Frownland

Frownland is like one of those intensely embarrassing situations where you end up laughing out loud at exactly the wrong time; and just at the moment you realize you shouldn't be laughing, you've already reached the pinnacle of voice resoundness; and as you look around you at the ghostly white faces with their gaping wide-open mouths and glazen eyes, you feel a piercing ache beginning in the pit of your stomach and suddenly rushing up your throat and... well, you get the point.

But for all its unpleasantness and punches in the face, Frownland, really is a remarkable piece of work that, after viewing the inarticulate mess of a main character and all his pathetic troubles and mishaps, makes you want to scratch your own eyes out and at the same time, you feel sickenly sorry for him.

It would have been a lot easier for me to simply walk out of Ronald Bronstein's film, but for some insane reason, I felt an unwavering determination to stay the course and experience all the grainy irritation the film has to offer. If someone sets you on fire, you typically want to put it out: Stop! Drop! And Roll! But with this film, you want to watch the flame slowly engulf your entire body. You endure the pain--perhaps out of spite, or some unknown masochistic curiosity I can't even begin to attempt to explain.

Unfortunately, mainstream cinema will never let this film come to a theater near you. But if you get a chance to catch it, prepare yourself: bring a doggie bag.

What happens when someone has so much social anxiety that they cease to function? How alone can one man get? When the mundane crap we have to do in order to be part of society gets to be too much, what happens? Frownland explores these questions. Definitely a startling original debut from Bronstein. The tone is strange and claustrophobic as we get inside the mind of a guy named Keith that is so messed up he can hardly form a proper sentence. We follow him around as he tries to make contact with people and function day to day. Most of us have known people like this- people that say "sorry" too much or "i appreciate it" when there's nothing to appreciate. So we know there are people out there like this but why would someone want to make a movie about them? Well, because its interesting and Bronstein and the lead actor, Dore Mann, do an excellent job. This film is about as un-commercial as a film can get. A few friends filmed it over the course of a few years as they saved money. It was shot on 16mm and the scratched film look is beautifully low budget. With no distributer, this may be a tough one to find, I think it's been screening randomly for the past year or so. Hopefully it'll be on DVD at some point. I saw it at the Silent Movie Theater here in LA. There were 10 people in the audience, among them Crispin Glover, if that tells you anything about how weird this movie is. Highly recommended.

It is beyond my imagination how much of a conceited hipster you'd have to be to give this movie a 10 out of 10. "Frownland" is like sewage that's been distilled into something worse -- like the jenkem of cinema. If you're a total masochist you might enjoy this.

Strange as it may seem, I really was trying to get into this 'film'. I understand what it is trying to show me and how it wants to show it, but I hate it. At every corner it just turns you off and makes you feel sick (almost literally). The cinematography makes it even more difficult to watch, unless you enjoy unnecessarily close and shaking camera shots throughout a 106-minute film. There's really not much else to say. This movie is awful.

But I can make a better one about myself... Is this a actor with all his head tics... Pulling his hair touching his face ... Just nervous around people lives with his 78 year mother and crazy sister... Graduated from HS where there was so much pomposity it winds up on Facebook. And it's the same ... No one likes you and you fade from Facebook to a lonely life no one loves you .. I'm not annoying like the character in this film but my life went by too fast I'm in my mid 50's thinking about where I can get Fentanyl Fudge. I feel life serves no purpose half of me wants to be Anti Christ and watch humanity just die and the other half knows it's not going to happen and I will on my own will make that sarafice .. So I'm up to The Who book scene which I have personally owned since 1982 . And still sits on my shelf.. I have a room filled to the brim with music video tapes records CD's computers just crap to fill the nothingness and know it's nothing ... I don't feel anyone loves me or cares... So you do the same you stop caring .. They stop caring or never did... Yeah I can make movie that you just die in the end. As I watch... Get it.

This is a film about a few New Yorkers who are struggling in life. It is actually very good at moments, but not great at others. The tone of the film is very uneven and unbalanced, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it feels unintentional here. At first we think maybe this is a comedy but we realize slowly that it is not.

The acting is actually very good. It feels strange at first until we realize that these are not the kinds of characters we normally see in films. But they exist in real life and here we get a chance too see them on the screen.

The writer and director of this movie stated that he was influenced by the highly acclaimed film Naked, and it is clearly evident here. In both films the characters speak fluently to each other about philosophy and their opinions on life. I felt like it actually felt more real in this one. It was better done. But it never felt completely real in either film, in my opinion. But maybe that's just because I don't encounter people who talk like that in real life. Maybe they're out there.

I like the camerawork a lot. The film felt a lot like Slackers at times, but maybe that's just because of the grainy 16mm look and the clothing the characters wore. The characters at times felt like they could have come from the world of that film, but at other times they felt like they belonged more in a John Cassavetes film.

It feels a bit like a Cassavetes film in several ways, particularly toward the end. The ending is very good and gritty and raw and not your typical Hollywood ending by any stretch. And while I feel like the story itself could have been revised and made better, the story as it was could not have been told any better.