New Best Friend

This film may be a bit derivative of the two titles I hint at in my one-line summary, but it by no means a truly bad film. It's a tad misdirected, somewhat dragged out and definitely not all-around well-acted, but it is not bad movie. I won't claim I watched this for any other reason than the fact that it features some of the hottest young actresses in newer times, but I will make a point of what happened when I sat down to watch it. I didn't take my eyes off the screen. I didn't get up for a minute or two, and I never really felt like I was wasting time by watching it. For a while, the last couple of weeks, I have had trouble finding a film that really got my attention and kept it. Not since watching Requiem For a Dream have I been following a film so intensely. I didn't want to miss a thing watching this movie, and that says a lot, considering my almost ADD-like short attention span. The plot is not particularly original, but it is interesting. The pacing is mostly good, but around the middle and near the end, it seems to slow down, in order to drag out the material in order to reach the minimum limit for the length of a feature film, something that really hurts the film(it probably should have been a short... or maybe there should have been written more story or more characters). The acting isn't all good, but the four leads give good performances(even Meredith Monroe of Dawson's Creek fame... who saw that coming?). The twists and plot developments are interesting, but the mystery of who committed the crime is almost impossible to solve for the viewer until the very end, where it's revealed. Even worse, it makes said mystery seem very simple, since it turned out to be the very person I suspected from the very beginning. The non-linear time-line works fairly well, but it does get somewhat confusing in several parts, because it's not perfectly clear if we're seeing a flashback or something that goes on 'right now'. There is a fair amount of sex and drug use in this film, so it's not for the easily offended or the faint of heart. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I believe most people will too, if they give it a chance. I recommend this to fans of the genre, and I urge anyone watching it to give it a fair chance to win you over. It's uneven, but it's not a bad film. 6/10

I decided to watch a few "Indy" flicks on DTV the other day, "My New Best Friend" ended up being one of them. Needless to say, I didn't watch this movie for any chicks or dudes or Taye Diggs. First off, this movie is something cinema majors, film students, culture critics, and porn directors and producers should watch, everyone else should pretty much avoid it unless you're a high school student about to go away to some small college in some small town in near an ocean. Basically, the film intrigued me to the point of being dumb-founded enough to watch it all the way through. I was glad I did, because in the end the film at least makes linear sense and the story achieves some kind of closure and logic.

What I think is most peculiar is the fact that everyone is noticeably too old to be playing college kids. All the lead characters and most of the supports are basically actors in their early 30's trying to play 18 and 19 year olds. This is funny because reading IMDB profiles you'd think these people were actually 20 and 21 but in L.A. we all know better. This is a great example of bad casting, simply because there are 30 year olds that can play 18, and there are 26 year olds who can't, this film employs the later as opposed to the former.

The other interesting thing is the strange homoerotic almost misogynistic attitude the director takes with the sex scenes and relationships. When I saw the film I imagined some big burly very masculine male porn director type doing the directing, but instead it was very strange to find out the director was a woman. It's also interesting to note that although the film tries to market itself to a college, high school demographic based purely on female sex appeal, it fails as well because of its general B nature, lack of even soft-core sex, and unrecognized names.

So I thought, how could this movie have been improved? Then it dawned on me why it was so perfect! It wasn't really a drama or a failed unintentional comedy, it is a very A type porn! Someone simply forgot to tell everyone the sex scenes were supposed to be real and hardcore, and the movie was supposed to be distributed by Vivid or Wicked Pictures and play on the 590's (for those that don't know, those are the porn channels on DTV). Anyway, I think it's good to study this film as a model for the future of A list porn, a story with a solid beginning and end that makes good sense and rewards you slightly at the end, but has no real substance at all or meaning, yet instead, contains just the right amount of sex, if it was hardcore in the first place, this film would be making millions, at Adult Bookstores that is.

One could certainly make the statement 'why should we care' about this film, and perhaps one should have posed that question to the director. Very little attention was paid, it seems, to anything which might endear any of this film's characters to the viewer. While the four female leads are intended to flutter between victim and villain as the story progresses, the performances ring hollow, contrived, and ultimately fall short of what I would hope started as a grand study of human sociology. Indeed this idea is suggested by their forced cooperation on a senior year project. Again, one is left with the feeling of too many tongs in the fire, and not enough hands to mind them.

While great pains are taken to show the villainy of Alicia Campbell (Mia Kirschner), the final upshot of all her ill deeds struck me as not only rediculous, but totally unfeasable, unattainable, and illogical. The broad strokes used to bring conclusion to the film failed to deflty weave together the many loose threads, instead preferring to shelack them to the table in an effort to prevent their fluttering away. It was nice to see the sidekick from "The Craft" continuing to make a name for herself as an out of control socialite.

Thankfully this film was not terribly long, although the music was surprisingly good. I'm still not sure why the director felt it was necessary to pepper the film with gratuitous breast shots, increasing in frequency as the film progress. My only thought is they began to suspect the film was failing as a concept piece, and chose the lowest common denominator for salvation.

Whatever your take on it, this film is still moderately entertaining, even if the ideology behind it has been beaten like a narc at a biker rally.

I think that those who rated this movie as a really bad movie just expected to much. I mean this was released direct to home video, so that should say something right out of the video store. This movie is what it is, a simple mystery movie, a simple click movie about taking in a nobody and making her a somebody and then regretting your decision when it comes back to haunt you. Towards the end I really felt sad for Hadley (Meredith Monroe) and could totally see why she did what she did. She built her lab partner, with good intentions mind you, from nothing into a resultant someone, and watched basically as she took her life away from her, all not meaning to do so....

Now would this movie have made it in the theaters? No, I don't think so. But considering the usual quality of movies that go directly to video, this is one of the better ones.

Bello

Feels like "Cruel Intentions" but spicier. Mia Kirshner was the reason for me to watch the movie. I'm in lust with her. She's physically perfect. Her sexy acting in this movie is great. She even has a steamy but brief sex scene. I got all the Mia I wanted.

I terms of plot, it's very decent. It's one of those teen intriguing thrillers that deals with revenge, envy, sex, etc. The things you are used to live in high school. Heck, even a cop gets in the middle.

Taye Digss's accent has become some sort of cult classic.

I found this movie to be morbid but interesting. That's enough to fit in the teenage 2000's cinema. Don't expect a great plot but it should please your hunger for the "Cruel Intentions" type of movies.