Moving Alan

I saw this film at Dances With Films and enjoyed it very much. It was very funny and touching, although seemed a little slow in the beginning. The cast is great and professional and the writing is funny and heartwarming. My teenage daughter (who went with us) loves Marley Shelton and asked me the other day if this film is ever coming out on DVD. Does anyone know? This film has some interesting actors in it. Mark Pelligrino who plays Alan I saw recently in Capote. I also saw that Leslie Jordan who was in the movie just won an Emmy. Too bad more people don't get to see this sweet little film. I have started going to festivals a lot in the last few years to avoid the Hollywood glut. This is one of those little gems that you only get to see in this context. I hope that is not the case for long.

Though it took me like a week to track down someone who sold this on DVD (in Brazil no less), the money was well spent. Truthfully, I expected a rather so-so movie, you know, the kind you see of SyFy or Lifetime - much to my surprise, this movie was really good. Marley and Samantha Shelton have great chemistry (with each other and others) and play off each other better than many other, better known siblings (looking at you, Olsens) and their performance is rock-solid. While not the funniest comedy out there, it still gives a few laughs: the quirkiness of Melissa (Marley) against straight-man Emily (Samantha) is excellent and the dialogue flows easy. Though he is the titular character, Mark Pellegrino (as Alan) is shown very little but has his trademark menace down, as always. Next there's Misha Collins, whose character is simply outstandingly well-acted and quite hilarious. The jabs his character takes on soap operas are very accurate and very entertaining. The story is quite funny yet has sombre, sad moments that gives it a depth that draws you in and makes you sympathize with the characters - Melissa's and Emily's back-story being the main point. As for the music score, I think most of the song choices are great, though it's a little much on the chick-flick side for me personally, but it is a movie about two sisters, so I get it. I touched upon this earlier, but the writing deserves credit as well: the movie is very dependent on dialogue and it never disappoints: it's witty, sharp and funny yet contains sad moments that adds to the levity.

I saw this one at the Bev Hills film festival and was disappointed. I was hoping for Thelma and Louise with more of an Indy twist, but the bad video projection and total lack of a cool score or good composer ruined it for me. Someone really cut off the money too soon. Potential never realized.

You can't find it anywhere in the US minus YouTube but honestly it's very so so despite the actors and actresses trying their best mainly due to shallow writing. And a lot of unexplained parts mainly it's only watched for the two leading males in it that ended up going on to star in SPN.