Ten 'til Noon

"Scott Storm has the most natural talent of any filmmaker I know." - Bryan Singer

Scott Storm continues to be an under-appreciated creative variable in the States. Despite carrying a major award with his first feature at the Slamdance Film Festival some years ago, it has taken this long to realize his follow-up, a guerrilla indie production with the brand of TEN TIL NOON.

While the title evokes images of a classic western, the picture is actually a dark examination of a single ten minute segment of one very bad day for a random group of seemingly amoral inhabitants of the City of Angels. While the film has yet to secure distribution beyond the festival circuit, it is crafty, violent and delightfully offensive in certain scenes. You could say that they don't make them like this anymore. Despite grander ambitions from the outset, Storm, Paul Osborne and their collaborators have accomplished uniquely commercial production values despite the complete absence of an "A-List" cast or reasonable project capitalization. In fact, the filmmakers en masse are to be commended for realizing a no-budget independent film ON FILM (as opposed to digital video) with intelligent sound design and yet another fine original score by the similarly underrated Joe Kraemer.

Given the current industry prejudice against this type of independent film, your first opportunity to see TEN TIL NOON may be through AMAZON, STARZ late-night programming or NETFLIX. Despite the naysayers, this film is very much part and parcel of the Tarantino oeuvre, and if you like 'em lean, mean and bloody, TEN TIL NOON is worth your time and attention.

"Ten 'til Noon" is one of those films that are more interesting for their form rather than their content. The concept (how different but interconnecting characters spend 10 minutes of their life, from 11:50 to 12:00 p.m) is intriguing, the twists (that come when the concept is finally broken) are genuinely unexpected, the acting is fine (Rayne Guest, in perhaps the film's trickiest role, is both explosively sexy and a good actress), the direction is perfectly OK for the budget, but ultimately the film is little more than an exercise in gimmickry (even having a 5-minute epilogue sequence AFTER some of the end credits have rolled), with a few Tarantino influences also evident (mostly in the dialogue). Overall, I'd say it's worth seeing for its sheer audacity. (**)

This is the caliber of a great film school project, which is a bit below a poor theatrical release. The script has lots of twists and the narration is told out of sequence from various perspectives all covering the same 10 minutes or so and is worth a look on a boring day.

It's not a blockbuster but if you have a pulp fiction itch and want to see a movie that wishes it was pulp fiction but couldn't quite pull it off due to poor acting and limp action sequences- this is it.

Not a bad way to waste a Saturday afternoon, I liked it even though it had some super amateur moments like checking the pulse of a person with leather gloves on, an assassin that wears high heels to work, etc.

There are some sexually perverse scenes and I applaud it for that if nothing else. This movie tried pretty hard to be pulp fictiony but it's just OK-amateur in the end. PLOT: A guy is going to meet an unusual fate in ten minutes- see it from all the angles and pretend this is pulp fiction or something.

I just saw this at the Indie Festival in San Francisco. No one else may ever get to see this one, but you should, so I'll make some comments.

The premise is very intriguing. A murder happens. The action occupies 10 minutes -- no more, no less, and that's what we see. Then we see a replay of those 10 minutes, and the actions of people associated with the murder, from their point of view.

This is a very clever premise, and the director pulls it off OK. As you might imagine, the acting is uneven; some very good, some really mediocre. The fellow who plays the hit-man is incredibly smooth, and his boss, Mr. Duke, also seems to be a more experienced actor. The rest of them are questionable. Larry (the unhappy bloke who is the hittee) is lame. Parts of the script are wooden. We also never get to see the story of the bank robber, which had the most potential in the whole setup. The gay characters are more of a plot trick than real people.

But on the whole, entertaining, with enough plot twists to make for an interesting time. I just wish they had done more with the script.

I recently had the privilege to view the motion picture Ten 'Til Noon. This movie is an edgy flick that's not for the whole family. It has many twists and turns that keep you guessing. Just when you think you knew what's going on, you find that you didn't know. This movie has it all; suspense, laughter, violence, betrayal, sex and a surprising love story. The story is told in the same ten minutes of the different characters that are linked in what appears to be a home invasion robbery. My mood was apathetic when the movie first started, but as each tale evolved my interest peaked. I couldn't wait to see what was next, even though it was sometimes shocking. The movie reminded me of a Quentin Tarantino directed movie and it had some of the suspense of "The Usual Suspects". After the movie was over, I found myself wanting to see it again. I feel that it would have this effect on most people or it would completely turn you off. The only question I had was "…what happened to Reuben?"