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Posted Female Filmmakers

Toss It

Review by Ale Turdó

RATING: 7/10

Relationship goals

Writer, producer, director and actress Michele Remsen goes all out in Toss It (2019), her first feature film, a layered story disguised as an anti-romantic comedy.

Emily (Michele Remsen) and Finn (Phil Burke) are long time friends, he is a ladies man, she is the pseudo-intellectual type that won’t settle for an ordinary guy. After they get reunited at Finn’s brother wedding, the flimsy possibility of trying to work out some sort of romantic relationship and get together once and for all becomes a reality. From that point onward, the story story will set into will they/won’t they mode, and a vast assortment of colourful characters will speak their mind about it as the audience navigates through the plot along.

Initially, Toss It takes a dark approach at middle-aged single people in our modern times, and the way they need to deal with the feeling that other people’s plans -the more conventional ones- don’t necessarily fit their aspirations and desires. Is there something wrong with them? How bad is it to be trapped at the me phase after your late-thirties/early forties? Is there a real need for love in their lives?

But what starts as a run-of-the-mill rom-com evolves into something a bit deeper. Long conversational scenes about marriage, family traumas, getting older, working out a relationship and standard middle-age crisis turn the tables during the second act, as two people resisting to fall in love with each other hold hands and venture into the unknown… unknown to them of course.

All the actions that seem to happen in the background are no minor details as Emily and Finn iron out some relationship wrinkles. A wedding, a funeral, a trip to Las Vegas, all this set pieces are transitional stages that make Emily and Finn’s bond advance across the narrative. It seems to give the idea that love can be found in the most cliched, mundane and unexpected moments of everyone’s life. And the reason why we find it in all those different places it is because we can always learn something from it, no matter the circumstances.

The diverse cast evolves into a curious ensemble: the wise mother, the submissive younger brother, the controlling wife, the buddhist wannabe friend. Each of them shine a light into the different paths love can take, and which of those paths could be the right one for us. But one thing is for sure: there is no right answer.

The core idea behind Toss It is that you should give yourself a chance, a chance to be happy with someone else, in your own way, whatever or however works. In Finn’s words no one gets it right, but you just hope to get it better. Is there a lesson in love, relationships, getting older? This is the kind of movie that won’t give you a straight answer. Instead, it unveils different points of view on the subject matter. Perhaps the only certainty here is that no relationship is perfect, we all need a tribe a to belong to and it can get quite lonely to navigate this world alone.

Foto Ale TN_2018 Ale Turdó —Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alejandro is a film critic and movie enthusiast that has been writing about movies for the past 7 years, covering everything from blockbusters to indie gems and all in between. He majored in Sound Design and Cinematography in college and is a full time digital content producer. He’s the kind of guy that thinks that even the worst movie can have something interesting to write about. Additionally, he writes for Escribiendo Cine and A Sala Llena. Twitter: @aleturdo and IG: @hoysalecine

Posted Film Reviews

Fame-ish

Review by Ale Turdó

RATING: 8/10

Fanmade

Writer, director, voice talent and actor Jeff Nimoy decided to make his feature debut a Rom-Com in an actual anime-con, with a fictionalized version of himself as the heart of the story. Fame-ish (2020) becomes as meta as it can possibly get and ventures into nerd territory —or why not nerditory?— with some mildly entertaining screwball extravaganza.

10+ years have passed since voice talent and anime director Jeff Nimoy —real life second cousin of Star Trek legend Leonard Nimoy— last struck success in his line of work. With his glory days long gone, Nimoy reluctantly accepts a paid invitation to be the main guest on an anime convention held somewhere in Wisconsin. To his own surprise, anime fans are still crazy about his work on a very popular show from his heyday, and are willing to spend big bucks on autographs and photo ops, which makes Jeff realize just how good of a business conventions have become in the past couple of years.

While doing his thing at the convention, Jeff reconnects with some old time colleagues. He also meets Nikki, a voice actress he starts developing a surprisingly deep relationship with. But Jeff’s old habits die hard, and threaten to jeopardize his brand new shot at being finally happy.

Whoever has ever been to any sort of comic or anime convention will immediately recognize the mandatory tropes: cue lines, official merchandise, fans in need of a bath. Filmed in the midst of a real convention, Fame-ish does an interesting job at recreating that universe up to the smallest detail. Once the audience is caught inside the convention domain, the story gets a reliable background to start developing its narrative.

There is a certain charm about Jeff Nimoy’s approach to this over the hill voice talent alter ego fighting with his own demons, there is a sense of vulnerability in the way he talks, the way he moves. Reality based or not, this attributes sure make his character a profound and deep one.

Technically wise, Fame-ish is a movie that makes a naturalistic approach to filmmaking. The camera follows its characters freely, some shots give us the conventioneers point of view and this generates a sort of intimacy, it feels like we as an audience are sitting there, being part of it all. The script is flexible enough to turn from screwball to drama in a split second, and vice versa. The indie-like soundtrack helps smooth the edges and navigate from one scene to the next, creating all sorts of transitional moods.

There is also an interesting look inside the convention-era business. No matter how big or small, the past decade and a half proved that there are fans of almost everything, and the special connection between fans and artists always stands the test of time. But all things aside, in its core Fame-ish is a movie about second chances, about an alcoholic trying to turn things around, trying to do better. Deep down, all the characters involved are simply flawed people doing their best to improve. Not a bad silver lining for a movie initially about the shenanigans of a washed up anime voice actor.

Foto Ale TN_2018 Ale Turdó —Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alejandro is a film critic and movie enthusiast that has been writing about movies for the past 7 years, covering everything from blockbusters to indie gems and all in between. He majored in Sound Design and Cinematography in college and is a full time digital content producer. He’s the kind of guy that thinks that even the worst movie can have something interesting to write about. Additionally, he writes for Escribiendo Cine and A Sala Llena. Twitter: @aleturdo and IG: @hoysalecine

Posted Film Reviews

The Dragonfly Conspiracy

Review by Ale Turdó

RATING: 7/10

The Truth is Out There

Veteran indie filmmaker Brian Neil Hoff cooked up a simple but smart found footage flick with his latest feature The Dragonfly Conspiracy. Shot as an almost guerrilla-style kind of movie.

Blake, played by Hoff himself, and Christine (Carolina Liechtensein), real-life granddaughter of Hollywood legend John Ford, are two friends trying to escape from the invisible and mischievous grip of The New World Organization, an ominous cult, a wolf in sheep’s clothing laying down a meticulous plan to exterminate most of the human population worldwide. After cutting loose from the cult camp, Blake and Christine start a frenetic journey across the country trying to reveal the organization’s true face. They take a camera with them in order to record everything they go through.

After some twenty plus years of found footage lore, Hoff still manages to get the best out of such a beat up genre, with moments of spontaneity that convey a believable enough sense of urgency. With nothing close to a big budget, they manage to build a considerable level of paranoia and suspense almost from nothing, not even scratch. The road trip spirit latches to the found footage scenario and move into a completely different territory, almost an uncharted one.

Most of the scenes consist of long uncut shots that add an eerie realism to the whole thing, evoking an Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (1998) kind of vibe, in a good way of course. The opening sequence is an eleven minutes suspenseful car chase thru L.A. highways they relies on the two main characters reacting to each other and the situation. Not an easy trick to pull at all.

The frantic pace slows down every now and then to introduce new characters that help out Blake and Christine on their journey, and deliver a much needed rest to the audience. Their testimonies help building up the narrative, each new character adds a new piece that shape the story.

Like almost all found footage movies, The Dragonfly Conspiracy often struggles when it comes to provide information to the audience that normally would not require the main characters to actually be in a certain place, but the constraints of the genre, and this particular plot, forces them to.

A lower runtime would have been probably a better fit for the movie. With almost ninety minutes on its back, you often get the feeling that this sort of narrative could have been a bit more efficient taking ten of fifteen minutes off, avoiding some iterations and circling around.

Putting aside all the classic paranoid tropes of the thriller conspiracy genre such as news media attacks, pharmaceutical schemes, DNA manipulation and imminent clone uprising, The Dragonfly Conspiracy still leaves some room for a not so crazy and not so subtle message: don’t be a sleeper, read the signs and stay awake.

Foto Ale TN_2018 Ale Turdó —Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alejandro is a film critic and movie enthusiast that has been writing about movies for the past 7 years, covering everything from blockbusters to indie gems and all in between. He majored in Sound Design and Cinematography in college and is a full time digital content producer. He’s the kind of guy that thinks that even the worst movie can have something interesting to write about. Additionally, he writes for Escribiendo Cine and A Sala Llena. Twitter: @aleturdo and IG: @hoysalecine

Posted Film Reviews

My Stretch of Texas Ground

Review by Ale Turdó

RATING: 6/10

Defending America from your own backyard

Erich Kemp’s sophomore feature My Stretch of Texas Ground brings all the drama and tension of terrorism tropes into southern American soil, with a story about a conservative senator who becomes the target of a rogue Islamic cell.

When trained assassin Abdul Latif Hassan (Junes Zahdi) travels halfway across the world and infiltrates into the United States to assassinate Senator Cruthers (Mike Gassaway), small town Sheriff Joe Haladin (Jeff Weber) seems to be the only man fit to do whatever it takes to stop him. Hassan and Haladin are presented as the antithesis of one another, standing on opposite sides of the street. But curiously they share the same drive and determination to become the last man standing.

Facts and fiction clash at multiple levels, partially thanks to a script that combines politics and warfare issues that obsess a great deal of americans since 9/11 and the consecuencial birth of the so call War on Terror. The movie tries its best to portray both sides of the conflict -sometimes stretching it a little- in order to show to the audience that violence is always nonsensical, whether you live the U.S., Yemen or anywhere. The loss of human lives leaves a mark on all of us.

Sheriff Haladin is portrayed as a Robert Forster kind of character, the cold-blooded gentle guy that is always up to the task. The small town sheriff trope works like clockwork here. Hassan, on the other side, is presented as a remorseless killing machine, willing to do everything for the cause. 

Some naive plot twists are clearly there to simply add a little bit more suspense to the mix: for instance turning the terrorist attack into a personal thing by having the sheriff’s son put in harm’s way when going fishing at the worst moment imaginable. Some other secondary conflicts are also there just to beef up the characters and make them more human (like the father and son rivalry).

It all moves towards the grand finale, the final showdown between the sheriff and the terrorist. The story becomes a slow-burning action-drama, leading to a clash between two relentless forces. Budget-wise, it is an absolute shame that the final confrontation was shot in such dark conditions, most of it becomes really hard to appreciate, delivering a somehow underwhelming conclusion.

Willingly or unwillingly, the movie ends up being a curious depiction of the current state of affairs that includes Trumpesque politics, the Republican foreign agenda and the never ending collateral damage caused by the middle east warfare. In some occasions, the low budget limitations gets on the way of this themes. But taking a closer look and giving a pass to the camp-like feeling, you might see most of it is still there somewhere.

My Stretch of Texas Ground is available on Amazon Prime.

Foto Ale TN_2018 Ale Turdó —Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alejandro is a film critic and movie enthusiast that has been writing about movies for the past 7 years, covering everything from blockbusters to indie gems and all in between. He majored in Sound Design and Cinematography in college and is a full time digital content producer. He’s the kind of guy that thinks that even the worst movie can have something interesting to write about. Additionally, he writes for Escribiendo Cine and A Sala Llena. Twitter: @aleturdo and IG: @hoysalecine

Posted Film Reviews

Burning Dog

Review by Ale Turdó

RATING: 6/10

FPM (First Person Movie)

Trey Batchelor’s directorial debut with Burning Dog (2020) mixes a wide array of genres and subgenres such as action, comedy, buddy cop movies, criminal heist and double crossing scenarios with their matching tropes, resulting in quite a particular and unorthodox blend on screen.

Combining first person shooter aesthetic with fast paced action, Burning Dog tells the story of a man simply introduced as Five, a video game designer unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. An unstoppable chain of events starts to unfold after two shady cops wrongfully suspect Five is involved in a blackmail scheme. As the plot unfolds, Five will try everything to escape from the situation, only to get deeper and deeper into a conspiracy involving internal affairs officers, the russian mob and dark web hackers among other colourful subjects of the criminal underworld.

 

As an audience, we experience the entire movie in first person, navigating the wild and shadiest corners of Los Angeles through the eyes of Five: every chase, every fight and every shooting feels like a constant rush of pure adrenaline. Needless to say, pulling off this kind of movie is definitively no walk in the park, it requires a level of craftsmanship we do not get to see that often in a director’s first feature.

Speaking about first-time directing, the technical nature of the film itself (the non-stop character’s point of view) sometimes results in minor mishaps such as an unintentional sloppy continuity between takes, which breaks the first person illusion. Even though the pacing is accurate, the often frantic rhythm threatens to get a little bit tiresome.

The non-linear narrative approach keeps us intrigued as long as it takes, in order to watch our main character go through all the hoops. The story line keeps going back and forth, slowly putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. Some might say that the storyline and its subsequent plots are constantly on the edge of becoming sort of convoluted, with too many twist and turns, dangerously trying too hard to keeps us entertained.

There is a sort of Scorsese feel flowing in the air, like an After Hours vibe attached to this titular character who is always on the run but getting nowhere, trapped in a surreal and nightmarish environment. In true video game fashion, Burning Dog feels like a never ending level, a ride that never stops. There’s always somewhere to run to, a non player character to
unwillingly follow into certain trouble… and the undying debate about the thin fuzzy line that divides the real world from the simulation realm.

Foto Ale TN_2018 Ale Turdó —Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alejandro is a film critic and movie enthusiast that has been writing about movies for the past 7 years, covering everything from blockbusters to indie gems and all in between. He majored in Sound Design and Cinematography in college and is a full time digital content producer. He’s the kind of guy that thinks that even the worst movie can have something interesting to write about. Additionally, he writes for Escribiendo Cine and A Sala Llena. Twitter: @aleturdo and IG: @hoysalecine

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