Bellflower (2011)

Greetings again from the darkness. This film is for all you kids out there who fantasize of a post-apocalyptic world in which you rule thanks to your killer muscle cars, hand-crafted flame throwers and total lack of dependence on society. You also treat bourbon as a major food group. If this describes you, please stay away from me ... and rush out to see this Sundance Festival favorite.

In the old days of radio, college stations would play what were known as "deep cuts". These songs were treats for the biggest fans of that artist and allowed everyone else to get a taste of a song that wasn't created to be a hit single. Bellflower is the movie equivalent of a deep cut ... filmed on a (broken) shoestring budget with driving force Evan Glodell as writer, director and lead actor. Glodell has a real feel for visual statements but I so hope his outlook on life is much brighter than the film projects.

Woodrow (Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are best friends and transplants to L.A. from Wisconsin. They come across as having ceased psychologically maturing at about age 15, though they are in their 20's now. Their whole world is tied to this poor neighborhood where they waste each day by boozing incessantly and planning their next flame thrower or souped-up muscle car. This is done with the intention of protecting them should the world turn into the deserted landscape seen in the Mad Max movies, which they admit to having seen way too many times.

As destructive plans are apt to do, theirs hits a speed bump when Woodrow meets Milly (Jessie Wiseman) during a cricket eating contest. What a great story to tell your grandkids! Anyway, Milly and Woodrow seem to be soul mates initially, but then things get complicated. Aiden is a very loyal friend and quite charming when he sets his mind to it. He stands by his friend through some staggeringly bad luck.

This isn't a movie that necessarily follows a traditional story arc. Heck, it begins by showing a scattershot montage of things to come (we assume) and none of it is particularly cheery. The ending is such that it's a web of "maybe" endings that allow us to determine just where the visions end and reality takes over.

It's no mystery why critics were so enamored with this one at Sundance. At times it plays like a student film project for a young Tarantino. Or maybe an early Kevin Smith movie, if he were ever addicted to explosions. That is meant as a compliment. Continuity is lacking on purpose and the rawness of the production comes across quite clearly and with power. Mr. Glodell will undoubtedly be given a budget larger than a credit card next time to see just what he is capable of. I for one, will be rooting for him ... just keep him away from me please!

Fmovies: So, here we are my first review. First of all, you must know I'm a really BIG watcher but I've never wrote a review for the simple reason, i never had to. But this time, it's different. Why? Because the phenomenon of this "3.0" generation really start to exasperate me. In fact I'm pretty sure all the people that destroy this movie did it on their smart-phones while "watching" it.

It's amazing how the bad reviews are incredibly long and detailed. And if i put that in parallel with some pretty popular movies for that same generation, the conclusion i come to is that you aren't capable of watching a movie in his "fullness", you just watch a succession of "scenes".

I know, i know, I'm not really talking about the movie, just go read other good reviews if you want to know why it's a f*ck*ng pretty good movie.

I wrote this review only to give you an advice if you decide to watch it: JUST DO IT, it's a real journey. Don't judge it, appreciate it, and do that until the very last moment. At the end, maybe that you will have liked it, maybe not, but at least you won't have lost 2 hours of your life, because it's unique and mesmerizing. Something you won't be able to appreciate if you analyze every seconds of it.

I'm not an expert on Directors and such, but I do know a bad movie from a good movie.

This movie started slow and I waited and waited for it to pick up, and it didn't. I had to (painfully) keep watching to see if their was more to this movie, and before I knew it it was over.

I am very perplexed that this film has a score of (6.3) on IMDb as to me its rating was closer to (2). I am starting to not trust the rating system here to help me find good movies.

I would rate this as movie to watch if there isn't anything else to do....

Bellflower fmovies. Just got out of the screening of this movie at the Independent Film Fest of Boston. Bellflower is a visually stunning movie and is sure to make help make the career of the star/director and a few other members of the supporting cast.

The basic premise is that two friends decide to future-proof themselves by creating weaponry designed for ruling a potential post-apocalyptic wasteland. They figure that if Mad Max has taught us anything it is that whoever has the most badass weapons will end up on top.

Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Tyler Dawson and Rebekah Brandes turn in impressive performances. I am sure that we will be seeing plenty of Jessie Wiseman.

The film was shot on handmade cameras that the director built which allowed him to create amazing tilt-shift visuals. All of the gadgets featured in the film were also built by the director for the movie. Filming happened over the course of 3 years on a meager budget of only $17,000, an amazing feat.

If this movie is playing at a local festival you need to go see it ASAP. I'm pretty sure that there will be plenty of buzz surrounding the film once it gets a wider release.

When David Fincher was preparing to shoot Fight Club, he briefly considered dispensing with stars and a big budget to shoot the film guerrilla style on digital video. Had he gone that route, the results would have been something along the lines of Bellflower, an audacious, flame- spewing, spit in the face of everything stale and conventional about modern cinema. Shot on a nothing budget using a camera that director/writer/star Evan Glodell built from odds and ends, Bellflower is a stark critique of characters lost and struggling in the sun soaked wastelands of Southern California. To go into detail would certainly ruin the joy of discovery this brutal movie has to offer. Suffice to say it is a love story like no other, chock full of drunken brawls, flame- throwers, and a muscle car named Medusa (also built from scratch by Glodell). Personally, I think this is one of the most important movies that's come out in recent memory. With a raw, ugly beauty reminiscent of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the sparse immediacy of films like Two Lane Blacktop, and David Lynch's ability to make the banal nightmarish and horrifying, Bellflower incinerates the very notion of narrative filmmaking, redefining it on its own terms. If indie filmmaking is meant to push the envelope, this movie leaves that envelope charred and twisting in the wind.

Bellflower is an interesting film because even in it's flaws it kind of speaks to the kind of film that it is. Unfortunately for me though, that doesn't mean crap when the flaws are so blatant and intrusive. The film starts off interestingly, a really in-your-face turn back the clock montage that takes us to the beginning of our characters, two wild twenty-something youths who spend their free time (which it seems is all they have for some untold reason) preparing for their Mad Max vision of the end of the world. In their mind it's perfectly normal to spend their time building flamethrowers and tricking out muscle cars, which is so dumb and idiotic and an absolute perfect depiction of men at this time in their life.

The first hour takes a relatively standard approach to following these guys, but despite some pretty awful amateur performances and awkwardly obvious pieces of dialogue, it had a certain charm for me. Writer/director/star Evan Glodell gives an aesthetic feeling that was off-putting at first -- the focus falls off every so often, flecks off dirt come up into the lens -- once I settled into it I really began to embrace the tone he was going for. However once the film started to really get a rhythm going it decided to awkwardly jump forward a period of time (you can tell because the main character has a beard now!) it really caves in on itself.

It was going along smoothly but then decided to move the plot forward into more serious territory and then none of it worked anymore. Those bad performances became worse as the scenes progressed further and further into laughably horrendous melodrama with some of the most obvious and artificial character progressions and dialogue stretches I've seen. The film spirals down and down until it gets to it's last two chunks where I was just hoping they would clip the wings off and stop tarnishing the promise it once showed. There's a disastrous fifteen-minute sequence that felt absolutely worthless even before we find out that it actually is worthless, followed by the final act which just nonsensically rambles on for what seems like an eternity.

Ultimately, it felt like this was a premise that would have worked great as a short feature, but in stretching it out to something full-length Glodell really destroyed everything he had going for him. Still, despite ultimately being a failure, I think Glodell shows some promise here as a filmmaker and I'll be curious to see what he does next.