Friday June 10, 6:45pm Broadway Performance Hall Saturday June 11, 4:00pm Broadway Performance Hall
Right off the bat what I noticed in Melissa Painter's film was the crisp editing, strong composition and feeling of rural Montana and small town life. Fifteen year old Jake is looking for his mother when he rolls into Livingston on a freight train only to find her gone. He spends his time breaking into cars to survive until he meets up with Tucker, the son of a local railroad foreman and soon finds himself living in the middle of a Norman Rockwell vision of farm and family. Painter provides us with an excellent visual narrative showing day to day life as Jake slowly integrates himself and is accepted. Good use of locations include the river and bridge the local kids frequent and the surrounding mountains as backdrop. Standout performances from Danny Alexander as Jake and Paz de la Huerta as beautiful Lily Rose tell a story of children growing into adults amid the conflict of trust, betrayal, sexual desire, fulfillment, frustration, reaching for goals and accepting reality. The most memorable scenes are of the three kids lying in the tall grass as they interact and a fantastic shot of the high school, the exiting kids and a train of flatbed cars moving past just feet away. Steal Me begins better than it ends. While the look is clean and straightforward Painter uses high contrast super saturated color effects for Jake's fantasy fears and desires that doesn't work and hurts the overall appearance of the film. The last third of the story suffers from hackneyed and stale dialogue that takes the entire screenplay down a couple of notches. Ten minutes of judicious cutting and a little more polish would help this film greatly. Painter and Alexander stepped out for a Q & A afterward and my impression was that of a young filmmaker with earnest intentions who I feel is capable of better work. Still, I enjoyed Steal Me, more a success than failure and definitely worth a look.
Right off the bat what I noticed in Melissa Painter's film was the crisp editing, strong composition and feeling of rural Montana and small town life. Fifteen year old Jake is looking for his mother when he rolls into Livingston on a freight train only to find her gone. He spends his time breaking into cars to survive until he meets up with Tucker, the son of a local railroad foreman and soon finds himself living in the middle of a Norman Rockwell vision of farm and family. Painter provides us with an excellent visual narrative showing day to day life as Jake slowly integrates himself and is accepted. Good use of locations include the river and bridge the local kids frequent and the surrounding mountains as backdrop. Standout performances from Danny Alexander as Jake and Paz de la Huerta as beautiful Lily Rose tell a story of children growing into adults amid the conflict of trust, betrayal, sexual desire, fulfillment, frustration, reaching for goals and accepting reality. The most memorable scenes are of the three kids lying in the tall grass as they interact and a fantastic shot of the high school, the exiting kids and a train of flatbed cars moving past just feet away. Steal Me begins better than it ends. While the look is clean and straightforward Painter uses high contrast super saturated color effects for Jake's fantasy fears and desires that doesn't work and hurts the overall appearance of the film. The last third of the story suffers from hackneyed and stale dialogue that takes the entire screenplay down a couple of notches. Ten minutes of judicious cutting and a little more polish would help this film greatly. Painter and Alexander stepped out for a Q & A afterward and my impression was that of a young filmmaker with earnest intentions who I feel is capable of better work. Still, I enjoyed Steal Me, more a success than failure and definitely worth a look.