“The Overnight” centers around Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Shilling), recent transplants from Seattle, as they settle into their new life in LA. When their son RJ makes a friend at the park, they accept his dad Kurt’s (Jason Schwartzman) dinner invitation assuming best case scenario, they’ve made a friend. Worst case scenario, they wasted an evening.

The evening that does ensue goes far past what the couple envisioned. Kurt and his wife Charlotte (Judith Godrèche) are on the weird side of perfect, with a gorgeous house, despite their strange taste in film and art. After dinner, Kurt and Charlotte convince their guests to let RJ sleep upstairs with their son so that the party can continue. The night takes a turn, as drinking, pot smoking and skinny-dipping begins. Early on it becomes obvious that Kurt and Charlotte have an ulterior sexual motive for the evening, though the details aren’t made clear until the film’s end. In between, both couples let loose and explore topics that are normally taboo, from body image issues to the struggles of marital monogamy.

It’s rare to see a film that allows adults to inhabit a sexual space so often reserved for teenagers. While it’s refreshing to see “grown-ups” air their insecurities on screen and admit to struggling with such universal issues, the casual tone only allows for the film to get so deep. A wild scene where Alex and Kurt show off their manliness (or not so manliness on Alex’s part), may be the most memorable scene for the slapstick humor, but only touches on male ego and insecurity. How do you go about making friends when you’re too old to meet them at school? How do you balance a sex life with parenthood? How do you stay responsible while still remaining open to new experiences? Writer/director Patrick Brice artfully mixes these questions in with comedic moments so the existential dilemmas are never overwhelming. Though the evening doesn’t go as any of the characters had planned, there’s the sense that each emerges stronger after their shared night.

The light hearted nature of the film as well as the stellar cast does allow room for forgiveness in the less stand out moments. The chemistry between the actors allow each to bring out the best in the other, giving Scott, Schwartzman, Schilling, and Godreche each their own narrative and moments. As the film progresses, the four keep playing off one another as one outrageous unexpected event leads to the another. While the climax (ahem) of the film is a bit lackluster compared to bigger parts of the film, the realism of the moment keeps the film in check.

Written & Directed By: Patrick Brice

Starring: Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godrèche

Grade: B+

Emily Ting’s name has shown up in movie credits as a producer for years, but it wasn’t until recently that she decided to take a stab at directing. In her directorial debut, “It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,” Ting examines the concept of emotional cheating and the parameters that define exclusive relationships.

Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg star in the romantic indie flick, as Ruby and Josh.  Chung plays Ruby, an Asian American woman whose visit to Hong Kong is shaped by a random encounter she has while trying to meet up with her friends.  Greenberg portrays Josh, an American expat who leads Ruby on a seemingly romantic journey through the streets of Hong Kong. After spending the night getting to know each other and strolling through the cityscape, a miscommunication between the two sends them each on their own way, but it’s not the last time the universe puts them together.

“It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,” premiered at the LA Film Fest on June 12th, and Hollywood Times Square got to sit down with Ting and the cast to discuss the film and the inspiration behind it.

So the film is pretty autobiographical, right?
Emily Ting: Yes so, on one level I am a toy designer so Ruby’s job is very much my day job and I was also able to plug a couple of my favorite toys, Justin Beaver and Moos Like Jagger. But in addition to just like having the same job, I channeled a lot of myself into the Ruby character in terms of what I was feeling when I was living in Hong Kong as an expat, you know the irony of being Asian, being a fish out of water in Asia, so all of that was very autobiographical. And you know on top of that the whole thing was inspired by a real life encounter. So there’s so much of me in this film for sure.

So how did you, Bryan and Jamie, get involved with the project?
Jamie Chung: Bryan worked with Emily on two different projects, I met Emily on one of the two that she was a producer on, and this is the way I remember the story, you [Bryan] tell it differently, but–
Bryan Greenberg: We’ll let Emily tell it
Ting: So we were at the Kitchen premiere in LA, and I was chatting with Bryan and he’s like ‘Oh are you working on anything new’, ‘Well yeah I have this script about this Asian girl who goes to Asia and its like an interracial love story,’ and Bryan’s like, ‘Did you know my girlfriend’s Asian?’ I was like ‘Yeah I think I do,’ so I did that very like sly Hollywood thing like, ‘Do you mind passing the script along to Jamie.’
Chung: See!
Ting: But that’s only because it was written as a British expat originally, but then when I sent it to him I said ‘Look, if you guys wanna do it together, its so easy to re-write the part’, and to cast a real live couple, that would be the dream.
Greenberg: I guess we’re both right.
Ting: It’s a dream come true to be able to work with a real life couple. Like I know its difficult for you guys, but for me as a director I’m like, ‘Oh they already love each other,’ like they don’t have to pretend to be falling in love because when you’re making a romance chemistry is like the biggest factor, and you can’t engineer chemistry you either have it or you don’t. They clearly have it cause they’re getting married, so for me I just like turned the camera on and they just exuded so much chemistry it was like ‘Oh my god this is like rom-com gold.’
Greenberg: And the first time we read it, when she gave us the script we just read it because we were like ‘I dunno, I don’t even know if she can write’, because I’ve only worked with her as a producer.
Ting: You were reading it as a favor.
Greenberg: We’re like, ‘Let’s just read it, lets just read it out loud and then we’ll know what to tell her.’ And honestly we were like, this script is good, like we loved the concept, the dialogue was really smart and the characters were refreshing, the setting was refreshing and interesting and real and honestly, I think Jamie is an unbelievable actress and shes never really gotten the chance to be like this romantic lead. She always talks about like ‘Man I really wanna do one’ so I was just really excited for Jamie to really get chance to shine because I think she’s so good in this movie, so charismatic, and audiences haven’t seen that side of her so it was really an honor to be able to work with her and see her. She’s so good in this movie.

What I loved about it is like, in other romances they kind of fast forward through the part where they’re actually falling in love until they get to a conflict or something, but the whole movie is just you guys, and the moments that make you fall in love with each other.
Chung: I really do think the hardest part about this film wasn’t anything towards the ending, like the second act was easy for me personally, you know emotionally but the hardest part was unknowing each other, that moment when they first meet. I do think there still is like a hint of familiarity, you know what I mean? But I think that was the most challenging part.
Greenberg: Yeah we got separate hotel rooms.

Did you? I was going to ask!
Greenberg: Yeah no, we stayed in different rooms.
Chung: He was totally fighting it in the beginning. But he was like, ‘This was actually a good idea.’
Greenberg: I didn’t want that! I was like ‘What, we’re going to Hong Kong together and you wanna get separate rooms?’ That sucks!
Chung: But I looked at it as like, we’re working 12 hours.
Greenberg: And she was right, because honestly we needed a break.
Chung: I don’t know any couple who works together and then goes home.
Greenberg: And it was a rough shoot because it was hot, and we were shooting on location, and it was hot.
Ting: Did he mention it was hot?
Greenberg: And you know with the crew, not everyone spoke English, not everyone spoke Cantonese so it was not the easiest shoot, so it was nice to have a little downtime. And maybe it did build the chemistry a little bit.

When you guys were acting were there moments where you forgot it was supposed to be Ruby and Josh and it just felt like Bryan and Jamie?
Ting: I will say in the Temple Street Market there were definitely moments where you were like ‘Hey Bryan, look at this!’
Chung: Oh I know! And I was like ‘Oh shoot are using sound?’ But that moment was like, literally us, like we were trying to shop.
Greenberg Yea, that was cool because she would just let us go and we were improv-ing a lot
Ting: That was all improv.
Chung: The haggling part I am genuinely terrible at, but I was really trying to buy a selfie stick.
Greenberg: And you did, you bought that one.
Chung: I did, I bought it. I took it home.
Greenberg: It’s a little dated now ‘cause selfie sticks are so big.
Chung: But back then you could only get it in Asia.

Another thing I really loved about the film was how it plays with time, and even in the title obviously, the film is concerned with timing, were there ever moments where you tried to intentionally play with the time or did you just let the pace of the city do that for you?
Chung: It was super intentional, you were like ‘Jamie needs a watch, you need to be looking at it.’
Ting: Because the whole thing takes place over the course of two nights and we shot it over two weeks,  [we needed] to keep everything consistent throughout like this is one night. And the thing with shooting everything exterior in the start of typhoon season is that you can’t control the weather. And it rained every single day that we were there but somehow when we would roll cameras it would stop.
Greenberg: Well we had a blessing ceremony
Ting: We did! We slaughtered a pig.
Chung: We didn’t slaughter the pig
Ting: The pig was already slaughtered.
Chung:: We ate the pig.
Greenberg: So you know you show up on set and usually you get your call sheet and its like where you have to be for rehearsal, and then we got the call sheet and its like ‘Okay you have the blessing ceremony’, and we were like ‘what?’ And this is something that they do for every film, it’s a blessing ceremony ceremony with this pig–
Ting: That’s slaughtered beforehand, and roasted, and then we get it.
Greenberg: It was a very interesting experience but apparently it worked ‘cause it did not rain.

What are you guys working on next? Do you have any upcoming projects?
Chung: Do we? You [Bryan] have some stuff in the works that you cant really talk about. I have some stuff that I don’t wanna jinx. We have Flock of Dudes at the LA Film Festival, and he just put out an album.
Greenberg: Yeah I just put out an album two weeks ago called Everything Changes, yeah I’ve got a couple things in development.
Ting: I have a couple scripts that I’ve been attached to to direct that we’re trying to go out to cast soon and find financing, but I feel like wuth a lot of these indie projects, they’re not real until you have money so there’s almost no point talking about it. We’ll see what happens.

Whether or not director Ian Edelman was inspired by the Kanye West song when he came up with “Puerto Ricans in Paris,” the title of this warm but silly buddy cop comedy quite aptly fits the film’s rather obvious but entertaining plot.

“Puerto Ricans in Paris” opens with NYPD detectives Luis (Luis Guzmán) and Eddie (Edgar Garcia) in the middle of a counterfeit purse bust. The detectives, who are also brothers-in-law, have a reputation for being the best counterfeit cops in the city. When famous French designer Colette’s (Alice Taglioni) newest bag prototype goes missing and a ransom note threatens to flood the market with fakes before the product launch, she turns to Luis and Eddie, offering them $150,000 each if they catch the thief, so off to Paris they go.

One biking montage later, the pair are loose on the streets of Paris trying to suss out the thief from Colette’s circle of confidants. Luis and Eddie are polar opposites and most of the comedy in the film comes from their mismatched personalities. While Eddie is happily married to Luis’ sister Gloria (Rosie Perez), Luis is afraid of commitment and still playing the field in his late 30s. While Luis just wants to get in, solve the case, and get out with their money, Eddie is more interested in absorbing some French culture while they’re away.

Eddie is the emotional soul of the film, with a sweet nature that shines through every time the camera pans over him. He catches the eye of nearly every woman in Paris, to Luis’ chagrin but the attention comes without even the slightest hint of temptation. As Eddie grows closer to Colette Luis warns him to be careful, but the warning is unnecessary. At no point does Eddie ever imply he’s anything but crazy for his wife. Paris loves Eddie, and the case finally gives him the opportunity to shine he had been craving in New York. While Luis has to learn to channel his humbler side and matures in the process.

As the two continue the case and run around with Colette in Paris, they throw around Parisian clichés and Puerto Rican stereotypes. Edelman’s direction takes more of a feature film approach and steps away from what you’d expect in an indie. The plot doesn’t try to delve deeper into any messages or metaphors, yet the film is a fun ride nonetheless. “Puerto Ricans in Paris,” could easily have been switched out with “Let’s Be Cops,” or “White Chicks,” but the laughs were enjoyable enough for audiences to ignore the lack of originality.

Written & Directed By: Ian Edelman

Starring: Luis Guzmán, Edgar Garcia, Alice Taglioni

Grade: B

Director Ben Chace‘s new movie “Sin Alas,” isn’t just a film with a dreamy look into an aging writer’s past, it is also the first American-directed film shot in Cuba since the revolution, making the story behind the production just as intriguing as the movie itself.

The film starts off with 70-year-old author, Luis Vargas as he discovers the woman he had a brief affair with as a young adult, has passed away. That night he can’t sleep and is tormented by pieces of a song from his lover’s famous dance performance in 1967. Luis is unable to forget the song and soon sets off on a mission to complete the melody as a way of letting go, but is led even deeper into a world of memory he has spent decades trying to forget.

Chace uses Luis’ predicament as a way to send audiences through different periods in Cuba’s history and it is a visual treat. We sat down with the director to discuss the film and what it was like filming in Cuba.

Tell me a little about the inspiration for the film; the thought process behind it.        
Well, I really wanted to shoot something in Cuba, but I didn’t know how I was going to do that as an American. As an outsider, what story could I tell and make it real and make it meaningful? I had been down there a couple times before with my friend who is Cuban-American who was like on a roots discovery mission, and I always loved Cuban music and was just fascinated, I wanted to check it out. We ended up filming a little, very homemade documentary that was just me and a camera kind of visiting the places his father grew up. I fell in love with the culture and the country and I was thinking about how to capture it, and I went back to New York and spent a few years making other movies, but I was always thinking like ‘Ok I want to get back to Cuba and shoot something’ still wondering how to do it. And then I was reading Jorge Luis Borges, he’s a short story writer. All of his short stories fit in one book, from his whole career, and I always just go back to it and I was reading it again one day and I read the story of “El Zahir” which is about an old man. In that one he becomes fixated on this image of a coin, but it starts off when he goes to a woman’s funeral that he was in love with many years ago. So it’s about the idea of something being unforgettable and its also this kind of like labyrinth, a psychological labyrinth. I thought that was a great starting point to try to build a story in Cuba because Cuba’s all about memory and the past is always present when you’re there. It’s unavoidable because things haven’t changed, and you’ve got the reminder that you’re living in the revolution, like it’s always there, it’s inescapable.

Ben Chace

I really liked the stylistic choices that separate the time periods, with the 60s shot in a hazy light and the 40s in black and white. When you were choosing to make them so clearly different was there a thought behind which era was going to look which way?
Yeah, well, there was definitely planning. We wanted to make the 60s stuff look like… I was trying to recreate in a way or illustrate the way memory works. And kind of how in some ways you stylize your own memories, you make things more grandiose. This affair that he had, he thinks of it like a Hollywood movie and he was like this young telenovela star in a tuxedo and that’s how he thinks of himself, in his heyday you know? And now he’s this kind of washed up old man trudging around in this gritty environment, but we wanted to really polarize that and add contrast to that because it also illustrates the difference of now and then in Cuba. So we shot it all on the same film stock, but we always knew that we would treat it differently. We shot the 60s stuff all on tripods and dollies, its smooth and we’ve got the fake rain machine behind it and we did all this lighting and stuff to try to make it look like a 60s Hollywood film as much as we could with this low budget –and the current day stuff it was mostly just natural light handheld in real locations. We did set dressing, but the sets are as naturalistic as possible, and we wanted it to have the rough and tumble feel of central Havana. Then in post-production we were able to push it a little farther, I actually found looks from those bold eras and we just emulated them. The look of the 60s is actually something called Magenta Fade, which is what 16mm which was shot in that year looks like now if it hasn’t been preserved. The greens disappear so all of a sudden things become kind of red and blue, I found some old footage from like the Soviet Era, I don’t know where it’s from but it was Eastern European stuff and when you see it you know.

So you shot it on location in Havana?
Yeah, in Havana and Hershey.

What was that like?
It was incredible, it was really amazing.

Was it difficult to get everybody out there or did you use all Cuban actors?
Yeah, yeah, everyone was Cuban, the only Americans were myself, my producer, and the cinematographer. So the crew and the cast were all Cuban. But you know you run into different things. It’s hard to move people around, move anything around. Cuba functions completely differently to America, but it’s a challenge to make any low-budget film, it was just a different set of challenges.

Do you speak Spanish?
Yeah, I mean pretty well. Well enough to get myself there, make it happen and get back.

I always wonder what it’s like to direct someone when you don’t speak the language the film is in.
I don’t know how that works exactly, but you know what I’ve learned just talking to other directors and making move movies, the key to direction is to do as little as possible. Just get the right people there and you know, make them like the script and cast the right people and they do their thing, you know. My one direction I gave usually, because one of the challenges as a director was to try to make a movie that could play to an American audience using Latin actors, and these actors are used to working mostly on stage and in telenovelas, so it’s a much more melodramatic thing that they do, that the kind of non-Latin audience, you know they don’t get that. So all I was doing was telling them to just bring it down a little, but, because you know they want to throw fireworks into every single line they deliver in a way so I was just like, bring it but a little less.

I also really liked the way the revolution is constantly present in the film without being touched on too explicitly, I was wondering if you had more to say about that, like how the revolution affects daily life in Cuba.
Well, it’s just, that’s the system that you have to contend with. And its unusual from our perspective, you know it’s hard to understand when you first get there because, I don’t know, it’s unique. It’s unique even to other parts of Latin America. I’ve traveled around Latin America pretty well and I don’t know it’s hard to describe really. It’s really hard to paint the full picture of it because it’s a holistic world that they inhabit and have to deal with and it manifests in the most grand philosophical terms and also in the most mundane daily stuff and it touches everything.

And I think American audiences especially don’t know very much about Cuba.
That’s the strange thing, and no one gets it. No one knows what the hell’s going on down there. I wanted to just show what people were going through and hopefully show that there’s just a lot of culture and humanity and great stuff there that in a way is suffering because of our ignorance of the situation. You know if we knew how fucked up it was down there we’d try to do something to change it but no one understands that we’re just given propaganda on all sides. We’re given this very thin and shallow idea of what is going on in Cuba you know? It’s like some woman dancing, Fidel, and what else do we know about it? A couple old cars. No one really knows what the daily struggle down there is like for people and my film I think touches on it, I think I did an okay job with this one character, but it goes deeper than that. You kind of have to go, and even if you go you have to spend a lot of time to get to the truth of it because people won’t say things out loud, there’s so much implicit stuff and there’s so much that you can say out loud and stuff you just have to witness. To me, it’s a labyrinth that’s why when I was like Borges, I was like what can I do to describe this, I need like a labyrinth blueprint to like tape images to and collect this thing and hopefully it will come close to representing something about the reality of that place.

Do you have any upcoming projects?
Well, I’m a musician, so I continue writing a lot of music and I’m trying to develop a documentary show that follows the development of rhythms over history. There’s just a lot of fascinating history and you get into it in Cuba. The guy who I’m hoping to work with, the composer, who did my scores, is this great Afro-Cuban guy from New York. There’s just all this great history of boats traveling from Africa to Haiti and from Haiti to Cuba, to New Orleans then to Chicago and New York and back down to Jamaica. If you learn about it you can actually hear how these beats slowly shift. I’m trying to develop a show that follows these musical currents.

Sin Alas premiered at the LA Film Festival June 11, 2o15

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT

After posting a video of classmate Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus) making out with another girl, head of the mean girls, Nina (Bella Thorne), finds herself not home alone, like she thought. Dismissing some creepy texts to be her boyfriend, Tyler (Anthony Rogers), in typical slasher film form, Nina decides to take a dip in her jacuzzi. She calls for him to join her, and he does… dead. As Nina realizes there’s a third intruder in her home, she tries to run away and directs the phone’s voice command to “Call 911″ –which the phone understands as “Call Pottery Barn,” ah, technology. Nina continues to run for her life, but we all know what’s coming and sure enough, her throat gets slashed.

And that’s how MTV’s television adaptation of “‘Scream” gets itself started, an homage to Drew Barrymore’s famous death scene in the original Wes Craven film. We see early on, the show isn’t shy about its origins. It wears the films’ history on its sleeve. The majority of the pilot parallels much of Craven’s 1996 film: A group of friends sit around and gossip about their friends’ murders, decide to throw a party in honor of the deceased, and make choices that leave the audience screaming at the screen as they shield their eyes.

Yet, the show does have one major difference, the 50 minutes following Maggie’s death are more teen drama than slasher-horror-flick.

First we meet Emma (Willa Fitzgerald), the good girl of the group who tries to rekindle her friendship with Audrey after Nina’s humiliating stunt. Emma’s jock boyfriend Will (Connor Weil) seems like a decent guy until she learns he hasn’t exactly been faithful. Will’s best friend, Jake (Tom Maden) somehow proves to be an even bigger jerk, making him the perfect next victim to audiences. Speaking of jerks, we’re also introduced to Brooke (Carlson Young), who charmingly plays a convincing mean girl 2.0.

As in the original film version, the main character’s parent are somehow linked to the murders. Emma’s mother, Maggie (Tracy Middendorf) is hiding a secret past. While she was in high school, victim-of-bulling turned murderer Brandon James terrorized their town of Lakewood. After receiving gifts from Brandon and learning of his love for her, she was able to lead police to him. The police ended up shooting him dead, or so was thought until now.

Just like we had Rachel in “Scream 4″ blurt out, “”A bunch of articulate teens sit around and deconstruct horror movies as Ghostface kills them one by one. It’s been done to death,” before she’s axed, we have Audrey’s best friend Noah (John Karna), the horror film buff to guide us through the self referential meta moments (Except he doesn’t die- yet). “You can’t do a slasher movie as a TV series,” he tells his classmates. Unless, we get to know the characters, like them, root for them, hate them, whatever it be so that “when they are brutally murdered, you care.” This will be the show’s biggest challenge. While the self aware dialogue was amusing throughout the show, there is little memorable about most of the characters. Despite Noah’s clever lines, Emma and her relationship with her mother, nobody has proven to be likable or even suspect. If the mean kids are next to go, will it be too obvious? Noah’s entirely correct- while a film only has to maintain our interest for an hour and a half, how will the show maintain our interest to keep coming back every week, for ten weeks?

While the pilot episode doesn’t reveal any groundbreaking twists in the slasher genre, “Scream” starts, surprisingly strong. The show is set up for success with MTV bringing in the target audience, an attractive, likable cast, but that doesn’t mean it won’t go down the wrong path.

“Slasher movies burn bright and fast,” Noah recalls to his friends. Keeping up with the meta theme of the episode, he adds, “TV needs to stretch things out.” So far, the show has succeeded in that. After the first episode, audiences are left with intrigue. Is Branden James back? Is the killer one person pulling the strings of many to keep us second guessing who the murderer is, a la “A” in “Pretty Little Liars”? After the ending montage, we’re left with a mysterious image (But I won’t spoil that tidbit for you).

The “Scream” pilot was screened at the LA Film Festival and will premiere on MTV Tuesday, June 30.

Co-written by Mapi Piña and Vanessa Soto

Red lips emit sinister whispering into the ears of a captive female character. “Oh Allie…” the lips continuously whisper. The fear emanating from the captive is palpable—a perfect opening to a thriller.

Stefanie Scott as Allie

“Caught” throws you into the middle of the storyline —with a kidnapping—and tells you the backstory later. After the opening scene we begin to see the layers of Allie’s life peel away. We learn that the protagonist, Allie (Stefanie Scott) is on her high school’s track team but is kicked off after her coach discovers her grades have been slipping.

The movie proceeds to show us that Allie works after school as a waitress at her mom’s (Mary B. McCann) restaurant, a job she not only detests, but is not particularly skilled at. While her job has its setbacks, the upside was meeting the dapper Mr. Jason (Sam Page) while he was out on a business dinner —an encounter assumed to be a few months prior to Allie’s kidnapping.
On one particular shift Allie goes against her mother’s wishes and leaves work early, practically prancing into the hands of her abductor. We soon discover that there are two abductors: a sister team comprised of Sabrina (Anna Camp) —Jason’s wife, and Paige (Amelia Rose Blair), Sabrina’s sister. As if Allie’s day couldn’t get any worse after getting kicked off her team, she gets snatched by a wife she apparently didn’t know existed and learns that Jason is just another chiseled-face adulterer.

Generally speaking, if you’ve seen one kidnapping-gone-wrong storyline, you’ve pretty much seen them all. One character just wants to teach another a lesson with a harmless prank that goes too far; it’s a genre with very little variation, but screenwriter Marcy Holland shatters those stereotypes in “Caught.”

After tying Allie to a chair in the attic Sabrina bounces through the house with manic glee, spouting lines like “Do you think you could waterboard someone in a Jacuzzi?” The plan quickly goes amiss when Justin (Sam Page) comes home early and Allie kicks her way out of the attic. While a lesser screenplay would drag out this moment until the end of the film, Holland’s writing shakes things up by having the confrontation between all the characters occur within the first act. Thirty minutes into the film, Justin discovers Allie in the house, Allie finds out Justin is married and Justin realizes what Sabrina has done, and having everything out on the table so early on adds a depth to each character’s performance.

In fact, where the film succeeds most is in its character development. Anna Camp’s performance adds dimension to a character that could have easily been played as a flat, vengeful housewife and makes her understandable, almost sympathetic and undeniably hilarious.

Overall, the film has a few suspense-filled scenes, but goes the way of a comedic thriller more than anything and the pacing was sometimes inconsistent. Laughter poured out of the mouths of a few audience members, mainly as a reaction to the difficult-to-believe scenes and the “Did she really just say that?” lines from a few of the characters—mainly Camp.

No spoilers on how it all ends, you’ll definitely want to see this one for yourself.

“Caught” premiered at the LA Film Festival June 12th, 2015

Directed by: Maggie Kiley

Produced by: Jennifer Westin

Written by: Marcy Holland

Starring: Stefanie Scott, Anna Camp, Amelia Rose Blair, Sam Page

Grade: B

WARNING: SPOILERS

Part mystery, part love story, director Ben Chace’s “Sin Alas” explores the labyrinths of our own memories.

The film is set in Havana, Cuba and starts with main character Luis’ (Carlos Padrón) discovery that his former lover, a famous dancer named Isabela (Yulisleyvís Rodrigues), has died. After attending her funeral, Luis finds himself haunted by dreams of her on stage in the 60s. Upon waking he’s left with the fragments of a melody stuck in his head.

He confides this in his friend Ovilio (Mario Limonta) and together they decide that if Luis could hear the melody in its entirety, he might be able to relax and sleep peacefully once more. The pair travels through the streets of Havana playing the melody over and over, asking every passersby whether they recognize the tune. When they finally find someone who knows the composition, the scene shifts and he’s transported back in time to memories of the affair he had with Isabela in 1967 while he was working as a journalist.

There’s a subplot in the film that focuses on the conflict of another family living in the apartment building Luis inherited from his parents. Their story interlaces with Luis’ struggle to prove to the housing board that he is the apartment’s rightful owner and serves as a vehicle for flashbacks of his parents in the 1940s and Luis’ childhood in the town of Hershey.

As the film progresses Luis is drawn further and further into his memories of the past, until eventually he remembers the parts of his childhood, and of his affair with Isabela, that he had tried to forget. As his memories unfold, it is revealed that the injury that caused the end of Isabela’s dancing career occurred when her husband discovered her affair with Luis. When he finally relives the end of their affair, Luis revisits her grave and apologizes to her spirit, confessing the guilt he felt for years over her fate. The film ends with Luis transferring ownership of the apartment building to his neighbor, leaving his own fate uncertain.

The film was inspired by the works of  author Jorge Luis Borges, and follows the labyrinthine style for which Borges is known. “Sin Alas,” is also the first American directed feature film to be filmed in Cuba since 1959 and was shot in Super16 millimeter on location in Havana and Hershey.

The narrative and cinematographic style slowly draws you deeper and deeper into Luis’ memory, and taps into the Cuban subconscious. Cinematographer, Price Williams makes clear distinctions between the time periods that are portrayed; the modern day scenes are shot the most traditionally, while the 60s scenes are colored in a hazy light, reflective of the optimism surrounding the revolution. All the 40s scenes are in black and white, emphasizing the time period as a more “classic” Cuba in Luis’ mind. The film beautifully captures not only Luis’s story, but also glimpses of three separate moments in Cuban history.

Sin Alas premiered at the LA Film Festival June 11, 2015

Written & Directed By: Ben Chace

Starring: Carlos Padrón, Yulisleyvís Rodrigues, Mario Limonta

Grade: A

“Caught” Still Courtesy of MarVista Entertainment

The Los Angeles Film Festival, which runs from June 10-18, is fast approaching! Festival organizers, Film Independent, announced the full lineup last Tuesday and with 74 features, 60 shorts, and 50 new media projects, there are a lot of decisions to make.

With such a big lineup that’s packed with amazing films, there’s definitely a film for everyone, but how do you narrow down which ones you’ll catch? Don’t fret guys, we will ease your anxiety, here are four stand-outs you’ll definitely want to add to your  festival watch list.

“The Diary of A Teenage Girl,” has been getting a lot of buzz since its debut at Sundance this year. Based on a graphic novel, Marielle Heller’s directorial debut focuses on the sexual awakening of main character Minnie in 1970s San Francisco. Her love story comes with a catch—her partner also happens to be her mother’s boyfriend.

“Dope,” another Sundance favorite, will add some laughter to your festival experience. Set in L.A., the film follows Malcom, a self-proclaimed 90s hip-hop geek with straight A’s, who through a series of turns, finds himself trying to unload drugs to avoid a dealer’s wrath.

Based on the stories of Jose Luis Borges, “Sin Alas” follows main character Luis’ as he discovers –through an obituary– that his former lover, Isabela has died. After reading the obituary, Luis sees Isabela onstage, just as she had looked during their affair 40 years prior. The film chronicles Luis’ journey as he unravels the past, bouncing between the present-day Havana and the Havana of the late 60s where their affair took place.

“Caught”: For a touch of suspense in your festival, don’t miss this campy thriller. “Caught” showcases what happens when teenage Allie’s affair with an older married man is discovered by his manic wife Sabrina. Sabrina gives off Stepford wife vibes, with that suburban complacency replaced with killer intent.

“They Came Together” sets itself up to be a parody of the romantic comedy genre with extremely dated comedy that never seems to quite ”come together” until the brutal end — and that’s on purpose.

Watching this film takes you back to the 90s, when films like ‘There’s Something about Mary’ were all the rage, but the nostalgia feeling just makes you want to switch movies rather than remember the silliness of those films. The film plays on a ‘You’ve Got Mail’ vibe, but isn’t nearly as funny or sweet. That’s the biggest problem with this film. It’s supposed to make fun of the absurdities of romantic comedies, but none of the jokes are funny enough to make you feel like it’s pointing anything out. As you go through the movie you start to feel like you’re just watching a really bad rom-com.

‘They Came Together” stars Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd — two really funny comedic actors that probably should have never been paired as they have no romantic chemistry, even in a romantic spoof type film. Poehler stars as Molly, an over the top goofy candy store entrepreneur who is single and not so eager to join the dating pool (and you’ll see why) and Rudd as Joel, an executive at a major candy corporation who recently became single after being cheated on by his non-committal girlfriend Tiffany (played by Cobie Smulders).

The film plays in story form by placing our characters on a double date where they cheesily explain to their friends how they met and ended up dating each other. So the story begins with a flashback (no spoilers, I promise) of a Halloween party where Molly and Joel’s friends had set them up on a blind date, yet they randomly meet on the street and end up hating each others guts, but secretly finding each other irresistible — as it plays out at the party.

Main characters Molly and Joel joyfully tell the tale to a bored married couple, played by Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper, whose comedic chops complimented our leads very well.

The film only being  83 minutes long feels like it takes a lifetime to get funny and on track as most jokes are for the moment versus having any bearing on the plot, typical parody style.  There’s even a point in the story where “the oh so graphic,” and sometimes uncomfortable tale, grows tired to the point where even their dinner guests tried to leave (as I am feeling most audiences will want to do within the first 40 minutes).

Don’t get me wrong, the movie does deliver laughs, especially since the film is loaded with cameos from top comedians who perform the SNL-like material with ease. Faring better than most in the laughs department, was well-known dramatic actor Christopher Meloni, most recognized for the NBC drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Meloni reconnects with director David Wain, Poehler and Rudd, who he worked with on the film ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ (2001), another Wain comedy, to create a character that truly stands out. In the film, Meloni re-tackles his comedic funny bone as Joel’s over the top, money-hungry boss, which was a nice welcome as his character’s embarrassing antics in the film by far gave the most laughs.

Overall, this film deserves a C as some scenes work and others don’t. If you like the actors in it you may enjoy it because of their charisma alone, but if you don’t, then stay far away from this film — as bits with idiomatic expressions like “you can say that again” will probably frustrate you rather than make you laugh.
‘They Came Together’ opens June 27th, in Limited Release.

Director: David Wain

Writers: Michael Showalter & David Wain.
Starring: Paul Rudd & Amy Poehler.
Grade:  C

Producer Laura Rister, actor Bruce Dern and director Matt Shakman

With TV credits for shows like Mad Men, New Girl, Fargo, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia already under his belt, Matt Shakman made his directorial film debut with “Cut Bank,” which includes an all star cast made up of Liam Hemsworth, Billy Bob Thorton, John Malkovich, Oliver Platt, and Bruce Dern.

In the film Hemsworth plays Dwayne McLaren, a young guy who wants nothing more than to leave his small hometown of Cut Bank, Montana, a town whose only notable feature is being the “coldest spot in the nation.” Dwayne works as a mechanic for his girlfriend Cassandra’s (Teresa Palmer) father (Billy Bob Thornton). While filming Cassandra at his favorite spot, Dwayne accidentally captures the murder of town mailman Georgie Wits (Dern). So it seems, anyway.

With a reward of $100.000 to anyone who can offer evidence for the murder, Dwayne quickly hands over the seemingly convincing tape to Sheriff Vogel (John Malkovick), who is completely unprepared for the violent crime. But the two, and postal inspector Joe Barrett (Oliver Platt), don’t expect Derby Milton (Michael Stuhlbarg), a creepy taxidermist, to emerge. All Derby wants is a lunch box that was a part of Georgie’s undelivered mail. He would do anything to get his lunch box.

After the screenplay appeared on the Black List, Shakman quickly jumped at the chance to direct. We spoke with Shakman right after the film’s premiere at the LA Film Festival to talk his transition from directing TV to film, working with the brilliant actors that were meticulously cast, dealing with severe heat while filming, and much more.