On the Road with Judas

Just watched a Sundance showing with an appreciative audience, On Jan 23rd in Park City. The theater was crowded with a 20 something crowd eager for something different. What they got was a confusing but compelling work which blends documentary style with dramatic insight. Touching, funny and twisted themes will keep the audience puzzled but engaged. The author and director JJ Lask has taken his well received book and created a screen play that works well in the Sundance arena but may be difficult to sell to a broader audience. Great performances, original writing and editing make this otherwise hard to watch film worth the effort. The score was dense with original and contemporary work.

This played Sundance I think last year. It's crazy. It's like a not-at-all creepy David Lynch. It's very hard to explain. But you have a writer of an autobiographical book, and the book is being adapted into a movie. The film follows the author, the actor playing the author, the filmmaker making the movie, and also the author of the REAL book/actual director of the movie, JJ Lask.

If you think Charlie Kaufman is meta, then you haven't even scratched the surface of On The Road With Judas. There are some of my favorite actors in the film too - Kevin Corrigan, Aaron Ruell (from Napoleon Dynamite), and that guy from American Pie Eddie Kaye Thomas is in it too. It's a real mindfuck of a movie - it's kind of like the movie version of a really hard sudoku problem, but really rewarding when it all comes together.

And unlike a lot of other films that are about themselves - it never sacrifices human emotion for the sake of it's cleverness. At it's very core is an honest love story, that is very well drawn.

This is not one of my twenty-seven favorite films, but it really is worth the watch.

Having-a-plot-line wise, "On the Road with Judas" is a bit lacking, but it is cohesive with the way it was made and was intended to be. See, instead of the basic book-to-movie adaptation, the film suggests that the book (written by writer/director J.J. Lask) has already been made into a movie, and a lot of the footage is interviews with the "actors" in the "movie," as well as the "real" people whom the book was "based on". A little confusing, but it works.

The "double-life" description really doesn't do the film justice.

What was really interesting was the director Q&As afterward (I saw it as SIFF), for it ends up that J.J. Lask (who played the interviewer in the movie) had each of the actors read his book, and then he interviewed them, in character, improv-style. The rest of the movie was written afterward, based on what they said in the interviews.

Also, Aaron Ruell is just adorable.

Although this is not a movie that is eager to please it's audiance, it is one who is looking to take them for a ride. In a cookie cuter world this is far from a hit. But it is a movie I will never forget. From those moments that made me cringe by how familiar some emotions were to those whomade me wonder what could have bin. I love this movie not in my top pic pics of all times but one I always look forward to re watching. Just like un rincon cercas del cielo

I saw On The Road With Judas in Phoenix a few weeks ago and have been transfixed on this film ever since. Everything about it is completely mesmerizing... The multiple planes of reality are constantly toying with the viewers perception of what is happening on screen, what is implied as "reality" and the meta-reality of the film's world...Definitely warrants multiple views.

I happened to catch this while the filmmakers/distributors were touring it around the country this Fall and fell in love! It is definitely a challenging film, and I can see why it hasn't gotten a very wide release, even despite the great cast, many of which are well-known actors (I LOVE Kevin Corrigan!), however, if you liked Eternal Sunshine, even Synecdoche, NY, you should certainly check this one out, the non-linear, meta-narrative is prevalent!

If nothing else, this movie has the timeless appeal of a classic con-man story. The two kleptomaniac main characters are excellent in their extra-curricular pursuits of collegiate artifacts ranging fro faculty Apple computers to rare art pieces adorning scholastic hallways…They are hilariously casual in their thievery!

Highly recommend you seek this one out, it's on Netflix… I picked up a copy of the DVD at the screening and have already revisited it a number of times and it just keeps getting better. There should be more films like this out there!