I love indie film, I like art films, I am split on this one. It is about nothing really, it's performances are fine, it's photography is decent (The Eclips scenes look great), yet this story goes no where. Should it go somewhere? No, but it doesn't stay with it's characters long enough to be about them! I feel awful about not enjoying this film, it's slight and sweet, it's not a hip indie and it doesn't have to be. Wonderland was a film about real people, doing real things, it's the most beatuful film of 2000, this film is pointless. The film isn't a comedy, it has dramatic elements, a film should have to fit into a certain genre (like what was American Psycho, The Virgin Sucides and Run Lola Run really....A horror film or a comedy, a drama or a comedy, or an action or foreign art film, repectively). This film has no genre because it is nothing. It's like a documentary about boring people living their boring life...it's not groundbreaking...but it's not good either. First Love Last Rites and Wonderland are two very overlooked films about real people that are much better than this art film wannabe. At Orlando's Enzian it would have been laughed off the screens by the art film crowd and the film professors that attend the theater. I understand why this film got picked up by the Shooting Gallery, it's not a real film, it's someone's life told without homor, insite or excitment. On the other hand it's charactors and direction were ok-I don't totaly hate this film-there are worce places to be in (like a screening of Adam Sandler's latest opus)-yet I am split on to what the message and the story the filmmaker is trying to tell? What is he saying, what is he telling us....he may be talented but the script is pointless, sure these people exist in real life by is it a documentation of these "real people"? If it is Wonderland is the movie to see (that film gets a 10, this one a 4)
Review of Judy Berlin
