Little Athens

Tom Zuber has great credentials in Law but seems to prefer to dabble in the territory of cinema. Having not seen his debut film LANSDOWN (2001) it is difficult to judge from LITTLE ATHENS (2005) if he is improving with age, but looking at LITTLE ATHENS on its own merits it seems a bit sparse in idea and in production.

Athens, Arizona is the bleak setting of this day in the lives of some fairly bored (and boring) youngsters, ne're-do-wells attempting to infuse sparkle into an otherwise glitterless place. Zuber creates four story lines, spottily interweaves them, and finally connects the dots in the last reel. The main problem is that comedy is funny because we care about the facilitators and here there really aren't any folks in which to invest. The cast tries hard and succeeds in giving us a taste of life in the flatlands of nothingville. D.J. Qualls (a character type who is very good, as in 'Hustle and Flow'), Michael Pena, John Patrick Amedori, Shawn Hatosi, Tory Kittles, Eric Szmanda, Jorge Garcia, Erica Leerhsen, and Michelle Horn are particularly fine and do their best with the material they are given.

Tom Zuber has a style, a sense of non-scripted spontaneity incorporating the gross with the sadsack, and given time he may make a fine little film. This one just misses. Grady Harp

The only thing that saves it are the performances by the many familiar faces that star in it, which were mediocre at best. Would have been nice if there was more of an actual story or point to the thing. Every 10 minutes or so I was saying to myself "Is this going anywhere?"

I liked the songs they used (respectively), but I felt most of them to be very intrusive and distracting from the story. Especially that riff with the strings that would play at the beginning or end of almost every scene. And there were some scenes where complete silence would have served so much more to what's going on, for instance when that pizza delivery kid was stealing the rest of those drugs while we watched the dead guy. The music killed that scene.

Also, I think the writers/directors have some kind of hostility towards women which is displayed time and time again in this film. The way the women are portrayed is as if they're stupid and clueless as to what's going on. The anal sex scene, the brother pushing his sister to the floor and the girl getting punched towards the end just seemed like a way for these guys to express their own short comings with women, and I viewed it as borderline degrading.

And that one actor Jorge Garcia, his random Spanish words mixed with his English dialogue didn't seem to make sense, and I speak Spanish fluently. No one throws in fully conjugated and otherwise unknown Spanish verbs while talking to monolingual white guys.

I thought the look was alright. The lighting of the party at night kinda made it hard to look at, but it emulated the real life lighting of a party like that I suppose.

So yeah, 5 out of 10 for me. It probably could have been better if they'd gone through a couple more drafts of the script.

This just sucked. The "day in the life" approach only works when there is something to care about. At no point are we interested in the characters, the location, or the void where a plot or storyline would be. I would just leave this here if there wasn't a 10 line requirement for comments. It doesn't deserve any more discussion. Do something better with your time than watch this movie. Read a book. Learn a new language. Build a bird feeder. Take a nap. Clean your fridge. Masturbate. Go for a walk. Browse Wikipedia. Cook a new meal. Cook an old meal. See how many Crayola colors you can name. Balance your checkbook. Mow the lawn. Floss. Pretend you're Batman. Clean out your closet. Go to bed early.

Was lucky enough to catch LITTLE ATHENS last night and think we're looking at an exciting young director. The film is constrained by its small budget but punches largely above its weight due to the ingenuity of its Zyber and the talent in the young, and I have to say, hot, cast.

To compare it to the Outsiders perhaps puts too much weight on its shoulders and certainly the flavour is very different, but I felt like I was watching the beginning of a new set of burgeoning careers and it was tremendously exciting.

If you have seen this film, please add your comments, I'd be very interested to read them.

On a final note, the music on this project is phenomenal.

(I work in the trade but have no affiliation to this film - to allay the fears of some of the other critics here).

But don't listen to what I have to say, see it and make up your own mind.

KilledCat

Saw this movie tonight as part of the Indianapolis International Film Festival. Had been looking forward to this one, largely due to the cast and the fact that these types of stories usually are told more realistically by independent filmmakers.

Unfortunately, I found the acting to be almost embarrassingly bad, the characters had no depth and no redeeming qualities, and the running time of 109 minutes felt more like 3 hours. I kept waiting for something to happen, and waiting and waiting.

Now, there are 2 positives this film has going for it. The soundtrack is actually quite good, and includes songs by SuperTramp, Radiohead, Ima Robot, The Vacation and The Walkmen just to name a few.

The cast is definitely attractive and there are some new faces that definitely show some promise. I was surprised to see Shawn Hatosy (The Faculty) in yet another throwaway role. After The Faculty, I actually thought he would become one of the major young Hollywood players, but he keeps turning up in films that in my opinion are a waste of his talents.

I really wanted to like this film and then tell everyone I knew to go see it, but now all I can say is save your money and use that 109 minutes to do something else....you will never get them back.

Just a side note: There were about 50 people of mixed ages in the audience. Two separate couple got up and left within the first 10 minutes, I have no idea if it was the film or something else. The person that I went with, actually enjoyed the movie quite a bit, so it may just that it didn't appeal to me. Unlike other films during the festival, there was no applause after the film and only a handful of attendees stayed for the credits.