A collision at the intersection of tragedy and addiction can leave countless emotional fragments strewn across life’s road. Decisions already handicapped by the perpetual specter of compulsive demons become further clouded by the blinding pain of raw emotion brought on by an unthinkable happening. Eventually, the consequences of the initial collision produce decisions that create consequences of their own, until life becomes nothing more than a spiraling series of missteps taken in an attempt to correct each previous misstep. Borealis, a comedy-sprinkled drama from writer Jonas Chernick and director Sean Garrity, looks at the victim of one such collision, a man whose years-long addiction and years-old tragedy have put him in a position to make a series of increasingly poor choices that not only threaten his safety, but the safety of his 15-year-old daughter.

That man is Jonah (screenwriter Chernick), his addiction is gambling, and the tragedy that befell him was the death of his wife and mother to their only child, Aurora (Joey King). After years of emotionally-charged bad decisions, Jonah finds himself in deep debt to Tubby (Kevin Pollak). The bad news about Tubby is he works for a loan shark. The worse news is that Tubby and Jonah go back to when they were kids, so Tubby finds a soft spot when Jonah wants to borrow money to place a bet. One cry of “all-in” later Jonah is $100,000 in the red.

Jonah’s day gets worse. Not long after playing the biggest losing hand of his life, his daughter’s eye doctor tells him that her eyesight, which has already been riddled with disease, has grown so bad that she will be completely blind in weeks. Unable to break the devastating medical news to the daughter he already has a fractured relationship with, and unable to meet the demands of Tubby and his hired muscle Brick (Clé Bennett), Jonah drags his reluctant little girl on a road trip to see the Northern Lights—partly to give her a fleeting glimpse of something he considers to be indescribably beautiful, and partly to avoid the financially painful inevitability.

For a 95-minute drama with only three primary players and three supporting players, Borealis attempts to do a lot. This is a blessing for the film. It provides a wide open space for its considerable talent to put on display a litany of emotions and memories, plus it affords opportunities for the story to avoid cliché. But the film’s “don’t just swing for the fences, swing for the parking lot” approach is inevitably its curse, as the supersaturation of backstories, plot lines, ideas, and character motivations become more than the filmmakers can handle.

The core of the story is wonderful. This father and daughter—a fractured pair as a result of mom’s passing, yet also individually broken by addiction and disease—are thrust into a unique circumstance. They are being chased as a result of one’s flaw while simultaneously chasing the clock as a result of the other’s flaw. This alone is fertile ground for emotional exploration, and adding an interesting circumstance to the mother’s death makes it even more compelling.

But that circumstance—or rather, the ripple effect from it—is never examined below surface-level. Clearly Jonah (and most likely Aurora) has been affected by this loss, and surely the loss has influenced the survivors’ behavior and contributed to the distance between them, but it is only presented to either generate pity or take a shortcut to an emotional goal; it’s never presented as a real catalyst for dysfunctional behavior.

Everything else in the film suffers from this same problem. It isn’t a case of superficiality so much as it’s a case of underdevelopment. Things like Jonah’s gambling and Aurora’s vision loss—real meaty topics—are only heavy character traits and high-level cause-and-effect cases. Other things like the childhood relationship between Tubby and Jonah, and the adult relationship between Jonah and his current flame Kyla (Emily Hampshire), are presented like early concept musings, not fully developed relationships. What remains after all of these missed chances is another road picture, a film about getting from Point A to Point Z, with stops at B through Y along the way.

It’s frustrating because these ideas are terrific as individual notions and as a creative collective. They’re also perfectly enjoyable presented as they are, but they are ultimately unsatisfying.

There are, though, some very satisfying parts of this film, led by great performances. Chernick shines as the father with all the wrong answers and the weight of the world—a world he helped create, both as a father and a gambler—on his shoulders. King is marvelous as the teen who is too angry with her father to help mend their relationship and too proud to let her deteriorating eye condition stop her from doing what she wants. And Pollak delivers the goods as the hard-ass with the soft spot.

The humor sprinkled throughout is genuinely funny, even if it doesn’t quite fit. Instead of providing a respite from the drama, the humor actually undercuts it. It’s an example of one more thing the filmmakers attempt to stuff into a picture that is already jammed with so much concept. Still, funny is funny.

There’s a lot to admire about Borealis, but the film sags under the weight of its own ambition, loading up on many solid concepts but never developing any of them thoroughly enough to do the film a greater good. Still, Borealis is very much worth seeking out, particularly for the performances by Chernick, King, and Pollak.

This review was originally published on October 7, 2015 as part of our coverage of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Stonewall, an uncomfortably inaccurate historical drama directed by Roland Emmerich, is such a confused, misguided, scatterbrained movie that it’s hard to decide where to begin in assessing its shortcomings (it comes up short on almost every front). It’s about the immensely important June 1968 Stonewall Inn riots, the single greatest breakthrough in gay activism—but really, it isn’t. Emmerich sullies and smudges that moment in history so crudely (and ironically) with Hollywood stereotypes, clichés, and ham-fisted filmmaking that it’s crystal clear, without a doubt, that he’s missed the point entirely.

One of the defining characteristics of the riots was that it was led in large part by people of color. Some of these key figures are represented in the movie, like Marsha P. Johnson (Otoja Abit), founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, but they’re relegated to minor (offensively minor) roles. Tragically, at the center of Emmerich and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz’s rendition of the story is a fictional, white, Midwestern man named Danny, played by English actor Jeremy Irvine. It’s a choice that lacquers the film with a thick coating of inauthenticity. We follow Danny as he plays proxy for ignorant white audiences, running away from his small Indiana town after being outed and yelled at by his homophobic, football-coach dad. Danny heads straight for New York City’s gay community epicenter, Christopher Street, where he’s taken in by a group of wild street kids.

Jonny Beauchamp plays Ray, a born leader and firestarter and Danny’s primary liaison. Vying for Danny’s affection is a quietly charming, manipulative gay rights activist played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, whose 3rd-floor apartment overlooks the street kids’ stoop and the Stonewall Inn. The supporting players are universally bland, their actors (mostly talented) underserved. Caleb Landry Jones has been carving out quite a fascinating career on the independent scene in recent years, but his turn here as a trans stereotype in no way helps his career along.

The film flashes back occasionally to Indiana and Danny’s falling-out with his family, which is as generic a coming-out story you’ll ever hear (though Danny’s accepting little sister, played by Joey King, offers some genuine sweetness). Other than the dark cloud of the homophobic, abusive NYPD hanging over the movie, there’s the imposing presence of Ron Perlman’s Ed Murphy, a dangerous quasi-pimp of pretty boys like Danny. Oh, and Danny’s attending night school at Columbia while he waits anxiously for his parents to send in papers to secure the scholarship he’s worked so hard for.

Emmerich seems totally disoriented as he zips from plot thread to plot thread, never sure about which one to concentrate on. Nothing takes priority and the greatest loss as a result of his confusion is that the riots themselves, which lasted for days in real life, only last for one night and don’t get much focus at all. It’s a big miss on Emmerich’s part and it left an awful taste in my mouth. Perhaps the most disgusting moment comes when Danny, the “white savior” himself, starts the riot with a corny, ADR battle cry of “Gay POWER!” and a brick through a window. Emmerich has said he included the character of Danny because he had to tell the story of Stonewall from his (white) perspective, which is troubling in itself, but this slow-motion moment of heroism makes his statement even uglier.

Speaking of ugly, the movie looks atrocious. Emmerich and cinematographer Markus Förderer seem to be going for a vintage, newsreel feel, but the aesthetic is ruined with environments and interiors that reek of artificiality. The sets are too pristinely lit, the costumes look like they came from a high school theater classroom, the shots are unremarkable—Stonewall looks like a bargain-bin musical adaptation, not a tribute to a gay activism triumph.

The movie was, according to Emmerich, made for straight, white people, a sort of crash course in the history and nature of the gay rights movement. It’s obvious, after watching this thing, that he’s made a big mistake; instead of sending blaring, dim-witted messages to white America like an ignoramus over-enunciating to a deaf child, maybe he should have just told the true story. Then, maybe people might have listened.

As the LGBT rights movement continues to make huge strides in America, it feels like a fitting time to start to look back at the many battles fought by this ostracized and abused group of people. One such historical turning point is the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York City, the violence and passion of which inspired the greater LGBT community to rally and get organized in their efforts for equality and safety.

Now we have a stirring first trailer for Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall, a film following a fictional young gay man, played by Jeremy Irvine, forced to flee his home when his sexual orientation proves too much for his friends and family, who ends up on the streets of Greenwich Village, NYC. He befriends a group of people made up of young gays, lesbians, and drag queens who introduce him to the Stonewall Inn, a gay-friendly mafia-run club and safe-haven. But eventually even their safe space starts to be regularly raided by the NYPD, who harass the people there. The historical consequence to this constant persecution was an eruption of rage in the form of two days of riots and a kick-off of the modern LGBT movement.

Though not the first film version of this important historical event, it certainly feels like the man who gave us Independence Day, Stargate, and The Patriot is a seasoned pro at igniting pride, and this two-minute trailer is plenty inspiring. The film also stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Joey King, and Ron Perlman and will be released in theaters September 25.

The first trailer for Zach Braff’s Kickstarter funded film Wish I Was Here has arrived. The film quickly raised over $3 million on the popular crowdfunding site, which produced a bit of controversy during its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival when many backers weren’t able to get into the screening. Focus Features has since acquired rights to the film for $2.75 million.

Those familiar with Braff’s breakout hit Garden State won’t be surprised that a song from The Shins plays during this trailer. Wish I Was Here is about a struggling actor who can’t afford private school for his two kids anymore, so he decides to home school them. They’re a few shots in the trailer that may get fans of Garden State excited to see Braff’s latest offering.

Wish I Was Here plays in theaters on July 25th.

Watch Wish I Was Here trailer

Wish I Was Here movie poster