After an impressive first season, that not only drew from its 1996 film origin but added elaborate depth and sustained an intriguing and comedic noir, FX’s Fargo is finally giving us an in-depth glimpse at season two.

A few things we already knew: Season two is set in 1979 in Luverne, MN and Sioux Falls, SD (a town near and dear to this website) and revolves around a case mentioned a few times in the first season. Following their established knack for an elaborate and well-rounded ensemble, the faces featured in season two’s trailer show just what a punch this next season is likely to pack. Patrick Wilson and Ted Danson are the lead law enforcement characters, trying to solve a murder that appears to include connections with what amounts to the perfect Hollywood Midwestern barbeque guest list: Jean Smart, Kieran Culkin, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Bokeem Woodbine, Jeffrey Donovan, Cristin Milioti and we didn’t even get a glimpse of Bruce Campbell yet!

The ’70s references are abundant, starting off with a Watergate joke and tying in with Dunst’s character showing an interest in ’70s cult-like New Age training program, Lifespring. Dunst always did look pretty great with feathered hair.

The trailer is plenty promising with what looks like all the same dark humor and as much if not more of the twisty murder mystery we came to crave from season one. The only downside? Because FX took their time renewing the show after season one, we have to wait until October before we get to watch. But with all that snow, it might just make for a more fitting viewing experience.

A particularly crafty young-adult tear-jerker, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl packs an emotional punch, but hits us with a looping left hook as opposed to its contemporaries’ straight jabs on the nose. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and screenwriter Jesse Andrews (who adapted from his own novel) go to great lengths to assure us that this won’t be your typical teen drama. They’re setting a booby trap: while most of Me and Earl sidesteps convention, its endgame is familiar, designed to make you reach for the tissues and hug your loved ones a little tighter. I wouldn’t say I fell for the trap completely (for better or for worse, my eyes stayed dry throughout), but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t moved.

The film won the two biggest prizes at Sundance earlier this year, and I’ve got to believe part of its success at the festival lies in the “Me” of the film’s title. The main character, Greg (Thomas Mann), is walking catnip for film geeks. He’s a witty, socially faceless high-schooler who, on his spare time, makes DIY spoofs of Criterion Collection classics with his best bud, Earl (R.J. Cyler). (Their sizable oeuvre includes gems like The Rad Shoes, Eyes Wide Butt and La Gelee.)

The drama stems from Greg and Earl’s schoolmate Rachel (Olivia Cooke), the terminal teen from the title who’s been diagnosed with leukemia. Greg’s mom (Connie Britton, who played one of the greatest TV moms ever on Friday Night Lights), upon hearing of the girl’s condition, terrorizes him into the ridiculously awkward situation of befriending Rachel out of the blue. At the foot of Rachel’s staircase, Greg comes clean. “I’m actually here because my mom is making me,” he says with a shrug. “Just let me hang out with you for one day. I can tell my mom we hung out and then we can be out of each others’ lives. Deal?”

In that moment they do make a deal, but not the one Greg so awkwardly outlined. By Greg being so forthcoming and honest about his naggy-mom situation, he earns her trust. He says probably the only thing that would have compelled Rachel to invite him into her room, and from there they make an unspoken pact to never bullshit each other. The film revolves around their friendship, which is predicated on this “no-bullshit” pact, and when it’s broken, their friendship consequently breaks down.

The film’s quick-witted dialogue is mostly funny, though the smartass-ness can feel a little overbearing. Greg narrates, breaking the story up with wry road markers like “Day One of Doomed Friendship,” addressing us directly, a device that sets up most of the film’s frank subversions of YA clichés. In the first of many scenes involving Rachel and Greg hanging out in her elaborately hand-decorated bedroom, they make a real connection and lock eyes. Via narration and a quick visual flourish, Greg promises that this is a strictly platonic story, free of nervous sexual tension (between he and Rachel, at least). This is a smart move by Gomez-Rejon and Andrews, as it dispels any anticipation the audience may have of Greg and Rachel getting together. Without this little aside, the resulting “Are they gonna kiss?” thoughts of teen romance would have been a major distraction from the story, which is about something else entirely.

Top-to-bottom, the performers enrich the material, making moments and characterizations work when, on paper, they’re pretty sketchy. Earl, for example, falls into black-teen stereotype a little too much, but Cyler’s measured, steady-handed approach to acting give Earl gravitas and maturity that makes him a perfect counter-weight to Greg’s skittish self-defeatism and neurosis. Mann slouches and mumbles just like me and all my nerdy friends did in high school (I mean that as a compliment), and his performance is only outdone by Cooke’s. With every muscle in her face relaxed, she can convey a wide range of emotions, from fear, to frustration, to sadness, to forgiveness. When Greg’s social ineptness gets out of control, she just sits there like a sage, blank-faced, though through her eyes we know exactly what she’s thinking.

The adult characterizations aren’t appealing, though the actors embodying them are welcome presences all. Greg’s dad is played by Nick Offerman, and though he and Britton have little chemistry, his fleeting nudges of encouragement to his son feel sincere and warm. The most archetypal role is given to Jon Bernthal, who plays Greg and Earl’s favorite, tatted-up teacher (he’s Mr. Turner from Boy Meets World). Molly Shannon plays Rachel’s mom, whose not-so-subtle sexual advances on Greg drove me closer to tears than the film’s tragic elements. When she is called upon to hit dramatic beats, though, she overachieves.

The movie’s visuals are its strength; the camerawork and editing is dynamic, thoughtful and patient. Gomez-Rejon and DP Chung-hoon Chung use a lot of wide-angle shots and panning and flashy maneuvers that recall Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese for sure, though I think Gomez-Rejon’s style is less polished and more spontaneous (the camera moves feel very choreographed, yet unpredictable). There’s a wonderful sense of movement and color to the visuals, though the filmmakers have enough discipline to know when to slow things down. A long, static, uninterrupted shot near the end of the film sees Greg and Rachel having a very heavy, very uncomfortable conversation, and the camera is almost cowering in the corner of the room. The actors will go 15-20 seconds without saying a word, and the tension in there is so thick that there’s no way the camera could ever wade through it or dare to budge. The film also harbors one of the best montages I’ve seen in a long time, one which cleverly illustrates the many emotional ups and downs of Greg and Rachel’s summertime meet-ups.

The Fault In Our Stars is a movie with a similar outer shell to Me and Earl, but with way more hanky-panky. That movie is about kids always saying the exact right thing or the exact wrong thing all the time, the filmmakers and actors banging on the drums of romance and tragedy as hard as they can the whole way through. Me and Earl feels much more frazzled and uncomfortable and authentic, frankly, taking a more low-key approach that’s a little easier to digest than full-on melodrama. What’s captured here so well is the solipsism and confusion of being an adolescent who’s forced to deal with death before you’re ready to, an aspect of life so many films have trouble representing on-screen. Gomez-Rejon and his three young leads have so much promise it’s scary.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl follows Greg (Thomas Mann), an awkward, socially faceless high schooler who’s forced by his mom to befriend a girl his age named Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who’s just been diagnosed with leukemia. The film revolves around their at first reluctant friendship which gradually blossoms into not a romance, but a connection that changes both of their lives completely and forever. Earl (RJ Cyler) is the closest thing Greg has to a friend, and together they make DIY spoofs of classic movies (“The Seven Seals,” “A Box of Lips Wow”). They decide their latest movie will be dedicated to Rachel, but tensions rise as her condition worsens and they struggle to make their tribute perfect.

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who worked under Martin Scorsese for a few films, shooting second unit stuff occasionally, and also collaborated semi-extensively with Ryan Murphy on his shows Glee and American Horror Story. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and was picked up for $12 million, the biggest acquisition in festival history.

In a roundtable interview, we spoke to stars Mann, Cooke, and Cyler, and director Gomez-Rejon about how the movie changed them as people.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is out in limited release this Friday and expands nationwide later in the month.

The movie spoofs Greg and Earl make play really well to cinephiles, but is there a concern that they might go over casual moviegoers’ heads?

Alfonso: No. We knew they wouldn’t make or break the movie. It was a texture that actually tells you a lot about Nick Offerman’s character, who introduces them to these films. People are discovering the films. You watch a Michael Powell movie, you keep it alive. It’s also an extension of the theme of the film. Maybe once someone voiced concern over the films being too obscure, but it didn’t matter. It’s a texture, and it’s very specific to them.

Is the hope that people who haven’t seen these movies seek them out?
Alfonso: That’s the hope, absolutely. That’s why we have the whole filmography, where people can find all of these movies. After we premiered at Sundance we had a screening the next day for high school students. That was a real test. We’d never seen it with just high school students. The movie played just as well, and afterward, they all said they wanted to go find these movies. That’s highly rewarding.

Speaking of teenagers, they have a really sensitive bullshit meter when it comes to teenage dialogue in movies. I thought the dialogue in this movie sounded very natural.
Olivia: It was Jesse Andrew’s script. It was so easy. A lot of the time you’re trying to make dialogue sound natural and realistic, but that wasn’t the case with this movie. Jesse made it really easy to say the lines.

Alfonso: You cast [the actors] because they make it feel real. You’re after naturalism, and these guys are here because they were able to make it sound like it was them.

Did you read the script or the book first?
Alfonso: Jesse had already adapted the script, and once I got the job it was about trimming it so that we could afford it. We couldn’t afford to make the script I read. There were some fantasy sequences we just had to cut down. We had 22 days and a certain amount of money, but it’s essentially the script, just a little shorter.

RJ, you joined the project way later than these guys.
RJ: WAY later.

Olivia: Not WAY later…

RJ: WAY…

Did you have any anxiety joining the project so late?
RJ: Yep. It was cool. I was mostly anxious to meet everybody. The only ones I knew going to set were Alfonso and Thomas. I was comfortable with them. I was like, “Okay. If anything happens, just run to one of them.” If they don’t have your back, run to Chipotle. They made it very calm, and they made me feel like just another family member. I forgot it was my first movie for a good while until I started walking into rooms and saw cameras hanging from roofs. I was like, “WHOA!” Everybody else was like, “It’s what we do.” That’s not what I do. My iPhone stays in my hand in front of my face. It was just them making me comfortable. It was nothing I did personally. I just fed off of their naturalness and niceness and didn’t look at the RJ-oddness. That’s a word. I’m making a word.

One thing that popped out in the movie was how different the Nick Offerman character is from Ron Swanson. Was that a conscious decision?
Alfonso: Of course. I saw Nick in a play called Annapurna with his wife. It was an incredibly dramatic role, and he had a beard down to here, and he just let himself go. It was amazing. I wasn’t aware of his range because we’ve been exposed to him as a comedian. Comedians always have this ability to go deeper than most people. I knew he would bring a depth to the character. He’s this eccentric, mumu-wearing, kilt-wearing, Moroccan-slipper guy, but there’s this deep sense of passion and concern for his son. One of the most powerful things in the film is a close-up of him saying, “Are you okay buddy?” You just sense that there’s so much going on underneath. It was never going to be a caricature, and it could have been that, because he’s so eccentric. But Nick makes him a human being.

Do you guys play video games?

Thomas: No.

Olivia: No.

Alfonso: No.

RJ: Yes! [pauses] I mean, aw, I’m sorry. No, I don’t play video games.

Well, there’s this thing trending in video games called “environmental storytelling,” where the player is dropped into an environment and looks for clues. Gradually, a narrative emerges without a word being said. I your movie has a scene in Rachel’s bedroom that reminded me of this very much.
Thomas: That was toward the end of the shoot. At that point I’d been living in this world for so long, and I’d just watched Olivia as Rachel kind of go through this. It was weighing heavy on me. I was worrying about the scene, and the first time I saw a lot of those props was when we were shooting. It’s Greg discovering all these things that, had he learned to listen, he would have known about. It’s not like he was a bad person; he was selfless in trying to make her laugh and distract her, in a way. It’s an admirable thing. But there are all these different layers to her. I was really moved.

We did a walkthrough where they’d say, “You’ll find something here, which will lead you to this thing, and then you’ll discover this thing.” We kept it pretty loose. At the beginning of every scene I’d read the note Rachel writes to Penn State, which got me to that point emotionally. I’d never had that experience where you start crying and you can’t stop. I felt drained. It was a really heavy experience.

Alfonso: It’s partly about that Greg didn’t ask enough questions, but she’s also aware. She’s talking to him. She left this book for him as a clue in a journey. It’s done in a way that Greg can look back on it without regret. She understood him better than he did, and she chose to show this side of her.

Greg makes a promise throughout the film that turns out not to be true by the end. Do you think this affects the overall honesty of the story?
Alfonso: It’s as honest as a 4-year-old facing someone who may or may not die. It’s the same thing with an 80-year-old who’s been married for 50 years to the same woman, or a 17-year-old whose new friend may or may not be there. You never think it’s going to happen, and you lie to yourself until the very end. I think it’s a very human reaction. It’s a 17-year-old telling you a story.

Thomas:  I like that he wants to control and protect her from being seen as this thing with an expiration date. He wants you to see her as a human and get to know her the way he got to know her. If you’re just waiting for something to happen, you might keep a wall up. He didn’t want to see her that way.

Did new things get revealed about the story as you filmed? In other words, did the personal meaning of the story change from the beginning of the filmmaking process to the end?
Thomas:  Oh yeah. Even now I’m realizing new things about it.

Olivia:  I always feel that, from the beginning of production to the end, you evolve with the character and the story evolves with you. By the end of filming I felt like I was a completely different person, and Rachel was a different person than I originally set about playing.

RJ:  At the beginning, I knew Earl, but by the end I understood why Earl felt this way and that way and why he says this and that, why he operates [the way he does]. That’s from the direction of Alfonso and discovering new places I could find in myself. That came with being comfortable around these guys.

Alfonso: It completely changed for me. I started the film as someone who wanted to believe McCarthy’s lesson, and by the end I truly did. That’s the big difference. I was doing the DVD commentary, and it was hard to get through it because you realize who you were at the beginning. The last day of production was a hospital scene, and you could barely talk over it because you’d changed so much and discovered so much about yourself. The characters in that scene became very much alive and mysterious in different ways. The journey continues to unfold post-Sundance. I changed quite a bit.

It seems to be quite a difficult task to create a film that features an intrinsically upbeat message without feeling tawdry or mind-numbingly sugarcoated. There’s a reason most films of the aforementioned nature appeal only to toddlers, and it’s because anyone past pre-school age knows that life is never perfect. There are always going to be obstacles, and finding happiness will never be as easy as it seems. In Welcome to Happiness, writer-director Oliver Thompson invites viewers into a world where genuine happiness is obtainable, but only to those who are all too familiar with the inherent difficulties of life.

Kyle Gallner stars as Woody Ward, a children’s book author whose closet features a mysterious door that allows special, troubled people to enter through in order to find happiness. Despite serving as a pseudo gatekeeper of the door, Woody has no idea what lies on the other side, though he is incredibly curious. After he meets Trudy (Olivia Thirlby), a charming young woman with whom he shares an apartment complex, Woody’s life begins to change, resulting in his desire to uncover the truth behind the door to a happier life.

Welcome to Happiness is an extremely “quirky,” Wes Anderson-style adventure comedy with an incredible ensemble cast and a dozens of wacky characters. Make no mistake, though, the film is completely comfortable venturing into very dark places. In order to stress the importance of happiness, Thompson opts to show many of the characters at their lowest. However, these moments of bleakness are never held for too long, and there is always a powerful sense of hopefulness throughout.

While the bizarre plot is reason enough to buy a ticket to Welcome to Happiness, the film’s star-studded cast secures the film’s success. At this point in her career, it seems almost impossible for Olivia Thirlby to not be violently charming, but she outdoes herself here, as one of the most absurdly adorable girls next door to appear onscreen in years. Her chemistry with Gallner is honest and sweet, and ultimately, very realistic. On the complete opposite end of the performance spectrum, the always-hilarious Keegan-Michael Key is absolutely fantastic as a peculiar baseball card collector named Procter, and appears to be having the time of his life in the role. With supporting roles from Nick Offerman, Brendan Sexton III, Josh Brener, and Molly C. Quinn, among others, the film has the feel of a big-budget Hollywood production, but the homey charm of an indie flick.

Thompson (who also edited the film) chooses to use a few strange editing choices throughout. Songs fade in and out somewhat jarringly, and some of the cuts are a bit peculiar. It fits fairly well with the storybook style of the film, but it is still noticeably weird at times. Perhaps that’s part of what makes the film so lovely, though. Welcome to Happiness feels like this strange children’s story but darker and for adults. There’s this universally relatable nature about it, because everyone desires to find happiness in life, but we’ve all experienced hardships that constantly seem to get in the way; and pasts that we can never seem to fully shake.

As a debut, Welcome to Happiness proves to be a pretty remarkable arrival for Oliver Thompson, who quickly stakes his claim as a filmmaker to watch. Despite a few moments that seem out of place in the grand scheme of the story, there’s so much to enjoy about this film that it’s really an easy recommendation. It’s a feel-good tale that manages to remain mature and, most importantly, honest. It’s the ideal two-hour road trip to happiness.

Believe Me marks director Will Bakke’s first foray into fiction film after two documentaries, One Nation Under God and Beware of the Christians. Both of these films attempted to explore Christianity’s place within modern society, by asking people on the street about their beliefs. Believe Me takes a similar introspective look at Christianity as it follows four college students and their attempts to raise funds for their university tuition by embezzling funds through a fake Christian charity.

After finding out his scholarship has run out Sam (Alex Russell) decides to set up his own fake charity Get Well Soon. The charity targets philanthropic Christians, supposedly to raise money to help fight poverty in Africa, when in fact Sam is using the charity as a front to raise money for his tuition fees at university. His friends agree to go along with his scheme on the condition that they get their own cut of the money, taken from the donations. After a chance encounter with a representative from a major Christian Ministry, Cross Country which helps raise substantial funds for Christian charities, Sam and his three friends Tyler (Sinqua Walls), Pierce (Miles Fisher) and Baker (Max Adler) find themselves on tour with the company traveling across the country, and speaking in front of thousands of people trying to persuade them to donate money to his fake charity.

One of the difficulties of dealing with a plot where the characters carry out an amoral act, stealing in the name of charity, is giving the characters a degree of likability. In lieu of likability, even a degree of uniqueness would make the characters more interesting to watch, but in the case of Believe Me the film’s leads are rather bland. Bakke tries to emulate the laid back college humor of Judd Apatow films, but his characters often come across as one-dimensional and consequently the jokes fall flat. The most pertinent example of this lack of depth, is in the character of Tyler, whose sole purpose is apparently to act as conscience provoker to Sam. There is also a strange encounter with a college professor (Nick Offerman), who breaks down in front of Sam, which doesn’t work. It’s an odd scene that may well be at home on an awkward office comedy such as Parks and Recreation (which Offerman also stars in) but is at odds with the tone of the rest of the film.

However, Believe Me really hits its stride when focusing on the satirical take on Christian commercialization. Each of the leads, who engage in preaching to packed stadiums, practice certain stances to provoke the audience. This includes the ‘Shawshank’, where they hold both arms in the air and look to the heavens as in the famous film Shawshank Redemption and the “Gecko” in which they hold both hands flat towards the ground, like the lizard basking in the sun. The Christian rock singer Gabriel (Zachary Knighton) who joins them on the charity tour is also good fun and helps inject the film with much needed charisma. Johanna Brady also works well to elevate her character from just being Sam’s love interest and provides the emotional backbone to the latter half of the film. Equally, Miles Fisher who plays Sam’s rich friend Pierce, breaks through the confines of the ‘rich boy’ stereotype and as the film develops easily becomes one of the film’s most interesting characters.

Hidden beneath the comedy and gentle drama of Believe Me is a potentially more interesting and darker film. This is particularly the case with Christopher McDonald’s tour leader Ken, whose morals seem to be just as adrift as Sam’s despite appearances. Furthermore, the satire that Believe Me does present of the commercial Christian roadshows, in which people are arguably duped into believing what they are told to believe, is such a rich source material it’s a shame that Bakke decided to not go further and delve deeper into the inner workings of the roadshow.

Believe Me is a film which provokes laughs but too often misses its mark, particularly during the film’s opening sequences. It’s also a film which raises interesting questions around modern Christianity and particularly its relationship with capitalism. However, Bakke’s reluctance to answer any of these questions with anything other than ambiguous platitudes can prove frustrating. There is nothing wrong with ambiguity, especially when dealing with complex issues, but Bakke is so desperate not to preach that in the end Believe Me ends up being a film which says very little.

Believe Me trailer

Remember Don LaFontaine? He’s the movie trailer guy; the “In a world…” guy. You know, the deep, gravelly voice that announced countless movie trailers in the ‘80s and ‘90s. LaFontaine, who has now left us, left a hole in the movie industry as grand and deep as his legendary baritone rumble. In the fictional world of In a World…, Lake Bell’s writer/director debut (she also stars), three voiceover artists bite, backstab, and dupe each other as they battle it out to assume LaFontaine’s now vacant throne.

Carol (Bell) is a smart-ass semi-slacker and aspiring voiceover artist with a kind heart. Her dad thinks her dream of voiceover success is a big joke and treats her like a loser. He happens to be the biggest winner of them all, Sam Sotto (the invaluable Fred Melamed), a pot-bellied egomaniac with a voice as smooth and rich as molasses and the most successful voiceover artist since LaFontaine (he’s still bitterly jealous of the deceased because, as you’ve probably surmised, he’s a self-involved dick.) Sam’s protégé is young, big-shot voiceover artist Gustav Werner (Ken Marino), a McMansion-owning scumbag whose douchiness is only matched by his mentor’s. He finds Carol’s dream just as laughable as Sam does. The two buddies are successful trailer guys, but from their bloated egos you’d think they were the biggest stars in showbiz (they conspire by the pool, they make snide one-liners at swanky parties, they spit misogynistic vitriol in the sauna.)

When a career-defining trailer gig opens up (for a sort of feminist Hunger Games-ish mega-blockbuster), Sam and Gustav are considered (mostly by themselves) top contenders, but Carol’s been quietly building steam in the industry herself, even (unknowingly) beating out Gustav for a few gigs. She’s wriggled her way into the dark horse position, and the jockeying turns into a maelstrom, with Sam backstabbing Gustav, Gustav sleeping with Carol (he corners her in a secret room full of oddities in his mansion and makes out with her nose), and Carol shoving her dad’s disgust for her ambition right back in his face.

The film is also a family drama, an ensemble comedy, a Hollywood satire, and a cute romance, with some feminist through lines thrown in for good measure. This is its biggest setback; there are so many subplots and asides at work that it becomes narratively scatterbrained and unwieldy. Dimitri Martin plays Louis, Bell’s nerdy-nice-guy producer and love interest. They make a nice pairing, and Martin’s shy tip-toeing is sweet. In other romantic news, the always on-point Michaela Watkins plays Bell’s sister, Dani, who’s happily married to Moe (Rob Corddry), though she flirts with danger as her eye wanders to her dashingly European boss, Jason O’Mara. Oh, and then there’s the family dynamic between Carol, Dani, Sam, and his creepily young girlfriend.

These subplots are acted very, very well by the cast, which is brimming with standouts (Nick Offerman, Geena Davis, and even Eva Longoria also join the fray.) However, what ends up happening is they detract from Bell’s guided tour of the sleazy, cutthroat world of voiceover actors, which is In a World…’s best asset; it provides the most interesting, unique, and hilarious moments. I only wish Bell made more room for it.

What’s really great about Carol’s storyline is that it ends on a note of female empowerment which is incredibly uplifting and fulfilling. I grew to care about Carol very much, and to see her come out the other side the way she does made me leave the film happy. It just feels like Bell was so dead-set on fitting every clever idea she had into the script that she ended up with a busier script than it needed to be. Still, In a World… is a clever, character-centric comedy that’s got a great cast and is framed by such a strangely peculiar backdrop that it sets itself apart.

In a World trailer

Short Term 12

SXSW film-goers pegged this picture pretty well when they gave it the audience award a few months ago. Destin Cretin’s second feature in as many years is an honest crowd pleaser that leaves you feeling all warm inside. Brie Larson, in an exceptional dramatic turn, and a solid John Gallagher Jr., mentor a very good ensemble cast as the head staff at foster care facility named Short Term 12. Cretin skillfully reveals that the bright faculty of this care center emerged from a similar backgrounds as many of the children they oversee. He does so with a script that skirts the many clichés of a ‘troubled kids’ drama and renders his characters painfully clear. In a post-screening Q and A he admitted to working in a facility similar to the one depicted in the film and conducting hours of interviews with workers and children as research.

Short Term 12 often deals in extreme emotions and Cretin guides his actors skillfully into restrained performances, yet at times the filmmaking fails to follow suit. Too often the production sound falls to a dreamy silence as the music, an excellent score from young composer Joel West, pumps up the emotion when audiences are already right there with the film. So many recent filmmakers have adopted a “naturalist”, documentary, or handheld style that it feels like the new norm. It’s more shocking to see carefully executed dolly shots and classical editing than shaky close-ups in low lighting. In Short Term 12, Cretin with long time cinematographer Brett Pawlak, execute this style to a tee and allow their actors to shine. Cretin and his team craft a beautiful film about nontraditional families using traditional storytelling.

RATING: 8

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

David Lowery’s unclear and unconvincing script extinguishes what could have been a fiery noir burning with lust and violence. His story contains many great crime genre staples—a love struck criminal, a beautiful country girl, a menacing father figure, lusty cops, and a prison escape; not to mention it’s set in the 30s. The industrious Lowery has lured immense talent to his film but fails to deliver even an ounce of the proposed excitement.

Full Review of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

RATING: 5

In a World

Lake Bell, a lovely character actor, makes her feature debut as writer/director with the unique comedy In a World. She draws from an impressive Rolodex of friends, such as Children’s Hospital co-stars Rob Courdry, Ken Marino, and Nick Offerman. Bell delights in filling most of the cast with comedians who all excel in dramatic turns. In a World works because it is not just silly nonsense like many of this summer’s comedies, but a compelling father daughter story set in the goofy, yet interesting, niche world of Hollywood voiceover artists.

Bell plays, Carol, a shiftless layabout who specializes in voice coaching dialects because she thinks she cannot make it in the cutthroat would of voice acting, dominated by her father, Sam, played by the marvelous Fred Melamed. Sam seems comfortable to pass the torch to a younger voice stud named Gustav when studios revive the classic movie trailer phrase, “In a World…” for a new round of epic Hunger Games/Twilight-esque films, but Carol begins booking voice over gigs of her own and throws a wrench into this male dominated world. On paper the plot seems a bit trite, but the wealth of supporting characters, touching family drama, and beautiful performances all around make for a great time. Bell perfectly balances the laughs with the drama and never lets the story get too silly or too dire. She crafts a wonderful and heartfelt comedy that also addresses serious issues of family relationships and feminism in Hollywood yet remains entertaining throughout. I look forward to more films from Bell.

RATING: 7

There are a lot of wonderful components at work in Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ feature debut— a savvy, clever screenplay, gorgeous nature-porn cinematography, a heaping helping of ‘80s nostalgia, and a genuinely funny cast—he just doesn’t quite fit them together. Every scene works in the moment, but when I took a step back from The Kings of Summer, I noticed how disjointed and shoddily constructed the production is. Vogt-Roberts aims for profundity but misses the mark as his fondness for improv-heavy long-takes and sheer outlandishness dulls the impact of the moments that engage the heart.

Chris Galletta’s screenplay is familiar material, a tale of youthful independence painted with glistening ‘80s nostalgia that invites comparison to its coming-of-age-movie older brothers (Stand By Me, Lord of the Flies), but it lacks their substance. Joe Toy (Nick Robinson), is a wiseass teen with a dad (Nick Offerman, Parks and Recreation) who’s been a verbally abusive asshole to Joe ever since his wife died. Joe has a dream of independence, of breaking free from his dad and living on his own. Joe’s a doer, so he makes this happen. He builds a shabby dumpster-hut of a house in the woods just outside of town with his best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso) who is equally enthusiastic about escaping the clutches of his overprotective all-American parents (played by comedy vets Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson). Their tiny alien/cartoon-like friend Biaggio (Moises Arias) tags along for the ride, a strange creature of a kid who spews the most random (and hilarious) one-liners I’ve heard in a long time. The merry trio live the dream, roaring and romping and stomping through the wilderness, jumping into lakes (in slow motion), living off the land (and a nearby Boston Market) and never bathing or shaving.

As I mentioned earlier, Joe’s a go-getter, so now that he’s made his first dream a reality it’s on to the next one. He invites his crush, Kelly (Erin Moriarty) out to the playhouse in hopes of working his sunglass-suave charm on her. His ploy to kindle a summer fling doesn’t play out as she falls for Patrick, the Cameron to Joe’s Bueller. The rift that forms between the best buds eventually shatters the dreams that Joe worked so hard to make real. All the while, the parents search for the boys and search themselves for the reason they drove their sons away.

What shines about The Kings of Summer is its cast, who all hit homeruns from top to bottom. Robinson hangs with the hilariously boorish and grumpy Offerman like a pro—their verbal assaults on each other are equally gut-busting. Arias is funny as hell as the out-of-this-world Biaggio, really digging into bizarre lines like “I met a dog the other day that taught me how to die”. You need to embrace your role to make lines like that work, and everybody in the film attacks with the same level of commitment.

What’s problematic is that I went from laughing out loud at Biaggio’s slapstick to staring blankly at sobering, out of place, Malick-ian montages of the kids basking in sun-soaked tall grass and splashing around in a pastoral river. In a later scene a random ‘totally wasted’ couple sloppily attempts to screw in that same river, and we’re back to slapstick again. The montages are actually quite pretty, and the drunk couple scene is funny, but they feel like they belong to different movies.

There is a lot to enjoy in The Kings of Summer, but there is also a lot to be desired. The cast’s spot-on performances are worth the price of admission, but I can’t help but think how great the film could have been, if only it were more comfortable in its own skin.

In Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ The Kings of Summer (which screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival), young guns Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso, and Moises Arias play teenage boys who break free from their overbearing parents, build a kick-ass house in the woods, live off the land (sort of), and invite girls over to have some uninhibited, no-shits-given fun. Girls however, as we all know, are the downfall of many a teenage boy friendship, so the mirage of paradise quickly fades. Backstabbing, insult-flinging, and heartbreaking ensue as the nature boys battle over (what else?) the pretty girls. The Kings of Summer is as intelligent as it is hilarious, and its cast spits nothing but comedy gold.

The three young stars of the film spoke with Way Too Indie about stretching their improve skills, working with the likes of Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, the importance of getting along with each other on set, throwing hammers, and much more.

WTI: You guys are really on point in the film in terms of your improvisation skills. Nick, you had an especially tall task, going line for line with Nick Offerman, who plays your dad. Did you guys spend time before the shoot practicing improv?

Nick Robinson: We were all enrolled in an improv class before [filming] started to get to know one another and also to hone our skills, since we were going to be working with some of the funniest people in the world. It helped. I got to go toe to toe with Nick Offerman and survived so…

Moises Arias: It was very interesting. I could only show up to one of the classes, so I only got to meet the dudes (Nick and Gabriel). I hadn’t met Jordan. I got the role on tape because I was shooting another film. It was a very, very interesting first day. Jordan was a really cool dude, Nick and Gabriel were ready to do their thing, and I was excited. Nick Offerman is one of the greatest people I’ve ever worked with. [I didn’t have a scene with] Megan Mullally, but she was fantastic to watch work. Marc Evan Jackson is a genius. It was awesome.

Gabriel Basso: Yeah, they pretty much said it (laughs). It was a pleasure working with them.

WTI: Moises, your lines in the film as the wonderfully weird Biaggio absolutely killed at the screening I went to. The things you say are really strange and off-putting, and totally hilarious. Were there lines cut out of the film that were even more bizarre?

MA: One hundred percent. [One of the lines from the film] “I met a dog that taught me how to die” is pretty out there. Chris Galletta is a fantastic writer. He comes up with random shit right on the spot. Jordan is big on skits and rolling the camera longer [than normal] and just riffing. Everybody stepped their games up and brought something to the table. I just felt that I should say whatever came into my head. A lot of it was really stupid. I remember one specific joke that didn’t make it. There would be a moment when I wouldn’t be looking at Nick, and he’d say…

NR: “Hey, Biaggio, look at me.”

MA: “I’m looking right at you.”

NR: “You’re not looking at me.”

MA: “Yes I am.”

NR: “Biaggio, you’re clearly not looking at me!”

MA: “I’m making complete eye contact.” It would just go on and on and on. There were a lot [of scenes] where we’d go on too long, or just weren’t funny. It was very interesting.

WTI: Nick, you and Gabriel had very different challenges. You had to, like you said, go toe to toe with Nick Offerman, one of the funniest people in movies. Gabriel, you had to listen to Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson (who play your parents) deliver insanely funny dialog while standing there trying to act upset and annoyed.

GB: It was incredibly tough. You have to not laugh. It’s one of those things where you don’t really have a choice, and if you break, you have to go back as quick as you can. I had a scene with Megan and the woman who played my grandma where [Nick and I] could not keep it together. They ended up cutting the scene short either because it didn’t work or…

NR: It was probably our fault (laughs). We could not keep our shit together.

GB: It was bad!

NR: It was 2am or something, and we were just so tired. For some reason, [that scene] was just hilarious.

GB: It was extremely tough, because I had to act pissed, and they were saying the funniest stuff. It was tough, but awesome at the same time.

NR: Nick Offerman is pretty intimidating to work with at first, but [once I got to know him] he was the nicest man I’d ever met. He does not break. No matter what, he does not break. I’d have to bite my tongue so hard during his stonewall delivery. I got used to it after a little while, but it was tough.

MA: I made him break once! Let’s just put that out there. It was during the snake/urine scene. Let’s just keep it at that.

NR: Okay, okay (laughs). That was a moment.

WTI: Were there takes where you’d shoot way longer than you intended to, just trading lines with these talented folks?

NR: Oh yeah. Like Moises said, Jordan is a big fan of just letting the cameras roll, letting everybody riff and mess around and seeing what comes out of it. We’d have 20-minute takes where, when everyone ran out of dialog, we would just throw stuff in and get as much funny stuff as we could. I really like that style, personally. Very loose, a lot of freedom, a lot of creativity.

MA: The musical pipe scene [at the beginning of the film] is all improvised. The director, writer, and cinematographer took us into the woods on a day off. They took us to these awesome locations that they didn’t have a reason for filming, but they were like “Let’s shoot B-roll just for shits and giggles. They took us to the pipe, and they said “Just start banging on the pipe!” We all started banging on it at first, then I decided to jump on it and just started doing these amazingly choreographed moves that were perfectly professional (laughs). It sort of became the backbone of the film.

GB: That’s iPhone sound in the scene.

WTI: No way…

GB: Yeah (laughs). We could have used that thing! (Gabriel points at the field recorder I use to do interviews).

WTI: It seems, from how well you guys work together, that you are friends off-set.

MA: I’ve worked on sets where you don’t get along, and that’s brutal. As an actor, you learn to try to get that spark at the beginning every time you work, because it makes things easier. These guys are good dudes and good people to work with. [Playing] Biaggio wasn’t too hard because he’s in his own world. He doesn’t have to have any [sort of rapport] with anybody. It was pretty much up to Gabriel and Nick. They’re the two best friends.

NR: The movie kind of depends on [Gabriel and I’s] relationship. It’s really hard to fake chemistry, but luckily the cast was amazing. It would have been a miserable shoot if I didn’t get along with the cast. It would have been miserable.

GB: We shot in the middle of nowhere.

NR: Yeah. At least 12 hours a day, with each other all the time. If I didn’t like you, Gabe (laughs)…shit would have gone down!

GB: It goes both ways! Thank god we got along. Near the end of the shoot, we had more down time than we had at the beginning, so we got a chance to bond.

WTI: What’s great about the film is that it’s about kids, but doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence. There’s a maturity about the film that makes it stand out among other films with similar plots.

GB: A lot of that has to do with the script. It was really well-written. In fact, that’s what brought us to the project. Chris did an amazing job. Thank god Jordan was there, because he put an amazing artistic spin on it. Ross Riege, the cinematographer, is brilliant.

NR: Ross is a genius.

WTI: Some shots look like a Terrence Malick film.

NR: Yeah, lots of Malick influence, lots of old Spielberg.

GB: But yeah, it just comes down to the script and the people we had executing the material. It all came together really, really well, and we all worked hard on it. I’m happy with the way it turned out.

WTI: Talk a little about the set of the house in the woods. It’s amazing! Did you guys improvise at all with it physically?

MA: The hammer throwing was destroying the house instead of building it.

GB: (laughs) It was coming down when we were messing around with it like that.

MA: The tree scene where I’m camouflaged [was improvised]. The throwing of the stick and all that shit was all Gabe.

GB: I hit that mailbox multiple times.

MA: He’s very proud of that.

GB: It was my moment on set (laughs).

NR: I remember the first time I got really excited on set was the day we walked into the house set for the first time. It was so cool. The set decorators did an amazing job. It immediately felt like a home. They had all kinds of trinkets and weird stuff on the walls. Part of the roof was a whiteboard. They scavenged from some dump. They had a pee bottle filled with lemonade in the corner (laughs). I’d always find new little things in that house as we filmed, like some nook that I missed or some weird figurine.

WTI: The film’s ending is very well done. It sort of makes the film, as we don’t end up where we expected to.

NR: The ending is amazing. It pretty much came off as written in the original script with us flipping each other off in the cars and driving off.

MA: In the hospital, [they] had a little dialog sequence, but they cut that out. They don’t exchange a word at the end, and I think it worked out perfectly. I love how that last scene came together. When I saw it for the first time at Sundance, I was like…”That was dope.”

GB: It reflects real life. You know, the cool guy doesn’t always get the girl. Friends don’t always mend a relationship after stuff like that goes down. I think the reason it lands with most people is because they’ve been through that and they haven’t walked away unscarred. You walk away with a little rift between you which will eventually be mended. [There are consequences] to decisions, and the end of the film does a good job of showing that.

NR: The last scene was actually the last scene we filmed, so it did have weight to it. “This is the last one. Let’s do it for the road. Cheers.”

The Kings of Summer is out in select cities this Friday, May 31st. Stay tuned to Way Too indie for our full review.

Twenty Feet From Stardom

If you’re a music fan, names like Tata Vega, Merry Clayton, and Darlene Love should be familiar to you, but chances are they aren’t. That’s because these ladies—powerhouse singers and masters of their craft—have spent their entire careers in the background, literally and figuratively, as underappreciated background singers. Director Morgan Neville plucks the gifted ladies from their usual wingwoman positions and gives them their own stage to shine on, in Twenty Feet From Stardom.

You could say that, at one time, background singers were the backbone of pop music. However, they seldom received the credit they deserved. They sang the unforgettable hooks to classic songs and got no credit, while the lead singer preened and pranced on the track and on stage. Darlene Love, a legendary background singer, was a victim of a nasty form of this musical hierarchy. She sang lead vocals on the Phil Spector hit ‘He’s a Rebel’ with her group, The Blossoms, but the song was released as a Crystals (one of Spector’s girl groups) song. Love’s name was nowhere to be found on the record.

Neville captures the undervalued vocalists exhibiting their colossal power in awe-inspiring studio session segments, but most notably, showcases their heartwarming personalities. To watch Darlene love reunite with The Blossoms after years apart and see the youth in their eyes sparkle as they reminisce makes the heart swell. Twenty Feet From Stardom will likely change the way you listen to music, which is priceless.

RATING: 7.8

The Kings of Summer

Three teenage friends (Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso, Moises Arias), feeling suffocated by their overbearing parents, decide to build a house of their own out in the woods where their parents can never bother them again. After building their DIY bro-shack, they throw sharp objects at things, jump off of things, hit things with sticks, and live off the land (and, occasionally, a nearby Boston Market.) They’re living the dream. Then, they invite girls over. So much for the dream! Damn you, hormones!

The plot offers nothing new, nothing exciting to latch on to. This year alone, I’ve seen at least four coming-of-age stories of teenagers in revolt. The good news is, The Kings of Summer is the cream of the crop. Though the story is old hat, the sharp writing and uproariously funny cast make it feel new again, and every scene feels fresh. I rarely find movies about kids to be genuinely funny (they’re usually full of corny-cute gags), but The Kings of Summer has an intelligent, razor-sharp wit and embraces the bizarre with such fearlessness that it had me laughing every step of the way.

What’s impressive about the film’s comedic success is that its stars are relative newcomers to the game, yet deliver their lines with skill beyond their years. This is apparent in scenes where Robinson, the Bueller of the trio, hangs beat for beat, quip for quip with the seasoned Nick Offerman, who plays his wise-ass, bully father. Their scenes are the funniest in the film, and it’s impressive to see such a young talent excel with such maturity. The film is surprisingly gorgeous, with Malick-ian nature shots scattered throughout, which can feel a little out of place at times.

Stay tuned to Way Too Indie for our full review and an interview with the cast.

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.

Trying to balance a humorous, honest and emotional film about alcoholism seems like an impossible task but it is what James Ponsoldt’s Smashed attempts to do. The film has earned some recognition by winning the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival as well as a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize and recently receiving an Independent Spirit Award nod for Best Female Lead. While Smashed centers around a characters dependence on alcohol, the film itself is largely dependent on the performance of its characters to carry it. For the most part they do but were relied on too much as the script wears thin by the third act.

Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Charlie Hannah (Aaron Paul) wake up in urine stained bed sheets but shrug it off as not a big deal which implies that it is a common occurrence. Kate is seen showering with a beer after a heavy night of drinking before heading off to work as an elementary school teacher. Before entering class, she takes some drinks from her flask. When she is teaching, however, she is the fun teacher that is very energetic playing with all the kids. That is until all the movement causes her to throw up in front of them.

Someone without a strong dependence on alcohol would most likely feel ashamed by this and would have seen the incident as a sign. But instead Kate goes out the same night to a local bar and does karaoke, of course under the influence of alcohol. One event leads to another and she ends up smoking crack after a prostitute convinces her to give her a ride. She wakes up on the street the next morning and finally starts to consider the fact that she has a problem.

After talking to one of her co-workers about her problem, Kate gets introduced to an Alcoholics Anonymous program. She starts attending meetings with her co-worker and begins to transform into a new sober person. People told her that the beginning of sobriety was the hardest yet it was not as difficult on her as it was on the relationship between her and her husband. The story ends up being whether Kate can continue to fight through her addiction by herself or cave into her old destructive self by staying with Charlie.

The cast ends up being by far the best asset of Smashed. Mary Elizabeth Winstead shines in a role that is dark and depressing. As the film progresses, you see the different sides of her character based on her level of sobriety. Aaron Paul plays a familiar role of the out of control substance abuser as he does in the excellent TV show Breaking Bad but is in the film less than you may imagine. Nick Offerman from another popular TV show, Parks and Recreation, plays the role of Kate’s co-worker who introduces her to AA. Offerman does well in the role but the role itself felt questionable. He is obviously an important part of the story as he leads Kate in the right direction but after one awkward scene you wonder if he was just meant for comic relief.

This leads into what I think was the biggest problem of Smashed, and that is the direction (or lack of direction) the film wanted to take. At times Smashed felt like it was aiming for the end product to be a light dramedy. Demonstrated when Kate is drinking whiskey in her car before teaching class, the music was light and almost cheerful. By the end it feels like it was an attempt to make it a dark character study that is a little harder hitting. By no means is having a balance a bad thing but this felt more like indecisiveness than anything.

Smashed is a sincere character study about a woman that deals with an addiction that grows beyond her control and the consequences that come from it. It is an honest take on a dark subject matter of alcoholism. Unfortunately, the film feels like it is missing clear direction and falls apart a bit in the third act. A couple of the characters felt underwritten, forcing Mary Elizabeth Winstead to do most of the heavy lifting which she fortunately handles well. Smashed fits into the rare category of a film not being long enough, or perhaps edited down too much, for it to be completely effective.