We Make Movies (2016): Behind the Indie Scene...Sorta

We have all seen them. Some of us have even been them at one point. That group of guys that hang together in a parent's garage or basement, seemingly never having girlfriends; really there's no seemingly to it, there just are no girlfriends for these guys. When these guys get together, which is usually about 20 hours out of any normal day to begin with, one of four things can happen: they can have a VHS movie watching session, they can break out the Dungeons & Dragons game, they can have an orgy (wait, wait, negate...oh gawd NO), or they can make a movie. For the love of humanity let's please focus on that last one.

A group of friends (5 guys and 1 girl) with apparently nothing better to do for the summer, you know like jobs, plan to make a movie over the summer to show at the Boehring Film Festival at the end of the summer. Led by Stevphen as director, who fancies himself to be a Stevphen..I mean Steven Spielberg in the making, this group rapidly fractures, fissures, or any other f-word you might like to use, apart at the seams, and of all things somebody wants to make a documentary of this!

Let's meet our intrepid filmmaker wannabes:

Stevphen (Matt Tory; also writer & director) - Lives with his mom, has never been laid; kissing doesn't count, and even if it did...has never been laid. Thinks that taking 'inspirations' (ahem) from blockbuster movies and throwing them into one script will make a successful movie; only the crickets in the background agree with him. Wants to appear to be a serious filmmaker if people would just stop interrupting him for trivial things like dinner.

Donny (Jordan Hopewell) - Has never been laid nor will he ever be laid. An accountant in the making, like I never saw that one coming, he is also Stevphen's best and most loyal friend. Just don't ever call Donny anybody's footstool; lawnchair, yes, but not footstool.

Garth (Jonathan Holmes) - Despite sharing his name with a Wayne's World character, has been laid and will be laid shortly. Has a singular trait not shared by any of the rest of the group; common sense. Also known as Gartholomew and Garthica despite his protests not to call him that.

Jessica (Anne Crockett) - The pretty girl who hangs with the group. Could easily hang with other pretty girls but then why would she want to as with this group she is showered with attention and the best gifts money can buy at a local yard sale.

Leonard (Zack Slort) - Pronounced Lee-on-ard. Too busy honing his craft by improvising scenes in public to get laid. Most likely considers Robert E. Howard to be a role model.

Curtis (Matt Silver) - Could get laid but would prefer to do it himself. Film school student and amazingly a thorn in Stevphen's side without even trying.

Kurtis (Josiah Finnamore) - Not actually a member of the group but a thief who has the shrewdness to con Stevphen by telling him he looks like a director, just before stealing his car. The fact that Stevphen is wearing a baseball cap that says director on it is completely oblivious to him.

I had a hard time figuring out where I would be going with this review. Watching a movie for review, you generally know by the end of the movie how you would rate it; at least I do. But how you arrived at that rating might be more difficult in some cases.

For me there are a few annoyances with the movie. At an 1 hr and 51 mins it does linger at times, and having spent too much time with these characters in the past I really don't want to spend that much time with them now. I do feel that a little too much of the story focuses on Stevphen's crush on Jessica and becomes redundant early in the movie. Additionally the jerkiness of the documentary style filmmaking is a bit trying on one's eyes and patience. That being said, there are more things that lean in the favor of this movie than the few annoyances I have mentioned.

Don't get the idea that the jerky camera movements of the documentary style is a sign of amateur filmmaking. It is not; these people know what they are doing. The script is well put together. It pulls together a lot of stuff that would be familiar territory to anybody who has had dreams of being a filmmaker, starting with their own amateur home videos, and then runs with it headlong, mocking it in almost every conceivable manner, and making fun of themselves as they go. There are a lot of laughs in this, at least there was for me, and of course at the expense of the characters involved.

I'll give them extra kudos for maintaining a consistent audio level. In one scene where the camera changed position frequently, there was not a single glitch in the audio track for the scene. The mockumentary camera movements and wide iris, though blinding at times, are on purpose. The look of this and laughs to be had in the script are not by accident, but purposefully and creatively staged to look raw.

I give it 3 1/2 Daggers

Availability

Get it in various formats via their website.

Check out the We Make Movies IMDB page.

Total Performance (2015): Breathtaking & Masterful

Total Performance (2015; Indie Short Subject) - From stage to screen actors put on masks for every performance. Allegory today, perhaps, but the expression comes from theatre of old from the actual use of masks to distinguish characters before an audience. Acting has evolved; actors no longer put on masks, they put on roles. The actor as artist no longer paints a face on a mask, they shape and create a role before our very eyes from a palette filled with shades of range and depth. But what happens when an actor puts on that mask and looks into a mirror, and they know that person looking back at them?

Cori is an actress working for a company with a unique service to offer; they hire out actors to people who want to rehearse real life situations that are uncomfortable. A boss may need to fire someone. A spouse may need to confront their significant other about infidelity. For these and other situations an actor provides the ideal verbal punching bag for someone to build up their confidence or as a form of catharsis. Cori is a good actress providing a good service to her clients, but the next role she has to play might hit hit a little too close to home.

Sean Meehan wrote and directed Total Performance, and hats off to him for a job well done. Great actors can perform great roles, but at the very core of that is having great roles to play, and Meehan delivers with an intelligent script, an obviously creative idea in the first place, and the direction to bring the audience into the story.

What moves this film, and the viewer, are two command caliber performances by Tory Berner and Steven Conroy. They work off of each other naturally. To Meehan's credit again he has used a date night for character development. It's brilliant as what better way to get to know two characters than experiencing them get to know each other. Berner and Conroy ace their roles; it's like the ideal situation, and this is an important foundation for the story and how it plays out.

From the most minor of roles, nothing is wasted. Timothy J. Cox has one scene in this film. Short it may be, but it provides a necessary element of seeing how Cori deals with it, and of course Cox, the master of the understated performance, in playing a boss needing to fire someone has my computer screen feeling his nerves without having to say anything. From opening with an angst filled husband having to confront infidelity, an in-house encounter scene filling the background, to a nervous expression, every moment has a purpose and every performance no matter how short is on key.

Meehan plays the ending of this shrewdly. I at first felt that it was ambiguous. Well, it's really not. It's understated for sure, but it will sink in, as soon as you remember to breathe. When a film can take your breath away...that's masterful.

I give it a full 5 Daggers. I'd give it more, but all I have is 5.

Availability

A really incredible film at just over 17 minutes and you can watch it on Vimeo.

Check out the film's IMDB page.

Here Lies Joe (2016): Indie Short Subject

Here Lies Joe (2016) - Perhaps the only day we might wonder such a thing is at someone's funeral. That thing would be what might be our epitaph. For most of us anyway, but is it a question others might ask themselves more regularly? Would not being able to give a satisfying answer to that very question give you a reason to find the answer, something to hold onto?

Opening with a disheveled looking man duct taping his car windows and running a vacuum hose from the car's tailpipe through the window, he sits in a moment of contemplation as he starts the car, glancing at a smiley face drawn on the passenger side window with Xed out eyes. Flashback to earlier that very day as this man, Joe, is in a suicide anonymous meeting where he meets a brash if not carefree young woman, another member of the group who seems out of place with the other members. Her name is Z, and appropriately named as she seems like the last thing Joe needs right now, or maybe he's the first thing they both need right now.

The subject of suicide is not an easy one to portray on screen. Certainly the artistic community is no stranger to the subject, but portraying it well is just not good business in cinema. You just can't say to someone "don't do it" and change their lives. Everyone of us are as complex as the other and all aspects of who we are run deep.

Here Lies Joe is in touch with this. The script is really quite creative in foreshadowing itself. A single line uttered earlier in the story, seemingly trivial at the time, actually comes to bear so creatively later in the film, and life changing at that. Human resolve is a durable thing, but there is so much bombarding it at any one point that a fragile balance can be swayed in either direction by the minutia of a single moment in time. That minutia is at the heart of this story of two people's conflicting personalities being their own way of reaching out, and a hand to hold onto might seem so innocuous to the rest of us, but so very concrete to someone who needs it.

It may seem strange to call tension beautiful, of course it's not but it can be beautifully portrayed and that is exactly what is done in the early scene of the suicide anonymous meeting which sets the tone and more importantly delineates the characters. Timothy J. Cox plays Bill, the moderator of the meeting and conveys the tension in the room through an ever so subtly reactionary performance he masters so well. A perversely beautiful and gripping performance by Mary Hronicek as a member of the group paints a portrait of depression Rembrandt only wished he had the skill to do, and the reason why I am using the picture of her and Cox rather than the poster.

The main characters of Joe and Z are portrayed by Dean Temple and Andi Morrow respectively. Dean brings an outward portrayal of amiable dissonance to the character of Joe, nodding and faking his way through uncomfortable social interactions, while an undercurrent of frustration and amusement vie for first place in his world. Andi is necessarily and successfully deceptive in the role of Z, seemingly carefree and disruptive, a sexy free spirit who could have the world at her feet, yet it is a shroud for the way she and she alone sees herself.

For a 23 minute short subject this may seem like a lot to say about it, but then there you have it. Here Lies Joe is a successful character driven story which creates the narrative via those characters. It's not a rich tapestry of characterization, which would be defeating, but elemental, providing just enough to move the story along and provide the viewer with a connection.

I give it a full 5 Daggers, both for being the wonderful film it is and giving me so much to talk about; now that's the definition of film.

Availability

You can find out more about the film and some great behind the scenes stuff and interviews on Sweven Films' Vimeo page here.

Check out the film's IMDB page.

What Jack Built (2015): Indie Short Subject

What Jack Built (2015) - Welcome to my stumbling block. Usually I do some kind of intro to my review of a film followed by a minimalist summary of the film meant to introduce the reader without spoiling it; a habit more reviewers should adopt of not spoiling films. What Jack Built is essentially a one-trick pony, or O. Henry type story if you will. The 11 plus minutes of the film is one continuous experience with a conclusion and the best way I can introduce it without giving away too much is to say: meet Jack...he builds something. Yeah, the title kind of says the same thing, huh?

Here's the setup: Take Timothy J. Cox, have no dialogue, and let him rummage through an artfully stocked workshop with a goal of building something that's going to keep the viewer in suspense for the duration of the 11 plus minutes of running time.

Now maybe to a novice or someone with a blockbuster movie only mentality this may not sound like much. Considering what I have been learning about Timothy J. Cox's acting ability through more of his films as I watch them, it is brilliant! In the first short I watched him in, I had remarked on how much Cox speaks to the audience on a non-verbal level beyond the script. Now put Cox in a film where that is his only form of communication, and of course he pulls it off wonderfully.

I had touched on the well stocked workshop in this and would like to give PROPS to John Heerlein for his amazing art direction (oh, stop the booing, it was too a funny pun...WAS). I can't say it would be my dream workshop because there's so much stuff I'm afraid I would be lost in it, but despite all the stuff lingering around it has order to it, deceptively, and is not just strewn here and there.

Matthew Mahler does the direction and cinematography keeping his composition tight. He does not stray from his central subject, Jack. This is obviously good as Timothy J. Cox's acting is what moves this along. Additionally Mahler provides the soundtrack, an upbeat synth soundtrack that raises the tempo and keeps with the tone of the story.

I have a few minor quibbles. The biggest of them is I'm not a fan of The Lady, or the Tiger? or alternatively Tarantino's briefcase. Though I have to a degree put that off on myself as some people do like a raw story they can decipher for themselves. The other quibble is on the aforementioned art direction I previously applauded. For someone with age on them, uh...like someone else I know..ahem, it's going to be easy to pick at the inconsistencies of some of the props in this story. Most people though won't even see it, or care, and so it very minor.

Overall it is a well done film providing an, I would think, ideal platform for Timothy J. Cox to entertain and have fun doing it. I did want just a little bit more out of it, but I'm more than satisfied with what I saw. It's only just over 11 minutes and well worth a watch.

I give it 4 Daggers.

Availability

You can watch it on Vimeo. What Jack Built on IMDB