I had to add my few impressions just to get the average review feeling for this film up closer to the score it really deserves. Beautiful photography and deliciously fitting music give the road trip a genuine convincing real emotional satisfying impact. I wasn't looking for plot, so didn't miss there not being one. The film makers here know how a film depends on feelings evoked by imagery and believably suspenseful drama. How you can get that without plot is how this movie works. That a feeble little VW micro-bus can get so much mileage with so little power is the impressive surprise. Yep, lotsa higher-powered vehicles pass it by, or find it's in their way. But Linas keeps on driving along and we get somewhere pretty satisfying eventually.

I follow film websites and picked up a film festival buzz about this movie. I spotted it on Fios pay-per-view and said "what the heck." I like micro-budget films if they are original (being from Baltimore, check out our home boy Matthew Porterfield).That said, this movie enthralled me. In my youth in the 60s and 70s, I spent a certain amount of time on the road. I hitchhiked from Boston to Provincetown almost effortlessly in 1972. I traveled all around the Baltimore/D.C. area on my thumb. I fear those days are over. Not sure why. But I met a lot of interesting people along the way.Anyway, a lot of those reminiscences came back watching "Bass Ackwards." Linas, our hero, has basically gotten kicked out of Seattle. No one there who he thought he was tight with wants him around anymore. He ends up on an alpaca farm to make a few bucks and the owner is glad to give Linas his rattletrap VW microbus, a ridiculous vehicle in any man's motor pool. Linas hits the road.Linas' parents are glad to hear he's on the way home to where they live in Boston. But you can tell they are dubious over what he's up to. They definitely do not want him as a permanent boarder.Bottom line, Linas is leaving nowhere and headed nowhere. All that matters is what happens to him along the way. And interesting things happen. He picks up and befriends a guy with heavy marital baggage. He flirts with a girl he does not know is married and ends up in a punch-out. He runs out of gas and has to do a Christopher Walken imitation in Lithuanian to get the gas he needs (I kid you not).It's not much of a spoiler to say Linas lands in an intriguing place in NYC and we see the beginnings of his new life. In fact, the movie ends abruptly where you are really curious what come next. Nevermind. He'll be OK.This is wonderful independent American cinema. And, one of the best American road movies ever made.

I also related to the movie, have wanted to see it ever since Sundance, and YouTube's pay release window. I found it easy to get into the rhythm of the film. I liked the sweetness of it, that it took its time, and that it had none of the smugness and self-consciousness hipness of many indie, and most studio, films. I had the same reaction to it as I did to sex, lies and videotape 20 years ago, feeling like this was a film that was again pushing the boundaries of film-making, pushing the margins to more authenticity, naturalism, etc. It's similar, but different than other indie or road films. It feels post-slacker, post- irony, post hollow-culture-formula-action movies, post-judgmental us- against-them contemporary stuff. It also redefined hetero men as I find them today, less afraid to be sensitive, unclear about what roles are today, not as phonily macho and cool as portrayed in Hollywood films. I know more people like Linas than I do leading men in mainstream films. That probably goes for the characters he meets on the road, somewhat more like people in LA, than those who inhabit studio films. The film was somewhat lacking in plot, and I was slightly itchy, but only slightly. Mostly I fell into the rhythm of the film, happy to be with Linas on his road adventure, as he experienced himself and his solitaryness in a way that was quite relatable for all of us.

Bass Ackwards is a film that as of right now seems to be going under everybody's radar. I found it by chance while researching released films from this year that I have not yet seen, and man, am I glad I found it. At times it reminded me of Last year's Wendy and Lucy, but without the added drama I found came along with that film. Other times it reminded me of Sean Penn's Into the Wild as the story follows one man on the road always searching with an open heart.What this film has however, that both these other excellent films do not is a soul that Hollywood rarely touches upon and an acutely fitted soundtrack reminiscent of Neil Young's score to Dead Man. All these things, plus a foreign language Christopher Walken impression make this little gem of a film shine like a newly unearthed diamond