Independent films shows the nitty gritty of love, life and sorrow, sometimes they add a bit of happiness. No camouflage here, just cold hard facts, bad hair, no make-up, sweat and dirt. Love making looks real not all pretty and fluffy like you can hit the hole every time, nope with Indie Films there are as many misses as hits. If you are on a neurotic sad Valentine’s night trip, be sure to buy extra ice cream and bring a spoon with these little gems.
Moonlight Mile:
Outstanding film!!! So real and human, not at all glamorous. Jake Gyllenhall (Donnie Darko and Bubble Boy) does a tremendous job, he has become a hot item in Hollywood. Jake’s character, Joe, leads you through the film, he almost takes you by the hand and lets you experience the impossible situation he has found himself in. What a performance on his behalf, we all knew he had it in him based on his abilities that shined through in Donnie Darko. Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon top-notch performers through and through, you can’t go wrong, they played the grieving mom and dad as if they had experienced it themselves. This film takes such depressing and serious part of life and proves that things still happen, even after death. It shows that life goes on, people still have to get up and go to work and they fall in love again. The film had humor, tears, love, compassion; just about every range of the human emotion is experienced here. The audience can’t help but to feel what the characters feel and move along with the story. Ellen Pompeo what an actress moves over Hollywood starlets a new girl is in town. To see Ellen for the first time is breath taking, she is not your typical big screen beauty, she really has a presence about her and she is gorgeous. I must say that this film will be heading towards the Oscars with best supporting actress, best film, best screen play, and best actor, mark my words I know it’ll happen. At the end I felt a sense of completion, it’s not one of those silly films that leaves you open and wondering what next. Yes, I was completely drained from the emotional roller coaster ride it takes you on, but very satisfied with the end results.
Punch-Drunk Love:
Who would have thunk it…Adam Sandler a talented actor beyond his typical medium. Wow, this film was interesting, nutty and entertaining all in one. I would say the formula of the audience not quite sure what they are looking at and experiencing on the big screen mixed with real life oddities that we experience with a dash of comedic poetic, being a real life satire just makes a perfect watch. I agree there was a few odd moments with a little purple haze that I’m quite unclear why the direct threw them in, but over all intriguing. The audience was captured from the beginning and held on with applause through the end. Unexpected greatness comes from the smallest packages, just like My Big Fat Greek Wedding who would have guessed it was to be as big as it is. I think Punch Drunk Love will have a small following, but will make a huge impact on the film industry and the requirements to be big budget and big advertising. Quite the love story, with a whole new twist to romance. Owning the film would make a fine addition to any film collection. The Superbit Special Two Disc edition is the copy you want. The extras, besides the brilliant quality of picture and sound, keeps you reeling. Multiple Featurettes, Artistic Photo Galleries, Interactive Menus, Deleted Scenes, and an addition of Mattress Man Commercial and 12 Scopitones. What a brilliant rendition from the screen and the DVD makes it even worth more.
Code 46:
Watch it, this film will sneak up on you and before you know it your enjoying yourself. Code 46 is not a fast paced film full of action and clean easy to watch scenes, rather it is a quiet little story with a few rough edges and loose ends. A vision of the future that does not look so much different from what we live in now; that is the best part, no floating space age cars and weird clothes to distract from the story. In a time of embryo splitting and human cloning, sexual relationships and births have to be governed or you maybe in love with your mother therefore the reasoning of Code 46. Believe me it sounds like a weird notion, but not too far off from being done and there could be huge repercussions from such a disaster. Tim Robbins character, Will, is a detective who has a family, but finds himself intrigued and very attracted to a government printing company employee. Will goes to investigate who has been giving out illegal papers for people to use in traveling to other countries that they have been outlawed from entering. In the process he is given an empathy virus that helps him read people to find the culprit. In doing so he is more sensitive to others thoughts and true selves. When Will runs across the bad guy, Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton), he is captivated and intrigued by her demeanor and thoughts. A short romance breaks out, but to find out later it was an illegal union and she has been sent to the outlands. Will goes to find Maria and runs away with her only to be turned in shortly afterwards and hunted down. He is returned to his family with his memory erased and Maria is left out to fend for herself…the end. There is where the problem comes in for me, the film ends very abruptly leaving the audience with an unsettled feeling and wanting more to the story. I can’t imagine where else it could have gone, but I wanted something, anything. Great little parts to the film were in the detail. Things like shooting it in high technological traffic areas to give the futuristic feeling, capitalizing and growing already existing problems and technologies like cloning and the o-zone and environment to capturing the realities of illegal alien border crossings. The director, Michael Winterbottom, and writer, Frank Cottrell Boyce, even went as far as creating a mixed language, which could be very realistic in our future. Code 46 is a very intriguing story full of details and grit and has given a different twist to a love story and the science fiction film category. It is great to see two talented people chose to play characters with such attraction and on screen presence, there is nothing worse, besides a really bad film, than when two people are suppose to be in love and there is absolutely no charisma or attraction between the two of them. Well done Tim and Samantha, well done in deed.
The Good Girl:
“The Good Girl” has been directed by Miguel Arteta and written by Mike White, who plays the Retail Rodeo’s security guard. The over bearing Christian who submits a comment of internal hell fire damnation to Jennifer Aniston’s character Justine. Little does he know that Justine’s bleak little life is about to come to an emotional turmoil, with an affair with a new employee and black mail by her husbands pot head best friend; that leads to the justification to his comment. Justine finds herself in such a dreary existence that I don’t blame her for taking matters in her own hands and finding an outlet for her place in life…I just wish she would have fully committed to her decision. Justine comes home after working at an Alco type store to meet her house painting husband setting on the coach, eyes glazed over and piercing through a cloud of smoke at the TV…don’t forget the joint in his hand and his best friend in an identical state next to him. Holden is like a breath of fresh air to her, somebody different and dangerous…someone who isn’t all there, but makes her feel as if she isn’t the only one who has been put upon on this earth. Tom (quotes to be his slave name) AKA Holden played by Jake Gyllenhaal is a character like no other, so full of passion, anguish, disguise, yet so ho-hum I’m here, finds himself in an unhealthy addiction to Justine and puts their affair on such a level that dreams don’t even match. Holden is obsessed with Justine and her reaction is so motherly, just go home I need to sort some things out. Don’t rent this film expecting a good feeling in your soul, this isn’t a glamour film, it’s an hard hitting dark comedy and tragedy about life on the sub-level existence. Jennifer Aniston finally proved she is an actor, she no longer has to be the silly pretty girl chasing after love and comedy, and she can be taken seriously.