Back when Apartment Troubles premiered at LAFF in June, the quirky comedy about two friends trying to make it in Manhattan on an artist’s salary (translation: no income at all) was called Trouble Dolls. A crumpled piece of paper at the beginning of the movie explains the Guatemalan myth of the trouble doll: A young girl can place one of these toy dolls under her pillow, and the doll will solve all her problems while she sleeps. Hey, a 20-something without financial support in the big city has to try something. But, needless to say, the dolls suck at their job. An eviction notice and one dead pet cat later, Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and Nicole (Jess Weixler) are on a plane to LA to get away from it all. They stay with Nicole’s aunt Kimberley (Megan Mullally), a has-been judge on an America’s Got Talent-esque program. Nicole, a conceptual artist more prone to quote Chekhov than Katy Perry, can hardly stand in her aunt’s presence without a glass of red wine in hand. But broke and with nowhere to go, Nicole and Olivia take up residence in Kimberley’s home and before long are auditioning for the show.

Apartment Troubles marks the directorial and screenwriting debuts for both Weixler and Prediger. What I found interesting about the script—clearly intended to be a comedy—is that I didn’t do a whole lot of laughing. In some cases the humor seems to have been lost in translation: scenes with Will Forte, who plays a socially awkward but well-meaning guy who offers the girls a ride in LA, just completely fail to land. But jokes about a 30-year-old guy who still cares way too much about his mother’s approval turn out to be far more harmless than the bizarre plot twist with Aunt Kimberley, who takes a liking to Olivia (for more than just her voice). Their scenes together are more uncomfortable than entertaining, and like Forte’s character, completely tangential to the plot.

Where the movie succeeds is with the two leading ladies, and since this is ultimately a character piece with bits of humor thrown in to lighten its existential weight, their performances really do provide enough to make this is a worthwhile venture. I said I didn’t laugh a lot, but intentional or not, that’s something I kind of liked about this movie. It’s easy to take eccentric artsy types and make them into caricatures, but that’s not what this movie is really about. While a show like Girls helps us to laugh with a generation of girls who got their Bachelor degrees and make naive (sometimes absurd) life choices, I don’t think Apartment Troubles is really trying to critique its lead characters. Instead, I think it’s trying to ask if there is a place in this world for people like them, a question worth asking in an age where art degrees are looked at with the same disdain as drug addiction or sexual promiscuity. Nicole’s family treats her art ventures as a harmful and destructive life choice. One she could ultimately change. “I don’t think they want her around the kids,” Kimberley confesses to Olivia on why Nicole’s family may have taken a vacation without her.

Maybe it’s helpful here that Prediger and Weixler wrote the script, because Weixler’s Nicole, particularly, feels eccentric, yes, but like a living, breathing person. She has a way of delivering her lines with a certain calm and carefulness—a bit counter-stereotype for a role like this. There is, however, a deflatedness in her energy on-screen, like if she wasn’t too poor to eat something other than juice smoothies, she might want to try a small dosage of Zoloft. She’s been beaten down, and now her one remaining lifeline, her bestie Olivia, is making strides toward normalcy: successfully making small talk with strange dudes in cars, landing a TV ad, and insisting the girls apply for a silly reality TV show.

To be honest, if someone positioned this film to me as “two east coast girls take a leap of faith and go on a reality TV show,” I would have never hit play. The premise seems prime for obvious and overdone satire, but I think the reason it works here is because we never stray too far from a story of two friends. It’s not about auditioning for TV, it’s about two young ladies, finding their footing in the world. Their response to rejection shows the film’s subtle tension: these girls both desperately need each other and just as desperately need to separate from one another. Outside of the confines of whatever quirky art school they just graduated from, each has to learn to what extent she’ll adapt and which rules of society they’ll choose to play by.

The script doesn’t let Nicole go on depressive woe-is-me tangents, but as far as I’m concerned, this film is all about her, and taking an eccentric personality and treating her with the subtlety Weixler does is an appreciated surprise when dealing with this genre. By the movie’s end it’s not any external circumstance that lets us know she’ll be OK, but the way she quotes Chekov to a starving cat while sitting in a pile of trash outside her apartment (OK, I confess, this sounds hilarious—but it’s a genuinely tender moment). The fact that she can still see beauty in the struggle lets us know Nicole isn’t broken. And maybe it’s not she that needs to change, she just needs to change the minds of others.

It’s not a perfect script by any stretch, and it probably helps if you already have a little empathy for the plight of the artistically inclined, but the film has a lot of heart—and both Prediger and Weixler are transfixing on screen. It’s impossible not to root for them. Even I was able to forget that a conceptual piece about a dead cat could never do well on a cutthroat talent competition. That’s America’s loss.

Writer/Director Alex Ross Perry‘s follow-up to his micro-budget feature The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip now has released a new trailer ahead of its upcoming appearances on the fall film festival circuit. Strong reviews of the film and Perry’s previous work helped make Listen Up Philip one of Way Too Indie’s choices for our Essential Fall Films list. Starring Jason Schwartzman as the titular Philip, the movie tracks the narcissistic author as he awaits the publication of his second novel.

The trailer features little of the Rushmore star, instead focusing on the people in Philip’s life and their predominantly antagonistic words for him. Elisabeth Moss co-stars as Philip’s photographer girlfriend Ashley, stating in the teaser, “honestly sometimes you’re impossible to live with.” The cast also includes Krysten Ritter, Jess Weixler, Joséphine de La Baume and Jonathan Pryce.

After premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Listen Up Philip makes its Brazilian, Canadian, and British debuts at the Rio de Janiero International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, and London Film Festival, respectively. It will also play the New York Film Festival before its upcoming limited release, scheduled for October 17th. The movie will also be available through iTunes on October 21st.

First trailer for Listen Up Philip

Viewing an on-screen relationship from somewhere in the middle can be a difficult place to be in as a film viewer. Finding two characters in a juncture in their story when one’s had no time to form any sort of attachment yet, makes for the sort of film viewing that practically demands distance. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby most certainly asks that of its viewers. Asking for patience in abundance as it fills us in on the current, past, and potential future of a young New York couple. And to make sure the severity of their rift is felt, the film opens with a suicide attempt.

Eleanor Rigby (Jessica Chastain) has a name inspired less by the Beatles and more by missed opportunity and a sense of fate. After a brief scene of young love between her and boyfriend Conor (James McAvoy), she’s seen biking down the Brooklyn bridge. With a sense of calculation, she leaves her bike and heads for the fence.

In the hospital, Conor, her now husband, flies to her side, panicked. But when she’s healed and it’s time to leave, it’s her sister Kate (Jess Weixler) who takes her back to their childhood home to stay with their parents. Her French musician mother Mary (Isabelle Huppert) awaits her on the front steps, glass of wine in hand. Her father Julian (William Hurt), the academic and therapist, is especially concerned and encourages Eleanor to take some classes while she figures out her life.

Eleanor enrolls and when her father encourages her to crash Professor Friedman’s (Viola Davis) class, she does so with hardly any real argument why Professor Friedman should allow her to join the class, but an unlikely friendship is sparked between the two and Eleanor finds her to be an encouraging outsider. A safe friend unaware of Eleanor’s tragic recent past.

Meanwhile Conor does his best to find out how Eleanor is, since she’s thrown away her phone, resorting eventually to stalking her at the school. He passes her a note in her class one day and upsets her enough that she leaves class. Despite what little we know of their former selves before this juncture in their relationship, it’s clear Eleanor has changed greatly and it’s equally true Conor wants to return to what they once had. One of them stuck in the ambiguity of who they are, and who they are as part of a couple after a major life change, and the other stuck in the remembrance of how good things once were.

It’s easier to understand The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby when one takes into account that it was originally two films. Him and Her. One focused on their relationship from Conor’s perspective, the other from Eleanor’s. At times throughout the film there seems to be much left unsaid, much that was most likely covered in the individual films that was cut to make Them work without being overwhelming.

But it’s exactly that hesitation that keeps The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby from true greatness. In his feature directorial début (or should we call it third film?), Ned Benson has crafted a tale of two people completely unable to communicate. And though the inability to communicate with someone at a juncture where grief makes it entirely hard to relate is realistic, as an editing and filmmaking tool it makes for somewhat frustrating viewing.

The emergence of the so-called “anti-romance” is a sign of the times, of the burgeoning destruction of the Hollywood ending in favor of realism and relatable romantic scenarios. And while I appreciate this perspective and the way it resonates in our modern world, I can’t help but always wonder where the realistic side character is, the one yelling at the main characters to grow up and just have a normal conversation. Bill Hader‘s Stuart, Conor’s best friend and chef at his restaurant, comes close. Doing his best to explain to Conor the egg shells he has to walk on around his friend when it comes to his marriage. And Viola Davis is truly fantastic as Professor Friedman, but her wisdom and usefulness to Eleanor seems to stem entirely on her not actually knowing anything about Eleanor and her immediate life. She just seems to accidentally give Eleanor the friendship she needs at a time when she accidentally needs it.

Plenty of conversations with their family members would seem to be the ideal pathway to character growth, but strangely it’s these scenes that drag the most. Much of the time spent skirting around the obvious topics needing real study.

The audience is only clued in to Eleanor and Conor’s central concern rather late in the film, though it’s not hard to figure out they don’t suffer from simple relationship troubles. Strangely Benson chooses to show flashbacks from the couple’s early days, before they were married and in the blissful throes of young love, rather than scenes from their marriage. In a sense it brilliantly shows the same blind spot the main characters seems to possess, an idea of when things were new and good, juxtaposed with the present when they seem so bad, while showing an unawareness of when they were just in the middle, living out their love on a day by day basis.

With all that anti-romance, anti-Hollywood ending, the characters fall into an age-old trap, resorting to reinventing themselves, albeit by returning to former passions and plans they once had before their marriage and troubles. So although the film won’t allow us to call its ending “sad” per se, it certainly doesn’t warrant the descriptor of “realistic”. Though I’ll give kudos to Son Lux for the musical placement, toying quite effectively with our hearts in a few key areas with some well-placed songs in a way that gives the implication of romance without actually showing it.

Chastain and McAvoy give phenomenal performances, every other scene playing out like the clip played by the Academy before they announce who gets the Oscar. But without the structure the story needs, their performances simply hit the screen as heavy and ineffective, the lack of insight into their psyches making for a detached relationship with viewers.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby has all the realism of watching a pair of friends go through a rough spot in their relationship, without any of the catharsis of being able to advise and yell at them as perhaps a good friend ought to.

A cross between the millennial musings of Lena Dunham and the dimwittedness of Romy and Michele, Trouble Dolls is a female buddy comedy for today’s self-aware art hipsters, or more specifically those looking to poke fun at them. Written and directed by its co-stars, actress Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and artist Nicole (Jess Weixler) are best friends and roommates living the boho life in New York City. Their electricity is off (by choice they say), their rent is short, and they are starving (or on a cleanse, it’s all about perspective). When Olivia’s beloved cat Seagull dies unexpectedly, Nicole decides a weekend vacation is in order. Utilizing her father’s private jet, she whisks Olivia off to California to visit her aunt Kimberley (Megan Mullally).

Without the foresight to charge their phone, let alone phone ahead to inform her aunt of their arrival, the two hitch a ride with another person at the airport (Will Forte), which Olivia insists will work out fine. Along the way to auntie’s house, they realize their chauffeur is on a prescription pill cocktail that may soon turn ugly. So they bolt, walking the rest of the way. Upon their arrival, Nicole’s aunt welcomes them with open arms, doting upon them (a little too graciously for Olivia’s liking), and lets slip that Nicole’s family is on a planned trip without her. Nicole sulks while Olivia is wooed by Aunt Kimberley,  a host for a talent TV reality show called “That Special Something”,  into auditioning for her show. After the two girls have their tarot cards read the next day, Nicole believes she should help Olivia with her audition, turning it into a mixture of her art and Olivia’s monologue.

With faces painted white and adorned in black trash bags, the girls go to the audition to perform in front of the judges, Lance Bass, Christopher Reid, and of course Aunt Kimberley. A strange mixture of spoken word, dialogue, flower backdrop, and projected images, their art piece is hilariously baffling. Afterwards Olivia is upset over her audition as Nicole begins to see the unhealthiness of their co-dependence. The two take their aggressions out on one another and as they begin to change, they have to figure out if their friendship can change with them.

Prediger and Weixler play off one another well and hold a believable friendship. Their jokes, however, aren’t as easily swallowed and while it’s easy to laugh at their naiveté to a certain point, eventually their obtuse and self-centered traits make for a heavier atmosphere than I think they were really going for. Their A-list co-stars handle the satire with far more ease, but are given some questionable character twists. Megan Mullally is fantastic as an oft-drunk washed up starlet, but is also an oddly predatory-like closeted lesbian whose advances on Olivia start out as funny then quickly move to uncomfortable. Jeffrey Tambor equally shines in his small role as the girls’ landlord, but a landlord who happens to be in an on-again off-again relationship with Nicole. They seemed to have aimed for awkward but went flying over their mark.

As a first directorial attempt on both Prediger and Weixler’s part, they’ve fashioned a friendship comedy that relies too much on the love its main characters hold for each other to buy over their audience. The film’s title comes from the tiny dolls Olivia whispers her hopes and troubles to, placing them beneath her pillow to manage her and Nicole’s anxieties. But no doll can save these girls from their troubles, as in the end the girls (and the movie as a whole) seem hardly willing to truly manage their own destinies.

The Face of Love has a premise that would prove a challenging sell for any filmmaker. Annette Bening plays a widow named Nikki who, five years after the death of her husband Garrett (Ed Harris), sees a man who looks like him at a museum. Exactly like him, in fact. The sight of the handsome doppelgänger intoxicates her with both fear and ecstasy, and she feels compelled to stalk him around Los Angeles.

Now, this can either be read as the behavior of a mad woman, or the behavior of a woman tragically chasing the ghost of her lost love. Either way, it’s completely absurd, but a good filmmaker can make it work, make us suspend our disbelief and buy into Nikki’s dark fantasy. Director Arie Posin doesn’t make it work, but he comes close, mostly thanks to his leads, both great actors. Without their talents, the film–with its momentum-less, scrambled script and pedestrian camerawork–would shatter into a million pieces.

When Nikki finally tracks down Garrett’s double, a man named Tom (Harris again, obviously) who teaches painting at Occidental College, and talks to him face to face, she’s hit with a tidal wave of emotion that floors her. (Bening is wonderful in this moment, writhing in pain, disbelief, and joy, as if she’s standing inches from the sun.) Predictably, she finds herself gravitating toward him, and him to her, and they fall into a relationship, though Nikki mentions nothing of Tom’s uncanny resemblance to her dear Garrett.

Is this a morally compromising pairing? At least on Nikki’s end of things, it seems to be teetering on the edge. One can easily see why she’s fallen for Tom, and besides him looking like Garrett, he actually seems like a sweet, good-hearted man. But it’s a clearly indefensible decision to not tell him that he looks just like her dead husband. She even tells him that Garrett dumped her, for some reason. She starts bringing Tom to she and Garrett’s old haunts, an idiotic display that makes no sense. He’s going to find out, you silly lady! Sympathy wanes when we see her make mistakes as dumb as this.

The reveal the film ambles toward is too contrived to generate any real suspense. We can see it coming a mile away, and when it hits–at the site of Garrett’s death, an empty beach in Mexico–it’s underwhelming, and a little weird (Bening and Harris nearly drown in an ocean of melodrama). In an earlier, climactic scene, Nikki’s daughter (Jess Weixler) is floored when she sees Tom, and when she blows up in his face Nikki yells “I need him!”, an allusion to addiction that Bening delivers well, but again feels a bit irksome.

Despite the ridiculousness of the story, it brings up some compelling ideas. How would you react if you met a double of your dead lover? And on the other side of the situation, how would you react if you were Tom and discovered you were the spitting image of your girlfriend’s dead husband? The moral implications of the scenario are intriguing, but this kind of love story is incredibly hard to buy into. Hitchcock did it in Vertigo, which The Face of Love resembles in more ways than one, but Posin struggles here.

Robin Williams plays Nikki’s jealous neighbor, who’s been asking her out for years but keeps getting shoved back into the friend zone. He’s little more than a plot device, but he makes the most of it, just like the two leads. Though most of us would turn and run in his situation, Harris makes us believe that he’s truly falling for this woman, despite her erratic, suspicious behavior. Bening has some fantastic moments (mostly in the first half of the film, before all logic goes out the window), and her chemistry with Harris is expectedly dynamic.

The Face of Love has the ingredients of a good film: terrific actors, a thought-provoking premise, and a capable director at the helm. But what sours the pot is the film’s script, which tells the story in such a meandering, unfocused fashion that the film loses us as the character’s actions descend into nonsensicality. Still, it’s hard not to be at least a little invested when you’ve got such incredible actors playing off each other on screen.

In Arie Posin’s The Face of Love, we follow a widow named Nikki (Annette Bening) who meets a man named Tom (Ed Harris) who looks, impossibly, exactly like her dead husband. Memories of her husband come rushing back to her as she and Tom start a relationship. Is she falling in love with Tom, or falling in love with her husband all over again? The film also stars Robin Williams and Jess Weixler.

Director/co-writer Posin chatted with us about working with Bening and Harris, how the film is inspired by his mother, paying homage to Vertigo, making Los Angeles romantic again, and more.

The Face of Love opens this Friday in San Francisco and is playing now in select cities.

You have two incredible collaborators manning your lead roles. As a director and storyteller, what was it like having such seasoned talents at your disposal?

Arie: It was a gift, a joy. The summer that I spent editing this movie was the best summer I’ve had maybe ever. It was a season of pure joy. On set they’re just so true and authentic, take after take. I feel like my job on set is to be kind of a firs line lie detector. Do I believe what I’m seeing? Do I believe the emotions? In the editing room, you can see that there were 5, 6, 7 takes that are all true and identical in their believability, but they’re also all subtly different. [Annette and Ed] are able to shade things and give you dimensions. It gives me such freedom to shape the movie. But at the same time, the hardest thing to do was to edit, because there are so many wonderful takes.

The story of how the idea for this story came to light is pretty remarkable. It came from your mother, correct?

Arie: Yeah. Years ago, a few years after my dad had passed away, my mother would come over to see me. She said words that are pretty similar to what Annette’s character says in the movie. She said, “A funny thing happened to me today. I was by the museum, in a cross walk on Wilshire Boulevard. I looked up and I saw a man coming towards me who looked like a perfect double of your father.” I said, “What did you do?” and she said, “It shocked me. He had a big smile on his face…and it felt so nice. It felt like it used to.” That’s the story that stuck with me and that I began to obsess, dream, and eventually write about.

I imagine going through something like that, you must feel a little bit crazy inside. What do you think the relationship is between sanity and love?

Arie: I think it’s different for everyone. My thought on it for this movie was, in a sense, that kind of love you have…you know, she spent 30 years with her husband, and she had him ripped away from her violently, tragically, just when they were at this stage where they’re thinking, “What are the two of us going to do together for the rest of our lives?” Seeing someone again who wakes up those feelings would be almost like an addiction. You get a taste, and you want more, despite yourself and despite the fact that it’s a transgressive relationship. It’s a compulsion, an obsession.

In terms of sanity, that was one of the biggest questions for me in writing the script and even throughout production. Annette’s falling in love through the course of the story, but she’s also falling back in love with her late husband. The question is always, she’s on this journey towards madness, but where is she at? How do we chart that? Is she crazy here, not crazy here? And it went back to the story with my mom, which became a real touchstone for us. The truth in that situation is that my mom wasn’t crazy, you know? She wasn’t imagining it. She saw this guy that looked like my dad, and it shook her to her core. I thought it was important that Nikki be sane, but as long as we could bear it. Once she goes mad, the audience becomes an observer of that. But to really participate, I thought it was important for her to be sane, then spiraling eventually into madness, but being able to hold that off as long as possible.

There are obvious similarities between the plot of your film and Vertigo.

Arie: Vertigo is one of my favorite movies. Hitchcock is unquestionably the master. There’s so much film grammar that we take for granted that was first proposed and best used by him. We all owe a lot to him. Having said that, when we wrote the first draft of the script, we set it in a museum because my mom’s story happened at the museum. The best cinematographers ask, “How few lights can I bring to a location in order to catch the naturalness of it?” That’s where the museum came out of. It didn’t come out of trying to do a take on a Vertigo type story. It all evolved from a very natural, organic place. But once we had the first draft and read it, it occurred to us: there’s a double in Vertigo, and there’s a double here. There’s a museum in both. A friend of mine saw the movie last week and said there was more than that. He said, “Well, she jumps into the bay in Vertigo, and she jumps into the ocean in your movie.” There are other movies that we love, and we had to check and make sure that if we were stealing, we we’d be stealing deliberately. (laughs) Another movie we talked about was The Double Life of Veronique. There’s a double there, as well, and it takes this metaphysical look at people who look alike. It’s been done many times.

Although this is a romantic movie, I wanted it to be infused with tension and suspense. The premise doesn’t naturally suggests suspense and tension, and yet I love so many of those movies in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s that were romantic but also had a bit of tension. And that’s certainly true of Vertigo.

San Francisco plays a big part in Vertigo, and Los Angeles plays a big part in yours.

Arie: That was something that I was very much inspired by Vertigo about. San Francisco is so much a character in that movie. I’ve fallen in love with Los Angeles, and I wanted it to become a backdrop. I live here, and I feel the romantic side of the city. It’s beautiful, but I haven’t seen it in movies in a long, long time. That was my hope. There was actually a moment when a financier offered to make the movie with us if we shot it in Baton Rouge. We turned it down with hopes of staying in LA and using the city as the backdrop for our story, a character in itself.

What scene are you most proud of?

Arie: One of the most challenging scenes in the movie is the scene where the daughter comes in and discovers that her mom has been in a relationship with a man that looks like her father. From the moment Nikki keeps this secret, the audience is savvy enough to know that the secret is going to come out. The question is how and when, and who’s going to find out. On one level, you want to fulfill that expectation, but on the other hand also make it surprising. In that scene, you have three people in a very hot, violent confrontation, and what I wanted to convey was the three points of view. They’re each coming at it with their own point of view, and I wanted the audience to identify with all three of them. As we bounce around the scene, you know why each person is reacting the way they are, and you can see the story from their perspective. That was a real challenge in the writing, shooting, and editing.

It’s a big scene to carry on your shoulders. I had a director friend of mine say, “It takes some nerve to take potentially the biggest scene in your movie and put it on the shoulders of the least experienced actor in the scene.” On top of that, he said, “If that scene didn’t work, the movie would fall apart.” It was a really critical scene, and Jess (Weixler, who plays the daugher) played it so brilliantly, against two of the best actors that we have.

Everyone has that friend. The guy that’s always too loud, too drunk, makes fun situations better, makes serious ones unbearable, and is strangely predictable in their obnoxious behavior. Lumpy (Tyler Labine) is that guy. After causing a sad, drunken scene as the best man at Scott (Justin Long) and Kristin’s (Jess Weixler) wedding Lumpy drunkenly wanders into the desert and dies from a head wound he received while…well, drunk. But is there more to the story? For all of Lumpy’s shortcomings, he is a decent guy trying to put his life together, and it takes a tragedy for his best friend Scott to see the big picture with his hard-partying friend. Best Man Down mashes a bunch of genre’s together to come up with a funny, entertaining, and surprisingly emotionally touching film.

The tragedy of Lumpy’s death not only casts a dark shadow over Scott and Kristin’s wedding, but it also forces them to cancel their upcoming honeymoon as Scott feels it is his duty to make sure his friend is properly buried. Both Scott and Kristin essentially write off Lumpy as a down on his luck loser that while a loyal friend, will never really amount to anything meaningful. As they head home to Minnesota to plan the funeral it becomes very clear that Scott does not know his alleged best friend as well as he thought. A mysterious number on Lumpy’s phone leads the new couple to Ramsey, a distant teenager growing up in a dysfunctional home. Scott and Kristin assume the worst but soon discover Lumpy and Ramsey have developed an innocent meaningful friendship, and that Lumpy was truly trying help create a better life for this young woman.

The acting in Best Man Down is one of the strongest qualities found in the film. Justin Long shows nice range as the level-headed Scott, trying to do what he thinks is right for his friend. Tyler Labine is a blast to watch on the screen. He is energetic and fun as you would expect from the role, but shows a lot of emotional depth during several powerful scenes between Lumpy and Ramsey. The real star of the movie is Addison Timlin as the 15-year-old Ramsey. She conveys a lot of maturity and has a very natural chemistry with the older actors. While the title is Best Man Down, her screen presence really leaves you feeling that she truly was the main character of this story.

Ted Koland crafts a clever script that takes a really simple story and lets it naturally unfold. The film has some nice bright funny spots that help keep things in perspective when dealing with the darker, more dramatic tones of the film. Some sub-plots are unnecessary and sort of bog down the script at times. A needless addiction issue with Kristin is hinted at throughout the movie but then is too quickly resolved. Some of the characters in Best Man Down felt contrived and under-developed. I wish the script had spent more time focusing on Lumpy, especially his interactions with Ramsey. Both of those characters were wildly entertaining and could have helped bring more understanding to their fragile relationship.

Best Mad Down is a solid first film from writer/director Ted Koland. The script wanders a bit, but it still packs an emotional punch. The Minnesota scenery is a nice touch as every character shivers the second they get outside, which many people from the area can relate to. If anything this movie will help bring awareness to the misunderstood sub-culture of fat, hairy, loud, drunk guys.

Best Mad Down trailer:

Audience reactions of Bob Byington’s Somebody Up There Must Like Me were evenly split between largely in favor or largely against the film. And it is easy to see why as the film does not aim for any middle ground. You will also either find yourself completely attached to the style or it will be an outright miss. Somebody Up There Must Like Me appears to take whimsical cues straight out of a Wes Anderson playbook, where style often trumps substance, though this film fails to achieve any of the equivalent results.

A recent divorce has sent Max (Keith Poulson), a wisecracking steakhouse waiter, into the dreadful dating scene once again. After one disastrous date, it seems like Max’s luck appears to be completely non-existent. Not only is his dating life miserable, but each one of his customers tends to be on the annoying side, but he handles them effortlessly with his nonchalant attitude. One day while chatting with a fellow co-worker Sal (Nick Offerman), a female co-worker named Lyla (Jess Weixler) greets Max as if they have never spoken before despite the fact she has worked there for three years.

Lyla’s quirky personality is shown right away with her addiction that has her constantly eating the restaurant’s breadsticks. Her character has a tendency of being rather clueless which meshes right off the bat with Max’s aimless outlook on life. Equally is fast as their decision to go on their fast date is their decision to get married. The film then begins to skip along in five-year increments which spans a few decades in total. Many things do change over these years but his demeanor and physical appearance never do.

Somebody Up There Must Like Me serves up a heavy dose of dry humor mixed with nonsensical characters. One example of this is that Lyla has a very nice working vehicle parked in her driveway, yet takes the bus to work every day without explaining why. The film is also filled with non-traditional components that adds some rather unique style. When Max asks Lyla if she has received a raise she mishears him say “raisins” and the word is then shown as a subtitle on the screen. There is an overall theme of miscommunication found throughout, but the choice use of the subtitle in this scene suggests that the director is intentionally showing miscommunication to the audience in a satire manner.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a film that takes a totally out of the ordinary approach. In fact, more often than not I actually prefer those types of films. However, there should be at least a sliver of a reason beyond being weird simply for weirdness sake. Somebody Up There Must Like Me reminds me of films like Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong, in which the absurdity is so deliberate that it diminishes the creativity it strives to achieve. Because the film itself seemed to follow the same aimless path of its characters, no real attachment can be made to any of its characters. Motivations in the film are not made very clear which leaves one to question the meaning of the entire film. Perhaps the point of the film is to have no point, but it feels like more of a cop out than any real revelation.