Little Birds
Grade: C
A coming of age tale featuring two young girls from the Salton Sea, who journey to LA, and get caught up with some no-good young boys who get in over their heads with crime and cons. Juno Temple continues to do any indie movie that comes her way, and proves to be effective as the devil-may-care half, while her best friend is still young. It's a little boring at times, and takes too long to get anywhere, but it has it's moments.
Loneliest Planet
Grade: F
An exhaustingly minimalistic mediation on nature and the nature of people in relationships. Hardly stopping to develop a character, and when it does they aren't likable, or develop a story, and recycling the same monotonous landscapes and banal pointless dialogue. Avoid.
Jack and Diane
Grade: C-
Juno Temple strikes again (again) in another indie flick, this time a summer romance between two girls (titular characters). This time Temple is the bubbly and naive Diane, while Jack is the clingy hard-ass (oxymoron?). This is also very slow, and tries to mix in this very awkward horror element, for no reason that some film-school level thesis of love being a monster. Or Diane is a werewolf. I don't know.
Man with the Iron Fists
Grade: C-
I usually would write a longer review for a film like this, but I can't think of much nice to say. I love the RZA, and his tutelage under Tarantino and Jarmusch has definitely given him an eye for good shots, and a taste for a floating camera. But his writing (hackneyed) and the editing (first cut was 4.5 hours now 114 minutes) really undermine anything good going on. With a terrible voiceover that amounts to "and then this happened" and "but you thought that was bad, aw naw son" and fight scenes that play like sportscenter highlight reels in which you have no physical idea of what is going on, not to mention poor CGI (that is overused) and you just have a trainwreck of a film. A shame.
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