CrazyJim2004

An early image in "It's Alright Now" has a young, seemingly healthy and robust young teenage boy lounging in the sun. It's only a moment or two later when we see his two friends help glide him down a Slip-N-Slide that we realize this young man is unable to move from the waist down. This makes for an appropriate, almost-allegorical preface for the events to come in Karee Von's captivating indie drama about a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood, who is desperately searching for surface-level elements to mask her own damaged interior.

While set against the backdrop of an unspecified summer in the 1970's, Von's picture is decidedly less fixated on the 70's cultural landscape and more invested in the universal growing pains associated with coming of age in small town America.

At the heart of the story is playful teenage protagonist, Ann whose bond with her childhood friends, paraplegic cousin, Brian and quirky neighborhood pal, Patrick, proves a comforting escape from her increasingly fractured home life. Her father has left town, her relationship with her older sister is strained, and her mother is currently tied down in a dependent relationship with a mentally unstable character who is adding fuel to an already fiery predicament.

Away from her dysfunctional home surroundings, Ann tries to make the most out of her time with her tight-knit circle of friends. The trio have that kind of isolated, outcast chemistry that works well in smaller, more personal films such as these. There's a bittersweet contrast between the livelier scenes of Ann and her friends enjoying their care-free summer days out by the baseball diamond and the more uncomfortable ones showcasing Ann's struggles at home.

The decision to position the events of "Alright Now" through the evocative narrative filter of the 70's makes for an interesting if formidable endeavor. Attempting to capture a period-authentic feel, close to fifty years removed from the timeline of the story would seem an ambitious challenge for just about any film. Doing so on a seemingly limited budget requires an even further level of artistic bravery that few filmmakers tend to embrace and even fewer, execute successfully. On that alone, Von's work on this film is nothing short of admirable. But admiration for an artist's efforts by itself does not necessarily equate to an entertaining final product.

Smaller, independent films like these always seem to have their work cut out for them when it comes to getting noticed in an already congested marketplace and in the rare chance where they do get noticed, they are often unfairly judged against much larger studio pictures with infinitely more resources. The indie community from which these films come from, tends to sell them up, which often creates a boomerang effect of attracting more discriminating viewers who rate them ridiculously low based on inflated expectations. In turn, that prototypical "undecided viewer" is left trying to gage their interest in the film through an inconsistent bubble of mixed reviews.

In reviewing films, I think it important to understand that all films aren't for everyone. A pitfall a lot of hobbyist critics/angry consumers fall into is judging a product's merits based on the product wanted, instead of the product they got. This is a particularly slippery slope when it comes to analyzing something as subjective as art. For example, those expecting this film to indulge in a more retro-leaning presentation might subtract points for how it delivers on that but in doing so, I think they risk missing a significant part of the overall experience. From my perspective, I viewed this picture as far less interested in recapturing the aesthetic of the 70's as it was in presenting those forgotten truths, warts and all, that come with growing up in any era.

So just who would be the audience for this kind of film? I feel it is most likely to be favored by those who enjoy more grounded films of emotional growth like Allsion Anders' Gas, Food, and Lodging or Lori Petty's The Poker House. The more nostalgia-based production values present in say, Dazed and Confused or the more recent Licorice Pizza, are all but absent here but thankfully, Von chooses her resources wisely and allows the storytelling and performances to be the selling point.

The performances in "Alright Now" are in my opinion, its greatest strength, particularly with regards to its lead. I can only imagine coming-of-age roles being a real pain in the backside to cast. They require a young actor who can not only deliver what is on the page but also has the ability to believably present both naivete and maturity in a single performance. In that regard, Von seems to have hit pay dirt with the casting of Amber Rothberg as Ann. At first glance, Rothberg appears an exceptionally promising performer, blessed with a talent for being able to convey a lot through expression. You can often gage the emotional temperature of a scene through how she plays it. No easy feat. As one should hope for in anyone inhabiting a lead role, she mixes well with nearly everyone she shares the screen with. Her big emotional highlight being in the midst of a hostile confrontation with her mom's erratic and belligerent boyfriend.

Story-wise, you have likely seen many of the events that unfold in "Alright Now" in other movies with varying results. I don't consider this a strike against it. Slice-of-life films tend to be less about the idea on paper and more about how it is executed on the screen. I dug how the film went about itself in this regard. I cared about the characters and was invested in what happened to them until the very end. Even the noticeably flawed characters like Ann's mother and sister behave in a way that is believable given the circumstances of their surroundings, their desperation and urgency feel earned rather than manufactured, a credit to both the actors and the material.

I don't consider It's Alright Now a great movie but it is a really good one. It gets a lot right and in those rare instances, where I thought it missed its mark a little bit, it never did so in a way that turned me off. There are the expected creative "blisters" here and there that come with low-budget filmmaking but even that rawness brings with it a certain endearing charm. From a filmmaking standpoint, I think this movie would make a worthwhile one to study for anyone trying to create a period-based film on a budget. Rather than sprinkle this film with the kind of hyperbole that tends to cannonball smaller independent films, I'll keep it simple. It's not a once-in-a-lifetime event movie but I enjoyed it a great deal and hope more people go out of their way to see it.

"Of The Living Dead" is not a movie. Movies usually have scripts. There is usually some attempt at creating some type of narrative within the film. Watching this… uh, production, reminded me of the sort of stuff that I would do when I was about eleven or twelve and first had access to a camcorder... with a few big exceptions. The first being that the principles involved are about fifteen to twenty years older than I was and the second being that I made the wise choice of letting my early cinematic missteps collect dust in my basement rather than seeking distribution for them.

"Living Dead" is apparently the brain child of Albert and Hugh Cochran (presumably brothers). According to the credits, they did all the writing, producing, editing, directing, cinematography, etc., which would be impressive if they did any of it with even the slightest level of competence or effort. The writing mostly consists of the actors more or less narrating their own scenes to the camera as they drop "F"-bombs left and right. The story itself has absolutely no structure to it at all. It's a bunch of poorly-conceived comedy sketches stretched out to maximum length. We get to hear the same joke referencing "28 Days Later" and "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" about six or seven times in the first twenty minutes of the movie. And probably a handful more before all is said and done. Worse yet is the obnoxious séance call by a chubby guy in a bad costume that keeps talking about "sons of b—ches" and an equally-irritating rock number about "zombies" and "B-rated movies" by a fat zombie. I'm pretty sure they are both played by the same actor. While we're on the subject, I would love to know in what remedial Junior High film class this movie would qualify as "B-rated".

The central plot here seems to involve two friends who, after watching a bunch of straight-to-DVD zombie flicks, are shocked to discover that the dead have actually risen to life and are attacking their home. There really aren't any clear-cut rules to how the zombies operate or even where they came from. Some run, some talk, some tell really unfunny jokes, and a few can even read. The main characters are played by Albert and Hugh Cochran and it should be also noted that Albert pops up at least a few other times as different characters without altering his appearance or even the cadence in which he talks. We're supposed to know that he's not the same character because he's wearing either a different color sweatshirt or a bandanna on his head. There's all kinds of random stuff going on involving séances, guys on stilts with awful fake accents, ninjas, and a guitar-playing zombie who sings like a bunch of kids trying to annoy their parents on a long road trip. Apparently, this stuff is supposed to invoke laughter. Nearly everything that happens in this overlong home movie is done to deliver a gag and then quickly forgotten about. It plays like a bunch of high school public access sketches stretched out to make a feature-length presentation with no consistency in its storytelling at all.

The technical work is even more embarrassing. For some reason, instead of traditional editing, the Brothers Cochran decided they would use some weird video flip-frame gimmick to transition between cuts making the whole picture seem like an 80's infomercial. The editing itself is very sloppy. There's no background track used so the audio jumps from no noise to hissing quite frequently. Whatever shots aren't destroyed by the eccentric editing are put of their misery by the lazy camera work. A common sense rule of film-making is if you can actually hear the bulk of the camera operator's work on the soundtrack then he's probably doing a lousy job. There's plenty of that in this presentation --- heavy-breathing, laughter, less-than-subtle camera movements. All of which are often more audible than the actor's dialog. There's even a few scenes where we get to hear the camera operator comment on the scene when it's over. Generally, I'd blame this sort of thing on the editor but I'm pretty sure that they're the same person.

"Of The Living Dead" actually received some pretty favorable reviews on Amazon. I'm assuming that it's either from friends and family of people who worked on the film or the filmmakers themselves with different accounts. I guess from a subjective perspective, one might find some entertainment value here but I really can't see how. This is not an indictment of low-budget movies at all. Clearly this film was made for practically no money but it was also made with no practical idea of how to structure a story, set up a joke, frame a shot, or edit a scene. It's a ninety-five minute movie that wears its premise thin before the ten-minute mark. The DVD packaging for this opus warns about "excessive adult language" that may offend some viewers but makes no mention of the much more disturbing issue of offensive film-making.