Redwoods

This is a well-made and sincere film that avoids pat answers or schmaltzy sentiment in favor of asking interesting questions everyone faces in life - what makes happiness and what is its price - without relying on melodrama or exploitation. The story is very simple and the presentation very low-key with subtle, convincing performances and great chemistry between the leads.

One of the things I realized after seeing it is that the story could very easily be about heterosexuals. It in no way looks to the gay community to provide some unique positive or negative trait. Lots of films make the festival rounds relying on stereotypes to carry them along but this is simply about people and love and I think anyone can connect with the themes it presents. Highly recommended to anyone interested in a touching story regardless of orientation.

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 :)

This is a brilliant film for its budget limitations. It shows the growing up of this genre of film which focuses on same sex male relationships. But it is just a film, not a "gay film" because it is just about people dealing with life and possibilities and the unexpected. This could be a film with women or man and woman. It is not about coming out or the struggles to come to terms with sexuality and trying to find acceptance. It is just a good story.

I am sorry about one element of the end. Would have preferred if they had found a more constructive and intelligent way to deal with the conflicts of a relationship in trouble and a powerful new love plus the autistic child. Maybe too much in one story but then again it is life. Many things went unexplained and unexplored which would have needed a longer film. But as stated it needed a bigger budget.

However, I hail this film as a big step up. There are none of the usual clichés related to gay life. Bars, booze, drugs, smoking, hysteria, neuroses, prejudice, rejection, hatred, bigotry, drama queens. There is never the question or feeling that these people are anything but "normal" and accepted and supported by everyone. Possibly unrealistic for the present times but a better message.

It gives me hope for the future. I spent my life watching films about men and women, good films, some brilliant films but always a struggle and conflict because of identification models. In this type of film I feel in a world I fully know and am comfortable in. All the characters are kind, supportive and reasonable. Would have loved to have a brother like Shane.

I gave it a 9, maybe high but I think such a film needs support. Not a 10 due to its limitations. It could have been a 10 with a bigger budget and more complete and detailed script. The acting was competent and the emotions believable.

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.

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.