The Vicious Kind

This felt like a breeze of fresh air, and it ambushes the viewer in a very good way. Taking place in a cold small town, I tended to put it on a strange "cold-far-away-god forgotten postmodern scenery" shelf, strange because this shelf contains Lost in translation, The girl in the café, Gigantic, Twilight and other seemingly unrelated movies. But The Vicious Kind is by far the most alive and vigorous movie out of these, in which the characters seem to be living very sincerely and intense, even against their own will. The humor is also genial, and the tenderness/passion that the love (or simply sex) story inspires is also an unexpected surprise. Loved this movie. The way one would appreciate a hot and tasty meal in a cold winter's day, after a mouthful of cold cucumber soup that the more pretend to be classy movies often serve. and i imagine the main character ended up to be Sully Sullivan from Nobody's Fool, the 1994 movie, played by Paul Newman.

The Vicious Kind is the kind of film that will play great to rabid audiences on the festival circuit, the problem being that now it has been released to the general paying public. There are a lot of problems with this film, namely; the humor isn't very funny, and the drama can't be taken too seriously. This will leave any film dead on arrival. What The Vicious Kind attempts to do is mix comedy and drama, and what's left is blandness and confusion amongst the aud per what is supposed to be funny and what is serious. Adam Scott is decent, but he could be real good if the script gave him some real emotion to play off of. Which brings me to the films next major problem - motivations. What drives these characters to do what they do? There is some back story, but it felt very exposition-y. There's a lot of crying being done here seemingly without reason as well, explicitly as means to "deepen" the characters and solemn the mood.

If you want to see a truly great American Indie this year, rent "Two Lovers".

Ever been hurt by a member of the opposite sex so badly you went through the growing a beard and wearing a stained t-shirt while being rude to everyone you came in contact with but really just wanting a hug phase? Whew. Me too. That's why this movie is so enjoyable. The film mostly follows Adam Scott's character Caleb. The film doesn't divulge all the details right away and I won't either, but let's just say a girl hurt him. Badly. Enough to make him the rudest bearded person around. His family life is not that great either, if you add the fact he's not even allowed to step foot on his Father's (JK Simmons) Property. Basically his wide eyed and innocent Brother Peter (Alex Frost) is all the family Caleb has. So naturally when he meets Peters gorgeous new girlfriend (Brittany Snow), who looks like the adorable punk rock girl that would rip out your heart from your chest and look cute doing it.....Caleb tries to stop his brother from falling for her, and of-course... ends up falling for her himself.

This film is written perfectly and played perfectly by everyone involved. What could have easily been a love triangle movie we have seen a thousand times before was anything but. Scott's performance as a guy teetering on the edge of madness and looking for answers is top notch. Snow never lets on exactly what she's thinking which makes for a really interesting movie throughout. JK Simmons is great as you would expect him to be and the writing leaves you wanting even more. The film had a great look to it and a decent soundtrack. It didn't feel like a false big budget romance, yet it didn't feel like a hipster indie film either. Yes, some indie films are starting to become as cliché as the big budget films. Not here though, this film has entertaining anger and a dark heart. But it's a genuine dark heart and an enjoyable, believable watch.

Mike Holtz WeWatchedAMovie http://www.youtube.com/wewatchedamovie

During a star-free night at an already emptied drive-in theatre, this film made my heart burn. This very last screening of a winter's night did not attract an audience but one sole viewer. And if you have an understanding of passion and pain you might not even be comforted by a crowd. You might prefer solitude while watching cinematic characters fight and love.

There are no exceptional techniques, there is no dazzling style. Visually the film holds back. As a result one character can step forward. Only this person seems to inhabit the film's universe and this could be considered a drop of bitterness.

However, this one person is able to entertain without the necessity of applause. He embodies the passionate being who bites back after being wounded. It is easy to fall for the broken one as long as you believe that there is a chance to heal. He is explosive. His hatred is an exceptional passion in disguise. In a universe of flat personalities he stands out. He cares too much, he loves too much and he cannot stop being passionate about every single soul. As a result, his viciousness is not inspiring hate but love from us and from them. We and everyone else are attracted because he is so full of what everyone else seems to lack.

The film presents us a world where people are not grown-up emotionally. Passions are rare and feared. In this universe people do not easily possess passionate love. Only the protagonist seems to own it but he also seems unable to handle it. Still, he is able to inspire another person, maybe even the audience to love him back. We learn that pain and love do not end, but jump like a virus from person to person. Love stories repeat themselves.

Passion is portrayed as a very dangerous form of love, one which easily feeds into a vicious cycle of being hurt and of hurting in return. But whether or not you can handle the pain and the guilt, for the passionate ones it seems inevitable to fall for it at least once in their lives.

The premise of this movie seemed interesting enough for me to give it a try. The story revolves around Caleb, a misogynist construction worker in a small town. His younger brother Peter just got his first "serious" girlfriend, which he is bringing for Thanksgiving to their dad's.

Adam Scott was an unknown to me but is absolutely amazing in the role of Caleb. He conveys all the suffering in this character on the inside, with all the aggressiveness on the outside. Caleb is fueled by hatred and negativity but the writing and direction of Lee Toland Krieger, and the performance by Scott suggest that if this hatred is explicitly directed at others, it is implicitly self-hatred.

Caleb is estranged from his father for reasons we learn about through the movie and his relationship with his naive brother is uneasy at best. The gap separating them is the very different outlook they have on life and love. Peter is more of an idealist while Caleb is on the slippery slope of fatalism.

Neither of them seems to be able to see the complete picture and their father Donald Sinclaire might have something to do with this. Donald is the prototypical dad figure. Doesn't talk much and prefers to address superficialities when he does. A scene that particularly highlight this is a dinner scene between him, Peter and his girlfriend Emma. While Donald can't stop complimenting Emma on her looks, Peter at some point shifts to her academic background, which seems to put the father outside his comfort zone. Veteran actor J.K. Simmons puts another great performance as the father, a great casting choice.

The last piece of the puzzle is the outsider who crashes in this family at such a critical point. Emma is Peter's new girlfriend and while it would have been easy to make this character little more than a plot device, she has several interesting layers to her. What we know from the start about her is that she is smart, polite, beautiful and herself comes from a less than perfect family (there is talk of alcoholism). More importantly perhaps, she dumped someone for Peter, which further fuels Caleb's belief that "all women are whores" as he likes to say. I had no idea who Brittany Snow was but I was blown away by her performance as Emma. Looking at her credit list afterwards, I would never have expected that.

The story mixes all the things you'd expect from an indie. Humor (mostly dark) is there, the main characters are quirky and the peripheral characters even more so. The camera-work, editing and music all ooze of this "indie feel". If anything, this hurts this heartfelt film more than it helps. Lee Toland Krieger obviously wrote a great and heartfelt story but there,s this sense that he has watched a lot of film festival darlings and well... it's just not terribly original in presentation and at times, feels formulaic.

The only other negative aspect would be the character of Peter. Naive and idealistic does not mean a character should be bland. Likewise, actor Alex Frost is unremarkable in this role.

All in all, this is a fine film and with Caleb Sinclaire, we have been given a misogynist character that almost rivals Roger Swanson (from the cult classic Roger Dodger). I just hope that in the future, Lee Toland Krieger will find his own voice and style when making movies as opposed to shooting it "like other indies".