First Winter

More cinematic hipster fever dream than apocalyptic thriller, First Winter (which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival) concerns a group of young city dwellers who retreat to an isolated country house to do (lots of) drugs, practice yoga, and have (lots of) sex. They suddenly find themselves without power after a humongous cloud black smoke appears on the horizon.

We take the film's word that getting back into town would be impossible (as it spends little time convincing us) and the characters food supply slowly disappears.

Current trends concern themselves predominately with "natural" and "sustainable" lifestyles. This film thrusts it's characters into a situation where they have to use these beliefs to survive. It doesn't shy from exposing the hypocrisy and shallowness of it's characters, either.

The film is beautifully shot, and contains some particularly captivating tracking shots and a mostly diegetic soundtrack. It also takes some unexpected plot turns, has some nice bits of humor, and contains an attractive mix of non-actors and trained.

More "whisper" than "shout", this worthwhile film, that I saw at the Woodstock (N.Y.) Film Festival, is a story about strong issues (sexual influence, narcotic drug usage, and survival when the outside world doesn't exist) but done in an intimate look at emotions, with lots of closeup camera work, during a relatively short span of time.

Rather than being a big budget apocalyptic multi character visual orgy, this almost biographical film looks at a narrow range of characters- it conveniently even pares down the total number of characters early in the film- with just an on location set of a multi room farm house interior and the snow covered surrounding countryside, and how one person relates to one person, within the commune dynamic.

The film doesn't invite complexity, ignoring the "baggage" of the future or the past, but for the few months that the film's actions portray- it is about depicting individual traits and conflicts within a subservient cult hierarchy. "Can we all get along", referring to a broad incident of an entirely different societal issue, is perhaps, in this small independent film, reflected in the ending- food will be found, Yoga continues to be practiced, music will be played, the commune will survive.

It's a 'hipsterrific' kind of entertainment, where a bunch of weird, bearded dudes and their laid- back girlfriends try to survive through a rough, debilitating winter (which - in fact - looks like a strange, colossal apocalyptic nightmare, where nothing spectacular really happens, yet we still have to be convinced that there is no way those people can escape from the deserted mad- house located somewhere far in the vast snow fields).

Given their perverse attitude towards the sex-infused, drug-filled routine, they aren't really able to reveal all their true feelings when placed in front of a grave tragedy - gradual shortage of food supplies, and then the death of one of their close friends (paradoxically, one thing connects to the other).

Beautifully shot and enhanced by some poetic visuals, First Winter comes as an intriguing, worrisome look at the behavior of young people during a crisis. Although too artsy at times, it's rather a convincing film with adequate performances. Strangely, it's also an interesting encounter with - what could be called - some kind of a bizarre sect, where everything is a big mystification organized by the guru of the whole group. Look for yourselves, as Benjamin Dickinson created an inviting film that might tire some because of too many unneeded longueurs, and satisfy others due to its fascinating camera work.

This may very well be the most boring movie ever made.

The best advice I can give to anyone thinking of watching this thing is: read a synopsis of it, then tell everyone whom you may want to convince that you are a completely pretentious, absolutely phony, laughably artsy fartsy horse's ass how good you think it is.

However, if you want to watch something more interesting, I'd say take your shoes and sox off and watch your toenails grow; that would be much more interesting than this appalling waste of time.

The seems to have been no script. I have no problem with improvisation if the people doing it are talented enough to pull it off; these people aren't.

I doubt if there even WAS a director, and the "acting" was an embarrassment.

Unfortunately, one is the lowest rating that can be given here...a negative 64 would be closer to the mark