The Film:

Little Man:
Little Man is the kind of documentary I'd like to force all of my friends and family to sit down with for a blind viewing. It's a documentary I'd like pretty much like everyone to watch; stunning, heartbreaking, devastating, powerful, resonant and hopeful are a few words that spring to mind. And at almost two hours, the minutes whip by in an engrossing rush.

Of course documentaries carry a stigma: they're educational, probably boring and certainly not escapist. If you want to close a few more minds, the fact that Little Man is about a premature baby born by surrogate for a wealthy Californian same-sex couple, you might as well close the books. Frankly, it's probably why this screener sat around for over a year before I picked it up, and why it took me an additional month to get around to viewing it. By way of disclosure, I'm the father of a two-year-old girl (for what that's wor...Read the entire review

Mend:
Taken with caution, under controlled circumstances, Mend should produce lasting effects including: paranoia, confusion, bitter regret, sadness, hopefulness and the desire to watch again. Side effects are not permanent, and results listed should not be considered typical. As with all indie movies, your results may vary. Talk to your rental agent to see if Mend is the right indie rental or purchase for you.

Unfolding through a warped time-frame, with flashbacks and flashes forward creating a disorienting and initially confusing effect, Mend follows a small group of young adults: Wesley, (Jay Sullivan) Laura (Nancy Mitchell - a standout) Peter (Scott Hernandez) and Samantha (Anna Nordeen) as they maneuver through the trials and tribulations of finding work, following their dreams, answering Love's call, and dealing with death, depression and dope (the kind of dope pedaled by pharmaceutic...Read the entire review

The Product:
Every small town has a story like this one - a man or event, tradition or legend that everyone uses to define what their community stands for. It's usually something heartwarming and geared toward human interest and the wholesome. Even the most remote citizen and those indirectly involved feel like they play a part in the mythos, and when the tale is finally told, the balance between fiction and fact is carefully maintained to maximize the folklore's staying power. Though filmmakers would argue over the semantics, it seems clear that documentarians handle this kind of circumstance better. They can cut through the crap - usually - and get to the meat of what matters. For Daniel F. Doyle and Michael Furno, the story of Walter "Shorty" Simms was just too good to pass up. It held everything a masterful movie could want. Oddly, the film named after the man takes a while to find its wa...Read the entire review

Boone Style:

Quirky family comedies are kith and kin to slasher films in terms of being a breaking-in point to the movie business. They have a tried and true formula, are conceptually an easy sell and are guaranteed to have audience-pleasing elements. Slashers have knife-into-flesh (which horror fan-boys seem to adore) and Quirky Family Comedies have, well, quirky families - who among you doesn't have (or at least had in the past) a quirky family? Boone Style pours on the quirk in an attempt to launch writer/director Mas Gardner into the Hollywood firmament. While no classic among the crowded genre, it has enough laughs, good humor and silliness to occasionally tickle the hardened movie-watcher's heart.

The set-up is clean and simple, the Boone family is spending a day in a Des Moines backyard for a family reunion. Little Ruby (Katie Hermanson) narrates and introduces us to the Boone cla...Read the entire review

There's a great story about the making of "Abby Singer," and a great cautionary yarn. Here is a movie whose makers put salesmanship above storytelling, and as their tale unfolds, we see hubris give way to the cold reality that they made a movie nobody would want to watch.

The film began life in 2001, when Utah-based writer/director Ryan Williams gathered a local action class for a new project: a drama shot on the cheap, with no screenplay. In early 2002, Williams - who also cast himself in the lead role - and his merry band of ad-libbers took their cameras to the Sundance Film Festival, where the cast would hunt down any celebrities they could and get them on tape. This was not to further the story, but to expand the film's ability to get noticed: now Williams could tell studio honchos that he was making a movie with Stockard Channing, Patricia Arquette, and Adam Carolla! (The part about them be...Read the entire review

Thirtysomething angst abounds in "No Sleep 'til Madison," in which one by one, a group of old pals wiggle their way out of their arrested development. "Madison" follows an annual road trip coordinated by Owen (Jim Gaffigan), who just hit the big three-oh and views high school hockey at his last-ditch connection to what he truly feels were the best years of his life. Not high school per se, where he did not fit in, but its hockey team, where he finally found acceptance for a few short years. To be so overwhelmingly stuck in teen-glory past is an enormously sad place to be, and this movie finds a warm spot in its heart for this poor soul as it gently nudges him toward adulthood.

Each year, Owen gathers his best friends, and off they go across Wisconsin to revel in high school hockey, all leading to the state tournament. They talk up the wonders of the sport - unlike those overpaid pros, high schoo...Read the entire review

Trona:

There's a percent of the population, and I'll say over 50 percent, who will find Trona incredibly annoying. But generally, what percentage of the population even sees any particular movie - maybe 10 percent for your average blockbuster? Well, Trona certainly isn't a blockbuster, yet I'll count myself in the minority as someone who wasn't annoyed by it - then again, I loved Gus Van Sant's notorious arthouse film Gerry, too.

Trona's similarity to Gerry begins and ends with long, studied shots of a man wandering around in the desert, but if you liked Van Sant's 8-minute static shot of Casey Affleck and friend shambling towards the horizon, you'll probably find a lot to like in Trona's laconic shaggy-dog-in-the-scrub-brush story.

Lacking a specific plot, Trona is for those who enjoy the journey more than the destination. A man works on some reports in an anonymous motel room, gettin...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Post-college ennui as it's never not been done before

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good comedies
Likes: Most of the movies that probably inspired this movie, gratuitous nudity
Dislikes: Drug humor
Hates: Wholly unbalanced films

The Movie
Once upon a time, there was something called Generation X, a handy marketing label slapped upon a group of young adults struggling with the transition from their teen years to adulthood. It conveyed upon these drifters a sense of belonging to a larger social condition, and even a sense of mystery, as the world faced the end of a millennium in the midst of a relatively booming economy.

Today, with a much less rosey social and financial global forecast in their futu...Read the entire review

The Movie

Simply FOBulous is an independent film about a Vietnamese family and the a search for love. The movie's title "simply FOBulous" refers to the term FOB, which is an acronym for Fresh Off the Boat. FOB is a term generally used to refer to foreign nationals who have recently immigrated to a foreign nation. They tend to stand out in all fashions, yet try harder than anyone to fit it. In Simply FOBulous, a recent FOB comes to the Seattle, Washington as a mail-order husband and upsets the balance of a local Vietnamese family (for the better).

Thuy (Chauu Lu) and Van (Kathie Pham) are sisters. Since their parents immigrated to the United States, they have been slowly "corrupted" by American culture. The girls spend their days at the mall shopping, ...Read the entire review

The Film:
Every year hundreds of films are produced and released here in the United States, but it is only a relatively select few that ever garner any sort of real attention. The vast majority of films that make it in the spotlight are the big-budget productions that Hollywood churns out. Occasionally, a smaller, independent film manages to break out and get some attention, but even films like Little Miss Sunshine or Half Nelson have the distinct advantage of having actors with recognizable names and faces. Truly rare are the films like The Puffy Chair or Raising Victor Vargas--movies with no recognizable actors and therefore no star power--that manage get a few brief moments in the comparatively small spotlight of attention. But for all of these rare films that are given a fighting chance of being discovered, there are all the other films that get lost in the shu...Read the entire review

Review:

Not to be confused with "Into Thin Air", "Into the Air" is a documentary focusing on the sport of kiteboarding. For those unfamiliar, kiteboarding has riders on a board being pulled along in the water by enormous kites. When the boarder catches a strong gust of air, they're pulled up waves and often to impressive mid-air heights.

The documentary doesn't give the viewer much in the way of the history of the sport similar to "Dogtown and Z-Boys" or "Riding Giants". Instead, it follows famed kiteboarder Paul Menta as he and his friends head off to Puerto Rico for some fun, sun and waves.

The picture introduces us to each of the kiteboarders that have followed Menta along for the ride, chatting about their strengths and weaknesses, as well as what got them into the sport. Each of them also takes a moment to talk about their thoughts on what makes the sport so terrific.Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Meet the people you didn't want to know in high school

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Mockumentaries
Likes: Comic books
Dislikes: Role playing games
Hates: Cosplayers who get too deep into their characters

The Movie
I've watched a lot of supposed mockumentaries, but most of them don't work, for one reason or another, often because they fail to stick to the conceit or because the actors haven't embraced their characters enough to feel real enough. When the genre works, normally in the hands of Christopher Guest or Michael Patrick Jann, it achieves a level of realism that lets you bask in the characters' behavior and enjoy yourself, as the twists of humor are amplified by the believable world around the...Read the entire review