indie film

World, Meet Jack

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 15 May 2024 13:28:38 +0000

World, Meet Jack Chet Kozlowski May 15, 2024 - 09:28

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A man sits in a field of overgrown weeds and wildflowers. He turns a video camera on himself. A patch of sunlight spotlights him, singling him out. Is it a trick of the light or a celestial signal?

The man is Jack Lee, the protagonist of the new film East Bay. Jack's frustrated. He's 39 years old. His ancestry is Korean, and his family holds themselves to a high standard, which Jack falls short of. "Success gives one's existence a meaningful narrative structure," he bemoans, due to his lack of either. What does his life add up to? When someone asks him, "What are your long-term plans?" Jack answers, "Death."

Jack works a menial job at a Silicon Valley software firm, performing "the custodial work of the digital world." He wants to be a filmmaker. He's made a few goofy and sardonic bits he wants to be considered "good bad," but he suspects they are just "bad bad." Undaunted, he enters the East Bay Film Festival. One of the festival planners, Sara, gets his jokes. She campaigns for the film to be accepted, and Jack's story arc begins.

Writer/director Daniel Yoon was born in Chicago and is now based in Toronto, Canada. His first feature was Post Concussion, shot in 1999 on 16mm film, and he's lived all sorts of lives between then and now. He's worked as an Outward Bound Instructor, leading extended canoe expeditions in Northern Ontario, as an energy policy analyst in Washington DC and Colorado, and as a management consultant to Fortune 1000 companies.

Besides writing and directing East Bay, Mr. Yoon also plays Jack, an endearing sad sack. His modest ambitions, relationship with his slacker roommates, and surprising way with beautiful women make us root for him even as he routinely sabotages himself.

If East Bay belongs to any category, it's the Confused Young Man Finding Himself Genre begun by The Graduate and refined through Orange County, High Fidelity, and even Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But it's more DIY than any of those. East Bay has the pokey quality of a school project. Mr. Yoon seems to be making it up as he goes along, surprising himself that he's got a film at the end. Granted, he allows himself some motifs, like glowing light that comes from no discernable source, singling out Jack at particular eras of his life. But for the most part, East Bay just…happens.

It's as a faux video diary, with flashbacks, flash-forwards—held together by John Welsman's pensive piano score—and Woody Allen-style asides spoken directly to the audience. Like Woody, Mr. Yoon is perceptive about human nature. As the film opens, Beth, Jack's partner (played by Melissa Pond), is embarrassed by her own intellectualism, so she puts on a "girlie act." Nervous Sara (Constance Wu of Crazy Rich Asians, and top-billed here) practically yells her dating chat at Jack as if reading off cue cards. Kavi Ramachandran Ladnier (TV's CSI: Los Angeles) is an "aspiring elite spiritual leader" about whom Jack says, "She is not completely bonkers unless you take everything she says 100% literally." Edmund Sim and Destry Miller, Jack's roommates Tim and Stuart (who both appeared in Mr. Yoon's first feature Post Concussion) show uncommon insight at unexpected times. There's even a cameo by God Himself. It's that kind of movie.

East Bay's Canadian roots show. Jack gets into the festival with a joint titled Hockey Daze; he and his roommates spend much time on the ice. The casting has a nonchalant multi-national bent that US films are still self-conscious about.

East Bay's plot is not particularly cohesive or a grand narrative. It's like a TikTok confession that branches out to themes like legacy, destiny, and divinity. It's a shaggy dog of a movie, ambling in, sticking its wet nose in your hand, wanting to be noticed. Eventually, you give in. East Bay has charm to spare and a wonderfully offbeat sensibility.

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East Bay. Directed by Daniel Yoon. 2022. From Level 33 Entertainment. In theaters and on VOD. 94 minutes.

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Suburban Desire under the Elms

Brandon Judell — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 04:39:47 +0000

Suburban Desire under the Elms Brandon Judell August 30, 2011 - 00:39

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The week before Hurricane Irene struck, I viewed a film that certainly could have benefitted from some of that storm's gusts.

The American indie The Family Tree does, truthfully, blow about quite a bit thanks to its choice cast (e.g. Dermot Mulroney, Hope Davis, Selma Blair, Keith Carradine, Jane Seymour), but its overabundance of inane plot lines configured by screenwriter Mark Lisson and its unfocused direction by Vivi Friedman couldn't get a kite knee-level.

The locale is Serenity, Ohio; the family is the Burnetts; and the narrator is 17-year-old gun-toting Eric (Max Theriot), who's having problems of all sorts. He even opens the film with, "Everyone has a breaking point. This is mine."

The next moment we're in the therapy office of Rachel Levy (Rachel Leigh Cook), a shrink who quickly realizes she's no match for the battling Burnetts. Mom, better known as Bunny (Davis), has focused all of her energies into raising money for charities (that she doesn't care about) and into copulating with her neighbors (who fit into all age brackets). Dad or Jack (Mulroney), since he's not getting any nookie at home, has the hots for a secretary at his company, while sister Kelly (the charismatic Britt Robertson) has developed a reputation as the Queen of Oral Sex at her high school.

If this weren't enough, a dead body is hanging from a tree next to the Burnett house, unseen; Eric falls for a disabled lesbian who desires Kelly; and Bunny has an accident mid-orgasm and partially loses her memory, thus becoming a nicer person who adores her husband. Oh, and then there are the thugs of color who have to talk to their moms mid-robberies, and a lesbian teacher who makes out with a student in the school bathroom. Stereotypes abound here, but in a manner so mishandled they unintentionally seem racist and homophobic. This is a wannabe black comedy that lacks the wit to be one.

Only Robertson and John Patrick Amedori as a mohawked boy in love rise above the material to embody full-blooded beings. As for Davis and Mulroney, who are usually splendid in whatever they take on, here they seem to be phoning in their yuks.

So in the end what we are presented with is a mildly affable comedy of familial dysfunction that wants to chide the times for being both morally and emotionally obtuse. Instead, The Family Tree winds up being little more than a film uprooted.

Garden of Earthly Delights

Dusty Wright — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:03:17 +0000

Garden of Earthly Delights Dusty Wright November 1, 2008 - 18:03

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Some movies unfurl slowly. The characters draw you in and then gradually reveal themselves, allowing the audience to see, feel, and breathe their world through their point of view, regardless of how ugly or boring it may be. The indie movie Eden (Liberation Entertainment) is one such movie.

Irish director Declan Recks expertly adapts writer Eugene O'Brien's award-winning play about a marriage teetering on the brink of extinction while exposing the tedium and underlying staleness that many couples experience after growing too comfortable with each other. Billy and Brenda Farrell's relationship is hanging by a thread, though a glimmer of hope exists as they plan to rekindle their passion for each other on the eve of their 10th wedding anniversary in their small Irish town.

Starring the riveting Eileen Walsh (best actress, Tribeca Film Festival) and Aidan Kelly, these actors channel real-people issues; no cotton candy Hollywood gloss, nor art-house pretentiousness. Billy, like many men looking for some spark in a dulled marriage, allows the illusion of friendliness with a young Irish lass to fuel his lust. His wife, Brenda, wrestles with her own maudlin matters. All the while she silently tries to make him take notice of her amid their horribly boring suburban existence. Most nights she sits on the couch watching the tube with their two equally bored children while dad heads to the pub to seek solace with his mates. Then upon his return she feigns sleep, anxiously awaiting his touch to resuscitate their flat-lined sex life.

This loveless existence plays out over and over again until the evening of their anniversary and the promise of rekindled passions. While the third act's climax is a tad melodramatic, the language and the honesty that reveals itself save the film from collapsing into cinematic cliche. Regardless, this indie is worth the effort.