AWFUL NICE (2013)

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This indie comedy film forces two estranged brothers to spend some time together after their father dies and leaves them a lake house.

James Pumphrey and Alex Rennie (who is also the screenwriter with director Todd Sklar) play the brothers and have a great chemistry, arguing, fighting, and lying like they have real history. Christopher Meloni (Keller from Oz) amusingly plays their father’s ex business partner and lets rip with a very silly voice and hair-style. Brett Gelman also has a great time playing a Russian heavy.

The escalation into brotherly scuffling comes quick and natural and is initially quite funny but after a while it gets a little tired.
This film has a lot of potential and a lot of the credit should go to the two actors who riff off each other with ease. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to its expectations.
What could have been a classic was merely a film that was probably made 10 years too late.
Tonally, it shares sensibilities with Napoleon Dynamite and Swingers but fails to reach their comedy heights. What a shame.
Still there’s some comedy in there and is entertaining enough.
Was it “Explosively funny”? Not really, but there were a few laughs in there.
Hats off to them for making this on such a low budget, anyone who can get a film off the ground and finish it deserves, at the very least, some credit, fair play.

2.8/5

BUY IT ON DVD HERE

DOWNLOAD THE FILM ON iTUNES HERE

STORIES WE TELL (2012)

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Todo sobre mi Madre.

Memories are funny things, not always reliable in their truth but more often than not, emotional snapshots warped and changed by time.

Sarah Polley has created an incredibly sensitive documentary about the nature of memory and stories being told by different players in said stories.
Here, she directs her family (they say work with what or who you know) to investigate various points in their lives and their inter-connectedness.

Someone once pointed out that if you get 5 (or some such number) people to go into a room and then come out and describe the room you will have 5 different versions of that one room.
Perspective, individual truths, experiential truths, and emotional responses-these all play a big part in this incredible experiment that manages to dissect the nature of life and family and walks the line between dispassion and emotionally affecting delicately with dexterity.

Give me this type of doc over ‘Who do you think you are?’ any day of the week. It doesn’t shy away from emotional exposure and the camera captures all the reactions beautifully and objectively.
This is Polley’s biggest strength, the fact that she is so enmeshed in the story but never gets in the way of allowing everyone to speak their own truths.
This, although it could be seen to be an emotional cop out on her part, actually reveals much more about her than if she was front and centre all the time. She doesn’t get in the way of the art. This is the feminine energy beautifully at play.
Hats off.

The less I say about the content, the better. Watch it and go on your own individual journey; unaffected and without judgement.
An important story told with delicacy and awareness about family and their various involvements in incidents past.

3.9/5

BUY IT ON BLU-RAY DVD HERE

DOWNLOAD THE FILM ON iTUNES HERE