Blue Highway (**3/4) [screening]

This comedy-drama is nice, and I wanted to like it more. It’s a road movie, and I kind of like road movies. Not only that, but it’s writer-director, Kyle Smith, took the trouble to actually drive to all the locations his lead characters do. His lead characters, Dillon and Kerry, are played by his friends Dillon Porter (who resembles Seann William Scott) and  Kerry Bishé, whose experiences on a long car trip inspired the script. So it has a very realistic feel to it. The fictional Dillon and Kerry are twenty-something friends making a cross-country move from Richmond, Virginia, to Los Angeles, in and old jalopy without a radio. Perhaps inspired by William Least Heat-Moon, whose bestseller Blue Highways told the story of a trip through small-town America, they’re staying off the interstates. (Talky Dillon seems like he might have read it; Kerry definitely hasn’t.) The reason for the move is briefly mentioned, but it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.

So that’s the plot. I think one thing a movie ought to do is accurately portray a reality, even if that reality is a fantasy. But also, a movie ought to make that reality interesting. This movie so accurately simulates what these particular characters might experience that it may leave you with the similar feeling of wanting to get to wherever you’re going. Or at least take the faster interstate. It’s not all bad. There are some funny scenes as they make brief pilgrimages to places where different films are set, meanwhile quizzing each other as to which movie is being paid homage to. But they mostly find no trace of the former sets, so these scenes too are often set on ordinary stretches of highway. (Texas: long, flat, dull.) Dramatically, there is one very well-done scene, toward the end of the film where we discover more about the relationship of these two characters that in the rest of the movie put together.

IMDb link

viewed 9/19/13 7:45 pm at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival] and posted 9/19/13

Tennessee (**3/4)

Brothers (Adam Rothenberg, Ethan Peck) trek east from New Mexico in this low-key drama. On the way, they meet a waitress in a diner (Mariah Carey) whose husband has become abusive. Although there is also abuse in the background of the brothers—their father is the reason they fled—the movie has nothing new to say on that subject. It’s all about brotherly love. The older of the two, once a protector, has become alcoholic. The younger one is sick, which is, indirectly, why they are returning to Tennessee. What they will find there is what drives the plot. Director Aaron Woodley favors a still camera and subdued lighting to such an extent that it’s monotonous, despite some painterly tableaux. The only music is Carey, humming to herself and, later, warbling a tune she wrote with Willie Nelson in a singer-songwriter style not common on her records. The conclusion is satisfying if you don’t like having every loose knot tied up.

IMDB link

viewed 6/4/09 (screening at Ritz 5); reviewed 6/19/09

Sunshine Cleaning (***1/4)

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are sisters who start a service to clean up after crime scenes. Screenwriter Megan Holley was inspired by an NPR story about a similar service, and interesting bits attest to her research on the subject. Without prior experience, the sisters learn quickly about the need for things like hazardous-waste permits. But mostly this is a family story, and Holley’s strong characters are what set the movie apart. Alan Arkin plays a character sort of similar to the one he played in Little Miss Sunshine, just as dedicated to his grandchild, nearly as eccentric, but less vulgar. Those who found that movie too stridently wacky may still be pleased by this; those who enjoyed it as a family story will too.

IMDB link

viewed 3/12/09 at Ritz Bourse