Coven

As many others have commented after seeing American Movie, this movie was not HALF as bad as you would have expected. Mark comes off as a dufus for most of the documentary (I suppose a lot of us would), but Coven showed me why this guy was so driven. I'm sure when Mark saw some of the shots from this movie, he felt that he was in the zone, that it had all come together. That is probably why it took so long to come out with the rest of the movie, because it would have been difficult artistically to accept a lot of the more mediocre scenes.

I think that Mark should pursue a career in Hollywood or indie film as a journeyman cameraman / cinematographer, and hopefully somebody will help shape his raw talent. Then he can move on to bigger and better productions of his own, as I thought some of the story in Coven was excellent, although it was VERY uneven.

I, like anyone else, never would have heard of this film had i not seen Chris Smith and Sarah Price's brilliant, funny and extremely touching documentary "American Movie". I recently purchased the "American Movie" dvd which contains "Coven", invited over a few other fans of the documentary, and gave it a go. The after disscussion concluded with the notion that had Mark Borschardt tried harder to stick with one genre he could have better concentrated on the story and suspense aspects of the horror or the plot and character development of the drama. He has a very artistic look to his film (context - coffee cup) and i believe his only flaw is a lack of concentration on the characters and story (content - the coffee). i am intrested in the results of "Northwestern".

I'm not sure if I still would've loved Coven if I had not seen American Movie, which tracked how director Mark Borchardt spent more than three years and hundreds of man hours to make a film. What was this movie is revealed, sort of, during the course of American Movie, but only in snippets. By the end, when Chris Smith shows a quasi-trailer for Coven, one gets really hyped to watch the whole thing. Thankfully we all can thanks to it being featured on the DVD, and it's really quite impressive. It's shot with an eye for creativity and an odd sense of horror by Borchardt and he gets some crazy and intense performances from his actors, especially one (I forget his name) who looks like an Orson Welles love-child.

And yet, as enjoyable and intense as the movie becomes- about a writer who becomes involved in a rehab group that is really a coven of witches (some women some male)- I wonder now if I would've connected to it more if I had not seen Smith's film. One saw in that, for example, how Borchardt and his friends abused alcohol over the years, and especially how his friend Mike took far too many acid trips and became the slow-talking (though amiable) guy he is today. So, seeing those rehab scenes one gets a more personal sense from Borchardt after seeing the documentary (not to mention his love of Night of the Living Dead projected through in Coven via harrowing hand-held black and white cinematography on a cheap-ass camera, and funky music, and some nasty gore).

But if you do watch it first on the DVD, or find it online, it's still by itself a successful work of primitive art: an independent film that is crude and uncouth, and with some really bizarre, effective scenes like the one in the hospital elevator, or when Mark is in the woods and is surrounded by the men in black cloaks.

OK, Mark? First off, you're a little weird. "I Blow Up"... but anyway, given what you had to work with, this movie didn't really suck that much, which actually is probably the only thing you really need to know.

For the rest of you... "Coven" (that's "KO-ven", not "KUH-ven", if you please) is a _long_ way from Hollywood, so just relax and enjoy(?) it for what it is: a finally-realized personal project of a fascinatingly driven -- and, yes, weird -- man which 99.9% of us would never have known existed (that goes for both the man and the film) if not for "American Movie".

"Northwestern" due in 2004? Hey, let 'er rip... I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Its one of those movies that is just a film to some, but a powerful social commentary for others. Mark Boschardt proves himself as a capable film maker, not the man so obviously mocked in American Movie (though when asked about his portrayal in American Movie, Mark Boschardt said "They were making their own movie, I'm not going to judge it so harshly").

The story is simple; a drug addict/alcoholic writer almost dies from an overdose. Hoping to stay sober, he tries out a support group which doesn't quite work for him. So he tries to stay sober on his own. This, of course, becomes impossible as we see the true nature of the support group, which drives him to further drug use in the movie (they do not take kindly to his not returning). The motivations of the group are unknown throughout the movie, and are still unclear at the end.

But the moral and message of the film are clear enough. Those who are in Alcoholics Anonymous will tell you to steer clear of this film, and to quote Boschardt once more "AA feels that if you don't get help from them, or God, then you haven't gotten help at all." This movie struck close to home with me, and I was really glad to be able to meet Mr. Boschardt himself. After all, it is quite obviously a very personal film for him. 4 stars.