This movie seems like it was made by film students whose lives are like this and they got a kick out of putting it on film. The actors/characters just seemed like people they liked, thought were cool, and wanted to put them in a movie. The photography was competent enough but the direction and editing left it in the realm of many independent films that have a lot of non essential scenes that do not push the story forward. There were enough scenes of devoid of both verbal and non-verbal acting. An attempt to carry a "moral' character that was to straighten the hero out and get him to get his s**t together but that never really seemed to take hold. The antihero protagonist character was just annoying but I can see how the filmmakers who like that kind of character feel great about seeing him in a movie. He's cool to them. But just not to most people.
... View More"Sorry, Thanks" is an independent film that takes place in San Francisco. The story focuses on two main characters, Max, a loser with a dead-end job and no plans, and Kira, an artist who, according to her friends, settles for less than what she's worth. Kira is in a period of transition, having just gotten out of a long relationship and her old job. She is looking for the next step in her life when she decides on a crap job and has a couple of romantic encounters with the incredibly unappealing Max despite his having a girlfriend who loves him dearly and treats him well. The film is a series of scenes which were, for the most part, completely unnecessary to the plot, or repetitive, driving in the point that Max is a lazy bum with no morals and no motivation, such as the scene at the beginning in which his bearded friend gives him a ride and tells him how lazy his, or when he and a group of friends are eating and they tell him that he has no morals. I felt that the first half of the film could have been removed and the plot would have been more concrete and the characters just as understood.This film was not emotionally appealing in any way, it does not come off as comedic as the director seemed to think, and the acting and cinematography were uncomfortable to watch. The idea, from what director Dia Sokol said in a Q and A, was to put together a film displaying a very normal, everyday existence. The characters based on people that she and others involved on the project knew personally in San Francisco and the title is meant to be something so common that one would normally never think about it. To achieve her goal of creating a nondescript environment, she wanted to keep the movie fairly devoid of chemistry or romance, which she certainly achieved, to negative results. The lack of passion from characters and of a conclusion to the abrupt ending leave this film without any particular intrigue. The viewer isn't made to care much about any of the characters and there is no apparent moral. It simply falls flat.
... View MoreIf you're an Andrew Bujalski fan, this is not to be missed. Bujalski's in top-form here (and he gets a bigger acting part than usual), playing a friend who has zero patience for his lamer by the day man-child BFF, but all the patience in the world for his beard.Remember Wiley Wiggins (from "Dazed and Confused")? He's no longer the scrawny freshman, but he's still a man-child here. He plays pathetic like a real pro, and it's truly funny stuff. To its credit, this movie doesn't use the man-child character the way most bromances do. It just sets him up to implode. And we watch. Made me cringe, but it was also a welcome relief.All around, I'd say "Sorry, Thanks" takes the best impulses of a "buddy comedy" and a "relationship movie" combined, but without all the Hollywood fluff tricks. This movie is just something much more interesting. Highly recommend.
... View MoreI'm not quite sure what to make of this film, as I kinda liked it, but also felt it was sort of a waste of time to watch.The story is about a group of post-teens, who doesn't really seem to know what they want with their lives, and go around living just for the sake of living. The protagonist is Max, played by perhaps the only well-known actor in the film at this point, Wiley Wiggins (from "Waking Life" and "Dazed and Confused"-fame). Max unambitiously works as a sort of telephone operator, not really putting much thought nor effort into his job, and frequently comes in late, as a result of him not having a car, and refusing to use public transportation. He has just had a one-night stand with Kira (Kenya Miles), who had just broken up with her boyfriend, and Max can't seem to stop thinking about her, even though he is already in a steady relationship with his long-term girlfriend Sara. Max doesn't seem to be regretting his affair, but at the same time doesn't want to break up with his girlfriend either, so he is going through some emotional issues (or rather, lack thereof) throughout the film, and we follow him around, essentially doing nothing, and then doing more of nothing later. We also follow some of the other characters around, also doing basically nothing too.Even though most of the characters are very shallow, they still belong to this interesting group of goal-less youths, which probably take up more and more of the modern western society today, and because many of us (including myself) belong to this group, the film becomes strangely relevant, despite apparently not really having a goal of its own.So, overall I rate this a 6/10, purely because of the likability-effect that these post-teens have, and because I can identify with many of the issues they face during their everyday lives. But it is probably not a movie I'd consider viewing multiple times, as it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere, with a character-development of basically zero.
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