Genial comedy, from director Matt Olson, features a lonely collegiate who tries to apply scientific principles to find the perfect mate, finding himself having one adventurous date after another.
Somewhat straightforward in its plotting and production design, The Chemistry of Dating gets an uptick from a strong performance by Brandon Rowray in the lead, a likeable, natural presence.
Two guys and two girls share an introspective night in Joe Burke’s comedy-drama Coop’s Night In.
A comedian with a hot online following is served up a dish of cold reality when an old girlfriend appears in Knock Knock, the latest dramatic short from director Amir Motlagh.
I am a fan of Motlagh’s work, and believe he is one of a group of talented young microcinema directors (S. Tyler Wilson and Matt Meindl among them) whose artistic vision will hopefully eventually be brought to a wider audience, perhaps through the completion of a first feature.
Synopsis: Alex is distractedly driving while talking on his cell phone when he accidentally runs into a guy who looks like he has just stumbled out of an ACDC concert. Alex, is of course, pretty freaked out but things only get worse when the guy stands up and walks over making strange hissing noises. For some reason, Alex mistakes this long-haired bathrobe wearing character for Jesus H. Christ and takes him home. Jesus is a nice enough zombie and he and Alex enjoy some heart warming E.T. style moments around the house. Things start to go bad when Jesus loses his temper, zombifies a couple of Mormons and hits the down where he performs miracles and kills pimps.
In the year 2012 and due to global warming, the entire galaxy has been flooded with water, creating the Aquaverse. The only hope for mankind against the evil Ching Chang Fu are Webb Torpedo and Rusty Bolts, also known as the Aqua Rangers.
Since it’s rise to glory, the whole sub-genre of reality television has become fodder for countless, witless, utterly forgettable comedies (EdTV, anyone?) that try to pull double-duty, both as a timely yuk-fest and as a subtle commentary on the instant celebrity culture in America. At least that’s how they try to explain themselves.
But in the end, what it comes down to is that these films are not funny in the slightest. They’re tired, overwrought pieces of tripe designed to make a quick buck on the latest fad. Nothing more, nothing less.
You know those guys, clad in black trenchcoats that hang out at GameStop all day long, never buying anything but just hanging out talking about what they would have done differently in Lord of the Rings in-between calling each other “faggot”? Well, what if those guys decided to make a movie?
Sheer pretension, The Votive Pit be thy name. For this website, I try my hardest to find the good in microcinema films. No matter how much I personally dislike a film, I try to find something supportive to say about it. I know what it’s like to put your heart and soul into a project and how much work goes into it. It takes every part of you.
But if a project is so utterly horrible, does that excuse it? Should the fact it’s a no-budget film give it an automatic write-off? No. You don’t send your film to a review site unless you want an honest review. And if I’m being honest, The Votive Pit pretty much sums up everything that is wrong about indie-film today: it looks good, but at the cost of the screenplay, resulting in an embarrassing fiasco of laughable dialog, ridiculous situations and liberalized self-importance, all under the façade of faux-depth.
It took a little while to get into Die and Let Live. It has everything going for it—a punchy opening set-up and a great title sequence—but for the first twenty or so minutes, as main characters Smalls (Zane Crosby) and Benny (Josh Lively) hang out around a coffee-shop, speaking in highly-contrived Kevin Smith-approved youth-speak (with a constant wink of ironic delivery), it took every ounce of will-power not to turn it off. These two guys, sitting around, pining over girls and avoiding meathead boyfriends—it was tedious and wreaked of trying too hard to be clever. If there is one trend young filmmakers need to stop, it’s this shit.
Filmed for less than $200, the ultra-indie Camp Blood: The Musical, in it’s tight thirty-minute runtime, deliver more laughs than all four Scary Movies combined. And not only is it the funniest genre parody to come along in quite a while, the songs that give it it’s “musical” part of the title are clever, witty and catchy, and instead of acting as some sort of gimmick for the film, these songs actually add to an already well-told story.