Jimmy and Judy

Hands down this was the best film at the festival. Realistic, haunting, and down right disturbing, I couldn't stop thinking about this film for days - in a good way.

The chemistry between the two leads, (Edward Furlong and Rachael Bella) is amazing. I hear they are now a real life couple.

My friend and I saw it Sunday night at the Women's building and we were nothing short of amazed. Got to meet the directors and they were very open to questions and explained some of the challenges they faced while making the film.

This film will be known for quite some time. It really will make you think.

I really enjoyed this film. I don't think I'll be giving away any spoilers here. First off, this film is shot entirely from a first person perspective, ala Blair Witch, but seriously, do NOT let that scare you away.

The titular characters are played by Edward Furlong and Rachael Bella (both of whom attended the premiere in SF tonight). You'll remember Eddie Furlong as the whiny little saves-the-future brat from Terminator II, though you'd do much better to remember his performances in American History X and Pecker, as he's long since shrugged off the child-actor label in these latter parts. Rachael Bella you may recall as the "crazy chick" who witnesses the bizarre death of her teenage friend in the beginning of The Ring (boy, I really hope I didn't give anything away there).

The story unfolds exclusively from the perspective of Jimmy's video camera. He's a video junkie (not unlike the neighbor character in American Beauty) and feels the need to "document" every important event in his life on tape (including certain aspects of his parents' relationship, and there's no way in hell I'm giving up *that* spoiler!).

Jimmy's been in love with Judy all of his life, their parents having apparently been friends for quite some time, but that love has been unrequited until now. He's a social misfit and outcast in all aspects of his life. He finally approaches Judy to show her how he's taken revenge on those that have wronged her in school (herself also being a social outcast, apparently) causing her to instantly fall in love with him.

The remainder of the film is a high tension tale of the love between the two star-crossed lovers and the misadventures they become entangled in as they explore a life of crime and independence. No, this is not a retelling of such "on the lamb" films as Natural Born Killers, True Romance, or The Devil's Rejects. They are not crazed teens on a killing spree, out to kill everyone who gets in their way. They do come across in many respects as honest social outcasts who simply end up in the situations they end up in out of circumstance and their purest desire to remain together and not be torn apart. You can, however, feel the influence of the aforementioned films as the story progresses.

I don't want to go into too much detail so as not to be blamed for submitting any spoilers. Suffice to say, the style in which the film is shot is actually somewhat secondary to the story. It does offer a unique perspective, though, on the relationship that is formed by the young couple and how they grow to bond so strongly. This really is a true perspective, incidentally. Not until the very end of the film (mild spoiler here, but not really) are you treated at all to a third person perspective of the action.

According to the Q&A following the premiere, the film was shot with practically no budget and within 15 days in the Kentucky countryside. The casting of Eddie Furlong was a very very fortunate accident when one of the future crewmembers of the production briefly met him at a party and suggested to the writing/directing team that they send him a copy of the script which he fell in love with. Rachael Bella is also very well cast and is beautiful (to say the least) which will appeal to those seeking the voyeuristic nudity and sex which I'm sure will likely be at the heart of some other reviews. Honestly, there really isn't anything explicit here. Jimmy is a first or second year college student suspended from school due to an incident involving his videotaping craze (at least partly to blame for his severe emotional scarring) and Judy is a high school junior or senior and their relationship is typical of that of late teenage/early twenties relationships when it comes to the sexual element (at least from my own personal perspective), so I'm sure you can figure out roughly what to expect.

The film is a love story... with complications. Honestly, what good story ever came out of an uncomplicated love affair? It's the honest portrayals and realistic style in which the movie is filmed that is it's true driving force. I hesitate to say phrases like "edge of my seat", but it is quite definitely apropos for much of this film. I think I'd prefer to just come out and say that this flick grabbed me by the balls and at no time did it really let go. It's a very fast-moving story once things really get to happening and I soon found myself totally engrossed.

I'm running out of words here, sadly, and I doubt I'm doing the film quite the justice it is deserved. I suppose my rush to try and provide this very first review of the movie (on IMDb at any rate). All I really do have to say, in the end, is that I truly hope that this film gets picked up for distribution (I believe it was mentioned that this has already happened, or is definitely in the works) and if you get any chance to see it, I highly recommend that you do. Hence my "10" here on IMDb... and my "6" on the festival ballot (which only went to "5" = Brilliant!,

see this flick.

pt...

Jimmy and Judy This clever, heartfelt piece of gonzo indie film-making is the movie Natural Born Killers should have been. It commences with a clever premise: everything we see is captured through the lens of Jimmy's videocamera. In the first reel, this conceit works a tad like Bogart's character just out of prison in Elmer Daves' Dark Passage, with the subjective camera point-of-view employed until after plastic surgery.

Jimmy (a great turn by former child star Edward Furlong, whose career seems to be headed in the right direction again) reveals himself only in the presence of Judy (Rachael Bella). Jimmy has poor impulse control. He woos Judy by exacting revenge on the kids who have bullied her at school, films his parents' gender-switching sex, and, in a very funny piece of Americana, freaks out in a fast-food car lane after pickles are improperly included with his double cheeseburger.

They hit the road for their obligatory crime spree. A bout of in-car flirting leads to a very twisted hit-and-run accident. J & J wind up in a rural commune where young folks of both genders become the playthings of a speed freak Hitler (prompting a scary monologue by William Sadler).

J & J would be truly sublime if the plot gave more attention to Bella's Judy. Furlong and Bella have that rare sexual/emotional chemistry that allows one to suspend judgment and enjoy the ride. Furlong is a smart, intuitive actor who seems willing to do almost anything to satisfy a role. The fast-food diet gives him a slightly bloated look, which is good for the character, bad for Eddie. Superbly helmed by writer/directors Jon Schroder and Randall K. Rubin, this one would make a deliciously twisted teen triple-feature with Larry Clark's Another Day in Paradise and Francois Ozon's Criminal Lovers. (Roxie, 2/4; Women's Bldg., 2/12)

There is a very brief period of many peoples' young lives, usually sometime in junior high school or high school, when it is cool to be a loser, an outcast. The girls like the guys that ditch school and get in trouble with the police and have disastrous relationships with their parents. That period of life does not, however, extend beyond high school, which might be why 21-year-old Jimmy (played by a plump, 30-year-old Eddie Furlong) manages to get a high school girl to fall in love with him.

I love the irony here, by the way. Judy is clearly a smart and successful student who one day is attacked by a group of girls, the bad kids (by the way, do high school girls really do this? Definitely not when I was in school…), which Jimmy catches on tape because he films everything. Later he exacts vicious revenge on two of the people involved in the attack and shows it to Judy, who is horrified but ultimately touched that he would look out for her in such a way. Soon afterwards she falls intensely in love with Jimmy, who is not a far cry removed from the same kinds of jerks that attacked her in the first place.

This is going to be a film that most people will either love or hate, although I happen to have strongly disliked it, but I didn't hate it. It's an extremely simply made film, shot almost entirely from the perspective of a home video camera and cut for the most part to run like an unedited MiniDV tape. There won't be any concern about motion sickness, but it's an intensely realistic portrayal of the lives of a couple of genuinely screwed up kids. In short, for a good majority of the movie it is genuinely unpleasant to watch, as it is meant to be.

Personally, I knew a lot of people like Jimmy (minus the killing) in high school because I hung out with the wrong people for a couple years. These are the guys that never go home because they hate their parents and are always drunk or on drugs. I don't know why people hang out with people like that, they are highly unpleasant to be around, particularly the nutty ones like the crackhead that Jimmy and Judy shack up with for a couple hours midway through the movie. I like movies that bring back fun memories from high school. Jimmy and Judy brings back memories, but all the wrong ones.

I bought the movie, by the way, because I was curious to see what Eddie Furlong was up to these days. He was phenomenal in Terminator 2 but his career never really seemed to go very far after that, except for his outstanding role in the spectacular American History X. I don't know much about his personal life, but he is a little TOO good at playing a dirtbag. It's also interesting that he looks so handsome on the cover box, because little Eddie has become quite the meatball.

Anyway, his Jimmy in this movie is an unhinged lunatic with absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever, while Judy is pretty and smart. Whether you like the movie or not, believing her interest in him is no small feat. They are polar opposites and it's nearly impossible to understand what she sees in him, but their chemistry works well enough so I guess it doesn't matter. We do, however, see in great detail why Jimmy is so twisted (we are, after all, products of our environment, and his parents' relationship is one of the sickest marriages I've ever seen, in a movie or otherwise), but we learn nothing about Judy's past, including why she was being bullied at school.

But the worst part of all, by far, is this ridiculous commune at the end of the film. It is a mixture of a twisted cult group and what I imagine Woodstock must have looked like. You see, there is some insane fanatic known as Uncle Rodney who has started this as a place for trashy people to go live. I think his exact words were "garbage people," meaning they are the garbage of society. Nice. I can see the appeal already.

This Rodney is played by William Sadler, who must never have had a more pointless role. The only purpose he serves here is to make this already trashy movie look like preachy crap. You can feel yourself being punched in the face with the transparent "social commentary" when he gives his goofy, fiery speech near the end of the movie. You see, apparently he believes that by providing this retreat for the trash of society, they'll become stronger with each new addition, while the "outside world" gets weaker with every one, until they become so strong that they can rain garbage on the world that threw them away and then "fornicate in their ashes." Are you hearing this? WOW.

I would hate to be the one to burst his balloon, but I have a feeling that the subtraction of a lot of criminals and junkies and drunks is not exactly going to make society weaker…

Ultimately, the movie starts off as a serious downer and goes downhill from there. I was thoroughly depressed by the time it was over and couldn't even take my afternoon nap. I hate that.

Note: Another IMDb user called this the best film at the San Fran Indie Fest. Boy am I glad I missed that one. And by the way, some lunatic from the San Francisco Chronicle has claimed that this is the movie that Natural Born Killers wanted to be, and at 1/20th of the cost.

Yeah, right. They spent $500,000 on this? Scary. I would say that not more than about $1,200 made it onto the screen….

This movie was a pleasant surprise and though reminding a lot "Natural Born Killers", from which borrowed many things, has a particular appeal of its own. Both kids are mentally disturbed and the whole story focuses on this disturbance and on the experiment of videotaping everything - by the way the manner sequences are shot is similar to "The Blair Witch Project". Edward Furlong's rage and Rachael Bella's sexual drive are visible and their outrageous behavior is believable, their chemistry is quite impressive (on the other hand they're husband and wife in the real life). I'd recommend the movie for their performances and for the street theater like atmosphere.