Dir - Michael Mongillo
Overall: MEH
An indie psychological thriller with some ghostly activity thrown in, Diane has more ambition than it does the budgetary means to achieve that ambition. The movie hinges on Jason Alan Smith's performance; an actor that is probably too good looking to make a convincing recluse of an army veteran, (think your average CW heartthrob except with no social life, no love life, and just a five o'clock shadow and a vague limp to make him somehow less fetching). That said, he does a fine job with the material that pits him against his own tormented psyche that is reeling after a lovely lounge singer is found dead in his backyard. Filmmaker Michael Mongillo goes for a combination of bog-standard supernatural flourishes, a soundtrack that has Carlee Avers singing what sounds like a smooth jazz standard as well as some indie folk tunes, and some trippy hallucinations. Sometimes the style forgives the meager budget, but other times it is jarring and wears its amateurish constraints on its sleeves. The dialog is also a mixed bag of clever and unconvincing, plus the whole thing comes off more like an mid-range television episode than a memorable work of an auteur, but this is hardly a detrimental thing.
Dir - Caye Casas/Albert Pintó
Overall: MEH
For their first collaboration together in the apply-titled Killing God, (Matar a Dios), filmmakers Caye Casas and Albert Pintó take on some heady themes in the guise of an abrupt apocalyptic scenario where a family full of schlubs come face to face with their creator. The situation is both ridiculous and funny enough, bringing into question just how logical it is for the human race to carry on existing when it is made up of such flawed individuals. It is a wise move then that writer/directors Pintó and Casas make their small crop of characters relatable. Two are in a long and loveless marriage that has hit a stalemate due to one being a sexist curmudgeon and the other succumbing to another man's sexual advances, one is recklessly living it up in his elder years, and the other is a suicidal cuckold whose own marriage has fallen apart. None of these people are fully likeable, but none of them are fully unlikable either as they merely represent various human foibles that any of us on any given bad day can fall victim to. Emilio Gavira's portrayal as the all powerful foul-mouthed, dwarf-sized, and wine-chugging creator is a hoot, but everyone gives solid performances to the point where the impossibility of their situation becomes emotionally palpable. On that note though, the film writes itself into an ending that is bound to disappoint on some level and the structure is too repetitive to stay on track.
(2017)
Dir - Mitchell Altieri
Overall: WOOF
Lazy, obnoxious, and worst of all not funny, The Night Watchmen comes from Mitchell Altieri, (half of the Butcher Brothers filmmaking team), though he works from a script by Ken Arnold, Dan De Luca, and Jamie Nash, all three of whom fuck up the idiot-proof premise of killer vampire clown zombies run amok at a newspaper office. Both Arnold and De Luca also appear on screen, and they at least seem to be enjoying themselves, but such enthusiasm does not translate to the audience unless one is incessantly forgiving of "jokes" that seem like they were the result of a rushed first draft writing session done seconds before shooting started. The characters are wise-cracking idiots who all have arbitrary quirks no matter how much horrific bloodshed is happening all around them, and combined with something as hackneyed as creepy clowns, screaming monster faces, and gratuitous gore, it fails as an inventive genre hybrid from top to bottom. In one of many horrendously painful scenes, our heroes want to prove that a guy is not a member of the undead, so they make him dance, he does an embarrassing sexy one, they insist he does another, that one is also not convincing enough, then the token black guy starts beat-boxing and the dancing guy gets killed anyway and farts postmortem, as do other dead bodies along the way. Every horror comedy does not have to be wheel-inventing high-brow art but for fuck's sake, can we try a little harder than this?
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