Middle of Nowhere

Middle of Nowhere is a touching character study given an extra resonance by pairing the real life mother & daughter Susan Sarandon & Eva Amurri, playing a mother & daughter. Susan Sarandon takes a back seat while Eva Amurri really shines in her role as Grace, the older of two daughters being raised by her mother after their father's suicide. While mother's attention is focused on getting her younger daughter to modeling school, Grace has to find a summer job to raise money to fulfill her ambition of going to medical school. She does get a job at a water park where he meets Dorian (Anton Yelchin) who has an unusual scheme to find money to get Grace to college.

This movie is full of real characters with whom is easy to identify and empathize with. The acting is great with Amurri and Yelchin the standouts.

I didn't know what to expect from this movie, since its visible lack of propagation. First, I highly congratulate this film for being so real; all the cast is pretty unknown and they surely do their work with professionalism and realism. Better than that, they chose actors that look like ordinary people, not perfect actors with artificial beauty and years of gym. Main story is reasonable and we feel connection with every character, even thought sometimes they act a little strange-- mainly the younger sister, who didn't speak a word until some point. Anton Yelchin has an evident similarity with Corey Haim, specially when comparing with his work in 1988's "License to Drive". There isn't a moment in this movie that we see overacting or lack of plausibility, which is another plus for the flick. It is also impressive to see how these actors express their feelings with nature, getting into the characters for real. All in all, it's a surprisingly GREAT movie, and I congratulate the whole team for such professional work.

The story starts off with 18 year old Grace(Eva Amurri) being rejected a student loan due to a bad credit history. After her father died, her mother Rhonda (Susan Sarandon) took out credit cards in her name, maxed them out and didn't paid them back. Devastated by the possibility of not going to college Grace starts working a 4 dollar an hour job at Baton Rouge's water park. That's where she meets Dorian Spitz (Anton Yelchin), a 17 year old who is tired of having to meet his adoptive parents expectations and just wants to get away. Grace and Dorian bond very quickly and Dorian tries to convince Grace into going in business with him. Dorian's business consists of selling pot, mainly to rich kids. Grace is reluctant at first but she accepts the offer in hopes of making just the amount of money she needs to go to college. Along for the ride is Grace's 15 year old sister Taylor Elizabeth (Willa Holland)who is being forced into a modeling career by her mother. Middle Of Nowhere is an extremely well written indie and the direction is impeccable. Its a a very honest story that relates more to real life then most films do. The acting was superb, specially Anton Yelchin who delivered a flawless performance and considering some of his other work, he seems to be a really promising actor and on the rise. Overall, In The Middle of Nowhere is a great piece of work that combines several genres and feels like a breath of fresh air. One of the best indies I have ever seen.

8.5/10

This film is about a teenage girl who is trying to finance her college. As she does not get the support she needs from her mother, she has to find alternative measures.

"Middle of Nowhere" wants to cover a lot of emotions by having many subplots. It wants to tell a teenage girl's struggle financially, her relationship with her family, and also her romantic life. I think it wants to be too much, sometimes it is a touching drama about broken family dynamics, sometimes it is a drama about teenage romance, and sometimes it is an introspective, self searching drama. It ends up not being very engaging, and a bit unfocused. Even though the scene where Grace confronts her mother about the death of the father is very touching, it could have had even higher impact if the script was tighter.

This is a surprisingly good movie about a recent high-school graduate (Eva Amurri) who's irresponsible mother (Susan Sarandon) has blown her college fund and destroyed her credit, so she gets together with a very moral but very misguided rich kid (Anto Yelchin)to deal dope in their "middle-of-nowhere" small town. A love triangle develops between the girl, her erstwhile "business partner", and her precocious, aspiring model younger sister (Willa Holland), but it is a largely unrequited one as she is uninterested in him and he resists the jailbait charms of her sister.

Eva Amurri is a beautiful and talented actress, if a bit long in the tooth to be playing a recent high school graduate. Willa Holland is an unusually beautiful teenager who has since gone on to work in European films like "Summer in Genoa" (as an even more sexually precocious youngster). She does a good job playing an aspiring underage model. It's nice to see Susan Sarandon playing a completely unsympathetic role like this. The real surprise though is Anton Yelchin who I usually find incredibly annoying even in movies I otherwise like like "Alpha Dog". Instead of wanting to kick his teeth down his throat as usual though, I actually kind of liked his character here (although strangely this is the second time he played a sympathetic drug-dealer--he had a very similar role in the more famous, but overrated "Charlie Bartlett).

A lot of credit also has to go to director John Stockwell. It's interesting that two of the more interesting and underrated indie directors today, John Stockwell and Keith Gordon, once appeared together as ACTORS in the very mediocre 1983 horror movie "Christine". Stockwell has come the closest to mainstream success (or, depending on how you look at it, selling out) with films like "Crazy/Beautiful" and "Blue Crush", but he does better I think with smaller pictures like this. I'd recommend this.