Cortez

Six stars for good acting and production and photography on a $100K budget. It helped in all respects that it was in good part - writing, directing, acting, producing - an affair of family and very close friend(s). Beyond that...after awhile I started asking myself why am I being put through these characters with this story; i.e., what's special here, what's the redeeming value (so to speak), what's the point? It's not enough to grab a slice of life, even done well; there's got to be some reason to put me - an audience - through it. Otherwise, it's just a form of self indulgence, more Me Generation stuff. I really like character studies, but the writers failed to offer its fullness here. No development at all. Just an extended photograph of anger and desperation and love and adaptations to it, beginning to end. Frustrating. The characters were annoying enough, repetitively so, that by about halfway through I had the urge to walk out, which, who know, I might have done were it not for an obligation to see it through - and nothing better to do the rest of that evening.