.com/

Maybe it was the marketing. I was expecting a sci-fi action thriller with lots of action. It came off more like a neo-thriller, focusing on [bad] musical interludes that were supposed to intrigue and entice, yet only served to annoy. I can see the filmmakers now screaming with terror, “Let’s try this, no let’s try that, no this” and nothing worked as planned. Something went off-key and never got back on track. But such is the life with studio films and executives and producers who want to season the pot wth their fingertips just so they can say, “Yeah. I made that.”

I’ve been a fan of Chris Evans ever since Cellular, which was a spectacular little film. When the right film comes along he’s going to ignite and explode into superstardom…if he wants that. Dakota Fanning has more talent in her little finger than most actors twice her age, but she and Camilla Belle were underused. Djimon Hounsou does well as the beautifully dark-skinned nemesis, but he’s too talented for roles like this — or he needs to learn from folks like Alan Rickman and Anthony Hopkins how to turn a bad guy into an iconic figure.

In short, the film missed the mark. Or — and this came to me while watching it — maybe it hit the mark and sparked just enough interest to become a sci-fi TV series.

The Dabbler - A Reid Gershbein Film

Reid Gershbein’s arthouse indie film, The Dabbler, begs the question, “What would you do and what would you care about if everything in the word was suddenly broken?”

Set in a world of economic stress, sexual freedom, unattained goals, The Dabbler gives us a meandering look at the disillusionment that often accompanies life in these United States. It’s cause & effect. Through one character we see self-pitying defensiveness when he’s pressured to identify and commit to his goals. We’re introduced to a woman whose life has more meaning when she’s surrounded and “intimately touched” by complete strangers. And we see a man who’s life has become a ticking time-bomb of  stress, so much so that he enlists help from a mysterious magical box for relief.

As I watched the film I honestly felt like I was peering through the window to Reid’s soul. I quickly recognized his laid-back influence as the film takes a very subtle approach in addressing the cataclysmic breaking of the world. In an age where people freak-out at the slightest inconvenience it’s interesting to watch a film where the characters react in almost a ho-hum way to a world with no power, no lights, no electricity, and no Blackberrys. Truthfully, we’re not given much to react to either, as the lack of power is so lightly touched on that it’s barely a subplot. The main story lies with the characters and how having their phones, electricity etc, taken away forces each to confront their own existence.

I had the privilege of watching the film full screen 1280 x 720 and I had to consider that the “shaky cam” might be a bit jarring or simply too much if I were to watch on a smaller screen. That said, the photography is beautiful (as usual) and Reid has chosen charming locations that reek of character and history.

Cheryl Fidelman’s character was the most prolific, intuitive, introspective and even annoying at times. Fortunately I catch on quickly and I carefuuly watched her character grow in the film; growth that reached a climactic crescendo during a spoken word sequence where she proclaims, “…the funniest thing about us is that we think we have all this time… instead of embracing the magic that’s here…right now.“ 

Whoop! There it is. A call to action to embrace the here and now; to choose to find joy in the present day instead of putting off happiness until you get that new car, new home, new phone, new lover, new job, new life… new you. So lightly touched on I found myself wondering if enough people who watched the film would get it. Then I thought, even if only one or two get it, that’s all a filmmaker could ask for.

The shortest distance between any two points is a straight line…and Reid avoids that straight line like the plague. Instead, he takes us on a journey through conversation, epic landscapes and wandering thoughts. Finding the meaning behind the meaning requires skill, or at the very least, focus. But as the theme of the film suggests, the joy isn’t in reaching the destination, it is in the journey.

The Dabbler is available to all under the Creative Common’s license. Watch and/or download it here.

UP (Pixar)

In its ten feature films to day, Pixar has been offering a clinic on how to make a feature film. Humor, emotion and damn good storytelling are the keys to success. UP  is a good film that I’m sure will be enjoyed by children, both young and old.  The folks at Pixar have fine-tuned the art of appealing to the child within all of us, while still tugging assertively on the heartstrings of compassion.

I saw the 3D version of UP today with my wife Kathy and out children, Israel, Cimone, Zachary and little Imara. We chose to pay a little extra to watch the 3D version thinking we’d hold on to the glasses to watch the DVD of Journey to the Center of the Earth with real glasses instead of the paper 3D glasses that came with the retail DVD. I watched UP; I laughed. I laughed out loud. I got weepy eyes. I cheered. I had a good time.

UP (Pixar)

After watching WALL-E last year I was in awe of Pixar’s ability to illicit laughing-out-loud without uttering a word of dialog. In UP a similar technique was employed  during a 40+ year montage sequence that had just about everyone in the theater sadly cooing with pronounced awwwws and ohhhhhhs. In mere minutes, we follow a young boy and girl through their unified exuberance over wilderness adventures to their adult lives and beyond. This is true storytelling where the message (moral: what’s really important in life) is beautifully woven in that doesn’t have much chance for tongue-in-cheek analysis of the fantasy.

I was captivated by the humor, the humanity, the irony and the conflict. Even the use of voices for the film were dead-on. Up is worth the wait and worth the money. I can only wonder what Pixar is up to now, but whatever it is, they will surely continue onward and upward.

Here. My Explosion...

When Reid Gershbein twittered (@thraveboy) about posting his film, Here. My Explosion… online I was excited. Weeks earlier, Reid and I had collaborated with several others on a Twitter-based roundtable discussion about DIY distribution for indie filmmakers. My truncated take on Reid’s essay was this: make a film, show it for free, let people pay you what they want. Now, here he was, putting his film where his mouth was. I was impressed with the action. Lots of folks talk about doing something. Very few actually do something.

Reid incorporated a funny sales pitch (if you will) with his film, offering “nothing for something” to all. What’s the nothing? Air. Bonafide, where-ever-you-live air.  If you liked the film and wanted to contribute to the actor’s personal fund, you can show your appreciation and receive good ole air for the price of $1. Call me big spender: I bought $2 worth of Los Angeles air before I ever saw one frame of the movie. Us indie filmmakers gotta stick together (and it’s 1/5 the price of a movie ticket!).

Whenever I watch a film I must tame my natural tendencies. I am a huge fan of the three-act structure; I look for it and expect it when I sit down to watch a film. However, when I watch an art film I curb that desire to look for specific plot points and try to leave myself open to experience everything and anything the filmmaker had in mind. I took that position with Here. My Explosion… and it worked well. 

I liked the film. It was beautifully and artfully shot with what I expect was a nominal production budget. The locations and art design were glorious, the San Francisco scenery puts everything in LA to shame and the performances were laid back enough to convey what I believe is the general mood of the film: chillaxing.

The first twenty minutes reminded me of something I heard in screenwriting class: the time to slowly explore your characters and story is in the beginning because that’s when you have the time. In other words, if you want to delay your pay-offs or let the story evolve at a slower pace, do it in the beginning, when it’s expected. Here. My Explosion… follows that format in letting us get involved in the characters’ lives — from a fly on the wall perspective — after setting up an interesting plot point with the main character and her coffee cup. The story shifts from that plot point but leaves adequate clues that there is something mysterious, or even magical, left to happen with said coffee cup.

Reid adheres to a very deliberate and nonchalant speed in his storytelling. If you are expecting flash and bang, or generic indie drama, it doesn’t happen.  One could say this works in the film’s favor;  I was left hanging over my laptop furious at times with the characters about their lackadaisical response to the surreal events. I guess you can say I was engaged, forcibly so by Reid’s clever employment of indifference in some scenes.

The film includes additional, yet subtle themes of freedom, capitalism, escapism and unrequited love. There was even a point where the neanderthal man in me responded to a misdirection and eagerly looked forward to seeing Sera and Tegan kiss. 

I didn’t necessarily like all the characters, but enough of them were interesting enough to warrant the time investment to see their stories play out. In the end, I sat for 75 minutes to watch the film on my computer. And as I understand it, I am not alone. According to the most recent tweet I am aware of, over 14,000 people have watched Here. My Explosion… online. That’s a helluva lot of free air.

Watch the film here 

Download the film here

Find Reid Gershbein on Twitter

JCVD

If you’ve never watched a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, if’ you’ve never cheered, laughed, ridiculed, mimicked, or idolized the Muscles from Brussels, you might not have the foundation to fully appreciate, JCVD. In my opinion, you need to have experienced Jean-Claude at the pinnacle of his career; you need to have felt the rush of momentum as he soared to super-star status, and you must have been there when his career and personal life plummeted into a spiraling tornado of despair. Yea, verily Jean-Claude has walked in the valley in the shadow of overnight success, and like so many others he has suffered a certain Hollywood death.

Cast from the Hollywood studio mainstream and thrust into the bowels of direct-to-video foreign made films, JC slipped from the tongues of moviegoers and stood as a cautionary tale against overnight stardom and pitfalls of celebrity. Drugs, several failed marriages and a constant comparison to a fellow celeb Steven Segal stained Jean-Claude’s  tenuous career.

But JC has been resurrected from the dead.

In JCVD Jean-Claude plays himself. Well…sort of. He plays our vision of him in a story line that teeters on the edge of reality and fiction. Based on equal parts truth and fable, Jean-Claude navigates the emotional labyrinth of the Hollywood diaspora that only insiders know exists. In the film JC is downtrodden, put-upon, an outcast B-movie star. Yet, he’s also hopeful, determined and holding strong to the faith and inspiration that led to his emergence from average Joe to household name.

As I said, you must have experienced Jean-Claude in his heyday. Films like Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Lionheart, Double Impact, Universal Soldier and Hard Target, made Jean-Claude. He’s credited with bringing director John Woo to the United States for Hard Target, launching John Woo’s turn to be in the Hollywood golden boy spotlight.

JVCD is a different animal. Starting with an action-packed opening sequence, done in a single long tracking shot (a la the restaurant sequence from Goodfellas) and culminating with a breach of the third-wall as the out-of-breath actor proclaims to the director, “I’m 47 years old, I can’t keep this over and over in only one take.”

The film is hilarious, inspiring, funny and clever — all at once. Even the overt in-your-face jokes and commentaries are nicely hidden in a wrapping of self-deprecation. Jean-Claude (the Jean-Claude) is brilliant in this film as is the directing. There is a uniquely brilliant final sequence which gives us a taste of what we’ve come to expect from a Van Damme movie, only to brusquely take it away with the flitter of a film reel. 

Jean-Claude has a moment in the film where he is lifted above the scene to deliver a soliloquy… or monologue — call it what you will — where he unveils so much about his life that it’s difficult to tell if this is the fictional Jean-Claude or the real Jean- Claude. And I believe it is right there that the film transcends the clutter of hopelessly poignant films about character and celebrity and becomes a film about heart.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I’ve got it! 

I now know what was missing (for me) from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the 4th installment of the X-Men franchise. Scale. It simply wasn’t big enough for me.

Don’t get me wrong. The movie was enjoyable. My wife loved it. However, I came away thinking something was missing. Action? Check. Drama? Check. Attitude? Check. Lots of bad-ass badguys? Check. Irreverent one-liners? Check. WTF?

It was scale. Size. Bigger would have been better. I’m not only talking about big explosions. Im talking about space. Landscape. The movie just didn’t feel big enough to me. I thought, “Here is a chance for Fox to go all out with this very successful franchise.” Go big. You can add CGI up the wazoo but the audience knows real big when it sees it, as opposed to being duped by blue screen technology.

There was no big. I did not see big.  I wanted big.

BIG: I think that is the thing that has been missing from the X-Men films. Big. The Dark Knight had lots of big. Lord of the Rings? Mucho grande. We need to drop Hugh Jackman’s ass in the middle of the Sahara or some shit and let the epic nature of the landscape become a character of the film. I haven’t seen Australia yet but I bet it was frigging big. Baz Lurhmann always does big.

I put comic book tentpole films in their proper perspectives. Instead of expecting brilliance in the script I expect lots of snippy one-liners. I expect guns: metal guns and big hulking biceps guns. I expect shirts to fall off, panties to slide down and people to defy gravity as opposed to succumbing to the gravity of the situation. I don’t go into a summer film with the haughtiness of a film snob. I want entertainment. I want BIG.