Little Birds

Lily Hobart (Juno Temple) is a restless damaged teen desperate to leave her Salton Sea trailer park. Alison Hoffman (Kay Panabaker) is her more reserved best friend. They run away to LA and follow Jesse (Kyle Gallner) and his boys. They get further and further into trouble as their friendship is put to the test.

This is written/directed by first time Elgin James. It's a very solid debut. Juno Temple has carved out a nice niche in the damaged teenager roles. She is probably one of the best at that role right now. Kay Panabaker is one of the smarter actresses, and she fits this role. She's great at the friend role, and she's great as the wet blanket in LA. Leslie Mann has a great maternal feel. Kyle Gallner is the perfect companion to Juno Temple. Overall, the acting fits perfectly in a fairly lightly written movie. It's a well worn genre. It's not new, but it's well done.

Most movies usually aren't realistic. They might be to a point but lots have a happy ending and everything is okay. Little Birds is not like this at all. It doesn't have the happy bright movie feeling. Little birds is realistic and every single event in it could easily happen. This movie also teaches a great lesson and has its shocking surprises. We learn in this movie sometimes trying new things is good, but going too far can end with terrible results. Little Birds isn't just an independent movie, it's the hard cold truth to life and proves bad things do actually happen. Always trying to impress people isn't going to get you anywhere in life except possibly leading up to terrible consequences.

A fine opening for a first time director. I saw it specially for Juno Temple and her performance was the major plus point but her co-star attracted to my eyes. I liked Juno Temple very much in 'Dirty Girl' but afterwords she was good, also exposed her body consistently and I disliked it. Sometime we hate someone we admired do like that. She could have been a good actor liked by everybody including family audience if she does not expose much of her skin.

Anyway this movie was good, delivers a fine message and kinda a lesson to youngsters to learn. This was the story of two teenage girls Lily and Alison from a small town. Fifteen, the age of self discovering and curious about everything in the world, to find out what is future and where it will be. These girls are unhappy with their poverty and pollution town, so wanted to runaway. One day they meet the boys from Los Angeles and follows them. What comes to them is not as they expected and theirs response to the circumstance brings the curtain to the movie.

Good story and the movie looked realistic to me. The element about blackmail through social media was one of the highlights of the movie. It was based on actual happenings in everywhere like the movie 'Trust'. I am happy they used it very well for this movie. This independent drama about youngsters mistakes is totally worth seeing.

8/10

(2012) Little Birds DRAMA

Another no plot movie, written and directed by Elgin James, starring Juno Temple as female teen, Lily Hobart living in a mobile home environment, with her best friend Alison (Kay Panabaker), who appear to be about the same age. This mobile resident is located near a supposedly an infected beach, which is why no one is playing around there. Defined as an acting device film, as Lily complains about her mother, Margaret Hobart (Leslie Mann) always trying to steal unsuspecting boyfriends money and so forth. She then strives to leave as soon as she's threatened by some of her former neighbors. And she does that by convincing her best friend to steal a respected man's truck, by the name of Hogan (Neal McDonough) to meet up with some skaters, but are really squatters who also rob and steal unsuspecting people as well, by means of online dating. Kate Bosworth also stars as Bonnie Muller, who's like another one of Lilly's aunts. Speaking as a realist and by looking at the big picture, I never got the sense that the characters are indeed real, since what Lilly and her best friend Alison do seems to be very routine, which it restricts viewers to whatever it gives us, instead of explaining to us about their studies. Or when Lilly first meets those boarders, which Jesse (Kyle Gallner) seemed to be her first boyfriend, and they just happened to meet by chance- and that Lily never found a steady boyfriend when she went to school, or other friends or enemies for that matter, which means that the schooling never even existed. Now, while I appreciate some of those subtle scenes such as babbling along the train tracks with a scene taken from "Stand By Me" I find that I'm unable to identify with any of the characters as a whole, or as being real as the movie raises more questions than it is giving us answers.

The good thing about this movie is Juno Temple. She is just incredible in her role. That being said her character is the bad thing about this movie. Your lead character should have something that despite his bad choices and behaviour makes him relateable and likeable. That is not the case here. She is angry at everything and the whole movie she either yelling at her supposedly best friend or insulting her or lauging when other people insult her. If they had a established why she feels so empty early in the movie we could be more on her site. Too bad.