Love on the Rocks (Justin Edwards) **
Love on the Rocks is reminiscent of previous Atlanta Film Fest selection Make Out With Violence. Both films present a combination of stark violence and humor and showcase strong technical skill that promises a decent future for the filmmakers. Unfortunately, both films also have issues when it comes to storytelling, and Love on the Rocks specifically struggles with a shifting tone that just does not work.
After a shockingly violent opening, the story opens with Amber and Barry having just broken up. Both try to move on, but find themselves involved with very disturbed individuals. Amber begins dating a man that is a brutal serial killer, while Barry gets involved with a hypnotist that trains him to act like a dog. The film follows these two separate storylines until they intersect.
The major problem is the jarring transitions between the two stories. The serial killer angle is appropriately bizarre and contains some memorably disturbing sequences. However, Barry's story is just far too silly to exist in the same film. It does take away from the film's serious symbolic ending when it just followed Barry and other men walking around on all fours in dog outfits. Despite this, I look forward to seeing what director Justin Edwards and appealing lead actress Lauren Jennings do in the future.
Screening Friday, April 16 @ 1130pm and Tuesday, April 20 @ 945pm
Feed the Fish (Michael Matzdorff) **
This is one of the higher profile films at the festival because it features a couple recognizable faces in the cast, most notably Tony Shalhoub as an oddball sheriff and Northern Exposure's Barry Corbin, both playing off their own popular images. Unfortunately it is also one of those typical festival films that is just too quirky for its own good. It quickly loses any sense of reality and becomes hard to care about anything.
Joe Peterson is a writer of violent children's books who has had a nasty case of writer's block. He decides to head to a small town in northern Wisconsin to take part in the town's annual Polar Bear Plunge. While there, he quickly makes enemies among the town's odd residents. He does eventually find romance with a perky local waitress, but she happens to be the daughter of the town sheriff.
Unfortunately, the film doesn't work because so much of it is trying too hard to be funny, including a labored attempt at penis reattachment jokes. Shalhoub's sheriff is not a full-fledged character, but just an excuse for him to do a riff on his Monk routine. When Joe's girlfriend from back home shows up, the plot goes through some fairly predictable romantic comedy elements. So here we have a movie that is either too quirky or too predictable. It misses the proper balance and thus falls completely apart.
Screening Tuesday, April 20 @ 710pm and Wednesday, April 21 @ 440pm
Big Font. Large Spacing (Paul Howard Allen) ***
I admit to feeling a sense of trepidation as I read the premise to this film. Big Font. Large Spacing promises to tell the story of two college students, Tom and Steve, who suddenly realize they have one night to complete a 5000 word essay for their philosophy class or they will flunk out of school. Reading that, I wondered why this was feature length instead of a short film format that would be better suited to such a thin premise. But writer-director Paul Howard Allen goes beyond the confines of that description and has actually authored a surprisingly insightful and funny film about relationships.
The scenes with the two guys are pretty standard fare, but they are funny. They continually get distracted playing video games, smoking pot, or trying to plagiarize another person's paper. The director uses a clever method of tracking their progress with constant intercuts showing how many words they've written. Unfortunately, the Steve role is a bit underdeveloped. He's funny, but a little too stuck in the stereotypical screw up best friend (think Zach Galifanikas) role.
Where the film really shines is when it develops the two lead female characters. Susan is Tom's girlfriend and Debbie is her roommate. The two have a decidedly antagonistic relationship, resenting each other for various reasons. In between scenes of the guys feverishly working on their essays, there's some really strong and thoughtful dialogue as the two women talk things out. They actually become more interesting than their male counterparts and pretty much steal the show.
Screening Saturday, April 17 @ 1015pm and Monday, April 19 @ 500pm.
Godspeed (Robert Saitzyk) *
One of the great things about attending festivals is finding hidden gems that don't get much attention or often fon't even get released. One of the bad things about attending festivals is that you'll occassionally run into some truly awful filmmaking. There are at least one or two films every year that are almost completely without merit. Godspeed certainly fits that category this year, a dismal drama that belongs on late night basic cable.
The first problem is the plot, which is far too thin to sustain a feature length running time. Charlie Shepard is a faith healer whose family is brutally murdered one night while he is having an affair with another woman. Years later, now a shell of his former self, he runs into a mysterious woman that appears to have some clues to his past. And that's about it. We find out very quickly who this woman is, how she's connected to him, and what she wants. And yet the film continues plodding along, taking an achingly long time to wrap things up.
The film features some pretty dreadful acting, with an ensemble cast that manages to stand where the director told them, but cannot find any nuance in their performances and spit out lines with an obnoxiously wooden delivery. Joseph McKelheer (who also wrote the awful script) is especially bad in the lead role, bringing no charisma to the role of a guy that was supposedly a faith healer. This is one awful film that you should avoid at all costs, and I certainly hope it is the worst I see at this year's festival.
For masochists: Screening Thursday, April 22 @ 700pm.
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