Spring

Justin Benson, 2015

IMDB

3/5

Through skillful camera-work and intelligent storytelling, Spring resembles a love-child of Before Sunrise and Let the Right One In, if there ever was one. A genre-clash, it's a horror/romance film that mainly focuses on the lives of two people. Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci), a grieving drifter who impulsively decides to hop on a plane to Italy. And Louise (Nadia Hilker), a mysterious beauty who tries to capture Evan's heart quickly and doesn't want to wait until the next night for a date. Evan immediately comes off as a sympathetic figure, having to endure the final moments of his mother suffering from cancer and watching her fade off. His misfortunes mount as he gets let go from his bar-tending gig at the local dive which clearly serves as the last straw for him before he decides to get out of dodge.

Evan can probably be called the every-man in the sense that he's just a young guy willing to jump into the unknown looking for adventure. He's confident but self destructive. Aggressive but also vulnerable. The most impressive part of the film is in the sudden twist, when the entire construct of the picture radically shifts into different form. It's something that isn't done enough, and hopefully a film like this can inspire other filmmakers to make the bold jump into genre-bending. It's here when everything changes. It works really well, and if anything the film falls a little to in love with its new form and ends up running about a half hour too long. Other than that, it's a pretty engaging story between two completely different people. 

You're Next

Adam Wingard, 2011

IMDB

2/5

In an age of mediocre horror films about the group of people stuck in the house with the attacker outside, You're Next fits right in without standing out a whole lot. It starts off by playing with the oh-so-common dysfunctional family dynamic and instead of doing something artful or unique with it, it just decides to keep it simple. It's guilty of relying on slasher conventions and ultimately comes off as an uninventive, wasteful affluenza story. It's dumbed down, it panders to the popcorn-gobbling horror audiences. It's a shame, because indie-lovers see mumblecore harbinger Swanberg on the screen and hope for something creative. But it's just an odd placement for Swanberg, where he is confined to playing the douchey brother consumed by bitter exchanges with his brother. To be fair, the camera work is actually quite good. The performances are just okay, acceptable and probably above-average for the genre. The story is the real destroyer. It even disappoints in the final moments of the film, where the credits could roll right after a phone pickup, and instead of doing that the story drags on for another ten minutes. Movies like this almost feel like a group of twenty-somethings found a bag of unique masks in a flea market somewhere and decided to make a horror movie. If this movie gives you anything to walk away with, it's a reoccurring song that will be stuck in your head for hours.

These Final Hours

Zak Hilditch, 2015

IMDB

3/5

Having an apocalyptic film set in the land down under feels immediately different. Dealing with the already rough and rugged country that is the continent of Australia, then letting all hell loose adds a different dynamic to the typical sense of sheer panic that we see in the American apocalyptic genre.

Bad guy but deep down good guy James (Nathan Phillips)  rescues young girl Rose (Angourie Rice) from a couple of psychopaths who have taken her prisoner. This is all while guys are running around with axes killing people, while others are looting and others are hiding out in the darkness. Complete insanity. The clock is ticking, where in a short period of time the world will presumably be over. Early on the specifics of the impeding doom are vague, but the inevitable is pieced together for you over the course of the film.

Final Hours is really a story about human morality, what's important in the final hours of your life. Is it about spending the final few hours with the people who want you there? Is it about spending the final hours with the woman you love? Or is it about doing the right thing, what's right in the eyes of universal judgement. Of course all of this depends on what you believe might happen after you die. James doesn't necessarily seem to believe that there is any kind of afterlife, let alone a heaven that is going to open it's doors for him because he has saved a young girl's life. In fact, the world that is about to burn seems like a world quite absent of spiritual divinity. When James arrives at Freddy's countdown party, it's a modern day Sodom and Gommorah showcase of sinful behavior. Sex, drugs, death. Watching that scene triggers an inner philosophical dialogue too. Is what they are doing really that wrong? They are attempting to enjoy the final moments of their lives.

This film gets you thinking, in a moral sense sort of like how Deep Impact made you think. What would you do? How would you react? Nobody really knows. You don't really know until it happens, and you see what your circumstances are. These Final Hours are really a single man's circumstances laid out before him.

The Skeleton Twins

Craig Johnson, 2014

IMDB

3/5

Any fan of the Wiig/Hader era of Saturday Night Live probably has an open mind when it comes to cinematic projects that they collaborate in. Some would argue it was the best SNL cast ever. A controversial opinion, one that I actually agree with. They have boldly left the comfort-zone of SNL in search of success in the movie world. It's worked out really well particularly for Wiig who has had commercial success with Bridesmaids but to her credit has taken risks with independent roles that clearly test her range in films like Girl Most Likely and 2013's Hateship Loveship. They are both undoubted balls of talent, and when working together one assumes that they have a level of comfort with each other that will show on the screen. That's certainly the case here, as the duo plays brother and sister who reconnect under not-so-great circumstances after spending many years not having contact with each other.

The most surprising element of the film which comes quite immediately is the dark tone of the story. It's not something that you would expect the two to be involved in, a story of suicide, loneliness, adultery. You realize very quickly that it's a black comedy in it's purest form. The laughs are there, but they are layered. But the film is rooted in good performances by the two and good writing. In a sense Skeleton is the the portrait of the modern American life. A disconnect between two siblings because of all of that life stuff, the baggage and avoidance. Depression, the self-consuming mother, marital distractions, homosexual frustrations, hypocrisy. It's all there, and although it's not an easy swallow, it's still an interesting film.