Station to Station

The acting is... terrible. I'm talking worse than community theater. Worse than a middle school play. I'm not trying to be funny. It's embarrassingly bad. Not one person in this is a good actor. Not a single soul on screen is meant for this.

I am the exact target demographic of this movie, if you know what I mean, and I have plenty of favorites in my collection of "so bad it's good" campy movies. This is not that. This is just really, really bad.

EVEN if you just want to watch it for the eye candy, it's about on par with fruit stripe gum. You'll only get about 30 seconds of flavor out of it.

And it's over two hours long. Could use a HEAVY edit. But then it might only be about half an hour.

I saw this film at the Las Vegas International Film and Screenwriting Festival on the first night. Like most of the films at these festivals, I hadn't heard of it before and I found the description was intriguing, but vague (intentionally so, when you think about it afterward).

But I am glad I didn't know anything going in. I don't really think any description could describe it, but if I had had it described to me, I might have watched it in with some preconceved notions and assumptions, which as it turns out, is the entire point of the film, or at least a big part of it.

All I know is I spent the next day thinking about it, about the characters, and some of the convos they have with each other. This film is really well acted and the best work is in the quiet back and dorths with each other, which happen in a way that starts the wheels turning in your head It got me thinking about a lot of the ways movies don't do that now and that made me realize how hungry I was for the kind of conversations and characters we see in the film, which is a modest attempt at making a blockbuster Hollywood film, but an A attempt at making an indie like this.

This movie was unexpectedly moving for me. It's weird, because I don't actually know why. I keep coming back to it in my head and thinking about different characters and scenes (they are almost like little short films with the Las Vegas "Boy Bunker" setting and main character "Major Tom" as the common elements). It's this really adult, conversations-based film where you learn about these characters from all these different walks of life and circumstances and each of them either really resonated with me personally or helped me see other people in those circumstances in a different light. I liked that a lot. There was a really good mix of "show" and "tell" and the dialogue was really, really good. I like that the lessons and that experiences are the journey, not a contrived beginning, middle, and end. Like you spent this time with these people and then it's time to go home, but you know there's more still to come for everyone.

This movie also "gets" a lot about being young and male in 2022, with the freedom in many ways to do what you want, act how you want, sleep with who you want, and do a lot of it online, but really crave a sense of family or "real" connections and how forgetting how to really do those things, or that the responsibilities that come with being in a "family" (even one you pick) or friend group are important, can hold you back.

I don't know how to describe or even review this film, but I think its worth seeing. It's definitely got the sex and nudity and big dramatic stuff it builds up to in the end (the intense end is so different from the way it starts, you realize you were really taken on a journey and surprised at the end. Thats another thing I liked, not being able to predict anything) and if you don't like longer, character driven scenes maybe not good for you?

But I really recommend it. Enough to come here and write a review to encourage other people to watch it, since I don't think it had a huge advertising budget. It just really sticks with you.

This is what happens when there is no editing. A film that is about twice as long as it should be with the longest scenes shot with the worst of the cast (Jordan Getty and Cate Luna). I haven't seen such awful over-acting in a long time. I actually had to fast-forward through most of their extended scenes. If Jordan pursed his lips or cocked his jaw one more time, or Cate over-gestured her way through one more scene, I would have shut it off. Was there no director on set to tell them to chill out, or try to act a bit more natural? They were just too unbelievable and because they were in far too much of the movie, it ruined the decent job the rest of the cast did. Other than that, thanks for Eggers crotch shot.

Everybody in this entire film are full of drama and not able to act it out. The dialogue is plodding. They must have fired the editors to keep the budget low, because there is so much dead space you could collapse a black hole in it. I love gay friendly films, but this is viewer unfriendly. If I wanted to see something sad and depressing, I would just look in the mirror. I watched "High School Musical" today, and it was insipid and silly. Still, it was leagues beyond this tragic, self-absorbed, snooze fest. If you want to paint a sad picture of gay porn websites, you could probably do a documentary that would be better, and more worth watching.