Below are a few movie reviews written for www.malamute.cc. These were all independent films submitted to the site for review.
Climax
by Tim Welch
Climax, the first feature outing by writer/director Sean Baker, is the story of a party gone lame. No one likes lame parties. But this one might be a little different. It is a little more than a party in this film. It is about ourselves, the people we knew, and how we all change. Or for that matter, how we don’t change. It is specifically about those people we knew in high school. It also proves Wolf’s point that we really can’t go home again.
The party is thrown by Art (Fred Berman) in order to gather his old friends from school and to catch up on the new and delve into the old. It is only two years after graduation but it seems that everyone has lost touch. Some have moved across country, some have disappeared, and some were never really in the mix in the first place.
Not many show and most leave too early for Art’s liking. The hodge-podge group that stays collide, revealing how they have pretty much stayed the same, but moved enough apart to start to see each other for who they were and are. Over the course of the night ex-girlfriend obsessing and egos get the best of them.
Aleks (Vincent Radwinsky) confronts the no-show kids from high school on why they remain outcast, mainly due to their techie obsessions and D&D lifestyles. Nick (Paul Weissman) reveals his trying to bust out of the girl-shy mode of high school and finally break loose. Jay (Matthew Dawson) shows his “maturity” as really just an excuse for being a prick. Art suffers from ridicule about his attempt at growing up by growing an uncomfortable looking beard. Others just have stayed the same, lived in the same town, and by not changing they highlight the insecurities and reasons for the change in others.
The dialog is often uncomfortable but real. It should be. Baker pulled it from recorded conversations of his own friends. This adds tension throughout the entire film. The words are familiar, we’ve been in the same circumstances and we have seen the same in our own lives. At least those of us from white suburbia. Forced party conversation moves into discussions of their yearbook as a porn substitute and real discussions of porn stars. While others maintain the useless drivel of those who have not quite grown up yet (i.e. the eternal Beavis and Butthead). Others just catch up.
But it never announces imagined angst or takes a sarcastic tone. The tone of the film is more relaxed, actually becoming humorous most of the time. More like laughing at someone you know or a situation you have been in.
It does highlight the odd paradox of being stuck in the past and trying so hard to get away from it at the same time. Case in point being the ex-girlfriend obsessions. Jay and Aleks handle it both by going after more and more women but end up frustrated by the their former high school sweethearts. Actually the lack of closure between them. Others are trying hard to change, or at least be different from their parents, and others are trying to break free from their high school inhibitions. The frustrations play themselves out in small talk, confrontation, and a game of coke can baseball.
It is a dialog driven piece that maintains a slow but steady pace. I felt that the start was slow but once the characters were given space they became much more interesting. The cast was really solid. All the characters were believable for the most part. Vincent Radwinsky was a standout, adding honesty and sincerity to a character that could have been played simply as a jock that likes women.
This just might be a version of a guy’s chick flick. These were and are some of the guys I have known and still hang with. Baker even nails the inability to really deal with emotion and conflict and does a great job of not making it into another angst ridden sob story. Just a story of a bunch of guys getting on with life. The only possible short coming is the slow pace and touchy start. Make it past that, it’s a great flick.
The bottom line is that Climax is a realistic stab at how the middle class male tries to move on and out into their own life. My wife didn’t get it, but I did and I liked it.
Blood Kiss
by Tim Welch
Ever watched one of those classic drive-in horror movies. You know, the ones that never quite showed the violence, gore, or sex but only hinted at them. They were very slow, a replacement for suspense (we all knew what was going to happen). The acting was miserably wooden. Dialog was a confused mix of tough-guy noir and just plain horrible. The monsters are living among us in everyday jobs and kill almost indiscriminately. In essence, these movies were just an excuse for going out to where you could find other things to do.
Blood Kiss is one of these films, only with less plot. Written and directed by Alex P. Michaels for Prelude2cinema, Blood Kiss attempts to create a creepy vampire, suspense-horror film. A gang of blood sucking vampires and an alcoholic birthday girl are the core characters while the plot revolves around the evil doings of a vampire cult.
The film opens with a birthday sequence for what you would think would be the main character Beth. After seeing brief segments of birthdays throughout her life, it ends with the day of her thirtieth birthday. You learn she has a long lost boyfriend, a drinking problem, and a stripper roommate. But then she disappears for the next hour or so. Not totally, but the focus is really on the evil cult of blood drinking vampire-like people. This group is led by a college professor posing his group as a class. The film tries to bring you into the group by going in-depth into the member’s lives. This merely takes more time away from the plot, dragging the pace down exponentially. These diversions are made even more difficult by the mere lives of the characters Michaels includes. A Christian medical professional, a college student, and a district attorney with political aspirations are all members. And all very unlikely and unbelievable vampires. I would have rather had the film explain the vampirism more clearly. By focusing on the character’s private lives without understanding what they really are, the plot is neglected. At the request of the filmmakers, I can’t give too much away. No problem there, the storyline was obscured by these intrusions.
The film never gets as involved with Beth as it really should. One spot of hope was the birthday setup at the beginning. It was an efficient way to show the character’s personality and a subtle way of showing some of her problems. But unfortunately that is as deep as her character goes. The alcoholism and her depression remains unexplained and the viewer is given no reason to care. Part of the problem is the overly vague dialog from all of the characters. I could only guess that this was an attempt to add suspense. Instead, it never cleared things up. Pacing was compounded by lack of plot. The actors were wooden. Lack of expression that was meant to serve as aloofness or suave demure just made the dialogue that much more emotionless.
There were some production problems as well. Lack of sound quality or consistency rather was a problem, as was excessive room noise. The film was shot on digital view but appears grainy. Bad and jittery camera pans are also distracting. The one violent scene is filtered to possibly add to the intensity, but like the other efforts tends to take more than it gives. All in all, there seems to be too many ideas for one movie. Maybe it should have been cut in half, with the focus kept on the main story line and production.
The bottom line is that Blood Kiss is a feeble attempt at the horror genre, replacing plot and solid characters with slow moving action. Instead of suspense, the film delivers wooden dialogue from shallow, stereotyped characters while leaving the horror out completely.
The Grail
by Tim Welch
In order to avoid the clich� a movie needs a new trick. There’s not much to play around with in movies any more. Effects have gotten immensely expensive. Twisted characters tend to get too ridiculous. Storylines can be convoluted to the point of having an audience of three, usually even to the exclusion of the director. But time sequence of the plot has been successfully exploited recently. Several movies have tried to play with time sequence and loosely connected stories pulled together by a thread that usually happens to be something comical or just plain twisted. Most of these movies usually end up with a collection of short stories that don’t ever congeal into a whole.
The Grail plays this way and actually succeeds. By portraying one day in the life of several individuals, director Kurt Volkan explores the goals (the grails) of drug dealers, druggies, lonely singles, the modern suburban housewife, and drug using Republicans all filled with irony and sharp dialog. In a self-declared “anthology-style piece,” Volkan has created stories that are smart and funny but most of all the connections to each other are probable and further the underlying commentary and irony. No stretching, no need for rose-colored glasses. The Grail (Magdalena Andersson) is the thread that connects all of these vignettes, both in the characters appearance and in theme. She also serves as a subtle device for the viewer to sequence the stories within the plot.
The central action at the center of the film is the murder of Eugene, a drug dealing convenience store owner, which has an overly intellectual concern for the implications of buying and selling drugs from nations that are guilty of human rights violations. This clearing of his conscience is irony in light of his side profession. From there, Eugene gets killed during a robbery in his store, and it’s this event that is the catalyst for the other stories.
But the rest is not presented in standard timeline. Volkan gives out sections in what seems a random order. Each story on its own would be fairly formula based. Boy likes girl, girl approaches, etc. The addict’s actions aren’t surprising. It’s what we see on television everyday. But by chopping them up and showing us parts that focus on the funny or the absurd, it forces the viewer to see the characters in a different light. The boy meets girl plot becomes a more accidental destiny of sorts. The drug dealer’s black power rhetoric becomes comical and ironic in light of the oppression he delivers, especially to those to whom he preaches. The plight of the housewife becomes less of a singular oddity, but more of a statement on the failings of suburbia, in the same ways as that of the other characters.
It is the small touches that helps things in the humor department. The housewife’s disgust of a flasher at the same time she is buying drugs, and the love affair of the Tyrone and McGruff (can’t tell much with out giving it away, but it is a must see).
The musical score, exclusively from a group called Ordinary Insect, was great. It was quirky and served to keep the mood just right between pieces. It also didn’t attempt the over-stylization, in the vein of films like Pulp Fiction.
The bottom line is that The Grail is a great film. It is very funny, and quietly expresses a view of suburbia that is fresh. It doesn’t moan about the disconnection and solitude, but pokes fun at those that dwell there. The main cast members were great as well. Hopefully this is one film that will make the rounds.
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