Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at my first two flicks of the day.

GOOD DICK

I’m kind of lukewarm on this film, which presents me with a difficult situation. It’s been a policy here at the site since day one that if we see a film that does not have distribution and we don’t like it, we don’t kick the shit out of it or write a scathing review of it. There’s no point . GOOD DICK isn’t a bad movie, but it’s one I’m not enthusiastic about, so I’m in that weird grey area.

I figured I’d write up a brief look at the film and my overall thoughts, good and bad.

GOOD DICK is a very indie festival comedy. It’s different, dark… there’s a lot of time spent on making the characters multi-dimensional, which is definitely a good thing. You get kind of the anti-John Hughes here. It’s about a video store clerk who falls head over heels in love with the weird pissed off quiet-anger girl who stops in every day to rent ‘80s softcore porn videos.

Jason Ritter plays the video store clerk and he plays the character with a wide-eyed innocent puppy dog love angle that makes it hard to dislike him as he kind of creepily stalks this poor girl.

Writer/director Marianna Palka plays the lead girl and plays it bravely. It’s not easy to like this girl. She’s angry, she treats Ritter like shit, but she has a few moments of tenderness that keep her from being a despicable person.

I guess the meanness is what I didn’t really like about the movie. I’m all for having a dark, angry tone for your movie, but I guess it just felt to me that the film would have been served better with a little more love thrown in with all the meanness.

We come to find out why she’s like this at the end, but it doesn’t really make up for the rest of the film.

Palka’s definitely got the talent both as an actress and as the creative force behind the film, but her first flick out isn’t one I’d easily recommend to just anyone. It’s raw, which a lot of indie lovers will grab on to, but it’s not something I’d watch again. Like I said at the top of the review, I’m lukewarm on the film. I wish the filmmakers well and I hope it finds its audience, but it wasn’t for me.

ALONE IN FOUR WALLS

This is the kind of movie you only see at a film festival. A Russian documentary about a prison camp for kids under 14.

The filmmakers smartly give us 2 or 3 kids to focus on and give a surprisingly tender look at these troubled kids. There one kid in particular who seems to spend the whole movie crying, but instead of being annoying (as you might think) it’s really heart-touching. He’s just a kid, terrified of being in this juvie detention center without any contact with his family.

The first act of the documentary looks a little staged (shots of crying kids at windows, etc), but are really effective at showing these kids as real people; children, really. Frightened children.

The second act brings in some of these kids’ parents and really slows the movie down. And there’s really no emotional conclusion.

It’s solid, but it does get a little slow. Not as slow as you’d imagine a Russian documentary about juvie kids would be, but it’s a great pick for any potential film festival schedule.

Okay, that’s it from me on those two. I just saw my favorite movie of the fest so far and I’ll be writing that up as soon as I can. Keep an eye out for more coverage!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com