A F**kload of Scotch Tape

Total crap. Is this supposed to be a modern day musical? Just a bunch of crappy vignettes with virtually the same thing happening again and again.

Horrible waste of time and an hour and a half of my life I'll never get back.

Great film, this really fulfills the promise of independent filmmaking, in that it can follow or break the usual film formulas as much as it chooses to. This film gracefully oscillates between what you expect, and what bucks the trends.

Everything in the "matches" – it's completely consistent - all the details, sets, script and acting style support the tone and story that's been established . Everything in this film needs a good cleaning, as the gritty film noir coats every surface. The only clean aspect of the film is the flawless cinematography and production element of this film – the focus of every shot is perfect, the lighting is brilliant, the blocking, the sound, the editing. The script is beautifully paced and the actors are all totally committed. Again, a lot of indie films look and feel sloppy, but this film demonstrates that you can make a beautifully crafted film without the bloated budget.

Julian Grant's FLOST, or A F***Load of Scotch Tape, is a film that emerges from our era of media convergence. In this new century, video games, television shows, comic books, and You Tube videos all can be easily displayed on the same electronic devices and screens. Moreover, with internet streaming replacing discs for delivering home video, spectators have the increasing ability to watch diverse strains of film history with a few clicks of a mouse or a touch of their screen. In other words, we are able to access media instantaneously, whether it's a classic film from 1945, a recent comic book, or a viral video. This convergence is creating exciting new possibilities for redefining the visual language of cinema. While cinema has always borrowed from other art-forms such as painting, theater, and music— and even responded to the market-share threat of television by developing wider aspect-ratios for the image—its ability to assimilate other art-forms is rapidly accelerating in the present.

FLOST incorporates many of the aforementioned media into its narrative. Bursting with visual energy, it bombards its audience with music video and comic book aesthetics (in fact a graphic novel adaptation of the film is forthcoming), surveillance footage, split screens with multiple temporalities, digital mimicry of celluloid home movies, and many other styles. Most films, as with the popular "Paranormal Activity" franchise, only replicate one type of media by copying the look of home-video footage uploaded onto You Tube. The more ambitious works, like FLOST, blend many different conventions to arrive at an exciting new visual aesthetic for cinema.

Grant's film also speaks to our ability to quickly access the archives of film history. FLOST is a conscious homage to film noir, the greatest of all genres in American cinema. Benji the beleaguered anti-hero is a nastier version of the great male-leads of noir history— Joe Gillis from "Sunset Blvd", Walter Neff from "Double Indemnity", and Jeff from "Out of the Past" come to mind. Like those characters, Benji obsessively provides voice-over for the double crossings, duplicitous females, and the dark psychology and fatalistic outcome of his story.

It's not surprising to see today's digital filmmakers returning to film noir for inspiration. After all, this is the genre where many of the great auteurs of American cinema were able to create highly stylized works on small budgets and tight-production schedules. For example, the great Edgar G. Ulmer's "Detour" was reportedly shot in 6 days. More importantly, directors like André de Toth, Joseph H. Lewis, and Jacques Tourneur helped popularize formal innovations in lighting, framing, and camera movement that have since become common film grammar. FLOST belongs to this tradition. Its visuals are a byproduct of our current period of media convergence where spectators can access everything instantaneously, but its desire to innovate is firmly rooted in film history.

FLOST has all the noir hallmarks you love: doom, asskickings, strip clubs, kidnapping, murder, briefcases of money, and of course a f*ckload of tape. Well, those and singing. Yeah, it's somewhat of a musical. But don't worry, it's Tom-Waits-in-the-gutter type stuff, not Marry frigging Poppins. No one's smiling here; there's no spring in anyone's step. The lead actor delivers a gutty, tortured performance, and I thought his fatale did a particularly good job. As with most small indies, there are a few ill-delivered lines by secondary characters, and the editing lost the tone in a couple of over-stylized sequences. Overall, a great, worthy addition to the genre. The film's especially impressive when you consider the director also shot and lit it himself.

Julian Grant's F*ckload of Scotch Tape is the perfect film to watch at 3:00 AM with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and your favorite smoke in the other. It also plays wonderfully on a lazy Saturday morning over a plate of hash browns and greasy bacon. In fact, you can enjoy it at any time, it's that damn good. After the initial viewing, my immediate reaction was, "Where has this film been all my life?" FLOST is a breath of fresh air from the entertainment that seems mass produced for members of the Oprah Book Club.

So what is it about? Fans of Jim Thompson's, "The Getaway" (the novel, not one of the two butchered film versions) will recognize the surreal, hyper-violent, spiral descent into madness and demise thrust upon Doc, the main character. And while the ending might not be a happy one, it is certainly a deserved one. Likewise for Benji in FLOST, played brilliantly by the young Graham Jenkins. The choices made early in the film have consequences from which there is no escape. And, of course, there's a dame to provide comfort while hastening the inevitable price that must be paid.

Sounds like a typical noir plot, right? Well, yes. And it is. But it's not your typical noir film. Gone are the shadows, harsh angles and billows of cigarette smoke. In their places are stylizations bordering on mania, hard drugs and... MUSIC! That's right, it's a noir musical whose backbeat is blood and money. And boy does it entertain.

The man behind the original music is the director's longtime friend, Kevin Quain. As another reviewer stated, Quain's music has a Tom Waits quality when first heard. But listen closely and you'll hear a true original, an artist who writes and sings songs that could have come from the America of 1912 instead of 2012. Musicals are risky experiments. If the words, music, images and story don't all fit together just right, the whole film blows up. In FLOST, it is a match made in heaven sliding straight towards hell.

The stories upon which the film is based come from the writings of Jed Ayres, a pulp-fiction author whose just-released collection of shorts is titled, appropriately, "A F*ckload of Shorts." I'm eager to read these to learn more about Benji and his world.

As I understand it, F*ckload of Scotch Tape is about to hit the festival circuit. If you get a chance to see it on the big screen, don't pass it up. There is so much visual flair and gut-wrenching music to warrant seeing this in a theater. But if you can't make it, definitely catch it digitally or on DVD when it becomes available. And wherever you see it, keep that bottle of whiskey close by.