The prevailing image of Joe Swanberg’s second feature is a pasty-faced young man transfixed by a tiny screen — a cellphone, a laptop, a camcorder, what have you. Often, there’s an adorable young woman with the man, but he’s oblivious to her charms. Talky and mundane but equally fresh and fascinating, LOL won me over [...]
Posts Tagged ‘independent’
The Motel
In my experience, pitching anything as “coming of age” story is instant death. Somehow, it reeks of overly familiar stuff that everybody is supposed to have moved past long ago. Bildungsroman has a slightly better ring to it, especially if you can hyphenate it somehow, but the idea is the same: teenagers learning about responsibility [...]
Little Miss Sunshine
Come and see the latest industrial-strength Sundance hit, now with 40% more quirk! Our new & improved independent™ formula leaves no storyline unsolved, no character trait unexplored, no minor role cast with an unrecognizable face, and no dry eye in the house with focus-group approved climactic superfreak dancing! But all the random quirkiness can’t make [...]
