tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67051099209872977762024-03-05T21:48:32.324-08:00The Portland Film AnnexPDX films and filmmakersneslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-79832774431807234372021-05-18T08:04:00.001-07:002021-05-18T08:07:06.134-07:00I Play With the Phrase Each Other (2014)Director: Jay Alvarez Writer: Jay Alvarez<br>
Film Score: Evyn Oliver Cinematography: Ray Buckley<br>
Starring: Jay Alvarez, Will Hand, Megan Kopp and Alexander Fraser<p>
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<b>I Play With the Phrase Each Other</b> is an independent film by Portland actor-director Jay Alvarez that is comprised almost entirely of cellphone calls. It’s an interesting idea that’s not nearly as tedious as it might seem at first, especially in the hands of Alvarez, who wrote the screenplay as well. The screenplay is actually very literate, perhaps more literate than it should be, but then that’s part of its charm. There’s something playful about the film that juxtaposes carefully wrought dialogue--almost painfully so--with subject matter that ranges widely from sex to electrical pollution to retail sales and at times borders on camp. Alvarez wisely chose to film in black and white, which diminishes the emphasis on the sets themselves and focuses the audience on the dialogue and the characters. The cinematographer on the project is Ray Buckley, who worked very effectively with Geoff Stewart on his film <b>Reverie</b>. The hand held work isn’t distracting, and at times it’s barely noticeable. Buckley also does some nice work with lighting in the interiors, specifically the nighttime shots that are almost reminiscent of film noir of the forties. The use of music is minimal, as it only appears three times, again, as if to avoid competing with the dialogue. The first is on the opening titles of the film, and while there is none during the phone conversations that take place in present time, Evyn Oliver’s guitar work can be heard during the flashback that Hand narrates to Fraser, and then again on the closing credits.
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The film opens with Jay Alvarez in his apartment at night, surrounded by the novels of Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs, telling his friend Will Hand in that same kind of language that he needs to get out of his hometown and come to the city. There’s definitely a sense of humor to the film as Alvarez finishes his adjective-drenched description of Portland and then pauses to take a sip of coffee. The next conversation is Hand’s friend Alexander Fraser confessing skepticism about him moving in with Alvarez, and the fact that Hand hasn’t told his ex-girlfriend, Megan Kopp, that he’s leaving. Hand’s dialogue, though not quite as arty as Alvarez’s, is peppered with the same kind of pretentious descriptions. More humor comes when the scene switches to Kopp at work at a book store when a customer tells her she’s not going to enjoy his phone call, then later describing to a man she’s beginning to date how much she wants to strangle the customers. Alvarez tells Hand he doesn’t need money or a job, and that he can assist him with his “sales,” a nebulous phrase that concerns Fraser. Later the audience learns that Alvarez’s sales involve musical instruments and the actor Big Dogg, a ghetto, black man who assists him by meeting his customers on the street and browbeating them into buying. Homeless man David Hudnall also assists by being on the phone with Alvarez during the sale while Alvarez watches them out of his window.
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At this point the phone calls begin moving outward from the core group like concentric circles, to include a girl that Fraser knows who moved to the city, Kopp and her girlfriend Dana Dae, who thinks brains in men are overrated, and an extended flashback to Alvarez and his girlfriend Bonnie Auguston, as well as his meeting Todd Robinson who had just abandoned his wife that morning and moved in with Alvarez. The second half of the film primarily concerns Hand’s misadventures in the city, including his attempts to get a job at a chain restaurant--where one of the servers is Quinn Allan, a well-known face in Portland films. Alvarez is very good onscreen but seems to be enjoying himself a bit too much, as if he’s secretly delighted with the way that the movie is coming together and it’s distracting him from his own character development. Megan Kopp’s performance also suffers, delivering her lines in the way that beginning actresses often do by being too self-conscious of their own performance. Will Hand’s character is the most subdued, and this helps him to keep centered, but by far the best actor in the film is Alexander Fraser who has an easy and natural way about him that makes him the most believable of the bunch.
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Alvarez has written a conversational film that demonstrates an ingenious construction at times, but sort of loses its way at the end. Actor Will Hand is the central character in the drama, complete with his obsessive-compulsive tick of keeping his phone away from his face and being afraid of electrical pollution. But the reality of the film is that it’s Alvarez who is actually at the emotional center, and I’m not sure he even realized it. The last twenty minutes is a conversation between Hand and Fraser about sex that is intercut with dialogue between Kopp and Dae in which both Kopp and Hand are telling the same story--something Alvarez also does at other points in the film. But it’s an unsatisfying way to end the movie, as the intrigue that Alvarez’s character has brought to the entire film is suddenly absent, and without it the dialogue sounds pedestrian. One of the knocks against the film is that people don’t talk on cell phones anymore, they text. But the black-and-white photography combined with touches in the set design like cassette players and flip phones gives it a feeling of being set in the recent past, when the primary function of cell phones was talking. While <b>I Play With the Phrase Each Other</b> isn’t for everyone, it can certainly be rewarding if the viewer allows the humorous aspect to dominate and it doesn’t become an overly serious <b>My Dinner with Andre</b> of the new millennium. neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-24421460394682710412021-05-12T11:21:00.000-07:002021-05-12T11:21:57.487-07:00Untraceable (2008)Director: Gregory Hoblit Writers: Robert Fyvolent & Mark Brinker<br>
Film Score: Christopher Young Cinematography: Anastas N. Michos<br>
Starring: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks and Mary Beth Hurt <p>
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One of the problems with technology based crime stories is that the technology itself goes obsolete so fast that it dates the film prematurely. One only has to think of Sandra Bullock in <b>The Net</b>, to understand. Fortunately, <b>Untraceable</b> was filmed deep into the first decade of the new millennium and so the issue isn’t quite as obvious. It’s there, but it can be overlooked. Though one of my causes is promoting films by Portland directors, this isn’t one of them. It’s simply a Hollywood project filmed in Portland, but that in itself was interesting enough to check it out. In many ways it’s a fairly derivative story, a serial killer who murders his victims online instead of the delayed gratification of reading about them in the newspapers or seeing them on the TV news. But it’s essentially the same idea. I was also drawn to the film by a couple of actors, Colin Hanks, who had a brief but memorable role in the HBO series, <b>Band of Brothers</b>, and one of my favorite actresses, Mary Beth Hurt. Billy Burke is a new face for me, since I don’t watch the <b>Twilight</b> films, but being born in Bellingham, Washington, he’s sort of a local. Director Gregory Hoblit, on the other hand, is a Hollywood veteran who began in television and has since moved on to helm some very good second-tier suspense films like <b>Frequency</b> and <b>Primal Fear</b>. And he does a solid job with this story as well, though as in all of his films the screenplay is the weakest link.
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The film opens on a high-tech video lab, with an unidentified man setting up a scene at the bottom of what looks like basement stairs to trap a cat. The scene then cuts to a rain-drenched street in Portland, Oregon. FBI agent Diane Lane grabs her backpack and heads into the Federal Building, where all kinds of computer analysts are at work investigating cyber crimes. Colin Hanks is a fellow agent who gets her up to speed on a recent case, but at the same time she gets a note from the Portland police about another site they want her to look at. She goes to the website and sees the cat stuck to a strong adhesive and apparently is going to die there for entertainment. Lane lives with her mother, Mary Beth Hurt, and her daughter, Perla Haney-Jardine. She checks the website before she goes to bed and discovers that the cat is dead. The fact that the site is local is not, according to Lane, a coincidence, but the head of the division, Peter Gray Lewis, feels there are more important crimes to be investigating. Then, in the parking lot at a hockey game, a fan lured by the prospect of a cheap online ticket is Tasered and pulled into a van. When he suddenly appears on the site, things get serious. While the Bureau handles the tech side of the crime, Billy Burke is the Portland homicide detective who deals directly with the witnesses, in this case the wife of the hockey fan.
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The software the killer is using bounces the IP address around to servers all over the world, so the Lane and Hanks have no idea how to trace him. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, from Modern Family before that show began, is arrested but he has an alibi, and before long another victim is captured and the killer is revealed as Joseph Cross. Ultimately it’s his local connections that allow the detectives to find a way in, especially after he comes after Lane and her family. It’s a strange role for Diane Lane because of the way she seems detached from everything, her work, her daughter, her mother, even the crime itself. She had so much fire in her belly in The Perfect Storm, and while there are personal reasons for her character in the film that might explain her behavior, it’s yet another reason the film is unable to live up to its potential. The movie is competently filmed by Hoblit and his cinematographer Anastas Michos, including an abundance of really nice overhead shots, but it’s the screenplay that keeps the film from rising anywhere above merely interesting. And there are some incredibly bad lines in it, mostly delivered by Hanks. One groaner has him talking about the hockey fan who is bleeding out onscreen when he says, “It’s too bad this guy wasn’t a Boy Scout, he could just bleed Morse code and tell us where he is.” Even though this is a plot point that comes up later, it seems incredibly insensitive in the moment. And then, when the hockey fan dies, Hanks shakes his head and says, looking at his computer screen, “It’s a jungle in there.”
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The music by Christopher Young in the opening credits attempts to set the mood by replicating John Carpenter’s piano music from <b>Halloween</b>, but the score is pretty forgettable other than that. The color manipulation of the film is done to replicate a Hollywood version of a Pacific Northwest winter, and it looks pretty good. The streets are always wet and the cloud cover is an icy gray, with a blue-tinged palate in very sharp focus to represent the cold snap the city is having in the story. Most of the interiors were constructed in Clackamus, southeast of Portland, while the exteriors were filmed at iconic spots in the city. In assessing it overall it can’t really be called a bad film, because it does hold interest all the way through. But that’s about the best that can be said for it. The screenwriters seem as if they’re trying to generate a relationship between Buke and Lane, but that never really comes off. They also make Hanks out to be a sort of an oblivious FBI agent, which doesn’t really work either. The film received decidedly mixed reviews, which makes sense. There’s nothing really unique about the story, and the acting is only average, but ultimately <b>Untraceable</b> is watchable, with just enough to keep it interesting. Just make sure you watch it on cable TV rather than paying for the privilege.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-54663560062305813112021-05-05T09:29:00.002-07:002021-05-05T09:31:48.897-07:00The Gray Area (2010)Director: Chapin Hemmingway Writers: Chapin Hemmingway & Tyson Balcomb<br>
Film Score: Jeff Broadbent Cinematography: Sean Rawls<br>
Starring: Gavin Bristol, Morgan Lee, Ian McMilan and Jesse Henderson<p>
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This is yet another independent film made in Portland. Writer-director Chapin Hemmingway’s most recent feature is a fascinating look at a three friends returning home after the death of one of their group. But while the premise might sound familiar, the film is anything but as it delivers as powerful an ending to a film as I have ever seen. I came to <b>The Gray Area</b> through Jesse Henderson, who had appeared in Justin Koleszar’s <b>One Foot in the Gutter</b>. The other draw for me was the appearance of Benjamin Farmer who was so impressive in <b>The Falls</b> films by Jon Garcia. Like so many of the great films coming out of Portland, this has a decidedly autobiographical feel, and an emphasis on character and drama that seems unique to the filmmakers in that area. The one area where so many small films fail tends to be in the screenplay, but this one is quite good. Hemmingway and his producer, Tyson Balcomb, have written a believable script that gives the actors a natural framework on which to work. One scene in particular, where the three leads are saying a few words before scattering their friend’s ashes, is a clinic on how to differentiate characters in the writing, but this is just one part of an impressive overall production.
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The film opens with some nice establishing shots around Portland, night gradually falling as the credits roll, and ending on a shot of the still body of Jesse Henderson in a car. From there the narrative begins with Gavin Brisol as small-time actor in L.A., picking up Michelle Damis by appealing to her vanity. The next morning he gets up from her bed--where she’s still asleep--and tries to write a note but has to look in her purse to get her name. He goes in to work as a barista at a coffee house, and soon finds out from a friend that Henderson has been found dead in his car. Bristol flies into Portland the next day and is met by Morgan Lee at the airport, who takes him to his parent’s house to wait for the funeral. That night Bristol, who has had a drinking problem, takes some pills and washes them down with whisky. While he’s in the pool ex-girlfriend Meredith Adelaide shows up, but leaves soon after when she realizes she can’t have an honest conversation with him about Henderson. On the way to pick up their other friend from the airport, Lee tells Bristol that Henderson’s death might not have been an overdose but a hot shot, a lethal dose of drugs that dealers sell to customers who get behind and don’t pay. Finally they pick up Ian McMilan, a soldier on leave for the funeral, and the group is complete.
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Bristol is feeling the need to rekindle his relationship with Adelaide, though more out of physical familiarity than emotional desire. But the real drama turns on how the three friends decide to deal with Henderson’s death by investigating whether it might have been murder. The film primarily revolves around Gavin Bristol, an actor who had already made a couple of appearances in the <b>Twilight</b> films. He does a good job here, but the drug abuse aspect of his character seems a little clichéd and at times his affectations tend to stand in for acting. It’s really Morgan Lee and Ian McMilan who do the bulk of the heavy lifting during the film. The only other real questionable moment in the screenplay is when the friends are presented with Henderson’s ashes by his mother, Trish Egan, and McMilan doesn’t know what to do. With his military background, however, he should have been the one in the group to voluntarily take the lead. Other than that, however, McMilan does some solid work as the self-assured war veteran, especially in the ending. For me, however, Morgan Lee is the real standout as the former drug addict who feels survivor guilt for getting out of the life while Henderson succumbed.
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Of the other notable performances in the film, one is Benjamin Farmer as a drug dealer. The simple juxtaposition of his scene with that of fellow drug dealer Joaquin Fernandez during their interrogation shows Farmer to be the far superior actor. The other is by Manna Phommathep as a drug distributor, and his scene in the climax is also very well done. While Meredith Adelaide is breathtaking in her brief scene by the pool, she unfortunately has very little else to do in the story. The ending of the film is as disturbing as it is surprising, and is no doubt one of the reasons the film has had such positive reviews. In addition to the drama, however, there are also some nice bits of humor in the screenplay, beginning with Bristol looking for Damis’s ID in her purse. And when Bristol insists on taking his convertible to the airport, McMilan looks in the back and says, “Where am I supposed to sit?” But Hemmingway also has nice way with visual humor. The tableaux after the funeral where the friends are lined up on the couch and given the urn by Egan is terrific. Like so many of the films coming out of Portland, the cinematography is beautiful, especially the scene at the beach where the friends go to scatter Henderson’s ashes, and the montage where the friends go to the drug house is also quite good. <b>The Gray Area</b> is a solid piece of filmmaking from Chapin Hemmingway, and hopefully we’ll see more from him in the future. neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-15488110926113624352021-05-03T10:36:00.005-07:002021-05-03T10:37:54.102-07:00The Falls: Testament of Love (2013)Director: Jon Garcia Writers: Jon Garcia<br>
Film Score: Jon Garcia Cinematography: Christopher Stephens<br>
Starring: Nick Ferrucci, Benjamin Farmer, Thomas Stroppel, and Hannah Barefoot<p>
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This sequel to <b>The Falls</b> is another beautiful story by Jon Garcia. Unlike the first film, <b>The Falls: Testament of Love</b> is more of a gay film. The first was really for anyone and everyone, a love story about two people who discover themselves outside of the constraints of their families. It was so well written and filmed it really transcended the idea of gay or straight. The sequel is the continuing story of those two characters who shared a momentous time in their lives and chose very different ways to deal with that experience. And that experience, in this film, is being gay and how that affects the people around them. Also, while the first film was really Nick Ferrucci’s story, the second film focuses on Benjamin Farmer and his challenges. The first film was done on a shoestring, with a total crew of four people, and actors helping out on the technical side when they weren’t on screen. But with the recognition and success of that film, Garcia was able to get more financing and hire enough crew members to handle all of the technical work and allow the actors to simply focus on their craft. The results are stunning.
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The film begins with Nick Ferrucci telling the audience very briefly about his experience on his Mormon Mission. There he met Benjamin Farmer and the two fell in love. Ferrucci left the church before he could be formally excommunicated. He moved to Seattle to write for a magazine and has a boyfriend, Thomas Stroppel. In his narrative he tells how he lost touch with Farmer and never heard from him again after a trip they took around the country together. The reason why soon becomes clear. Farmer took a different route after his experience with Ferrucci, confessing to church officials and vowing that he would never give in to such temptations again. He met Hannah Barefoot later and married her, and the two have a daughter who is now three years old by the time of the current narrative. One of the important people in their discovery of themselves from the first film was Brian Allard, an Iraq War veteran who was incredibly accepting of them and became their only real friend during that time. But each of the men receive a call from Allard’s mother telling them that he has died, and this becomes the second time in their lives when they are thrown together. Their meeting after the funeral is, as one would expect, awkward, with Ferrucci desperate for closure and Farmer bent on denial. But what eventually happens between them is as uplifting as one could hope for.
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Once again the two leads, Nick Ferrucci and Benjamin Farmer are exceptional. In fact, they are so natural and so believable it actually makes the viewer aware that the other actors are just acting. But the supporting cast plays an important role in this film. In the opening sequences Ferrucci is joined by Thomas Stroppel, desperately in love with a man who doesn’t have the same feelings to give back. It’s truly heart rending to see the emotion that both actors are able to access. Benjamin Farmer’s partner onscreen is Hannah Barefoot as the trusting Mormon wife who begins to suspect something when she senses that things aren’t right between them. In fact, unlike the naked emotion of the other pair, Farmer and Barefoot have the more formidable job of keeping their emotions subtextual for the first half of the film. The other great pair, though they don’t work together, are the fathers. Harold Phillips plays Ferrucci’s father and is still disappointed with him after the revelation of the first film. But in one of the most moving scenes in the sequel, Bruce Jennings as Farmer’s father calls to blame the whole thing on Ferrucci after Farmer’s revelation, but Phillips instantly rises to the defense of his son. It’s inspiring how, when faced with the same disapproval from outside, he is finally able to articulate his true feelings about his son.
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In addition to the fine acting, the work of Jon Garcia as a director really shines. His use of symbolic imagery in the picture rivals that of the great directors from the golden age of cinema. In the first film Farmer was so consumed by the Mormon religion that he had absolutely no other interests. When he confesses to Ferrucci in this film that he hates his job and Ferrucci suggests he do something else, he has no idea what that would even be. This is symbolized when they meet later in Ferrucci’s hotel room. Sitting near the window, the large red “M” from the motel sign outside in front of his face symbolizes how Farmer’s obsession with his religion has blocked out everything from his life, including who he really is. Ferrucci, on the other hand, has his face reflected in the window showing that he has embraced who he really is and is living his own life. Another wonderful use of a subtle symbol is after Farmer has confessed himself and stands before the window in his house looking out at the rain, symbolizing the cleansing effect that his confession has had for him. <b>The Falls: Testament of Love</b> is a masterful film that perfectly complements and extends the already brilliant work of the first film. It gets my highest recommendation.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-50532995946400985282021-05-02T08:31:00.001-07:002021-05-03T10:37:42.096-07:00The Falls (2011)Director: Jon Garcia Writer: Jon Garcia<br>
Film Score: Jon Garcia Cinematography: Christopher Stephens<br>
Starring: Nick Ferrucci, Benjamin Farmer, Brian Allard, and Quinn Allan<p>
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I’ve come to a conclusion in my old age, that organized religion is all about hate. The only function it seems to serve these days is to give people a justification for hating other people. Religious people are the most hypocritical on the planet simply because they have the most to lose--but only because their religious delusions tell them so. The reality is that the gods they pray to are no more real than Santa Claus and that all of their posturing and hatred is for nothing. Except for the collateral damage they do, especially to young people who have been brainwashed before they are old enough to decide for themselves if they want to share in their parent’s fantasy life. <a href="https://amzn.to/2ueasdk"><u>The Falls</u></a> deals with Mormonism, but substitute your own intractable, hate-filled religion and there wouldn’t be a lot of difference. Nick Ferrucci plays a twenty-year-old Mormon who is about to go out on his two-year mission. His mom and dad are happily married, and he has a younger sister and a girlfriend. His dad jokes with him about being a “world traveller” because he’s only going six hours away from home for his mission. But, like a dutiful Mormon, he goes believing “god” has a plan for him. Boy is he ever wrong about that.
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Ferrucci rooms with Benjamin Farmer at his new residence. The ascetic lifestyle the two lead seems as vacuous as their lives have been up until now. When they’re getting to know each other and Ferrucci asks Farmer what he’s interested in, he can’t think of a single thing. They get up first thing in the morning and pray, then go for a run, then study their bibles, then go on their bikes into town and begin their monotonous routine accosting people on the sidewalk and at home. For fun at night they read through novels and cross out objectionable words. It’s very obvious from the beginning of the picture that Farrucci’s heart isn’t in it. He’s doing all of this because he is supposed to, not because he wants to. One night the two are sandbagged by a guy who had done his homework on Joseph Smith. That’s bad enough, but when they meet an Iraq veteran who lost his brother to a mine explosion while standing right in front of him, covering him in his brother’s blood, the real impotence of religion becomes obvious. In the face of that reality Farmer becomes distracted and distant, and when Ferrucci asks him about it the reason is just as obvious: he is having doubts. He is beginning to think for himself. Unfortunately, in his religion-polluted mind he believes that is a sin. But that’s nothing compared to the attraction the two have for each other, and their inability to stop themselves from acting on it.
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This is just a beautiful movie. The boys are not grotesque, or caricatures, they are just boys, and they just happen to fall in love with each other. The two principals are perfect in their roles, and Nick Ferrucci is absolutely perfect. He’s able to convey that goofy, nervous quality of a teenager that is so real it’s eerie. Uptight “Elder” Quinn Allan notices that their numbers are going down since they stopped taking their mission seriously and, while they are a bit nervous about what will happen if they are discovered, it’s not enough to stop them. The ultimate irony, of course, is that the boys are supposed to be out converting people to Mormonism. Instead it is the Marine veteran Brian Allard who converts the boys to reality. But it’s a process that all brainwashed children must go through in order to lead healthy lives. It’s the ones who don’t, who believe in the fairy tales, and buy into the guilt and humiliation and hypocrisy who wind up leading miserable lives where all their true feelings and impulses must be kept on the down low--which is itself another metaphor for the closeting of gays, especially those who are members of the church.
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What this film is most of all is honest. There are no histrionics, no drama, and no sensationalism. It’s the story of people being themselves, trying to be honest, and facing up to the consequences for that honesty. As a result, the ending is about as uplifting as a film gets. Writer-director Jon Garcia had no previous knowledge about the LDS religion or community before writing his screenplay and had to do a lot of research once he realized that using the church as the context of the film was a way to really make an impact on audiences. As I stated earlier, what kind of church he elected to use is entirely beside the point. The consequences--namely excommunication--are barely distinguishable. One of the great characters in the film is played by Brian Allard. He not only doesn’t react negatively to the boys’ admission of their relationship, he encourages them to go further, exploring the world and themselves in the process, to find out who they truly are. Given their cloistered upbringing, it is sage advice. The film doesn’t actually bash religion as much as I would have liked, but it is that much stronger for it because it doesn’t have to. The church does that to itself through its behavior. <b>The Falls</b> is a small, quiet film with such a powerful message that it should be required viewing for everyone in this country, if not the world. It receives my highest recommendation.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-56007025705867732212019-02-09T10:48:00.003-08:002021-05-18T08:10:03.325-07:00Reverie (2009)Director: Geoff Stewart Writer: Geoff Stewart<br>
Film Score: Ray Buckley Cinematography: Ray Buckley<br>
Starring: Geoff Stewart, Zach Sanchez, Ronnie Chittim and Shawn O’Brien<p>
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<b>Reverie</b> is the first and only feature film directed by Portland-based Geoff Stewart, who also wrote the screenplay and starred as one of its lead actors. Like the works of many of his contemporaries in the last decade, the film is a tremendously impressive achievement and stands as one of the major works coming out of the Rose City in the last few years. As the title suggest, the film is a meditation on many things, nature, friendship, mortality, and forgiveness. But the one thing that comes to the fore is the extreme visual confidence of Geoff Stewart, who on the surface has a deceptively simple style that is actually densely packed with imagery and meaning. I came to Stewart through his work on Justin Koleszar’s 2011 film <b>One Foot in the Gutter</b>. Both he and Zach Sanchez worked as actors on that project and did a great job, with Stewart in the lead and Sanchez in a supporting role. Prior to both of these, Stewart had directed a segment of the film <b>The Experimental Witch</b>, based on the novel <i>The Witch of Portobello</i> by Paul Coelho, which used ten different directors to tell stories about the main character through the eyes of others. Shortly after, both Stewart and Sanchez, along with Ray Buckley, would produce his first feature screenplay.
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The film opens with Zach Sanchez in bed waking up alone because his girlfriend has gone out of town for three days. From there the scene shifts to Geoff Stewart at home, a fire going in his wood stove. He is packing up his fishing tackle, then goes out to his truck and takes off. Back at Sanchez’s apartment he is working on his computer and talking to a colleague, sending some architectural drawings to the office. An interesting juxtaposition begins to take place between the two characters, as Stewart is seen heading off into the woods to fish, while Sanchez works out on an exercise machine as his dog looks longingly out the window. While Stewart is fishing in the river, Sanchez takes his dog for a walk, ignoring nature and phoning his girlfriend about the project he and his partner may be commissioned to design. The next morning, as Stewart meditates on the surroundings at the bank of the river, Sanchez drives out to his hometown and when he finds his mother gone, goes to get a permit to cut down a wild Christmas tree for his apartment. He winds up in the same area where Stewart has been fishing, and drives by his truck. Stewart can’t get his truck started, but when Sanchez comes back he drives right by him without stopping. The intersection of the two characters is made more intriguing, however, when Sanchez does stop and backs up.
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They know each other, but Stewart doesn’t want to impose on him and Sanchez is glad of it, driving away yet again. Then he stops again and gives Stewart a ride to the highway, accompanied by brief conversation but mostly awkward silence. The conflict is apparently about music. The night before, Sanchez was playing a song on his guitar and then abruptly stopped. When he is picking up the tree license the next day, childhood friend Shawn O’Brien asks if he’s putting the band back together and then acts as if he spoke out of turn. Finally, when Stewart is alone in Sanchez’s old car, he hears the same song on the CD player and as the vocals begin he removes the disc and flings it off the side of the road. When the two are stranded on the mountain after Sanchez’s battery goes dead, it soon becomes apparent that the female voice on the CD may be the real cause of the contention between them. While in some ways the resolution seems clichéd, it’s done in a way that feels incredibly fresh. The key to the ending is actress Ronnie Chittim, who acts as a sage, imparting wisdom without the demand for action on that wisdom. It is for the two principals to decide how they are going to use her knowledge. Both Zach Sanchez and Geoff Stewart are solid actors, able to bring a profound naturalism to their roles. And while their attempts at raw emotion may be less convincing, it’s certainly not to the detriment of the film as a whole.
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What really stands out, however, is the photography. Nearly every aspect of the visual imagery is excellent for such a small production like this, especially in the nature scenes. Swift moving clouds presage a rainstorm that dapples the surface of the river and turns to snow while Stewart is fishing. Birds flying through a forest of spruce and fir, and a beautiful shot of the moon at night through the trees create a real visual feel for the Pacific Northwest wilderness. But it’s the flashback sequences that reveal the true brilliance of the director and his cinematographer Ray Buckley, and they are really the heart of the film. As Sanchez tells Chittim the story of his past, when the two men stay the night in her house in the woods, the scene behind them suddenly transforms to his childhood, but it is kept perfectly out of focus, allowing the impression of what he’s talking about to fuse with the story he’s telling, while keeping the specific images from competing with that story. Stewart does the same thing with Chittim’s story of her husband, and with her philosophy of life that she conveys to Stewart’s character. This style of cinematic impressionism is truly spectacular and is well worth the lengthy journey to get there.
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If there’s a weakness in the film--and to be fair, it’s a weak spot in so many independent films that it’s almost expected--it’s in the screenplay. The first two thirds of the script are extremely minimalist, and it works incredibly well, allowing the visuals to do the bulk of the communication. Stewart doesn’t even speak until halfway through, and Sanchez only speaks when he’s on the phone. But when Sanchez is telling the story of their falling out his lines become poetry, which destroys the suspension of disbelief. They’re the kind of lines that one would imagine coming from an omniscient narrator in a novel, and just seem out of place spoken by Sanchez. I can see how Stewart might have been going for a narrative impressionism to go along with the visuals, but it seems to distract rather than add to the overall effect. It’s a minor criticism, however, as the rest of the film is so good. The film score by cameraman Ray Buckley is also very good. Not really new age, it is a guitar and keyboard based wash of sounds that underscore the meditative nature of the film without being obtrusive. I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming talent in the Portland film community, and Geoff Stewart’s <b>Reverie</b> is no exception. It is a strong, narrative film, visually stunning, that comes highly recommended. neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-14240608778233941332018-12-21T11:11:00.003-08:002021-05-03T10:55:33.566-07:00Sex Weather (2018)Director: Jon Garcia Writer: Jon Garcia<br>
Film Score: Mike Sempert Cinematography: Jon Garcia<br>
Starring: Al’Jaleel McGhee, Amber Stonebraker, Alan Burrell & Marty Bannon Beaudet
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Jon Garcia is back. Not that he ever stopped making films, but his latest project, <b>Sex Weather</b>, finds Garcia embracing the vital element at the core of all of his films to the exclusion of everything else: the love between people. When that is combined with the confidence of a filmmaker who is fearless in putting on the screen a vision that refuses to be compromised by the cinematic fashions of the day, truly amazing things are able to happen. In his first film, <b>Tandem Hearts</b>, Garcia has a scene that takes place in a bar between a male and female couple and a pair of musicians. He sets up the scene with an establishing shot of the bar, but spends the rest of the scene cutting between faces. Because of that the emphasis of the scene moves away from the setting to focus exclusively on the characters. In <b>Sex Weather</b> he has taken that same idea and made it the focal point for an entire film. While the premise of the film seems far from original, a typical one-night-stand, morning-after love story, Garcia manages to avoid all of the clichés and defies expectations at nearly every turn to create a unique cinematic experience that, while familiar in context, is anything but predictable.
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The opening credits begin on an establishing shot at dawn of the Freemont Bridge in Portland, Oregon. It first appears to have been done with a crane, but as the camera continues rising it soon it becomes apparent that this is a drone shot—the sort of thing that used to be done with a helicopter, and something Garcia experimented with in his previous film, <b>The Falls: Covenant of Grace</b>, but is used to a much more purposeful effect here. Finally the credits end on the feet of Al’Jaleel McGhee and Amber Stonebraker as they poke out from beneath the sheets of the bed in her apartment. The first of Garcia’s unpredictable moments comes when Stonebraker gets out of bed to make a secretive phone call in the bathroom—preceded by a shot of her and another man in a photo, and ending with a painful declaration of “I love you” before she hangs up and hangs her head. This is typically something most films would reveal later in the story, and while there is more to it here than first meets the eye, there’s also a sense that Garcia has no interest in those kinds of cinematic tropes. Which doesn’t mean it’s not important to the story. Garcia’s mastery of the cinematic art form is such that it often doesn’t reveal itself until a film is over—and sometimes not until after a second viewing. His films are much more like novels in that respect. The reality is the phone call is incredibly important. In fact, it’s the center around which the entire film revolves . . . it’s just not important yet, and it’s that kind of patience that is the hallmark of Garcia’s best work.
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When Stonebraker returns to bed McGhee wakes up and heads to the bathroom himself. Afterward he looks around the apartment, at her latest script and her awards for acting, and then they have the inevitable awkward confrontation. One of the expectations for a comedy or drama like this one is the predictable conflict between two people who have had sex but don’t really know each other. In most of these stories it is the centerpiece of the film, but Garcia is happy to get it out of the way early and get on to what really matters. McGhee can’t find his phone, and has Stonebraker call the Lyft driver to see if he left it in the car. Then, with time on their hands while they wait for the driver to return her text . . . they start talking. And the thing that becomes apparent almost immediately is the quality of that talking. Al’Jaleel “A.J.” McGhee is a phenomenal actor, and his co-star, Amber Stonebraker, is nearly his equal. Because of that it’s powerfully clear from the outset that this is no indie production populated by local dinner theater actors. Rather than characters, McGhee and Stonebreaker actually become people. They are alternately funny and serious, concerned and dismissive, naked and partially clothed, and beneath it all emerges the conviction that their sexual encounter the night before was no accident. Their compassion for each other—rather than passion—becomes far more important than their differences.
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The dialogue ebbs and flows quite naturally, and both actors are visually compelling on the screen. But because the screenplay is so highly autobiographical, it is McGhee who is the most startlingly original in his characterization. When Stonebraker expresses disappointment at the quality of McGhee’s lovemaking she says she thought it would be different because of their history together—McGhee is an independent filmmaker and she had worked on one of his films, then they reconnected at the premier of his most recent picture the night before. When she says she had certain expectations about him, he immediately fires back about her, “Well, so did I.” Even more endearing is when he says the same thing after Stonebraker chides him for not trying hard enough with his previous girlfriend—“You know, women like to be pursued”—and he responds with, “Well, so do I, right?” It shakes viewers from their complacency and puts them in the position of Stonebreaker, seeing McGhee as an individual rather than a composite of all the negative expectations women have of men. Eventually the two come up with rules for the bed, one being that they can’t leave the bed all day. Their self-imposed isolation in the apartment and on the bed is beautifully symbolized by the frequent juxtaposition of the drone shots that float effortlessly over the rooftops of the neighborhood, a different kind of isolation but one that matches their separation from the rest of the world.
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One of the major challenges of making a film this intimate, shooting on a set that barely ventures out beyond the confines of a queen-size mattress, is how to make it interesting visually. Shot selection and editing, in that regard, are crucial in order to keep the audience from feeling as if they are seeing the same shots over and over again. To that end editor Zach Carter is to be commended. A long-time collaborator of Garcia’s he has taken Garcia’s wide array of camera angles and woven them together in a way that feels fresh and yet never loses sight of the fact that the actors are at the center of the story. As a cinematographer Garcia indulges more than ever his penchant for pulling focus, but it really works in this context. It’s the same effect one experiences in bed with a lover, so close to the other person’s face that it’s impossible to focus. The subdued film score by Mike Sempert is also supportive in the way he reflects the nature of the visuals, but little more. Garcia has scored large chunks of his previous films and, though it seems just one more responsibility to ask from an artist who already takes on nearly every task in his projects, one has the profound desire to see the director at some point make the commitment to score an entire film with his own music.
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It’s difficult to resist giving the ending away, because that is the most remarkable part of Garcia’s story. It’s not until the very end of the film that everything finally makes sense, and Garcia’s purpose suddenly washes over the viewer to reveal the true nature of what this experience together has meant for these two people. Garcia’s film isn’t perfect, but that isn’t the point, any more than it is to expect people to be perfect. But in spite of people’s flaws, everyone carries around isolated perfections within them. In fact, it is ultimately those perfections that we see when we fall in love and, ironically, what we initially perceived of as flaws can become some of the most endearing qualities of the person we fall in love with. Garcia’s latest is just that kind of film. There is something about it that resonates deep inside, and so we find ourselves compelled to take it home with us. But don’t be too quick to kick it out of bed the next morning and send it on its way. It has much more to tell than might first meet the eye. It has much more to teach if we just give it the chance. Only by opening up and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable will we reap the benefits to be had by this chance encounter. <b>Sex Weather</b> is a film you could love.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-73104673346583064412017-11-15T08:42:00.002-08:002021-05-03T10:54:09.608-07:00The Films of Jon Garcia: 2009-2013<font size="+1">by Eric B. Olsen</font><p>
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<b>The Films of Jon Garcia: 2009-2013</b> is about the zeal for making motion pictures that informs the kind of work that goes on in the Portland film community every day. Most of the people involved in these independent projects aren’t looking for money; they are looking for an artistic outlet that they can’t get anywhere else. And regardless of what winds up on the screen, there has to be a certain grudging praise for artists who are able to realize their visions despite all of the factors working against them. Portland writer-director Justin Koleszar put it this way: “To be honest, I really hope that people can, if nothing more, just appreciate that the film was done well. It’s not going to be everyone’s favorite, but I hope that they appreciate the performances of the actors and all the work that went into it, the entire cast and crew.” In the context of the kind of sacrifice that goes into an independent feature in terms of finances, time, and effort, it’s not an unreasonable request, and a sentiment that I’m sure every independent filmmaker shares.
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After discovering Jon Garcia’s film <b>The Falls</b> in my local public library, I started watching other films that featured the two stars of Garcia’s films, Ben Farmer and Nick Ferrucci. It was then that I began to realize just how many terrific films had been made in Portland in the past decade, and had it not been for accidentally stumbling across <b>The Falls</b> I might never have know about them. They are independent films, to be sure, and certainly suffer from the severe budgeting restrictions that come with young filmmakers struggling to realize their vision. But one thing that can’t be restricted is artistic vision itself, which can be seen in the narrative quality of their work that sets it apart from much of the independent filmmaking happening in the rest of the country.
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My initial concept for the book was an ambitious one. I had identified a dozen films by eight different directors and planned to spend the majority of the text dealing with my own analysis of the films, using the interview material to supplement and add dimension to that analysis. But it soon became clear that I was going to have to limit the scope of the project, and maybe do just a few films or directors at a time in multiple volumes. The choice for the first volume in the series was equally clear. Of all the directors I had interviewed, only one had made more than two films, and that was Jon Garcia. In fact, one of the things that became abundantly clear about him throughout my research is that he really is a filmmaker. His ability to write screenplays, his vision as a director, and his determination to continue to make films of high quality despite the necessity of low budgets, has set him apart from most other independent filmmakers.
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The book itself is also somewhat unique in the way that it is written. I have read numerous books on film and the history of cinema over the years and while they deliver a lot of good information and historical background, I find most of them wanting in the way that they approach their material. What most of these books lack is a cohesive narrative in which all of the elements of a film—history, interview and analysis—occur simultaneously in the text. This is the kind of book about film that I’ve always wanted to read, so it’s the kind of book I decided to write. The book examines the first four films of Garcia’s career in order to provide a deeper understanding of works that transcend the limitations of independent filmmaking and to show how they have attained the status of art. Part oral history and part film analysis, it provides a detailed textual commentary on <b>Tandem Hearts</b> (2010), the director’s first film, <b>The Falls</b> (2011) and <b>The Falls: Testament of Love</b> (2013), his most well known films, and <b>The Hours Till Daylight</b> (2016). <b>The Films of Jon Garcia: 2009-2013</b> takes an in-depth look at a writer-director who has earned a reputation as one of the Pacific Northwest’s premier filmmakers.
neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-58410090409952672532017-02-09T20:49:00.001-08:002021-05-03T10:52:28.017-07:00Some Days are Better Than Others (2010)Director: Matt McCormick Writers: Matt McCormick & George Andrus<br>
Film Score: Matthew Cooper Cinematography: Gregg Schmitt<br>
Starring: Carrie Brownstein, James Mercer, Renee Roman Nose and David Wodehouse<p>
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I almost didn’t get this film because of some bad reviews on Amazon and IMDb, but they should all be ignored. <b>Some Days are Better Than Others</b> is a wonderful little independent film out of Portland, Oregon. Most of the negative criticism is that the film is boring, but that is almost always code for low intelligence in the reviewer and an inability to understand what the film is really attempting to do. Writer-director Matt McCormick has served up a slice of life picture that has some terrific characters working in mundane circumstances in order to accentuate the honest and real emotions of everyday people. Okay, it’s not for everyone, but I feel sorry for those who don’t get it. This is a fantastic film that works on a number of literal and metaphorical levels. It’s incredibly well filmed, and well acted. The film score by Matthew Cooper is very unique and appropriate for the visuals, with long, single notes and lots of ambient sound like traffic or waves that interweaves with the music. And the cinematography by Gregg Schmitt is also very impressive, with excellent lighting and memorable visuals.
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The film begins with Carrie Brownstein talking into a video camera, recording an audition tape for a reality TV show. Life is good. She works with dogs at a shelter and has a long-time boyfriend, and a few days later she gets a letter from a talent agency that wants her to audition in person. Meanwhile, James Mercer is unemployed by choice, an anti-corporate liberal who works for a temp agency and has to borrow the car of his step-grandfather, David Wodehouse, who usually goes along with him, to get to work. The other main character is Renee Roman Nose, a sorter at a thrift store. She lives utterly alone in her apartment and barely speaks all day. After the characters have been introduced, McCormick starts throwing curves into their mundane lives. Brownstein, who has been dating her boyfriend for five years, logs onto his email when she can’t get a hold of him and discovers he’s having an affair with another woman. Mercer has a job counting cartons of milk in local grocery stores, and gets tossed out by security from a big chain store, while Roman Nose discovers the ashes of a child in an urn that someone has donated to the store.
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What soon becomes apparent about the film’s purpose is that the three main characters are more emotionally connected to life than those around them. Benjamin Farmer plays a cutthroat estate liquidator. He’s crude and heartless and hires Mercer through the temp agency to empty an old woman’s home. Roman Nose continues sorting clothes, but everything seems to remind her of the child’s ashes that no one has bothered to come back and claim. And Brownstein, while the breakup is squeezing her heart, runs across her boyfriend with his new girlfriend and suddenly she can hardly breath. The other subtext is the idea of being discarded, whether it’s Brownstein being upset because one of her dogs is set to be euthanized, Mercer cleaning out the dead woman’s home, or the abandoned ashes of the little girl. But along with that is the metaphor of the Goodwill store, where someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure. And there are also two terrific dream sequences. The one with Brownstein's boyfriend getting out of the car and leaving her in the middle of the road is one of the highlights of the film. One of the most satisfying aspects of the film is the way that McCormick weaves all of the stories together at the end.
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There are some really nice bits of writing in the film, most of them about James Mercer’s character. One is when Mercer tells David Wodehouse exactly how he can manage to eat out, three meals a day, for a mere six dollars. Another is when he and Wodehouse are spending the day at the beach. Their conversation is so heartwarmingly real that it’s difficult to believe. All of the principals are incredibly good. Both Carrie Brownstein and James Mercer are able to convey a sad sweetness that perfectly realizes McCormick’s message. Renee Roman Nose, in her quiet way is equally strong, and David Wodehouse is an absolute marvel. It’s also terrific to see other Portland actors show up in the film. Benjamin Farmer, who was so great in Jon Garcia’s <b>The Falls</b> films, gives a solid performance, and Luke Clements, who appeared to good effect in Justin Koleszar’s <b>One Foot in the Gutter</b>, has a bit part on a mock television show. I’ve seen a lot of independent films in the last few months, but this one is nearly perfect. While the ending might seem abrupt for some viewers, it really isn’t. <b>Some Days are Better Than Others</b> comes highly recommended.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-26470267411875291822017-02-04T21:39:00.002-08:002021-05-03T10:51:02.328-07:00Last September (2008)Director: Chapin Hemmingway Writers: Tyson Balcomb & Chapin Hemmingway<br>
Film Score: Jim Walker & Tim Ellis Cinematography: Sean Rawls<br>
Starring: Jeremy Fiske, Andrew Fletcher, Emily Michele and Laurie Balcomb<p>
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While Portland director Chapin Hemmingway’s first film, <b>Last September</b>, initially feels like a practice run for his more assured work in <b>The Gray Area</b>, this is still a film that stands on its own and delivers some strong work from both the principal cast and the director. The lead in the film is the director’s college roommate at Emerson University, Jeremy Fiske. The two roomed together in Boston before moving to the school’s Los Angeles campus, and while Hemmingway worked on the screenplay Fiske served as a sounding board during the writing. After a successful premiere in Portland, the film went on to appear at a number of small festivals including the Tacoma Film Festival and the Indiefest U.S.A. festival in California, in which the film was given an award for best visual effects. Like most first films, however, it suffers from choices that Hemmingway would make differently in his later film, as well as some technical issues that were unable to be ironed out in post-production. While the extremely low-budget and independent quality has to be taken into consideration--along with this being the director’s first attempt at filming his own screenplay--the end result shows a lot of promise.
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The film begins at the house of college student Jeremy Fiske. It’s the day of the funeral after his mother has died and when his childhood friend, Andrew Fletcher, comes over all he wants to do is get out. The two aren’t exactly estranged, but they haven’t seen each other for a while and there’s a definite tension between them. Very quickly the film becomes one of contrasts in character. While his mother’s death has forced Fiske to grow up quickly, Fletcher still seems stuck in the adolescent world of his high school years. He doesn’t want to go to college and still fights with his mother, Laurie Balcomb. At the same time Fiske decides to break up with his girlfriend, Emily Michele, who the audience later learns also dated Fletcher at one time. When Fletcher invites Fiske to go up to the San Juan Islands in Washington for the weekend, Fiske readily agrees in order to get away from things for a few days. The first stop, however, is at the apartment of a girl Fletcher knows, Allea Martin, in the hopes that she can get Fiske hooked up with her friend, Ashley LeBel. But Fiske simply winds up drunk and crying in the bathroom.
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The next day the trip continues on an idyllic note, with a ferry ride to the islands, followed by a hike in which the two begin talking about the real conflict in their relationship: the feelings they both share for Michele and the tension that they’ve felt ever since. It’s not until the trip takes an unexpected turn that they develop a new understanding for each other. Though Jeremy Fiske may not be a household name, he has gone on to do some interesting work after this film, authoring another independent film he starred in that was shot in Boston, but primarily as a production assistant on such big-budget films as Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Moneyball with Brad Pitt. He does a good job in this film, only his second feature, though the technical issues with the sound tend to hamper his quiet delivery. He has a look similar to Ron Eldard, but his acting style is closer to Giovanni Ribisi. Andrew Fletcher is taller and more angular, and presents a nice contrast to Fiske both physically as well as in character.
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In terms of the acting itself, the men do a decent job but the women in the film don’t fare so well. Emily Michele is painfully awkward on the screen in the couple of scenes she has, first with Fiske when he breaks up with her, and then with the two of them before they leave on the trip. Laurie Balcomb also seems a little unequipped for her dramatic scene as Fletcher’s mother. To be fair, the early scenes with the men are rough as well, but since they have the entire film to develop some chemistry it doesn’t make as much of an impact. Hemmingway and producer Tyson Balcom’s screenplay emphasizes realism, which is interesting to a point but wears thin after a while. The goal with dialogue shouldn’t be realism, but instead a natural feel while moving the narrative along, something the team vastly improved upon in their next feature. And that is the real takeway from the film. On its own it’s a moderately successful independent first feature, but when viewed as a stepping stone to the much more successful follow-up, the difference shows a filmmaker who can learn from mistakes and who has exhibited a tremendous amount of growth in a short time. In that context, <b>Last September</b> is a bittersweet experience in that this growth hasn’t been able to continue in a series of later projects. neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-75143130912237430032017-02-03T13:16:00.003-08:002021-05-03T10:50:30.013-07:00Welcoming Departure (2012)Director: Scott Ballard Writer: Scott Ballard<br>
Music: The Blue Cranes Cinematography: Dave Rosenblum<br>
Starring: Thomas S. Campbell, Eve Pryce, Rachael Perrell and Dave Morales<p>
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<b>Welcoming Departure</b> is the feature debut of Portland writer-director Scott Ballard. Getting his start in feature work as a cinematographer, he did some impressive camera work on the otherwise stilted <b>How the Fire Fell</b> in 2010, but already had amassed a substantial resume writing and directing short films prior to that. The theme of this film is a tired one, the elderly person who makes an impact on the life of a younger one, and Ballard is clearly intent on finding something new to say with it, though it’s difficult to know if he succeeds. It’s an odd film in many ways. While there are a lot of things to like about it, they don’t really seen to fit together very well. For the first nine minutes of the movie Tom Campbell seems perfect for the part, but as soon as he opens his mouth it’s clear he’s way more intelligent than his character first appears. The jazz soundtrack, which includes some terrific music by the Portland quintet The Blue Cranes and the Alan Jones Sextet, almost seems as if it belongs in a different film. And there are certain ways of handling a story like this by directors like Alexander Payne or the Coen Brothers, but Scott Ballard chooses to go in a very different direction. The subdued nature of the telling is far more reminiscent of <b>Some Days are Better Than Others</b> by Matt McCormick, but Ballard’s screenplay lacks the symbolic underpinning of that film, and the stakes for his characters don’t seem nearly as high.
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The film opens at breakfast time, with Thomas S. Campbell dropping the needle on a jazz LP, eating Cheerios and opening his mail at the kitchen table before heading off to work in his station wagon. Campbell works as the night janitor at the public library. After his shift he meets Dave Morales and the two have a real breakfast at a diner before Campbell goes back home. The next day is just like the last except he brings a letter from home with him, which he opens during his lunch. Apparently a relative of his has died and he is one of the beneficiaries. It’s nine minutes into the film before there is any dialogue, at breakfast with Morales. Campbell thinks the letter is a scam because he doesn’t have any relatives, but calls the lawyer when he gets home and the next day is told to pick up a package at the airport. Campbell is decidedly low-tech guy who prefers vinyl to digital, and doesn’t own a computer, and the scene where he attempts to navigate an automated phone system is amusing if familiar. One morning when Morales doesn’t show up, he goes to the restaurant alone and talks to waitress Rachael Perrell. The conversation is intended to show the viewer how bland his life is, and sets up the reappearance of Perrell later on. Oh, the package at the airport? It keeps him awake wondering what it is and so he finally drives out to pick it up. It’s an old Norwegian woman named Odessa played by Eve Pryce.
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The results should be predictable, but they’re not. Not unlike the episode on the phone, Campbell handles the crisis in his typically methodical fashion. Absent are the histrionics that a character like this would normally indulge in, or the obsessive-compulsive breakdown the viewer might expect. Instead, Campbell goes about his business of working the problem, gradually uncovering information about Pryce as well as exploring his own reaction to her presence in his life. The film is short, at barely over an hour, and it certainly could have benefitted from spending more time with the supporting cast, especially in the second half. That said, there are some very nice moments. One is the actual LP that Campbell is playing on his turntable. Even though the jazz on the soundtrack is provided by local Portland groups, the LP is a Blue Note album. It’s a small detail, but for the knowledgeable jazz fan it’s a nice one. Equally impressive is when Campbell goes through Pryce’s suitcase. The photo album, postcards and sweaters have a palpable feeling of authenticity to them, and when Campbell neatly arranges everything as he puts it back it’s quite touching. There’s also a nice moment at the coffee shop when Ballard keeps the camera on Pryce while Campbell and Morales talk about her, only her eyes moving in time with the conversation. It’s an economical technique, as it only requires one set up, but used judiciously it can be very effective as it is here.
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Tom Campbell is solid in the lead role, intelligent and level-headed despite the curves he is thrown. Eve Pryce is a much better choice visually than the actress Ballard had on the original promotional materials, and she does a terrific job with no dialogue. While David Morales starts off as the typically goofy best friend, he becomes something else again when he meets Pryce and it would have nice to see more of him at the end. Rachael Perrell is absolutely riveting onscreen and it’s a shame that both she and Morales couldn’t have had more time to develop their characters in an additional twenty minutes that the story cries out for. And that’s probably the fatal flaw of the film: the screenplay. The cinematography and direction are solid, but the narrative simply doesn’t have time to gel. This may be a result of Ballard spending so much time working on short films, or it may be just a function of being his first feature. First features are notorious for weak screenplays. <b>Welcoming Departure</b> is certainly not a bad film, however, and as stated earlier there are things to admire and enjoy. Fortunately Ballard has made a second feature and the hope is that he will continue working in the long form and hone his considerable skills even more in the future.
neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-8541166998188640532017-01-11T09:03:00.002-08:002021-05-03T10:49:31.338-07:00One Foot in the Gutter (2011)Director: Justin Koleszar Writer: Justin Kolezar<br>
Film Score: Adam Allred Cinematography: Ryan Kunkleman<br>
Starring: Geoff Stewart, Nick Ferrucci, Zach Sanchez and Benjamin Parslow<p>
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This is another of the independent films out of Portland that I have been screening ever since being absolutely blown away by Jon Garcia’s <b>The Falls</b>. This film, <b>One Foot in the Gutter</b>, by writer-director Justin Koleszar, features the star of Garcia’s film, Nick Ferrucci, and that’s what brought me to it. And while it lacks some of the carefully crafted aspects of Garcia’s films, it is still impressively artistic in its own right. But beyond that Koleszar’s script takes on a disturbing aspect of today’s youth culture in which young men and women, just starting out in life, continue to behave as if they were in a fraternity or sorority, binge drinking and acting like the idiots they see in Seth Rogen movies. In the past, as critic David Denby discusses in a different context, young people “were not expected to remain in a state of goofy euphoria until they were thirty-five.” The recent decline in civility and empathy for others is directly related to the all-consuming selfish behavior that young people in their twenties are indulging in at the expense of the rest of society and, even worse, at the expense of their own future. It’s not a popular stance, but it is one that needs to be confronted, and I applaud Koleszar for doing so.
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The film begins with a terrific montage, a Northwest rainforest outside of a small town. Inside one of the houses another montage of shots establishing a dirty bachelor pad is overdubbed with Nick Ferrucci yelling at Geoff Stewart to go with him for Mexican food. But a car crash suddenly brings the film to a screeching halt. Ferrucci came out okay, but Stewart can’t remember the crash and is having emotional trauma that is still lingering on three weeks later when he sees his doctor, Harold Phillips. Prosecutor John Lee gives him two choices, three months in rehab with a reduced fine, or the full fine and a week in jail. Stewart is planning on moving to Colorado for a job, and Lee says he can do his rehab there. At the same time Ferrucci is buying a gun, and Stewart’s little brother, Jesse Henderson, leaves home to move into the living room of the house because he idolizes his brother’s party lifestyle. The other two guys who live there, Zach Sanchez and Benjamin Parslow, together with Ferrucci, are throwing a party for Stewart in the hopes that he’ll stay in Oregon instead of moving to Colorado. Stewart, who has been sober for a month following his doctor’s orders, had planned on leaving before the party, but his ride begs off for another day and he is stuck at the house that night.
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The party begins with the arrival of a group of girls that includes Stewart’s ex-girlfriend, the arresting Meredith Adelaide, who confesses to Stewart that she still loves him. Later, his friends put so much pressure on him that, against his better judgment, Stewart gives in and begins to drink. The subtext to the evening is that Ferrucci has something very important he needs to tell Stewart. Luke Clements, another friend who has come down from Seattle, is the voice of reason in the group and wants Stewart to go to Colorado. The ending is bittersweet and, while not climactic, it is certainly real. And that is probably the thing that is most prevalent in the film, a sense of realism that Hollywood struggles with but that Koleszar is able to capture extremely well. The acting is solid, especially Stewart, and Ferrucci is perfect for his role as the slightly goofy best friend. But the rest of the principals are equal to the task as well. The screenplay is very intelligent, and while that shouldn’t be a surprise, it is, because that tends to be the real weak point in small, independent films. Once scene in particular that stands out is when Ferrucci is talking with Adelaide in the basement and she says, “He doesn’t have to hate me,” to which Ferrucci replies, “Technically, he does. And technically, so do I.” It’s a terrific shorthand to let the audience know that she cheated on him, done in a very clever way. And the screenplay is full of those moments.
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The story itself, which emphasizes the vacuous nature of the boy’s lifestyle, has lots of meaningful moments without being preachy. In a scene where Stewart is dreaming, the four friends are running through the woods, but when they stop to talk he notices there is someone else along, a drinking, smoking, unkempt loser with missing teeth (a cameo by the director). It’s a sign that the wanton lifestyle the boys have been living is not going to lead to anything good. In another scene shortly after, Parslow is standing outside amid Stewart’s possessions, which have been unceremoniously chucked out the window, and deliberately pours beer over the American flag. It’s a moment that may mean nothing to young people, which is just the point, a powerful symbol of the narcissistic and nihilistic attitude of today’s youth. Koleszar’s cinematic sensibilities are also impressive. The opening montage is quite good, a series of static camera setups that end with the house, but it’s then that the camera slowly pushes in. And in several flashbacks that show the relationship between the boys, again, he emphasizes empty moments that are merely substitutes for a real relationship between them. As far as I know, the film doesn’t have any distribution on DVD, which is a shame. <b>One Foot in the Gutter</b> deserves to be seen by a much wider audience because it is a terrific film, and yet another example of the great work coming out of the Portland film scene.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-69036208189526214922016-12-20T15:47:00.002-08:002021-05-03T10:48:34.244-07:00Bucksville (2011)Director: Chel White Writers: Laura McGie & Chel White<br>
Film Score: Tom Brosseau Cinematography: Marc Greenfield<br>
Starring: Thomas Stroppel, Ted Rooney, Katy Beckemeyer and Tom Berenger<p>
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<b>Bucksville</b> is a fascinating film. I came to it through its star, Thomas Stroppel, and his incredible performance in <b>The Falls: Testament of Love</b> by Northwest director Jon Garcia. He is a compelling actor and it’s terrific to see him in a starring role. Chel White is another Northwest director who wrote the film along with his girlfriend, Laura McGie. Like Garcia, White is also a musician and wrote some of the music for the film with guitarist Tom Brosseau, who is also an actor. The big name in the picture is Tom Berenger who was one of the producers on the film. The tag line pulled from the Ashland Film Festival promotional material states that it “ponders the fine line between good and evil,” but the film itself really takes a stand that is quite unambiguous. It was entered in a number of regional film festivals and did quite well, earning a first prize in Kansas City and a couple of second place finishes in Europe. It’s a small, independent film that was certainly able to gain a lot of recognition through its association with Berenger, but ultimately it stands on its own as an interesting, if flawed, character study.
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The film begins in the cabin of a white supremacist group in the Pacific Northwest run by David Bodin, the town barber, and his brother, Ted Rooney. After reciting an oath, they all put on hoods and leave the cabin. The next morning Thomas Stroppel tells his father, Bodin, that he wants to join the military and go to Germany, but he is prevented from even thinking about it. His mother has left them and taken his sister, who calls to talk to him, but there’s nothing he can do. At the next meeting of the brotherhood, they decide to kill a sex trafficker who has avoided jail time. They capture him and spin a wheel to see who will kill him. Stroppel is picked and gives him the lethal injection in the woods, and the body is buried. When the easygoing Bodin dies, however, and the hard core Rooney takes over, Stoppel wants out even more but leaving the brotherhood won’t be easy. At the same time Rooney has pledged his group to become part of a larger organization run by Tom Berenger, where they will be paid more for higher profile victims. Stroppel’s old girlfriend, Katy Beckemeyer, reveals in a brief reunion that the two of them were supposed to run off together. She did, but Stroppel stayed, but now that she’s back he wants to leave with her for good, and that will take some doing.
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For a vigilante film, the plot is pretty tame, but that seems to be the point. These are small town folk who have been seduced into the right-wing idea that their guns and their religion entitle them to extra-legal authority to do as they wish to punish criminals who have been “under-punished” by the judicial system. In many ways they are naïve about their ability to sustain such an organization, and inevitably they fall into the quandary of any such fanatical group, that the younger generation doesn’t share their vision and eventually want to go their own way. In the context of the film, Thomas Stroppel is definitely a prisoner of a cult. And as good as their vigilante intentions are, their actions are not so clear cut. When Berenger gets involved the morality becomes even muddier. There’s a lot that could have been done with the script that was missed, and that’s unfortunate. The intent is to present a character study of Stroppel’s escape, but the attempt at realism here sort of works against the piece in that his own naiveté causes him to make some incomprehensible choices. The opportunity for far more introspection and explanation were there but weren’t taken. It’s not a huge flaw, but it could disappoint a lot of viewers. <b>Bucksville</b> is not a great film, but it is worth seeing, if only for the quality work of the cast and the director doing their best with a script that doesn’t quite measure up.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-2832826864094889062016-11-27T18:02:00.002-08:002021-05-03T10:47:43.608-07:00Population: 2 (2012)Director: Gil Luna Writers: Gil Luna & Jonathan Stark<br>
Film Score: Edouard Brenneisen Cinematography: Kenneth Luba<br>
Starring: Suzanne Tufan, Jon Ashley Hall, Shelly Lipkin and Meredith Adelaide<p>
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Small, independent films tend to be character driven, modern day dramas simply because they’re easier to film. So for any filmmaker, independent or not, to take on a work of science-fiction it has to be a daunting task. How much more so, then, for someone without studio funding? That’s what initially led me to Gil Luna’s <b>Population: 2</b>, and while there are certainly some challenging aspects of the film, what he was able to accomplish with the limited budget he had is fairly impressive. Of course the film has been lambasted online for it’s obvious deficiencies, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to criticize low-budge filmmakers for not being able to create something that’s up to Hollywood standards. But the fact remains that there are degrees of artlessness in film. On one end you have people like Michael Bay, who squander millions of dollars and ultimately wind up with artless tripe. And on the other end are talented filmmakers who don’t have choices, who are hemmed in by low budgets into taking whatever they can get in terms of cast and crew. Gil Luna is clearly one of the later, and yet managed to create a believable post-apocalyptic universe and a story that explains how it became that way, all seen through the eyes of a very compelling character and a talented actress to bring her to life.
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The film begins in the cockpit of a bomber, the pilot and his navigator heading for a target that they are set to reach in twelve minutes. The conversation between the two indicates that they are friends and that while they’ve trained for this mission, this is the first time the mission is real. This is followed by a quote from John F. Kennedy about man’s potential to destroy themselves with nuclear weapons. An image of a satellite above the earth is seen next, amid lots of chatter, one voice among them saying that, “a pregnant woman, that baby will not remain alive.” Then Barry Wilde is seen in a video from Seattle touting a mirror-based system that reflects sunlight out into space to deal with global warming. Finally, Suzanne Tufan is heard in voice over--with Olivia Klinetobe playing Tufan as a child, running through a field--talking about how innocent her childhood was in assuming the permanence of everything around her. Later, in adulthood, the bombs take it all away. Thus, by the time the opening credits roll, the three threads of the narrative--however vaguely--have been shown to the viewer. There is the pilot and his partner who will deliver the first of the bombs that will end life on earth, Tufan’s life with her husband before the bombs, and her life alone afterward. This last thread is hinted at during the titles, with scratches in the wall to indicate days, and accompanied by an absolutely beautiful piece of music composed by Edouard Brenneisen who provides an impressive score overall.
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After another episode with the pilot, a group of media spots are shown. The first is an advertisement for an abortion pill featuring Meredith Adelaide, then two opposing viewpoints on two different programs cut together that discuss the faulty engineering of the reflective technology put in place to combat climate change--a project that was completely corporate controlled and so the people and the government can’t interfere. From there, the film cuts to a depopulated Portland, Oregon. Heading down into the basement of what looks to be an empty factory, a Hazmat outfitted Suzanne Tufan comes home after her daily search for food. Tired and dirty, she lays down on her makeshift bed to sleep the darkness away. From the pilot continuing to close in, the scene then fades in on Tufan before the bombs. Her husband, Jon Ashley Hall, works for the company and is being coerced into telling the public that everything is fine. As long as he does what the company wants, if things don’t improve and chaos ensues he and his wife will have a spot in some protective bunker owned by the corporation. The three threads alternate throughout the film, as Tufan gradually learns what the cost of being one of the chosen few is--and it’s far from an easy decision to make. Meanwhile her life afterward is a constant struggle for food and water. And all the while the bomber is getting closer and closer to its target.
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The first thing that must be said about the film is that Suzanne Tufan is tremendous. All of her sequences alone are heart-rending. Without her, what little positive feedback the film has would be non-existent. She is incredibly believable, both in her scenes of isolation as well as the pre-war drama. But she’s also assisted by some solid supporting actors as well. Shelly Lipkin is particularly good as the CEO of the corporation, and while Jon Ashley Hall’s performance is a little too studied he’s certainly no worse than many Hollywood actors. The other impressive feature of the film is the art direction by Janet Beeson. To be able to create a realistically de-populated city for Tufan to travel through is what ultimately makes the film. Computer graphics will only get a production so far, and the use of them on the jet plane sequences is probably the weak point of the film. And it’s not that the visual effects aren’t good, but in contrast to the set design they do seem very artificial. At the same time, removing those scenes would only have diminished the film, as they provide an important counterpoint to the rest of the story. So it’s difficult to understand some of the severely negative criticism the film has engendered online. The film is as much a social issue piece as it is science-fiction, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and while it’s not the best post-apocalyptic film ever made, it certainly has a lot to recommend it. I’ve seen plenty of bad films in my day, and <b>Population: 2</b> isn’t one of them.
neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-77028803008357823962016-11-27T14:55:00.001-08:002021-05-03T10:47:09.713-07:00Monday Night Gig (2005)Director: Tyson Smith Writer: Ian Smith<br>
Music: Somerset Meadows Cinematography: Todd E. Freeman<br>
Starring: Neil Kopplin, Seneca Relich, Ina Strauss and Aaron Babb<p>
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“We’re getting the band back together.” How many times have those words been spoken all around the country? And how many more times in Portland? Tyson and Ian Smith’s <b>Monday Night Gig</b> traces the improbable history of the band The French, as they attempt to make it big. It’s a goofy comedy in the style of so many independent films, but there is a serious undercurrent to the story that comes from intimate knowledge of the milieu, kind of like a low budget <b>This is Spinal Tap</b>. The title itself, in fact, is a major in-joke, as Monday nights are the nights when nobody goes out, and thus it is the worst gig of all. Microphones that shock the singer into numbness, arguments between band members, band meetings, bad opening acts, patron-less venues, a broken down band bus, and lousy accommodations on the road all come from a place of affectionate appreciation for the struggle of musicians with far more vision than talent. The Smith brothers bounced around the country as kids, eventually winding up in the Northwest. Ian earned an English degree from the University of Oregon, while brother Tyson earned his graphic design degree from Portland State. The two began by writing indie comics together--a skill that was put to use in creating the wonderfully humorous posters for the band--and quite naturally branched out into film. This is their second feature, after making <b>The Sexy Chef</b> in 2002.
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The film begins with Neil Kopplin and Seneca Relich in the garage playing their guitars, and dreaming of the day when the name of their band, The French, will be up on a marquee for a sold out show. The title sequence is particularly nice, with a posters being stapled on a telephone pole, and the screen divided into multiple sections as the two musicians look for a bassist and drummer to round out the group. At their first gig they’re pelted with spaghetti and booed off the stage. Three years later Kopplin, now a junior high teacher, calls Relich, an accountant, with the good news: they’re getting the band back together. After chasing down the bass player, Aaron Babb, who is living in a cardboard box, and anarchist drummer Ina Strauss, who works at a pizza joint, Kopplin announces they’ve been signed to a local record label. Unfortunately, with the combination of personalities and a pot-head engineer Gray Eubank, the group never seems to get any actual recording done. Day after day in the recording studio goes by, and zany antics ensue, and when they finally do record a song Eubank forgets to turn on the machine. Then, once the album is finished, the repo men come in and take everything out of the studio, including their album. Four years later Kopplin and Relich are interviewed on public access television to announce a CD release party at the Mt. Tabor Legacy Lounge. When Relich has had enough and wants to quit, Kopplin convinces him to do one last show.
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As is the case in so many independent films, the two leads are pretty good. The rest of the cast . . . not so much. Fortunately Neil Kopplin and Seneca Relich carry the show. Kopplin is a natural and the camera loves him. He’s goofy and irresponsible in a completely believable way. Relich’s acting is a little too character driven and, as the voice of sanity that is drown out by Kopplin’s idealism, he has to try too hard. Nevertheless, he does a solid job in support and the two work well together. Had Ina Strauss played a slightly different character, or been given different direction, she might have stolen the show. She has flashes of brilliance that are all too brief. Portland writer-director Mike Prosser also turns up as Relich’s boss at the accounting firm, and he’s given some terrific material. But the writing is also inconsistent. In among the plethora of easy jokes that don’t really make it, there is some extremely funny writing. Early on in the film Kopplin has been kicked out of the house by his wife for buying their son an inappropriate birthday gift. “I got him the five piece drum kit,” he tells Relich. “I was only cleared for Battleship.” The film is finally what it is, a send up of a garage band with dreams of making it big, and while one of the jokes seems to be on the audience who never hears the band actually play, that’s simply another choice that indie filmmakers have to make. And since there are very few actors who also play, the choice was ultimately a simple one. Still, if you know what you’re getting in to, and you’re up for it, there are laughs to be found in <b>Monday Night Gig</b>.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-81465174611845710272016-11-26T15:20:00.003-08:002021-05-03T10:46:20.452-07:00Lake Noir (2011)Director: Jeffrey Schneider Writer: Abel Martinez Jr.<br>
Film Score: Bentley Michaels Cinematography: Jeffrey Schneider<br>
Starring: Geno Romo, Heather Wakehouse, Michael Gonzalez and Benjamin Farmer<p>
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Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t go anywhere near a film like <b>Lake Noir</b>. Low-budget, independent horror films are on a long list of things I don’t spend time watching at all. In the first place they’re too easy, meaning that most directors think that they can get more of an audience for a horror film than a straight drama, and that it will be easy to write and film. But there is an art to horror every bit as much as there is for comedy--or drama, for that matter. And while the initial audience might be larger the word of mouth is a killer, especially since the advent of the Internet. That said, however, two of the most impressive films I have ever seen are <b>The Falls</b> and <b>The Falls: Testament of Love</b> by writer-director Jon Garcia. And one of the brilliant stars in those two films is Benjamin Farmer. So in seeking out other things he has appeared in I wound up taking a look at this film by another Portland director, Jeffrey Schneider. The story harkens back to the camp-like atmosphere of the original <b>Friday the 13th</b>, and the host of imitators that came in the wake of the success of that film. For using a hand-held digital video camera the cinematography by Schneider is pretty good, but that’s about the only thing that is. The tagline for the film is, “Nothing good happens at this lake,” and unfortunately that would include Schneider’s movie.
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The story, if you can even call it that, begins with Michael Gonzalez being beaten by Benjamin Farmer with a baseball bat and dumped into the lake while his girlfriend is raped by one of Farmer’s buddies. Flash forward and virgin Heather Wakehouse wants to go to the lake for the weekend with her boyfriend, Geno Romo, and some mutual friends. Her mom says no and so she lies and says she’s going to a girlfriend’s house, then jumps into Romo’s truck and they’re off to pick up their friends along the way. In another truck are four other late teens who stop off at a gas station to fill up and are told by crazy old man Bob Olin the story of Gonzalez, who enacted revenge on his abusers by killing them as well as everyone else who stays up at the lake at night. But the kids ignore the warning, pitch their tents in the woods near the lake and proceed to get drunk and have sex with each other. Everyone that is except Romo, who becomes increasingly frustrated with Wakehouse’s abstinence the more he drinks. Finally, as night falls, Gonzalez emerges from the swampy lake and begins working his way through the copulating couples just like every other slasher film you’ve ever seen.
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Actually, that’s not quite right. Most other slasher films are at least somewhat inventive. Unfortunately Abel Martinez Jr.’s screenplay is absolutely pointless. The dialogue he has the actors speaking is the most inane I think I’ve ever heard in a film. I’m sure he was striving for something like “realism” but simply comes off as unimaginative in the extreme. And so are the killings. In most of them, you don’t even see anything happening. When Marzell Sampson is killed there is no blood at all, and the audience doesn’t even see what happens to the girl he’s having sex with. And when Calvin Morie McCarthy is beheaded it takes a few moments to realize that the mannequin head rolling in the dirt is supposed to be his. There’s not much gore to speak of, not much sex to speak of, and not much story to speak of. The acting, not surprisingly, is fairly poor as well. Geno Romo probably would have been the best of the lot had he had a decent script and some kind of direction. And while Benjamin Farmer is a brilliant actor--and the reason I watched the film in the first place--you wouldn’t know it as he is really wasted in a tiny role. Michael Gonzalez looks like a cross between Tor Johnson and Santo and, while he is fine as the killer, it probably would have been better to have someone else play the young boyfriend who is left for dead. <b>Lake Noir</b> is a bad movie, but then it was always going to be. neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-12554600248487200472016-11-12T10:24:00.003-08:002021-05-03T10:45:00.814-07:00The Falls: Covenant of Grace (2016)Director: Jon Garcia Writers: Jon Garcia & Rodney Moore<br>
Film Score: Jon Garcia Cinematography: Seth Wheldon<br>
Starring: Nick Ferrucci, Ben Farmer, Bruce Jennings and Curtis E. Jackson<p>
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The third entry in Jon Garcia’s Falls franchise is an important film, not so much cinematically but for the message it conveys. <b>The Falls: Covenant of Grace</b>, is a very different film from its predecessors and so it can’t really be judged on the same criteria as the first two films. The series began with <b>The Falls</b>, a carefully crafted love story of two Mormon missionaries who find themselves swept up in the experience of being honest about their sexuality for the first time. The second in the series, <b>The Falls: Testament of Love</b>, was a tour de force of filmmaking, with the two principals finding themselves on opposite ends of the spectrum and gradually working their way back to each other almost in spite of themselves. In both of those films the conflict that the protagonists face is central to the story, but in the third film Garcia goes beyond conflict to focus on what the ultimate outcome for the two characters will be. The conflict that comes from the church and family is really only token resistance as Nick Ferrucci and Ben Farmer attempt to sort through the important things in their individual lives and make their own choices in order to decide what their future lives will be like, either together or apart.
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The film begins with some breathtaking aerial photograph of the evergreen forests of Oregon. Nick Ferrucci is out for a run, thinking about how the rejection of his Mormon faith in the last film has not been the answer he thought it would be. It is a year after he went down to Salt Lake City to save the man he loves, Benjamin Farmer, from a life of deception and now Farmer is coming up to Portland to reunite with him. In a really wonderful sequence, Garcia has Ferrucci picking up Farmer from the airport and taking him to his house, and the awkwardness of their reunion is palpable. But this is something they acknowledge and ameliorate with shots of liquor. The two have clearly been dancing around the issue of whether or not to be together long term for a while, and Garcia’s comedic sensibilities are still spot on when the two are out looking at the lights of the city later, and Farmer says he thinks he could do the Northwest thing. Ferrucci says he already is, and when Farmer asks him how, he responds by saying, “You’re hanging out with gay, bearded men and drinking beer.” Later Farmer meets Ferrucci’s friends, including gay masseuse Curtis E. Jackson, and the inklings of jealousy from Farmer appear, but it’s to Farmer’s credit that he doesn’t let it go any further. The two have an unfortunate argument the day before Farmer leaves, and essentially he goes back to Utah with things still as unsettled as before.
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Later, when Ferrucci sees online that Farmer’s mother has died, he goes down to see Farmer after the funeral accompanied by his father, Harold Phillips. The two are at first accosted by Farmer’s father, Bruce Jennings, who then inexplicably invites them to an impromptu dinner with Farmer’s disapproving brother, Andrew Bray. The conversation at dinner is able to demonstrate to Jennings that there is something between the two that has been beyond his understanding, as it’s also the first time the two declare their love for each other. Farmer, who has a small daughter with his former wife, is applying to law school in Utah, and the conversation between he and Ferrucci about their future together becomes the central theme of the film. Because of that the resolution to their dilemma is purposely left cryptic, as though for either of them to say definitively what he wants will force the other into saying no. So Ferrucci goes back home with things still in the air. When Curtis Jackson has a crisis in his life Ferrucci comforts him, and the happy resolution Garcia comes up with continues as a theme throughout the rest of the film, from the about face in Jennings’ character, the return of Farmer to Portland and the eventual happy ending for everyone, to the coda in which the director harkens back to the first film. But then this is the point of the whole film.
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Rather than continuing to explore the roadblocks to happiness for gay Mormons, a reminder of the harsh reality they go through daily, Garcia decides to present a vision of possibility for his audience. It’s the kind of promise for the future that the director has always gravitated toward in his endings, but here he puts it front and center for the entire film. And the emphasis on the audience is an important part of understanding the film, because the trajectory of the three films has been moving increasingly toward a gay, rather than a general, audience. This film has many more sex scenes than the first two, as well as an immersion in gay lifestyle rather than the straight universe of the previous films. There is also plenty of Garcia's talent on display. As stated earlier, the director’s sense of humor is wonderful. In the dinner scene, for instance, he makes a terrific Northwest in-joke when Jennings wonders out loud how the two are going to make their relationship work with Ferrucci living in Seattle. Then, when Ferrucci tells him that he lives in Portland now, Jennings says it’s the same thing. The line drew howls of laughter from the Seattle audience at the film’s premiere. There’s also a nice moment after the opening, when Farmer calls Ferrucci to video chat before coming to Seattle the next day. After the conversation is over Ferrucci tosses his phone on the bed, assuming that Farmer has hung up, and criticizes himself out loud for not saying “I love you.” Then Garcia cuts to the phone, with Farmer still listening and a quizzical look on his face. The humor is a crucial element to the story that balances the intensity of the drama.
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The aerial photography of the Oregon woods and the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City is really quite arresting, and though it doesn’t seem possible the cinematography throughout is even more intimate that Garcia usually achieves with his emphasis on close ups. If there’s a negative aspect to the film, it’s the way Garcia attempts to touch on all kinds of issues without really giving them any significant screen time. Gay marriage, interracial gay relationships, and gay promiscuity are all mentioned but never explored in any substantive way. To be fair, though, those kinds of challenges were never intended to be the central focus of the screenplay. In terms of acting Ben Farmer does his usual stalwart job, but the real surprise of the film is the incredible performance of Nick Ferrucci. His progress as a film actor has been remarkable in the three years since <b>Testament of Love</b>. Another notable performance is by Curtis E. Jackson, who flirts with stereotypical gay behavior throughout the film but never steps over the line, and manages to give an impressively genuine performance in the process. Also worthy of note is actress Rebecca Karpovsky in the role of Ferrucci’s lesbian friend. She adds another layer of texture to the film that the viewer didn’t even know was missing, but in retrospect is absolutely essential. With <b>The Falls: Covenant of Grace</b> coming three years after his last film, it’s good to see Garcia getting back to making the thoughtful and finely crafted films that he has been known for in the past.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-88386535961668918772016-11-11T11:13:00.002-08:002021-05-03T10:43:49.994-07:00Selfless (2008)Director: Jacob Pander Writers: Jacob & Arnold Pander<br>
Film Score: Auditory Sculpture Cinematography: Kevin Fletcher<br>
Starring: Josh Rengert, Mo Gallini, October Moore and Jennifer Hong<p>
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The Pander Brother’s film <b>Selfless</b> has taken a real beating online, receiving a meager four out of ten on IMDb, and a dismal zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes. But that’s a shame. Despite this being a first feature--with all the attendant problems that usually incurs--it is undeniably a visually stunning film. This should not be a surprise, however. The brothers hail from Portland and have been graphic artists involved in creating cutting-edge comic books since they were in their teens. They are among a number of young filmmakers plying their trade in the Rose City, creating music videos for the thriving music community as well as collaborating with Portland luminary Gus Van Sant. The film deals with the recent phenomenon of identity theft and takes that idea to the extreme. Josh Rengert is an architect who has it all, a great girlfriend, a model apartment, and a job working for a firm that’s about to close a major deal designing a new skyscraper in Seattle. The film opens at the airport in Portland, with the credits rolling over people going through security and having to reassemble themselves, belts, shoes, and suitcases, before heading to the gates across the iconic PDX carpet.
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As Rengert is waiting for his flight to Seattle, he pulls out his sketchpad and begins drawing stewardess Jennifer Hong. A few minutes later Mo Gallini sets down next to him, irate over being fired while on his cell phone, and Rengert wastes no time in moving to another set of seats. When Hong strikes up a conversation with him and sees his drawing of her, she asks him to sketch someone else. The angry Gallini is still on the phone fuming, and so Rengert begins a quick caricature of him but is caught in the act. Gallini abuses him verbally, and there is a definitely the threat of physical violence before everyone goes their separate ways. What Rengert doesn’t see, however, is Gallini picking up his architectural magazine and getting his name and address off the subscription label. A few days later back at home, Rengert’s girlfriend October Moore has purchased a couch and Rengert’s controlling personality comes out as he wants her to take it back. It turns out he’s the same way with his partners. While the investors want him to make some modifications to the building design, Rengert absolutely refuses. But because of all this Rengert loses sight of the campaign being waged against him. Not only has he been tricked into giving up his social security number to a phony bank alert, but he suddenly discovers that Jennifer Hong is his downstairs neighbor.
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As with so many first features, the Pander’s screenplay is easily the weakest part of the film. As supremely confident as the brothers are with their visuals style, their ability to render believable characters is very much the opposite. Even so, the acting in the film is solid despite the script. Josh Rengert does a good job in the lead role. One particularly nice moment is when he has lost everything and freaks out in his car. Pander pulls back his camera and the audience can literally see the car shaking. October Moore as the girlfriend is feeling the need to start a family, which Rengert balks at, being too wrapped up in his work. This drives a wedge between the couple that keeps her from supporting him later in the film. The real star of the film, however, is Jennifer Hong in a double role as the stewardess and her twin sister who has been smuggled into the country, forcing the stewardess to act as a drug mule to pay off her debt in return. She is an enigmatic figure in the film, and one isn’t sure whether she’s working for Gallini or not. As for Mo Gallini himself, he’s a credible villain who would have been helped a lot if he’d been given an equally credible motive.
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It’s not difficult to see why ratings for the film are so low. There’s a great deal of incoherency in the plot. Aside from the lack of motive for Gallini, there is the problem of Rengert’s inability to comprehend an obvious attack on his computer. And when the viewer wants things to be ratcheted up on the identity theft, personal credit cards, utilities shut down, nothing happens until later, allowing the tension-building opportunity to slip away. The visuals, on the other hand, are stunning. Pander bathes the screen in the white glare of overcast Northwest weather, while the locations have been meticulously selected for their clean lines and uncluttered look. In one impressive sequence near the end of the film, the brothers use their graphic arts skills in a lengthy animated sequence where Rengert imagines himself walking through the building he has designed. The close ups and camera angles, as well as interesting montages, also suggest a graphic novel approach to the shooting of the film. Overall, it’s a very compelling film and, taking into account the missteps of first-time feature filmmakers, <b>Selfless</b> ends up being an impressive piece of work that makes one hope the Pander Brothers will be able to make more features and develop their not inconsiderable skills even further.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-42417949203079064462016-10-23T19:26:00.001-07:002021-05-03T10:43:14.418-07:00The Roomies (2010)Director: Jared Yanez Writer: Jared Yanez<br>
Film Score: Andrew Parish Cinematography: Westley Cornwell<br>
Starring: Quinn Allan, Katie Mentesana, Benjamin Farmer and Geno Romo<p>
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<b>The Roomies</b> is another film from the crop of young, independent filmmakers coming out of Portland, Oregon. Director Jared Yanez and star Quinn Allan are part of a production company in Portland, Mongrel Studios, creating a tremendous variety of media projects. My entre into the film was through Allan and Benjamin Farmer, who had appeared together in Jon Garcia’s <b>The Falls</b>, one of the best films I’ve seen in the last twenty years. This film, however, has the distinction of introducing me to an incredible talent in Katie Mentesana, an absolutely beautiful actress who has a remarkable onscreen presence, and an honesty that positively leaps off of the screen. The film begins with Quinn Allan’s face beneath running water, then finally emerging in a baptism. But this is quickly replaced by him pulling his head out of a toilet, and being somewhat mystified as to why it was there. It turns out he’s drunk in a bar with his friends Geno Romo and Ben Farmer, who are all moving in together the next day. Allan is a new Christian and his friends are teasing him and talking about video games and getting drunk with Carly Carcione. The next morning he stuffs all of his belongings into a garbage bag, leaves them at his new apartment, and heads to church.
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But in the next scene the housewarming party is underway with plenty of, sex, drugs, and drinking, and Allan still seems mystified by the emptiness of it all. He is apparently trying for some kind of change in his life, but living with his friends, the loud and obnoxious pothead Romo, and the musician Farmer, is not very conducive to a new way of life. It’s not until Romo’s girlfriend, Katie Mentesana, is about to move in that the audience learns Allan works online as a moderator for the discussion boards at a porno site. Then, at an open mic where Farmer is performing, Farmer’s girlfriend, Carcione, hits on Allan, and the gig is followed by yet another party at the apartment where Carcione calls Allan “dark.” What had been sort of a goofy comedy about roommates, suddenly takes a turn for the surreal. Romo drives Allan over to the house of a business man he’s trying to get to invest in Farmer’s band, but Matt Mascaro is actually an ex-con drug dealer who is more than a little strange, including Mascaro’s mother, Kim Page, huddled on one end of the couch crying. Back at the apartment Romo bashes Allan for stealing girlfriends away from him in high school, and later Farmer confronts Allan for the fact he’s not actually paying rent at the apartment. The crisis point comes when both of his friends decide to move out.
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Writer-director Jared Yanez definitely has a distinctive visual style behind the camera. He has a deft hand at montage and his setups and composition are terrific to look at. This is easily the most compelling thing about the film. If there is anything lacking, though, it is the screenplay. But then that’s the case with a lot of independent films. There’s a certain banality to the dialogue that causes the actors to try a little too hard to bring life to it, something reminiscent of John Sayles' first film, <b>Return of the Secaucus Seven</b>. Quinn Allan’s work in the film is a bit inconsistent. It’s a good part, but it seems difficult for him to know how to play it. Ben Farmer starts out a little rocky as well, but soon settles into his role as the more financially responsible of the three. Geno Romo was the only actor I really had anything good to say about in an otherwise execrable film called <b>Lake Noir</b>, which also featured Ben Farmer in a bit part. The irony is, while he was the best actor in that film, he’s the least effective actor here. I get what Yanez is going for with the part, but Romo’s performance comes off as more of a caricature than a believable person.
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While I had a difficult time warming to the story there is, however, one incredibly beautiful scene in which Quinn Allan and Katie Mentesana are packing up Romo’s things so he can move out of the apartment. The bed is too heavy, though, so they lie down and begin talking in a relaxed and casual way. Yanez makes an interesting choice here to build a bit of tension and, instead of letting the scene unfold by itself, he intercuts a brief scene showing Farmer and Carcione’s relationship hitting a snag. Then, when he cuts back, the tension is finally released as Allan and Mentesana begin to tease each other, get physical, and when she finally kisses him it leads to the inevitable. The chemistry between the two is tremendous, and pushes the film into some incredibly interesting territory. The problem is, this needed to happen twenty minutes into the film. As it stands, just as things really get going, the film winds to a close. In fact, the last act of the film is so good in comparison to the first hour and a half that it’s difficult to know how to feel about it as a whole. It’s not surprising that the film won a film festival award, as the last twenty minutes of the film leaves the viewer speechless. Though not a great film overall, <b>The Roomies</b> has a lot to recommend it and as a first film it is impressive. With any luck Jared Yanez will be able to direct some more features soon and build on this great start. neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-50992446877960575052016-10-01T16:47:00.003-07:002021-05-03T10:41:42.500-07:00Kicking Bird (2005)Director: Kelley Baker Writer: Kelley Baker<br>
Music: Don Campbell & Al Lee Cinematography: Randall S. Timmerman<br>
Starring: Ian Anderson-Priddy, Andrew Ox, Don Adler and Lorraine Bahr<p>
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<b>Kicking Bird</b> is writer-director Kelley Baker’s third film. Unlike some of the more polished productions coming out of the Rose City, Baker’s films harken back to the indie features of the seventies that contain more grit than glamor. Unfortunately the first thing one notices when viewing Baker’s film is that the digital videotape robs the story of the warmth of film. It’s probably something that could have been corrected in post, or perhaps wouldn’t have happened with a different camera, or it could have been the best he could do at the time with the limited budget he had, all forgivable sins. Unfortunately it does nothing to ameliorate the deficiencies of the visuals, and for the most part it has the look of a high school media class production. In some ways, however, it’s appropriate considering that high school is the subject of the film. The opening shot of a brick schoolhouse is accompanied by a ringing bell, and followed by Ian Anderson-Priddy racing out of the building and down the street and a punk rock song pushed to the front in the soundtrack. Soon his reason for running becomes clear as a shot from the front shows him being chased by a bunch of other boys. Sound quality is an issue as well as the visuals, when one of the boys is barely audible on the soundtrack.
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Anderson-Priddy makes it into his house just ahead of the others, and immediately his grandfather, Danny Bruno, yells at him to bring him a beer. Bruno chews the scenery in his first scene, a poor man’s Bill Paxton, and it’s difficult to discern whether he’s going for laughs or not. After a brief scene in the boy’s bedroom, the scene switches to coach Don Adler at school that afternoon, finishing cross-country practice and then detention. At the end of his day he is ridiculed by some acquaintances for choosing a career as a teacher. Andrew Ox, a goth friend of Anderson-Priddy’s stays the night, and they eat dinner in front of the television with his grandparents. All the acting to this point, with the exception of grandmother Lorraine Bahr, is far too exaggerated for the medium, as if all of them had come from a stage production and were unable to adapt their acting to film. What comes out about the young man in the film is that he’s very intelligent but doesn’t apply himself in class, his father has disappeared and his mother is in prison. The title of the film comes from the bullies calling him “bird” as a diminutive of jailbird. Why Baker chose kicking as the adjective instead of running remains a mystery. When Adler sees Anderson-Priddy being chased by his star--and never close to being caught--he calls off the bullies and tries to recruit him for his team, something on the order of <b>McFarland, USA</b> from ten years later.
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Once the film finally settles in after twenty minutes or so, it’s almost possible to forget about the deficiencies of the production and focus on the story as it unfolds. Anderson-Priddy goes with his grandparents to visit his mother in prison and has a teenage meltdown, but Bahr has a really nice moment calming him down and getting him back in the room. Teen delinquencies follow, stealing beer from a convenience store and pouring sugar in the gas tank of car of Ox’s mother’s new boyfriend. But nothing really comes of these events and the viewer gets the strong impression of having seen it all before. Baker definitely has a confident visual style, which makes one wish even more that he had done something to fix the starkness of the videotape because it causes a lot of the shot selections to make it look like a television show rather than a feature film. As with most independent filmmakers, the writing lags well behind the visuals. For the first forty-five minutes the screenplay can’t decide if the boy’s missing father or joining the cross-country team is going to be the main thrust of the plot. As a result, the episodes of delinquency drag on long after the audience gets the point, which dilutes what could have been an interesting story if handled differently.
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At the end of the day the success of a film usually comes down to the acting, and there just isn’t a lot to say on that score. Other than a nice performance by Lorraine Bahr, the rest of the acting was average at best. But it also must be said that the screenplay didn’t help the actors either. In trying to write what Baker clearly feels is realistic dialogue, it wound up being rather pedestrian instead. Anderson-Priddy probably would have come off better had his character not been so clichéd, but there’s really nothing original there. Baker also tries for something like a <b>Karate Kid</b> ending, but by that point it’s far too little and much too late. Worse than that, however, all of the moral high ground that Anderson-Priddy had gained throughout the film is completely thrown away when he acts every bit as unprincipled as the rest of the adult cast in the film. For this viewer it destroyed everything it seemed the film had been building toward. It must be said that any independent film production is a labor of love, and the time, effort, and money that go into it are worthy of respect. Baker certainly must get credit for that, but his artistic choices from the music to the lack of post-production--whether forced upon him by a paucity of funds or not--are questionable. As a result, <b>Kicking Bird</b> remains a flawed film.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-8402841941918101412016-09-28T17:14:00.004-07:002021-05-03T10:39:52.789-07:00Tandem Hearts (2010)Director: Jon Garcia Writer: Jon Garcia<br>
Film Score: Toby Nathaniel Cinematography: Jeff Hammond<br>
Starring: Quinn Allan, Heather Harlan, Rebecca Teran and Nick Ferrucci<p>
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While Jon Garcia’s first film, <b>Tandem Hearts</b>, is definitely a first film, it is also a harbinger of the greatness that would follow. Produced in 2009, but not completed until nearly two years later, it is the story of a young couple who have run out steam and attempt to jump start their relationship by moving to a new city to start a new life. Unfortunately, once they get there they realize they have brought their moribund relationship along with them. While the tendency in Hollywood might have been to manufacture some kind of happy ending for the film--even in the sense of simply moving on--Garcia allows the viewer to wallow in the pain. But it’s not a masochistic experience because of it. There’s a wistfulness to the story that is undeniable, and though the description bitter-sweet has lost its meaning through overuse, there seems no more accurate phrase to describe the experience. While many small, independent films painfully attempt to portray reality--and to be fair there’s some of that here--there is also a sense that the purpose here is somewhat larger. The emotions that are pulled from the audience have been done so in a very careful and deliberate way by a thoughtful artist with a distinctive vision that would fully show itself in his very next film, <b>The Falls</b>.
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This film begins in an old garage, with Quinn Allan walking over to a covered, tandem bicycle and pulling off the tarp. This is followed by a very nice 3-D animated title sequence. Each act of the film is also prefaced by Allan taking out a fresh CD and writing on it. The first section, in Boise, Idaho, is labeled Track 1. It begins at a going away party for Allan at the house he’s living in before he moves to Portland, Oregon. Later that night in bed his girlfriend, Heather Harlan, seems a bit nervous about the move they’re making, and they turn away from each other to go to sleep. But the next morning they finish packing the U-Haul trailer and hit the road. During the trip, however, there is a sense of unease working in Harlan. While Allan takes the trip in stride, sleeping in the car or the hotel, Harlan is restless, as though she’s stuck on the back end of that tandem bike with someone else steering. Track 2 begins outside of Portland at a gas station, stopping for supplies. Once they reach the furnished house they’re renting, a certain gender stereotype creeps into the shots, with Allan checking out the TV and pulling down a giant sword from the wall, while Harlan takes a look in the kitchen. After unpacking they go to a bar and a couple of locals give them the lay of the land.
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From there the daily routine of existence begins, working on the car, going shopping, and finding jobs. Harlan goes to a party without Allan, and talks about moving to Portland because she wanted a change, the subtext being that she may want a change from Allan. When Harlan gets a job, however, things settle down and the audience gets its first glimpse of what the couple is really like together as they make dinner, sing together, and watch TV. Garcia wonderfully transitions into the couple’s problems by showing the first rain in the film. Then Harlan engineers about the most awkward sex scene on film. Nothing dramatic, but emblematic of the couple’s lack of intimacy, especially considering they haven’t had sex since they left Idaho. The story is not a unique one, and in many ways a simple recounting of the plot does a real disservice to the film. Right from the opening, the viewer is aware that this is a director who has a passion for visuals. The glow of the sunlight washing out Allan’s features in the opening shot as he enters the garage is beautiful. And the road sequence on the way from Idaho to Oregon begins with a terrific montage.
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But there are also some questionable choices as well. Garcia has his cinematographers pull out of focus frequently and while the effect is interesting in a way--like Terrence Malick’s elliptical editing--it soon becomes a cliché that draws attention to itself rather than something uniquely part of his directorial vision. And there are standard problems with the screenplay, a typically weak point in many first films, and young actors working too hard to play normal. In many ways Garcia attempts to do more here than he’s capable of, but rather than failing it comes off as young director stretching himself, working at the edge of his abilities, and as a result it is far more admirable than amateurish. For one thing, his use of close-ups is particularly distinctive, a trait that he would carry through to his later films with great effect. For another, his use of space makes the set--in this case a rented house--become almost another character in the film in a way that few directors of any stripe are able to do. Garcia also has a penchant for unique songs on his soundtrack, some of them written by him. But where in other independent films the lyrics can become intrusive, he seems to have a deft touch with knowing just how to use these songs for maximum effect
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Quinn Allan, in his only his second feature, does a respectable job but seems to have the same issue that he did in his first film, <b>The Roomies</b>, in that he gets better as the picture progresses. In the early scenes he looks adrift in terms of how to play them, while in the later half of the picture he finally settles down and does some very good work. A similar effect haunts Heather Harlan’s work but again, after the breakup, she really begins to get comfortable in her character in a way that makes her much more believable in the second half of the film. Rebecca Teran is the friendly barista that Allan has a crush on, and she does a terrific job later on in the film, while Nick Ferrucci has only a small role as a guest at a couple of parties. Tom Stutzman begins his first scene, as a musician friend of Allan’s, as a stock character, but quickly makes an impact as someone who’s very genuine. The title of the film, along with the visual of Allan riding the bike without a partner, had the potential to be a lot more powerful symbolically than the way in which it was actually used, but the symbolism is still there. The most powerful stamp of the director, however, is in the way he ends his films. Can I call it “Vintage Garcia?” <b>Tandem Heats</b> may not have been the best cinematic meal I’ve ever eaten, but the dessert Garcia serves at the end is the most satisfying I could ask for. neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705109920987297776.post-79041890985525909842016-09-26T09:35:00.000-07:002016-11-27T14:48:27.992-08:00The PDX Film AnnexI've been thinking about starting this blog for a long time. My interest in independent films coming out of Portland has increased exponentially over the last few years and while many of these posts are also found on my E List movie blog I'll be moving all of them over here over the course of the next year in order to put all of my Portland reviews in one place. I also want to branch out into documentaries and web series coming out of the Rose City, as well as other independent projects filmed elsewhere in Oregon. Though I haven't decided whether or not this is something I will do, I've also been thinking of doing actor and director profiles on the blog, and there may be other things that I haven't even considered yet that will be appropriate to write about. My hope is that this will eventually become a resource for films produced by Portland directors, as well as independent films made in the state, all things film and Oregon.neslowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00770074282979851121noreply@blogger.com0