Wake

The release of this movie was a source of great anticipation for me. For one reason or another I wouldn't make any of the screening for Wake over the last year, so for me by the time I saw Wake I walked out thinking that the phrase "Good Things Come to Those Who Wait" to be very true.

As I think most people would agree, (at least those that go to a movie to actually WATCH the film) Wake is a haunting film to say the least. If you are tired of the mindless, the fluff, the unsubstantial flick that Hollywood tends force feed us, then give this brilliant indy film your $10 bucks. Wake is just extraordinary. Everything from the depth of the storyline, to the interactions between the 4 brothers, to the intimate setting and the inviting yet foretelling music, Wake offers a true movie experience. You get sucked in and taken to places in your own mind that maybe you didn't want to go. But isn't that what movies are meant to do.

Enlighten, entertain, engage you... Well Wake does all of that. But above and beyond all else it was the acting and the depth of the story that got me back into the theater a second time. I knew there was something I missed the first time around and just needed to make sure that I got it all.

The acting is just magic. Gale Harold's acting talent was no great surprise. His talent, his dedication, his willingness to take on the dark, the doomed, the distraught character of Kyle goes along with what I have long believed about Gale Harold... He takes risks in the hopes of growing professionally and perhaps personally as well. Well I hope this role did that for him, because it shows in his performance. For the sake of not getting to flowery ... Gale Harold was magical as Kyle. And for that we all owe a ton of gratitude to one Susie Landau Finch and one Henry LeRoy Finch for convincing Mr. Harold to try his hand at acting and for creating the opportunity to play Kyle ... respectively. I was not familiar with Blake Gibbons until last Friday, but now I wonder why. He is a phenomenal actor who nailed the role of Roy. What I found most remarkable was his ability to go inside himself, deeply enough to bring about this performance. Roy is a character that can be a self-centered prick on one hand, yet clearly loving and caring on another. It is almost as if he battles between the two simultaneously in each scene.

There isn't enough to be said for Henry LeRoy Finch. Its simple really, if it wasn't for his brilliance, dedication, guts and obvious talent, Wake would not be.

A very dark, haunting movie but excellent acting, especially by Gale Harold and Blake Gibbons. The four brothers in this dysfunctional family collide by circumstance and the story's spiral downward flow is brilliantly brought about by the superb acting. Lavish sets and locations are not necessary and not missed as the whole pivotal story centres around the childhood home of Jack, Kyle, Sebastian and Raymond. The story is told by the older Sebastian, as portrayed by Martin Landau. A must-see for Gale Harold fans. My mind definitely didn't wander off throughout the whole movie. The range of emotions portrayed is riveting and the actors must have gone home drained. Excellent music score and directing.

Four actors who look nothing like brothers get together to do some bad acting while pretending to be brothers and after a night of pills, booze, gunplay and strippers someone ends up dead.

I'm all for keeping the audience guessing but there is nothing that these people say to each other that is straightforward, everything is alluded to and it gets old quick. That being said, you don't need to be a genius to figure out what's going on here, that is, assuming that you care.

Ex-con bro and blonde-sleaze bro are both so annoying that I was hoping the booze and pills would promptly render them null and void. Even the talented and yummy Gale Harold as crazy bro can't salvage this material -though he does do a fetching drunken strip tease and he can puke and pass out with the best of 'em. The other bro, well, his name was Sebastian and that's about all I remember.

The house looks like a studio set built too small for the actors, either that or the only thing the actors/brothers have in common is that they are tall.

In keeping with tradition started with my Particles of Truth review I'd like to add that Gale Harold looks better in a lacy housedress than any man has a right to.

The reason I went to see Wake was because of Gale Harold, who gives a superbly credible performance here as Kyle, one of the four Riven brothers who reunite for one long night of insane plotting and torturous reminiscing, culminating in disaster (as these nights always do). What sets this film apart from other dysfunctional family reunion rehashes is how realistic it feels -- you genuinely get the sense that these four wrecks actually share history, which is very hard to depict - most writers wind up over-stating the facts to let the audience in on it, but first-time screenwriter Henry LeRoy Finch manages to convey their shared anguish without doing this -- he tells us just enough, relying on mood and the actions of the characters to fill in the rest.

I saw the movie at the Queens International Film Festival. I thought it was excellent - atmospheric, beautifully photographed (though the digital projection at the festival was a bit dark), well edited, superbly acted across the board, and (this was an added bonus) well scored. The movie begins with Landau's voiceover (we see him as he types) writing a story of the flashback events. I must say, the prose in his bookend scenes was a bit flowery, and even contained an obvious pronoun error (in fact, I believe there's a moment in later dialogue when Blake Gibbons's grammar is corrected by Dihlon McManne, and McManne - the younger version of Landau - is wrong then too). Finch's script was much better in the the more important departments of dialogue, character, plot, pacing, etc., where it was truly fine.

The premise is that one of four brothers, an escaped con (Raymond), has chosen the family house to rendezvous with his accomplice brother Jack (who brings along a couple of party girls for the road) and abscond with some ill-gotten money. They happen to arrive on the night that the eldest - Sebastian - plans to euthanise their cancer-ridden mother with drugs he has persuaded the youngest brother Kyle to supply. All the acting was wonderful (and it helped that the parts were uniformly wonderful). The characters were each dysfunctional in different ways. The brother who has stayed with the mother to hold it all together (Dihlon McManne) is a weakling; Jack (John Philbrick) is an amoral, sadistic loser; Raymond (Blake Gibbons) is caught between good and evil, a cunning but stupid con man with both a genuine family affection and a sadistic, controlling, larcenous streak.

Kyle, the youngest (Gale Harold) is really the strongest of the four (he has quit alcohol and drugs and holds a job), and the best (he never quite gets away from his best instincts, whatever the provocation). He's also the most damaged (Raymond comes in second). He is haunted by the horrific family past, and he take prescription drugs - apparently to deal with some form of schizophrenia. As the haunted one, he experiences terrible flashbacks brought on by the appearance of Raymond and Jack. It's a very dark film, but very compelling. You have to pay attention to it, and that makes it a real moviegoing experience, where the dark theatre and absence of distractions keep you intent on it. I would really recommend that your first exposure to it be in a theatre rather than on TV or a DVD (unless you watch the DVD on your hard drive from your computer chair).

I want to mention finally that the music by Henry LeRoy Finch and Chris Anderson is very good and atmospheric, and that it is augmented by some original songs by a folksinger/songwriter named Ramsey Midwood, with whom I am not familiar. I have made a note to myself to look for an album of his, because the songs were terrific. Very literate folk songs, a bit like Tom Waits's stuff. I have only one quibble, apart from the flowery prose of the elder Sebastian (McManne/Landau), which is that I didn't need the early exteriors of Raymond and Kyle on their way to the house. I already knew the brothers were coming, and it would have been better to see McManne going about his routine, and get more of a sense of how isolated he was there with the uncommunicative, dying mother. However, the footage of Gale Harold tearing down wooded roads on his motorcycle is something some of you may be glad to see.

How is Gale Harold? Excellent technically, as is everybody - especially Blake Gibbons - but he brings to it all the depth and complexity he brings to everything else. And though he's a mess, and gets messier, there just isn't any way to keep him from being beautiful. And that works for the script, because Kyle has a goodness that none of this ghastly family has ever quite been able to kill, and that at least two of his brothers recognize and, in their own ways, cherish. John Philbrick's Jack is the most unredeemed and unsympathetic, but not the scariest. That's Blake Gibbons's Raymond, who is alternately scary, appalling, and strangely sympathetic. I don't agree with the previous contributor that the Raymond character ought to have been the center of the film, however. He's interesting at all times, but Gale Harold's character is one of those doomed angels - deeply damaged by past events that Blake Gibbons's Raymond doesn't even seem to remember very well. And Harold is simply hypnotic in the part.