Go through the massive list of stars that appear in Joe Swanberg’s Digging for Fire and it might be easy to claim that one of the most prolific names in modern indie has “gone mainstream.” But actually watch Digging for Fire (or Happy Christmas or Drinking Buddies), and it’s clear that the mainstream has actually come knocking on Swanberg’s door. This is the same low-key, character-based storytelling Swanberg has been honing for years, only now with a plethora of talent and established names thrown into the mix. And, if anything, Digging for Fire shows Swanberg as a filmmaker in total control, using his ensemble and skills at creating a casual, inviting tone to make a subtle and fascinating exploration of commitment, aging and marriage.

Taking place in Los Angeles, the film opens with married couple Lee (Rosemarie Dewitt) and Tim (Jake Johnson, who co-wrote with Swanberg) taking their son Jude (Swanberg’s own son, stealing every scene he’s in) to house-sit for one of Lee’s wealthy clients. While Lee goes off working as a yoga instructor, Tim—a public school teacher—stays at home during the summer break. Soon after arriving, Tim starts poking around the house and discovers a bone and an old gun buried in a yard behind the house. Tim wants to keep digging, but Lee doesn’t want him messing up her client’s property, and a host of other small disagreements between the two (including Tim’s refusal to put Jude in a private school) leads to Lee taking Jude to spend the weekend with her parents (Sam Elliott and Judith Light).

Tim takes the opportunity to invite some of his old buddies over (Sam Rockwell, Chris Messina, Mike Birbiglia and Kent Osborne, to name a few), and before long he’s convincing all of them to help dig up whatever else might be hiding underneath the property. At this point the film forks off into two narrative strands, one profiling Tim’s weekend with his friends, and the other following Lee trying to have a girl’s night out with her sister (Melanie Lynskey). Both Lee and Tim wind up finding themselves conflicted when they each encounter an opportunity to cheat; Lee meets a British restaurant owner (Orlando Bloom), and Tim makes nice with the young, carefree Max (Brie Larson).

Anyone familiar with Swanberg’s previous work won’t be surprised to learn the film’s central mystery is a nonstarter. It’s more of an excuse for getting characters together to casually chat about the themes Swanberg and Johnson really want to explore. “When did you feel like you got back to yourself?” Lee asks her mom at one point, wondering if marriage and motherhood have removed her ability to live her own life, and Tim admits to Max that he feels like he’s not maturing, he’s just getting older. Their brief exchanges with friends, family and strangers around them reveal that both Lee and Max have hesitations about staying in for the long haul of their marriage, with the hypothetical idea of something “better” existing out there tempting them into seeking individuality over partnership.

What makes Digging for Fire such an enjoyable yet fleeting experience is how Swanberg lets these ideas flow organically into the film through his terrific cast and tight editing. Narrative doesn’t mean much here, as it’s more about how Lee and Tim’s actions reflect their concerns. Dewitt and Johnson anchor the film nicely, and there isn’t a single weak spot in a cast that’s as sprawling as LA itself. Shooting on 35mm with cinematographer Ben Richardson (who also shot Drinking Buddies and, most famously, Beasts of the Southern Wild), the film’s keen eye for composition helps give it a cinematic feel that comes across as a surprise given its dialogue-heavy approach. Swanberg has made films for over a decade now, and at a pretty quick pace too (remember when he directed six films in 2011?), but in some ways Digging for Fire feels like the start of a newer, more refined era for him. It’s exciting to watch Swanberg in complete domination of his craft, but it’ll be more exciting to see what he does next.

It’s not always entirely clear how director David Gordon Green chooses and/or writes the projects he’ll direct. At best we can call him eclectic, at worst erratic. Clearly he doesn’t want to be pegged into any one genre, a noble intention, but it means watching his films is an exercise in expectation. You just never know what you’re going to get. Manglehorn is a nostalgic drama with notes of comedy and plenty of Green’s Malick-y influenced quiet, but mostly it feels like a sleepy character study about a man lost in his uninteresting past.

That man is A.J. Manglehorn, a locksmith in a small Texas town (a favorite setting of Green’s) who lives inside his lonely rituals of work, small talk with the local bank teller (Holly Hunter), eating at a nearby cafeteria, and writing love letters to Clara, the one who got away years ago. His relationship with his workaholic ambitious son (Chris Messina) is tenuous and the closest friend he has in his life is his fluffy white cat, Fanny. As Manglehorn goes about his life, building up the courage to hang out with Dawn the bank teller and explore what it might be like to have a real life (and female) friend, his love letters to Clara lamenting the lost past they once shared are narrated by Pacino with a slight Southern drawl keeping the past as ever-present.

As almost a metaphor for how pointless his love letter sending is, his mailbox has a beehive growing out of it, making checking for daily mail a physical challenge. Everything else happening plot-wise is predictable; since it’s established so heavily that Manglehorn is lost in his nostalgia and couldn’t possibly move forward without first making a disaster of things. And so he manages to further estrange himself from his son, be unfeeling toward Dawn, and be entirely too caught up in his cat’s health. It’s all just so uninteresting.

As if to directly correlate the level of dull content pieced into the script, Green cast the legendary Al Pacino to play the titular character. In fact, Green created the entire idea for the film based on an interaction he had with Pacino years previous where he wanted to tap into Pacino’s particular talent for being an indecisive and enigmatic character. He was right to want to utilize the particular flavor of idiosyncratic that Pacino continues to master as he matures, but leaving out context is the film’s biggest flaw, and it seems a writing issue.

The film’s writer, Paul Logan, was a PA on Green’s film Prince Avalanche. He’s written no other produced features, and the fact that most PAs on film sets have almost no interaction with the director makes it all the more impressive this young man was given the opportunity to write a film for David Gordon Green, especially one with Al Pacino hand-picked for the role. But talk about not taking advantage of a situation. A film that lives in the past, but never really explains the past is a film about nothing. It’s just too hard to tap into Manglehorn’s all-consuming nostalgia without any justification for it. The forward movement of the story is molasses-paced, and while sweet and subdued perhaps, it’s just too inexplicable most of the time. Even Manglehorn’s eventual decision to break off the honeycomb below his mailbox and stuff it inside the box feels less like a moment of triumph and more like the inexplicable actions of a confused old man.

Like all of Green’s other films, there is a distinct color quality to the film. Manglehorn is green-tinged and highly vignetted, adding to the inclusive feel of the film and, perhaps inadvertently, emphasizing the small-scale of its scope. The music of the film is manipulative, attempting to evoke feeling and there is too much reliance on it to add where the writing lacks.

Al Pacino is great as lonely and quirky but has almost a little too much street cred to be believable fully. Holly Hunter is easily likable in almost everything, and she really does come across as the sort of bank teller anyone would want in their life. She’s the only character for which genuine emotion is evoked and more filmmakers should really be utilizing her these days. But neither of these talent behemoths can make up for what is a droll and partially formed script. David Gordon Green can continue to explore and take chances, but like Your Highness and The Sitter, we’re going to have to continue watch as he sometimes fumbles.

When the film held its North American debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Manglehorn was one of two movies touted for featuring “the best Al Pacino performance in [x] years.” The other, The Humbling, came into theaters and onto VOD January 23rd without much fanfare. Five months later, Manglehorn is set for its own simultaneous theatrical and on-demand release with a new poster and brand-new trailer.

The latest from prolific director David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express), Manglehorn is a dream-like look into the life of key maker A.J. Manglehorn (Pacino). Still heartbroken over a woman whose love he lost years ago, Manglehorn pens lovesick letters while serendipitously solving problems for the various people he meets around town. Co-starring Holly Hunter, Chris Messina and Harmony Korine in a scene-stealing role as a degenerate former Little League player that Manglehorn once coached, Green’s film is full of evocative visuals and a trippy sound mix that blends several scenes together. Manglehorn will get a limited release the same day it appears on VOD, June 19th.

Watch Al Pacino walking around with a cat in the Manglehorn trailer below:

Here’s the Manglehorn poster:

When a movie about chronic pain so embodies its subject matter that it becomes a pain in the ass to watch itself, it’s got to offer something more to prove its artistic worth; otherwise, it’s just a misery simulator. The only “something more” Cake offers is a tedious mystery thread. We follow Claire (Jennifer Aniston), a divorced lawyer with a scarred-up body and face who we watch drink, pop pills (as she drinks), take naps (after she drinks), treat people like shit, moan a lot, and saunter around her expensive L.A. home like a zombie. By gathering clues we discover how she got her scars, why she suffers from such debilitating pain, why she’s such a bitch, and how in the hell her friends can tolerate her self-involved bullshit. Piecing together the tragic history behind Claire’s scars is a chore; Memento this is not.

The most likely reason you’ve heard about Cake is because Aniston’s performance garnered her a Golden Globes nomination and some peppered critical praise. There’s been a fascination with watching our prettiest actors looking as unflattering as possible (i.e. like real people–gasp!) that’s been growing steadily for the past couple of decades, and the inclination may be to lump Aniston in with the likes of other “go ugly” alumni like Charlize Theron (Monster), Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball), and Nicole Kidman (The Hours). But I have no interest in penalizing her for this correlation, nor do I find the juxtaposition of real-life starlets stripped of their glamour illuminative or poignant. Bottom line: Aniston’s performance is really, really good. It’s lived-in, believable, unadorned, and at times moving. The effort is there, but what ultimately stifles her is the sleepy, flat-lined script that perpetually spins its wheels.

At first Claire seems like a relatable protag, even a funny one. In the middle of a chronic pain support group (she looks in agony just sitting there) she incisively undresses the group’s be-one-with-your-emotions phoniness when asked about Nina (Anna Kendrick), one of the group’s members who killed herself by jumping off a freeway overpass. She talks to Nina’s ghost sometimes, which through eye-rolling contrivance leads her to Roy (Sam Worthington), her dead Nina’s husband. Unlike her studly gardener who she bangs on occasion, Claire finds a sentimental commonality with Roy.

But the true life raft keeping the emotionally shipwrecked Claire from drowning (she literally tries to drown herself) is her housekeeper, Silvana (Adriana Barraza, very strong), who’s treated and paid less than fairly for all she does (though Claire’s loaded enough to petulantly throw money at her whenever she owes an apology). There are other people orbiting Claire’s black hole of depression, including her ex-husband (Chris Messina), her physical therapy coach (Mamie Gummer), and her support group leader (Felicity Huffman, who shares with Aniston the film’s funniest scene, involving a jumbo-sized bottle of Costco vodka), but none of them do much more than suffer as they listen to her imperious bullshit.

Aniston and the makeup team do their best to wipe away any memories you have of her as the desirable girl-with-the-hair Rachel on Friends, covering her with those scars and making her hair look as bland and stringy as a Triscuit. Her resting face looks like she puked two minutes ago. You can tell she approached the role with no ego. The most striking facet of her performance is her body movement; watching her wince and groan as she shuffles from one room to the next looks convincingly painful, and even evokes a bit of sympathy for the otherwise icy Claire.

Director Daniel Barnz finds myriad ways to show Claire horizontal: she sleeps a lot, beds the gardener, sleeps with Roy (just sleeps), lays flat in the passenger seat whenever she’s driven, floats belly-up in the pool, passes out in front of the toilet after overdosing on pills…and the list goes on. This is Barnz’ main visual motif, and he’s so obsessed with it that it feels kind of insulting to our intelligence. (Hell, even the opening title has the “A” in CAKE laid sideways.) This is all meant to bolster the impact of the film’s final shot, in which (spoiler alert) Claire sits up straight (WHOA). The strategy backfires, as the moment is so telegraphed you can’t help but cringe at how obtuse it is.

There’s barely a trace of plot to keep things moving, and it seems Barnz is banking on the “mystery of the scars” to propel the film. Screenwriter Patrick Tobin carefully places his little nuggets of information about Claire’s past intermittently and gives us just enough to figure it out on our own. The reason the process isn’t compelling is because it’s a bridge to nowhere; Cake is monotonous, rudderless, and doesn’t make any real statements about depression, suicide, or the act of grieving. It’s a film starving for something more, and while Aniston makes good use of it as a platform to show she’s got chops, it’s not the career-defining film she and many others hoped it would be.

This past Thursday we chatted with the stars of Alex of Venice, which closed out this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre. Director Chris Messina, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Don Johnson, and SFIFF57 Director of Programming Rachel Rosen spoke with us about Messina’s directorial debut, the festival buzz, and why Winstead will never call Don Johnson “Daddy”.

Noah Cowan has only been San Francisco Film Society Executive Director for about ten weeks, but in that short stay his presence has lit a fire under an already lively film community. Last night, at the Closing Night screening of Alex of Venice at the Castro Theatre, Cowan addressed the crowd from the same podium he did when festival began two weeks ago, thanking Programming Director Rachel Rosen and her team for putting together a fantastic lineup of films, thanking the festival staff and volunteers for their hard work, and thanking the audience for partaking in the festivities. His enthusiasm for the future of the festival and SFFS–community building, educational programs, the fall Cinema By The Bay series–was echoed by the buzzing crowd. The future looks bright for the longest running film festival in the Americas.

Rosen then took the stage to introduce the night’s guest of honor, actor Chris Messina (The Mindy Project), whose directorial debut Alex of Venice would close out the festival. Also in attendance were stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Don Johnson, and Katie Nehra (who also co-wrote the screenplay), and producer Jamie Patricof. A soul-searcher family drama, the film follows Winstead’s Alex, an environmentalist attorney so preoccupied with work that her husband (Messina), feeling neglected and trapped as a stay-at-home dad, takes a sabbatical from the family, leaving Alex to take care of her aging actor dad (Johnson) and ten-year-old son (Skylar Gaertner).

Winstead is given a lot to work with in the role of Alex, as the material requires her to explore myriad colors of emotion as a mother overwhelmed by a sense of abandonment, isolation, a scattered home life, and a hefty workload. She rises to the occasion and emerges as the film’s greatest asset. Johnson, who’s been enjoying a second wind career-wise as of late, is on the money as usual, but it would have been nice to have seen a few more layers of texture added to his character in the unpolished script, which gets hung up on family drama tropes every time it starts to build a bit of momentum. Messina shows major promise as a director, and with a couple more films under his belt could be great.

Also screening on the last night of the festival across town at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas was Kelly Reichardt’s latest, Night Moves. Jesse Eisenberg (in his second festival appearance, the first being The Double) and Dakota Fanning play Josh and Dena, a pair of environmental activists who, with the help of an ex-Marine accomplice named Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), blow up a dam in Oregon, and then wade through the dark world of paranoia, guilt, and suspicion that descends upon them following their extreme, costly actions.

Reichardt, lauded for minimalist, meditative pictures like Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy, has fashioned a dark psychological thriller in Night Moves, her most accessible film to date. She still gives her actors a football field’s worth of emotional ground to cover with understated, revealing long takes and deceptively deep dialogue, but compared to how hushed her previous efforts were, this film seems to move along briskly. Some of the night time photography is bone-chillingly gorgeous, and this may be Reichardt’s most visually refined film to date, but the script slips off the edge in its third act, providing little food for thought. Still, we’re still left with the thick, atmospheric imagery and fine performances to chew on, which is more than enough to warrant a watch.

I Origins the latest effort from Another Earth director Mike Cahill, takes an excellent, heady sci-fi premise and mucks up the execution, resulting in a disappointingly half-hearted picture. We follow Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), a young scientist with an obsessive  fascination with eyes and their origins. His life’s work is to end the debate between scientists and religion by proving that eyes are a product of evolutionary development, not Intelligent Design. He takes close-up photos of people’s eyes regularly, and meets the love of his life (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) at a party while using the eye-photo line as an icebreaker. She’s a spiritual soul, though, and isn’t on the same page when it comes to his work in the lab, unlike his lab assistant (Brit Marling), who with Ian unlocks a mystery that could change the world.

Far-fetched isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it comes to sci-fi; unbelievable plots can work as long as the drama is convincing and the filmmaker convinces us to invest in the characters’ plight. Cahill falls short in this regard, beating the spirituality vs. pragmatism drum too loudly stretching the one-dimensional characters so thin you begin to wonder where the story is going with all the scientific jibber-jabber and rudimentary existential debates. After the film’s predictable, overwrought, dud of an ending, it’s unclear what exactly the film is trying to say. What’s the big idea? There’s some poignant statement or metaphor buried underneath the piles of pseudoscience jargon and fleeting moments of serendipity, but Cahill fails to mine it.

The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs from April 24-May 8, has announced its opening night film as The Two Faces of January, starring Oscar Isaac, Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst, which will be making it’s North American premiere at the fest. Closing out the festival will be Alex of Venice, the directorial debut of actor Chris Messina starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Don Johnson.

“We are delighted to offer these exceptional films by first-time directors who are best known for their work in other areas of the film world,” said San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Noah Cowan. “Championing talented artists who aren’t afraid of taking risks is at the heart of the Film Society’s mission and our ongoing support of filmmakers around the world. I can’t think of a better pair of films to kick off and wrap up what is going to be an amazing festival.”

The Two Faces of January (above) marks a directorial debut as well, in this caseof screenwriter Hossein Amini (Drive). Set in Greece, the thriller sees Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst play a couple who fall into a dangerous dilemma with an Athens tour guide (Oscar Isaac) following a murderous incident at their hotel.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars in Chris Messina’s Alex of Venice as a workaholic environmental lawyer whose husband (Messina) is fed up with being a stay-at-home father and decides to stay elsewhere. Winstead is left at home with her son and actor father (Don Johnson) and is forced to hold the family together all by herself.

For more festival info, visit sffs.org

From first time filmmaker Matt Ross comes an indie romance drama that is both incredibly subtle and very captivating. 28 Hotel Rooms is a simple story about a relationship that starts off as a no-strings-attached ordeal but unsurprisingly develops into something much more complex. The film pays close attention to the small intimate details of relationships such as inside jokes and understated ways that couples often express affection. The pacing in 28 Hotel Rooms can be exasperating at times as it slowly evolves with on and off moments during its course, just as relationships do.

Two former acquaintances faintly recognize one another at a hotel bar where they met for the first time over a year ago. The film does not give much background information about either one of them; neither of their names are ever revealed. The man (Chris Messina) is a writer from New York who is on the road promoting his latest book. The woman (Marin Ireland) is a corporate analyst from Seattle who travels a great deal due to work conferences.

Only a few minutes pass until we see the two together in the first of many (28 as the title suggests) hotel room rendezvouses. Despite both of them being in other serious relationships, the two hook-up in one-night-stand fashion each time their travel schedules allow. Their sexual escapades slowly take less focus when their faux relationship does progress into something, although even they are unsure exactly what kind of relationship to call it. To complicate the story the “l” word is thrown around multiple times from the both of them; describing both the relationship they have together as well as their existing outside relationships.

There is a brilliant scene when the two are enjoying themselves on top of a hotel roof completely naked and clearly intoxicated, the man shouts down to bystanders below, “Life’s a fucking puzzle. Help me put it together”, in a half-joking but half-serious manner. The scene was surprisingly subtle despite how it sounds, but it is a very important scene. Neither one of them can figure out just how far this relationship can go, nor what to do with their existing ones. Considering the circumstances and the little emphasis the film puts on this swift scene, it is easy to take it lightly, but here is a man who is literally begging for anyone to guide him on what to do with this life.

A significant turning point in 28 Hotel Rooms is when the characters realize that they are lovers in hotel rooms only. They are confined and trapped as they are not able to risk being seen together outside the room. This imprisonment feeling continues to grow into a problem that they can no longer ignore. But it is also one that may be impossible to overcome, even if they try to tell themselves it is not.

At first, the lack of knowing anything about the characters may seem peculiar, but then you realize that it is done on purpose. Because they are living two different lives and they only know each other in the confines of the hotel rooms they share, there is little known about their outside life. The director wisely places the audience on the same level as the characters, we know nothing more than the characters themselves do.

For someone that we know so little about, Chris Messina’s character progresses more than one may assume. Marin Ireland’s character had an even more challenging task to showcase her character as she is much more reserved than Messina’s. Both of the lead characters superbly express wide ranges of emotions from laughter and sexual thrills to sad realizations and angry outbursts. And by the end, they start to divulge just enough about themselves to make the audience care about them.

28 Hotel Rooms is a simple film about complex situations that naturally form in relationships, but what makes the film so remarkable are the emotions that the director is able to capture on screen as well as evoke from the audience from such a simple setup. On one hand you will feel a lot of frustration and anger because of how they are hurting their other partners behind their backs. But on the other hand, you find yourself oddly rooting for the couple to somehow make it work. If nothing else, the film demonstrates that love works in mysterious ways.

From the directors of Little Miss Sunshine comes Ruby Sparks, a whimsical film about a struggling writer who falls in love with a character he makes up. The film was written by Zoe Kazan who plays the lead role of Ruby Sparks. It is slightly ironic considering the film is about a writer bringing a character to life; which is essentially what she has done here for herself. You might go in expecting a standard romantic comedy and if so you will be pleasantly surprised that it is more than just that.

At one point (I will not say when) a character says “Just don’t tell me how it ends”, which is what I intend to abide. It is not really an easy film to spoil because the big “twist”, if you can call it that, is not really spoiling it. I do not believe it is a spoiler if that is what the entire film is about, enough to where they include it in the official synopsis and trailers. But thankfully, Ruby Sparks is much more serious than the trailers let on. However, if you are an absolute purist; which I would doubt you would be if you made it this far, then you should stop right here and read nothing more about the film. As always, I never try to ruin a film in my reviews for anyone who has not seen the film yet.

Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is a famous writer who is struggling to find both inspiration for his next novel as well as romance in his life. The highly-acclaimed novel that made him famous is now ten years old and he has not made a very successful follow up since. So now he is currently working on what he hopes to be his next big hit and prove to himself that his career has not peaked. Not helping his confidence is his agent when he admits that living up to your first work is hard when it is a mega hit. And that “sophomore slump” syndrome does not happen when you are mediocre to begin with. Not wise words to tell someone when they are having a writer’s block.

Calvin mentions early on that he does not want to use his fame to get girls because he knows that they would not really like him for who he is. Instead, he uses some clever tricks suggested to him by his therapist to meet people such as, getting a dog so people stop to talk to him on the street. He is inexperienced in the dating world as he has only had one serious relationship in his life. Add that fact that he is awkward and shy makes it hard for him to meet someone.

It is not until Calvin starts having dreams about the character he made up for his new book that he gets inspired to write. Calvin creates Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan), as the girl he has always wanted to be with, the perfect girl in his eyes. He gets so inspired that he cannot stop writing. Then he realizes that the reason he wants to write so much is because he fell in love with the girl he created. Which is healthy for his career but not for his personal life.

Ruby shows up in his dreams more and more until one day he no longer has to dream about her because she suddenly shows up in his real life. Of course, he believes she is imaginary because how could she exist? It is a writer’s fantasy to create someone who is perfect for you then magically you meet that person. As time passes he realizes that she may not be completely perfect as he was expecting.

The great moral of the film is that even the perfect girl from your dreams is going to have faults and to try to change them is both dangerous and wrong. As the old adage goes, be careful for what you wish for, it just may come true. There are major drawbacks to trying to play God. Calvin’s brother pointed it out to him at the beginning of the film when he said that the honeymoon phase of a relationship does not last; women are different up close.

There is a great scene where we see Calvin on a sofa talking to himself. Or at least that is what it appears. There is a deep voice that seems like it is coming from his head until it is revealed when he lays down and the shot opens up to spot the man who was sitting in front of him. The man ends up being his therapist. The reason why this short scene is so interesting is it is before we start seeing the character he makes up appear in his life. So it sets the stage, if you will, for what was to come later in the film.

Ruby Sparks could have been a very different film if it had chosen to focus on what I feel like a lot of filmmakers would have focused on, which is the gimmicky part of the film. Instead, it pleads with you not to try to make sense of it because it does not even bother to explain how it happens. Similar to what Midnight in Paris did, it just embraces the magic of it all and asks you to imagine what if it could be true. Besides, the best part of the film is not the person he creates but rather the person he becomes.