It may just be a coincidence that Lena Dunham was a guest speaker at SXSW the same year Fort Tilden won the Grand Jury Award at the festival, but it’s certainly fitting. The film has nearly the same setup of Dunham’s popular HBO program Girls–young privileged female hipsters living in Brooklyn, struggling to make it in life in spite of everything being given to them. Directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers put more emphasis than Girls on the satirical aspect of their helpless and obnoxious characters, but the results aren’t far off from each other–a funny indie comedy featuring reprehensible people.

Twenty-something hipsters Harper (Bridey Elliott) and Allie (Clare McNulty) share a massive apartment in Williamsburg despite not actually working for a living thanks to wealthy parents. Ask them what they do and Allie will respond that she’s preparing for the Peace Corps and Harper will claim to be an artist despite not showing any signs of interest in the craft. Which is why it’s funny (and somewhat annoying) when the roommates insist on “taking the day off” to meet-up on the beach with two guys they met at a party. Really? A day off from what? But the real question becomes, how the hell are these inept self-involved friends going to navigate the city? It’s not a far trek, bu

Fort Tilden doesn’t hide the shallowness of its characters. Upon realizing they’re a bike short for their beach trip, Allie demands one from their creepy neighbor without a hint of courtesy. But Harper isn’t remotely grateful as she simply refuses to ride a stranger’s bike. These are the kind of people who are easy to loathe, and this film embraces that.

Speed bumps are hit before they even get on the street because neither of them know how to pump air into a tire. Failing at the simplest of tasks ends up being the running joke in Fort Tilden. Though once they step outside of their apartment, and into the real world, many of the jokes are about over-paying for everything. Because money has been handed to them without having to work for it, their concept of money is completely skewed. Which is how they end up spending $100 on a cab ride and $200 for an old barrel without thinking twice about it.

Laughs begin to fade when they do finally reach their destination, but it’s actually not a bad thing. For the first time reality settles in for both characters and you can practically hear the gears shifting in the story. Up until this point their knee-jerk reaction to problem solving was to call daddy or write a snarky text, their phone activity displayed onscreen used as a neat effect, but when they put their phones down we see their true identities at last. And this is when Bridey Elliott and Clare McNulty truly shine in their roles. Throughout Fort Tilden the chemistry between Elliott and McNulty is silky-smooth, but in their darkest hour it’s clear they’re a perfect match for each other.

There are moments when the gags are overplayed and their personalities are borderline insufferable, but that’s kind of the point of Fort Tilden. Eventually these two obnoxious, adolescent souls come to realize that they need to grow up. But until that moment, watching the unintelligent friends attempt to reach their simple destination as if it were some epic feat is surprisingly entertaining–almost like a female hipster version of Dumb and Dumber. Fort Tilden is a bumpy ride at times, but it remains a charming expedition, which is perfectly summed up in the last line of the film, “This is tediously adorable.”

Originially published on July 28th, 2014

The story of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams, The Color of Time is told through a series of flashbacks, voiced over at times by the poet’s own works read aloud by James Franco, who also stars in the film. Walking us through various elements of Williams’ life in no particular order, the film attempts to slowly unravel his existence into a series of experiences that not only inspired his poetry, but combined to make his work a visceral reflection of life as he knew it. Yet problematically, the film fails to do so in a way that delves into who Williams was as an individual, instead allowing his story to blend into the commonly held, stereotypical understanding of troubled young men becoming troubled old poets.

Written and directed by twelve students from Franco’s class at NYU, The Color of Time is a film for students; its heavily filtered aesthetic and non-linear structure will appeal far more to the artistic undergraduate than the average cinema-goer. This is not merely the result of a film that is too intellectual or abstract to appeal to a mainstream audience, but rather a fundamental flaw in the established style that has been liberally applied to the entire piece. While on the one hand it is commendable that a film created by twelve individuals is so cohesive, on the other it could certainly be argued that this is simply a uniformity born of a lack of originality. Indeed, the film is clearly inspired by the picturesque beauty of Terrence Malick films, down to the sepia-toned fields of long grass. In allowing the film to be thus influenced to the point of detraction from its core subject, the filmmakers make sure that though it may be a beautiful imitation, it will never stand out. Rather than remaining honest to the needs of the story, the different aspects of Williams’ life have been manipulated to fit a stereotypical understanding of how such biopics tend to go.

Jessica Chastain also stars in the film, but appears to essentially be reprising her role from The Tree of Life; she performs admirably, but even this does not distract from the knowledge that we have seen this character before. There is only one point at which the film seems to truly break out of its self-imposed shell, and this comes through the portrayal of a drug-induced stupor that Franco, as a young Williams, finds himself in. It is, ironically, a breath of fresh air – a reminder that the film does in fact have some creative minds behind it. Yet just as we come to hope that the film might continue to break away in such a fashion, it snaps back to what the filmmakers have no doubt decided is the “tried and true” method.

The biggest problem with all of this, however, is not simply audience exasperation, but in fact the disservice it does to Williams’ poetry. Poetry as an art demands a personal reaction: an interpretation through which it can become a powerful force in our own lives. Few would expect that film could be the medium to reduce it to little more than a series of platitudes set to melancholic piano music. Perhaps the poignancy lies only in the poetry, and not in the film—an implication only made further apparent by the lingering feeling that The Color of Time should have been far more thought-provoking than it was. Though Franco seems to have attracted other stars to the project, including Mila Kunis as his wife, and Zach Braff, they are all evidently underused, functioning as fleeting moments in Williams’ life and with no real identities of their own.

Biopics, regardless of how artistic or loosely interpreted they are, are stories about people—namely, real people. The Color of Time is not a story about people, but a story about what we expect certain people to have been. Masquerading under the honesty of Williams’ poetry, it is a confirmation of our assumptions, and a pretense of profundity. By rejecting creativity in its vision, it becomes, at its core, a superficial film that–though visually appealing—does neither itself nor its subject justice.