Surprise package: Jamie Lee as a husband-hunting mum-to-be in ‘Plan B’.
Here’s a batch of reviews covering some recent independent films. All but one aren’t available in Australia.
And a friendly note to any independent filmmakers seeking review coverage:
All requests are warmly received. Just use the contact form below.
But, please, do not offer any form of inducement as it’s against the code. This is an old-fashioned site run by a Jurassic journo.
All that’s needed is a screener and maybe a bit of background.
Thank you. – Jim S
PLAN B ***1/2 (90 minutes)
The killer premise of this comically outstanding – if not exactly morally upstanding – rom-com sees a wanton woman (Jamie Lee) falling pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with her nerdy neighbour (Jon Heder), then seeking to sucker a successful businessman into thinking he’s the father.
Buoyed by a vibrant central performance from Lee (Ted Lasso, Crashing, both of which she also wrote for), the snappily paced story boldly ventures into the dark cracks of the dilemma, building great comic tension as her deception and disregard for others slowly and inevitably forces her to confront her long-dormant conscience.
Fine direction from Brandon Tamburri (who penned with Jean S. Monpère) keeps a nice edge running through the proceedings, with Subhah Agarwal providing strong support as the film’s Jiminy Cricket.
On Amazon (US only)
CON JOB *** (93 minutes)
There’s not a dead second in this absolutely nutty, extremely funny blabfest as two semi-idiots try working a scam involving the sale of a house via a corrupt notary. But before they get to that they need to deal with a series of hurdles, including the side effects of illegal supplements and a foul-mouthed food delivery driver from Australia.
Set mostly in one location – a congested suburban house – director Ian Niles (co-writing with Guy Harry) elicits fabulously energetic performances from his cast, with special kudos to Aaron Berg as the musclehead and Julia Claire Schweitzer as the crazy Aussie.
The cascade of comic verbiage flows without relent as the pair fight against a series of bad decisions and a lot of bad luck to pull off their arguably ingenious scheme. The song that accompanies the plot-tying finale should be performed at the Oscars.
A TRIP ELSEWHERE *** (93 minutes)
At the heart of this visually impressive, conceptually daring psychedelic flex is a very important message: if you have a child being cared for by a babysitter, don’t take a massive amount of hallucinogens. It won’t end well.
An engaging and singularly fevered jaunt directed by J.R. Sawyers (written with Jay Gutierrez), the story sees four distraction-seeking strangers during Covid congregate in a house to ingest inadvisable quantities of LSD, never once bothering to consult a search engine on the potential downsides.
The other-worldly imagery conjured by the hallucinations are often dazzling, though the sequences depicting the disruption of time, place and memory turn out to be more arresting.
On Prime (US only)
SOLVENT *1/2 (94 minutes)
What starts out as a fun fauxumentary about a group of experts and academics looking for Nazi documents secreted somewhere on a decrepit farm in rural Austria holds for about 45 minutes.
Then the film’s stylistic quirks and eccentricities become so self-conscious the film is simply rendered tedious – not least for its preoccupation with bottled human urine.
Directed by highly respected Austrian artist Johannes Grenzfurthner – founder of the famous-in-Europe monochrom art collective – the film’s chief crime isn’t that it’s pretentious, it’s that it’s boring.
In that regard, Solvent can at least lay claim to the singular achievement of making its 93-minute running time feel longer. A lot longer.
Though early scenes are peppered with playfulness, the piece is progressively drained of humour as the main character becomes obsessed with a pipe in a cellar that leads to a subterranean entity.
Flash montages, mostly archival images of the Holocaust and Bosnia, swish through regularly, though despite the film’s ostensibly zany style it does become visually repetitious to the point where not even the supposed “shock” images have much impact.
These chiefly involve things oozing and poking out of a rather unconvincing prosthetic phallus.
Rather than being gross or disgusting, they merely elicit yawns and bring to mind the early work of John Waters, who apparently had access to rubber appendages of a higher quality.
DEATH *** (77 minutes)
Ensconced on the outer rim of the Australian independent film scene is this low-budget rough diamond from director Anmol Mishra who unfurls the backstory of troubled young woman Sabrina (Marigold Pazar) as she lies in a bathtub having slashed herself.
The narrative is jagged, often disjointed and barely coherent. The tone is all over the shop and some of the scenes simply don’t work.
Yet what makes this little movie remarkable are the flourishes of style and the very high standard of acting, with Pazar delivering a rather mesmerizing central performance.
The camerawork is surprising and fluid, with the director’s obvious love for long takes on show. One shot that moves from the inside of a moving car to the outside once it stops is virtuoso stuff.
Death is a case of style over substance, though here at least that style makes up for a lot of the film’s shortcomings.
One can only imagine what the result would be should such skill be deployed in the service of a stronger story.
Google Movies; AppleTV; Gumroad
IT’S COMING **1/2 (88 minutes)
Believers in the supernatural will obviously love it, but skeptics are unlikely to be turned by Shannon Alexander’s admittedly engaging first-person documentary about a family that believes they see and sense paranormal activity in their small New York apartment.
The strongest aspect of the film is how the unobtrusive Alexander shows how his subjects – a single mother and a gaggle of kids – certainly believe how they’re seeing and hearing things.
So, too, the paranormal experts, two of whom brandish high-tech equipment hoping to capture the presence of the inter-dimensional entities. Their recordings, alas, are inconclusive, with no explanation offered about the supposed “spirit” the camera detects sitting in front of the TV.
As is always the case with these sorts of projects is that, entertaining as they are – and as this is – the question is never confronted as to why such paranormal entities are so cryptic and vague in their communications with this side of reality.
It brings to mind that wonderful moment in Ghost where the spirit turns on the hot water tap to steam up the bathroom mirror and then writes “boo”.
Would love to see a documentary show that.
THE BOUNCER * (78 minutes)
Unconvincing fights, wince-worthy dialogue, a poorly motivated villain, poor visual effects and a bland lead performance add up to a pretty sub-standard action offering.
Set in Romania, Frank Sharp (John Ozuna) is a bouncer at a swish nightclub that always has six people waiting to get in.
He’s a tough guy who can deploy his martial arts skills to fend off undesirables, yet he has a heart and a penchant for protecting women, especially those poor souls who accompany club-loving Russian crime lord Kane (Costas Mandylor).
He treats his dates very badly so one night Sharp steps in to save Silvia (Rosmary Yaneva) from his clutches. And the chase is on.
Why Kane cares about this particular companion is unclear. Still, he was disrespected so perhaps that was enough to justify expending so much time and resources tracking her and her protector down.
Unfortunately, director Massimiliano Cerchi doesn’t move the piece fast enough, or stage action with much impact.
The action is lame, features a distasteful scene involving a gratuitous strangulation and a very ill-judged moment that shows how our supposed hero is willing to kill an unarmed man. Note to filmmakers: that’s not heroic, that’s murder.
It doesn’t help that the visual effects are so bad – in one scene a splash of blood on the footpath jumps six inches – or that Kane is burdened by incompetent goons who can’t hit a slow-moving target from a helicopter. “My blind grandmother could shoot better than that!” he yells at one point.
And though there’s good support from Irish actor Simon Phillips (as the friend) and Australian Mandylor (who has a few funny lines), it can’t paper over Ozuna’s thin and stilted lead performance. A touch of charisma could have helped.