It can seem at times, for anyone who keeps up with the movies, that a certain kind of nominally "independent film," while perfectly worthwhile and enjoyable, has become self-limited, maybe even a bit tiresome, a predictable genre unto itself -- the Little Miss Sunshines and the Way Way Backs and The Perks of Being a Wallflowers, comedies with heart that flirt with the deep end but make sure to stay quirky and pleasant, odd but funny, "dark" but not too<...Read the entire review

The Movie:

What's the difference between being an American and being in America? The post-9/11 indie drama The Citizen grapples with that question, dealing with a Lebanese immigrant named Ibrahim (actor Khaled Nabawy, in an affecting performance) who touches down at JFK Airport on the ominous date of September 10th, 2001. In the ensuing years, we follow Ibrahim as he attempts to gain citizenship in a country grown suspicious of dark-skinned foreigners to a toxic degree.

The Citizen counts as one of those films that, despite several obvious flaws, manages to stay intriguing and watchable. The plot unfolds in pat, predictable, soap opera-ish fashion, the characters are very simplistic good/evil archetypes, yet director-screenwriter...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Four college friends meet at two different times over two years. The quartet encompasses two married couples. One, Sharyl and Joel (Melissa George and The Newsroom's David Harbour), tied the knot early and have a child and a home in the suburbs. He works for an ad agency as a photographer and they are fairly well-off as a result.

The other couple have only just gotten hitched. Carlo (Taye Diggs) is a photographer, as well, but one with aspirations in the art world. Grace (Julia Stiles) is studying to be a social worker. On one timeline, the newlyweds are visiting Sharyl and Joel on a layover on the way to their honeymoon destination. On the other, the wea...Read the entire review

You never know what you're going to get from a first time film actor. They could have "it" or they could be dead wood. And it's especially unpredictable when they have no previous experience whatsoever. Joel Evans had never acted before, never had a lesson, and yet was approached by Anita Doron and asked to audition for the lead role in The Lesser Blessed. Evans is from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada, the same home town as author Richard Van Camp who wrote the novel of the same title from which the film is adapted. Incidentally, the novel is Van Camp's only full-length book. So we have a writer who has only written the one book,...Read the entire review

Thanks to the internet and an entire generation of film fans weaned on the genre classics of the 1970s and 1980s, I think I'm tired of homage. So many movies made today wink and nudge; if I never see another goofy B-horror flick in the tradition of The Evil Dead, it won't be soon enough. Restitution, however, is a more unique problem: writer/star Mark Bierlein and director Lance Kawas only seem to know how to execute some of the scenes in their unintentionally funny thriller through the language established by other movies. It's not quite the same -- I don't think the cinematic references are intentional -- but many scenes in Restitution play like the most subtle Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker production never made.

Bierlein plays Alex Forrester, an auth...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Please Note: The images used here are promotional stills not taken from the Blu-ray edition under review.

"This is a true story."

That's the last thing you see on the screen as Monte Hellman's Road to Nowhere comes to an end. As of this writing, I haven't investigated whether that is a lie or not, because I'm not convinced it really matters. Part of the point of Road to Nowhere is that you don't know, and being aware of the ruse behind Fargo didn't really change my perception of Fargo. Then again, the Coen Bros.' jokingly tricked us from the start, leading us by the nose into their clever fiction; Hellman waits until we have w...Read the entire review

If you've seen director Monte Hellman's Two Lane Blacktop, there's the slightest hint of what the viewer is in for with Road to Nowhere; Blacktop ends with an event that is sort of meta in its own way, calling attention to the fact that the viewer is watching a film. Of course, that film is extremely low-key and naturalistic, whereas Road to Nowhere aggressively brings the viewer into its artificiality, providing constant, dizzying reminders of several cinematic layers.

On the film's surface (probably), there is a crime involving shady land deals engineered by Rafe Taschen (Cliff De Young). His embezzlement is uncovered by a reporter named Nathalie Post (Dominique Swain), and the release of her story leads to a murder of a police officer by Taschen and Velma Duran (Shannyn Sossamon), and concludes with Taschen's apparent suicide (the money vanishes) and Velma's death. The ...Read the entire review

Small Town Murder Songs, written and directed by Ed Gass-Donnelly, is one of those modestly scaled films that is both wise to not to extend its reach beyond its grasp, yet shoots itself in the foot by over-limiting its scope. At a lean 76 minutes (six of which are credits), it's great that this is not another in an increasingly long line of ideas that would sustain a 50-minute short unnaturally stretched to feature length. Still, there are intriguing fringes around Gass-Donnelly's characters that he doesn't trim away, and the film seems like it would be more satisfying if he had colored them in a little further.

Walter (Peter Stormare) is a quiet man, living the quiet life as the sheriff of a quiet town. And as they almost always are in movies, he's harboring a deep regret over a violent fight between himself and another resident named Steve (Stephen Eric McIntyre), likely over the affections ...Read the entire review

THE FILM

"The Scenesters" is a satire of life in East L.A. To fully appreciate its sharpness and sense of history, one needs to be intimately familiar with the inner workings of East L.A., leaving roughly 1% of the potential viewing audience open to the film's sense of humor and rich environments. For everyone else, the feature is likely to be rejected as a labored, smug, and ultimately inert neo-noir crime comedy, a movie far too wrapped in its own cleverness to engage the viewer with anything above rampaging self-awareness.

Desperate to make a film of their own, director Wallace (Todd Berger) and his producer Roger (James Grace) have stumbled upon the opportunity of a lifetime when Wallace's job as a murder scene videographer comes across the work of a serial killer known as The Soloist. Employing the expertise of crime scene cleanup crewmember Charlie (Blaise Miller)...Read the entire review

An opportunity to watch The Endless Summer again is never an unwelcome thing. Bruce Brown's knowing, witty paean to surfing retains all of its charm after more than forty years. With limited resources, Brown crafted a polished, exciting portrait of the sport, highlighted by bold photographic techniques and skilful editing that capture the thrill of surfing everything from Malibu's gentle but sturdy breakers to the legendary monster waves of Oahu's North Shore. Brown is not interested in the origins and culture of the sport, but in the specific skills and strengths of its key practitioners. Many of the great surfers of the mid-60s are featured here, and Brown carefully documents their achievements with great admiration.

The film's wraparound narrative...Read the entire review

Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger:
Coming from the land down under, Esther Blueburger tackles the coming of age comedy from the perspective of a Jewish outcast in a very WASP-y prep school. A few movie-of-the-week plot machinations and one character verging on trite aren't enough to trip this movie up, however, as much of its 100-minute run-time is composed of chirpy, entertaining style, often low-key humor that bubbles along amiably, and Esther's heartfelt relationships which really ring true.

With her Bat Mitzvah fast approaching, Esther (Danielle Catanzariti) is forced to acknowledge her status at her prep academy; no one likes her or really knows whom she is. Esther's mom is more concerned with the Bat Mitzvah menu than anything else, but still wonders why she hasn't received any RSVPs yet. It's because Esther has no friends other than her nerdy twin brother. Rather than turning int...Read the entire review

There's no end to the stream of politically-liberal documentaries detailing sad tales of human misery and global catastrophes in the offing. As a rule, these documentaries spend most of their runtime expounding on the problem de juor before halfheartedly rushing through a laundry list of possible remedies. Not so with One Peace at a Time (2009), Turk Pipkin's follow-up to Nobelity (2006).

In Nobelity, Pipkin sat down with Nobel Prize winners to discuss the means of tackling chronic global problems. Now in One Peace at a Time, Pipkin features non-profit organizations at the forefront of these efforts to fulfill basic human needs for clean water, food, education, medical care, a sustainable livelihood, and care for orphaned children. Pipkin pitches for viewers to make a difference by contributing resources either to these organizations or others like them, while...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The kids aren't alright.

While Meadowoods opens with a quote from historian James Anthony Froude about man's general disdain for his fellow creatures, I believe there is a far sneakier message about the dangers of groupthink lurking beneath the film's surface. Director Scott Phillips, running with a screenplay by Anna Siri, uses his feature-length debut to present a vision of psychological horror that builds upon the fear of the anonymous before literally placing it in our back yards.

Travis (Connor Thorp), Steph (Michele Roe) and Ryan (Michael Downey) are bored. They attend college in a small town where nothing much ever happens. Since two of them are sociopaths and the third blindly follows directions, it's a given that how they choose to pass their time will wildly differ from anything that you or I would do. Case in point, they decide to murder someo...Read the entire review

The Film:

James Mottern's Trucker begins with Michelle Monaghan having a deep, hard orgasm. That's one way to get people's attention, I guess. Satisfied, she climbs off the young man, puts on her clothes, blows off the gentleman's attempts to engage further with her, marches out of his motel room and climbs into her big rig. It's a blunt scene, quietly effective, telling us much of what we need to know about her character, Diane Ford, a long-haul trucker.

A few years ago, Diane walked out on another man, Leonard (Benjamin Bratt), and their infant son, Peter. Now, Leonard is hospitalized with cancer, and Peter needs somewhere to go while his stepmom (Joey Lauren Adams) deals with a family emergency. Diane is stubborn and tough, and she makes no apologies for who she is ("Not everybody's cut out to be like everyone else," she notes), but being genuinely needed causes her to question the way she's ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

If you toned done the extremities of Man Bites Dog and wrapped it up with some infomercial style bookends, you might wind up with something similar to writer/director Luke Ricci's How To Be A Serial Killer.

The film follows a man named Mike Wilson (Dameon Clark) who, on the surface at least, seems to be a fine upstanding citizen aside from his one rather hard to ignore flaw - he's a serial killer. When we meet him, he's heading into a local video store to rent a movie for the night. Here he sees a kindred spirit in a man named Bart (Matthew Gray Gubler) who works the counter and is repeatedly harassed by some of his more obnoxious customers. In a rather brazen move, Mike approaches Bart and strikes up a conversation with him about wanting to kill people like the customer he just dealt with. This leads to a fast friendship where Mike reveals his true nature...Read the entire review

THE FILM

"Local Color" is a sensitive portrayal of a young painter trying to sharpen his gifts and a deeply flawed piece of filmmaking. It's a movie that will have you loving and loathing the world of art, often in the same instant.

The year is 1974, and John (Trevor Morgan, "Jurassic Park III") is an aspiring painter cursed with a homophobe for a dad (Ray Liotta) and little opportunity for art education. When John discovers famous Russian artist Nicoli Seroff (Armin Mueller-Stahl) lives nearby, he introduces himself to the cantankerous alcoholic, hoping to become his student. Nicoli hates the world, but John's intelligence piques his curiosity, and the two spend a summer in the country discussing art and life, learning from each other.

It's commendable that writer/director George Gallo wants to vent his frustrations with the art community and explore the genesis of creativity...Read the entire review

A young boy's favorite toy has magically sprung to life, retaining his teddy bear shape but at the size of a six-foot-plus linebacker, with the facial mobility of a stroke victim and the voice and mannerisms of a Scottish drunkard. This should be, by all accounts, a horror movie. It is instead a Canadian family comedy. So, you know, same difference.

The movie and the bear are both called "Gooby," which also sounds like a description for how you'll feel while watching. For Gooby (the character) provides us with a good idea of what a teddy bear might look like if designed by someone who's never seen a bear (teddy or otherwise) before and was given instructions over the phone, by someone for whom English is a third language. Also, one of those instructions was to make a creature so fright...Read the entire review

The Product:
It's been discussed before, but it bears repeating - can one fantastic facet of a film make up for the remainder of mediocrity? Put another way, does one horrific element undermine an otherwise sensational bit of cinema? You see, it really is a dilemma. Now, music critics would argue that awful lyrics or a lame solo destroys an otherwise strong song. A bad track amongst an otherwise solid album, however, can be excused. Classic books aren't unmade by ineffectual passages or clichéd characterization. So skewed logic suggests if an otherwise solid work can survive a rather substantial flub, a piss poor one can be perked up with a near Oscar worthy performance - and that's exactly the case with writer/director Luke Ricci's How to Be a Serial Killer. Inside all the marginal mock doc set-ups, the overly ironic "murder as a means of self-actualization" and significant lack of g...Read the entire review

The Movie:

You know you might be in trouble when a film's open credits "poems by." To be sure, the domestic melodrama of Home is weighted down by some heavy-handed hanky bait -- breast cancer, alcoholism, drug abuse, impotence and the copious tears of an adorable little girl - but it is saved by devastating performances by the mother-daughter combo of Marcia Gay Harden and Eulala Scheel.

Set in 1969 in a predominantly Amish area of Pennsylvania, this modest indie concerns the challenging relationship between Inga (Harden) and her young daughter, Indigo (Scheel). A breast cancer survivor with the psychological and physical scars of the ordeal, Inga finds an outlet in writing poetry. She desperately needs the outlet. Inga is neglected by her workaholic husband, Herman (Michael Gaston). The couple spend their nights boozing and fighting viciously. For Inga, the circumstances a...Read the entire review

Gooby:
Not being the target market usually doesn't affect my ability to review movies. But sometimes my poor little brain throws up its hands right from the get-go, and we end up with an experience like Gooby. How do you solve a movie like Gooby? From the jaded viewpoint of an adult, it's a leaden, mirthless fable of a child growing up, leaving his fantasy world behind, and growing to love his checked-out parents. Kids might be amused by Gooby's central conceit, a five-foot-tall stuffed animal come to life, but then kids occasionally lick the floor for fun.

Willy Dandridge (Matthew Knight) has problems; his parents are type-A business people with no time for him, they're moving to a big fancy house and away from his "only safe space," and he constantly hallucinates monsters and space aliens. Plus, he's about 13-years old. But never fear, Willy! Because your childhood toy - an orange stuffed...Read the entire review

The Product:
It's kind of sad when your film's history is more potentially intriguing and compelling than the actual product that shows up on the screen. Legend is almost always better than the truth. Such is the case with IMPS, or I.M.P.S. , or Imps - whatever you want to call it. The brainchild of one Scott Mansfield, this Kentucky Fried Movie rip-off sat on a shelf somewhere in a studio back room until DVD determined it was worth releasing. And judging from the sagging star power involved (Linda Blair! Sybil Danning! John Carradine! Keenan Wynn!), it should have remained a long LOST artifact of its time. Let's face it - any film that makes The Groove Tube look contemporary and Can I Do It Till I Need Glasses seem subtle deserves to be buried in some executive's private lyme pit. Yet here we are, faced with reviewing an artifact from ...Read the entire review

The Product:
Not every story based in truth is worth telling. Sometimes, the facts are just that - pieces of reality that lead up to nothing very significant...or dramatic. Clearly, someone thought the story of college genius turned prostitute turned killer Barbara Hoffman deserved the Blood and Money treatment. In 1990, Karl Harter released a book entitled Winter of Frozen Dreams: A True Story of Passion, Greed, and Murder. In it, he outlined the story of a smart, pretty coed who became a paid whore and then befriended men who she murdered for their life insurance. Outside of Wisconsin, where the crimes were committed, the tawdry tale was virtually unknown. Now comes director Eric Mandlebaum and a group of screenwriters. They want to turn Winter into a slow burn suspense thriller overloaded with character, complexities, and incomplete narrative ambiguities. We are suppo...Read the entire review

Boasting a strong cast and solid production values on a shoestring budget, Aaron J. Wiederspahn's debut film The Sensation of Sight (2006) is a hypnotizing tale of lost opportunities and philosophical musings. This offbeat drama focuses on Finn (David Strathairn, Good Night and Good Luck), a middle-aged English teacher who's undergoing a turning point in his life. After a tragedy involving a young student of his, Finn wanders the streets and sells encyclopedias one by one for $20 apiece. He's almost eerily calm about his decision to leave his wife and son; in turn, both seem downright shocked that a grown man has resorted to roaming the streets. As fate would have it, Finn soon encounters a number of souls on similar paths: from a young man who's lost his brother to a single mother attempt...Read the entire review

The Movie:

[Author's note]: Portions of this review were originally posted on June 21, 2008. Unfortunately, at that time, Monterey Video sent DVD Talk a screener copy of The Cry that did not represent the final product. At the end of January 2009, we received the commercial release of The Cry to look at. This review has been revised and now reflects the DVD commercially available from Monterey.

The Cry begins with one of those textual narrative introductions that often precede films involving a historical moment or legend. Here, the viewers a...Read the entire review

A teenage girl breaks free from her rebellious tendencies and begins to hone in on her inherent connection with a creature from the sea.

Now, if that short little description suits your fancy, then you should just run out and buy a copy of the absolutely magnificent picture Whale Rider, Niki Caro's phenomenal adaptation of a great coming-of-age story. It features gorgeous cinematography, powerhouse performances, and a stellar narrative about individual growth, nature, and societal assimilation. Eye of the Dolphin, alternately, is a really weak deviation of the same formula that only holds onto some of the same prettiness in its visual design around the dolphins that it highlights.


The Film:

Gamers is clearly a labor of love for Christopher Folino who independently wrote, directed, produced, and edited this mockumentary about five middle-aged guys, who after playing a minimum of 50 hours a week for 23 years, are on the cusp of breaking the world role-playing record. Folino's familiarity with the intricacies of role playing games (RPGs), the idiosyncrasies of players, and the ensuing odd group dynamics, is readily apparent. To the extent that Gamers is funny, it's funny because it's a good-natured exaggeration of reality, in much the way that This is Spinal Tap was a good-natured exaggeration of a certain kind of hair metal band many viewers were familiar with.

Unfortunately, Folino lacks Christopher Guest's chops as a writer and director. Folino's characters and scenario are too limited and the jokes are too thin to sustain the 84-minute runtime. The five princi...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Cellar Door's front cover art heralds the three awards it won at Shriekfest. I don't know how much value should be placed on this fact, honestly, but as yet another low budget entry in the dubiously christened "torture porn" genre, it has some surprisingly effective moments.

Whether you'll like The Cellar Door or not will depend upon where you sit in the cultural debate over the grisly sadism that prevails in flicks like the Saw, Hostel, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchises. If you're into Jigsaw and Leatherface's antics, The Cellar Door is worth checking out, if only because it's one of the better direct-to-video knock-offs I've seen in this genre. If you find this kind of film disturbing, well, take a hint from the DVD's cover art and avoid it.

The Cellar Door opens with an intense sequence where a young girl ma...Read the entire review

The Cellar Door:

Herman is a misunderstood man, doughy, beyond balding and kind-of quiet. That quiet bit is probably a good idea, because Herman, with all his minor faults, can't seem to find a good woman. A good woman to trap in his cellar and read to while he collects stool samples that is! Oh my, what a strange man is Herman, and what a strange little film is The Cellar Door - a film that dares to tie the torture porn genre together with a hardcore musical retort to that old nursery rhyme that begins, 'say say oh playmate, come out and play with me.'

The Cellar Door opens in Saving Private Ryan style with an impossible to watch sequence as Herman tracks down one of his runaway brides. By using 90-degree shutters on the cameras while filming (standard filming techniques use 180-degree shutters) a hyper-crisp, ultra-jittery picture with excruciating detail is created. Combine this with...Read the entire review