Redwoods

This film is a great story and it made me cry , that in my book is a sign of a good one. It would have a made a cool series with all the characters in Humbolt having expanded story lines. The chemistry between the main characters is brilliant and you can feel the dilemma they face. Beautiful setting ! Gets your imagination going about the characters and wanting to know more that the film doesn't expand upon. It's sweet but sad story but quite believable and makes you reflect on life and it's fragility.

I think people should realize it's not a Hollywood movie but just a great story. If you don't have an open heart don't watch it ! It's not a European style film. I didn't regret buying it ;) Thumbs up to all the actors :)

I've seen all four of the movies that this writer/director has written and they are all strangely compelling. So much so that I'll continue to follow his work and hope that he continues to improve.

When I was much younger I would cross a set of taconite dotted railroad tracks on the way to school. Taconite is a rough form of iron ore that contains valuable iron ore but in quantities so small that it was once deemed uneconomical to mine.

Thinking of this writer/director's work reminded me of that ore. There is good stuff here but with the abundance of other, more readily appreciated, options available today, most will fail to see the value in this.

This time around there were a number of adorable characters that had really sweet moments and some wonderful plot points surfaced that had great potential. But there were also a number of flaws that might have been fixed if the writer and director had been two separate people with individual perspectives.

It might be stretching things to call this a "diamond in the rough" but there were definitely brilliant, touching moments in this film. Enough so that I enjoyed it when I wasn't considering the "might have beens."

Personally, I've always been a bit fascinated by the taconite and I'll continue to follow this guy's work. Hopefully as his work becomes more refined, I'll find it even more compelling.

The problem with most gay indie films is that they tend to be low-budget amateur productions. Amateur writing, amateur directing, amateur actors....they often come across as extended student films, but it is sadly the only way that most of these films would ever get made because the big Hollywood studios are still hesitant about "doing gay". Once in a blue moon we'll get a big studio release like Brokeback Mountain, but such films are few and far between.

Redwoods is very much a typical gay indie film in that it comes across as an amateur production made for a margin audience that still doesn't have much product in their niche marketplace to choose from. Perhaps "semi-professional" is a more polite term than "amateur", and given its obvious limitations it is by no means a terrible film, but it isn't a good film either. The script could have stood another rewrite or three (particularly to cut down on the number of times where the characters say each others names in their conversations, which sounds painfully false). The director could have rehearsed his actors more thoroughly (though better casting would have been preferable), and also gotten a bit more coverage from his cinematographer for a wider variety of shots to cut to, not to mention looking over his editor's shoulder and insisting on a few more cuts here and there to avoid the often dreary static effect that ruins many scenes. And I am certainly not a prude, but the full frontal nudity in the film was both out of place and completely unnecessary. Whether this was an attempt to titillate or to try to make the film more of an "arthouse" piece remains a mystery, but it was a desperate move regardless - and it shows. Of course, the writer and the director of this production are one and the same person, and so he must take the biggest share of the blame for the film's failings. As all artists should, hopefully he will learn from his mistakes and go on to make something better.

However, the biggest problem with the film is that, from beginning to end, it is a shameless rip-off of The Bridges of Madison County. Unfortunately, Brendan Bradley is no Meryl Streep, and making the story between two men rather than a man and a woman does not give this film enough of a distinction by itself. Had the film just loosely borrowed from "Bridges" rather than directly copying it, I might have been more forgiving, but a rip-off is a rip-off. In the film's favour, it at least gave the audience some decent photography of the redwood forests of northern California, though sadly this doesn't save the film from mediocrity. Perhaps it is unfair to be so critical of small independent films such as these due to their low budgets and often inexperienced personnel, although 2007's Shelter managed to rise above its humble indie beginnings and became a minor classic due to the sheer talent of its cast and crew. With better care, forethought and finesse from all involved, Redwoods could well have reached similar heights, but unfortunately it just doesn't make the grade.

I am sorry, I was really thinking hard about an other summary for this article, however there is nothing else I can say but that this film is just one of the worst movies I have ever seen...

Maybe it is just the sugar-sweetness of it. The looks the characters exchange, the way they are dressed, combed, the way the camera moves... it just gives me the creeps of surreality! The writing is mediocre and I wanted to stop watching it however kind of hoped it is going to get better during the movie... it did not. It just got more and more honey-romantic... without any substance. I cannot say that the characters were interesting or engaging. Brendan Bradley is just looking really weird with his puppy eyes and holding his elbow - which I suppose should be a character tick of some significance (maybe his insecurity and innocence) but it just makes me wanna shake that man to his senses! I kind of liked the way the writers put loopholes into the screenplay making it not all to laid out for us... oh, that was not intentional... ups... and there were like two or three moments of a light shining through the darkness of these dialogs but other than that - I had my vomit bucket prepared.

One amazing peace: the harmonica! OMG! If you please introduce an element within the writing, make sure there is a significance to it. Also, make your actors practice it, so at least the one character bringing it in, has an attachment to it!

Also, why the supporting cast was even there... no clue. This could have just been even cheaper movie without them. The mother and the B&B owner or even the brother (was he just signed up because he could get naked in front of the camera?). Oh, speaking of sex - I kind of surprisingly liked the undressing scene - it was kind of all what this movie was not - realistic.

I am not saying there only has to be realistic movies but this movie was so off the charts for me I could not give it more than 2 stars out of 10: one for the undressing and the other one for the nature.

I wish I could go to Redwoods and engrave on the trees Oscar Wilde's aphorism so that everybody could marvel on the splendor of the insight.

For at least one more thousand years, oh Oscar, stay with us, for I go Wilde with this, this thing, for this is a symptom of our current predicament, not a film:

Suffocating cheap chords of piano and wind mark our downfall to letting cheap soundtracks describe our intimacy; no I do not want any more bad music describe my, or anybody's intimate moments. They make their own f***ing music.

Mediocre writers-cum-directors feeding primly on previous films, not as films, but as hits, and they miserably miss, dragging us with them.

(The actors in their two bed scenes were somehow let to be, and these are the only almost redeeming moments in the film - along with Brendan Bradley's bland expression playing the harmonica towards the close, that achieves something of pathos - , but, oh, so bereft when then one remembers the pap surrounding them.)

No I do not want any badly informed directors turning the unlived life into one more self-indulgence!

(And why is it that Matthew Montgomery is involved with creepily mediocre gay films ("Socket", "Gone but not forgotten")?)

But let's start at the beginning: Dear trees, fade out then fade in, then fade out then fade in, then fade out then fade in, then fade out then fade in - did you get the headache spin;

No, cut it to the middle: slow mo so oh slow mo cut with mom and dad pensive so; slow mo and tears aboard this is really worstward ho; scenes with me and my lover so, wait, no, this is mom and dad again, this editing is so -

FIVE YEARS LATER

Now this what can it mean?...Are we to marvel that the protagonist has not aged a day, that the film comes five years after "Brokeback", or that five years from now that we are going to have more of this kind of film?

One starts to get the feeling we need more of the punk sensibility that informed Derek Jarman's films; one yearns for films with spunk.