"elevationISM" Short Film Review

Movie Poster. Credit: Brian Boucek

The way I found about this movie was pretty much all coincidence. It was a regular Saturday night for me, and my girlfriend and I stopped by my house to chill with our pet mouse before going to get some food. When I get there, my roomate is sitting in the living room, and we ask him what is going on, if he wants to go watch some movies we borrowed from a friend later that night with us. His answer was "Nah, I am going to that movie premiere at the Western Ave. Studios." so my girlfriend goes like "That sounds like a good idea." I agreed with her, so we decided to go to eat then go to the premiere of the movie, which thankfully happened to be free, that was a plus!

After getting the food and headed to the activity, we sort of got lost getting to the actual room where the screening was happening, but we finally figured it out. On a side note, I must say that these Western Avenue Studios are pretty impressive. Anyway, we finally get to the room and it was very full of people, which I think is awesome, because a lot of people were from Lowell, and supporting a local films and artists is pretty amazing. There were some things for munching on the tables like candy and sandwiches, also copies of the DVD of the movie.

Now, to the actual movie.

Technically speaking, it was shot really well. You can tell they used good camera equipment for this, and they studied their shots. Very good cinematography indeed. One thing I kept having trouble with was the audio. There were certain parts where I imagine what the film makers did was to use the audio from the actual camera micrphone, rather than using their own microphones, or even trying to dub over certain parts, which is what bigger films do, and knowing this is a local low-budget film, I understand. For example, the scene at the bar where they main character John is watching the band, and the frontman is talking into the microphone. I couldn't really understand what he was saying because of the reverberation of the room. To give it my benefit of the doubt, it could have been the speaker system in the actual room where we were watching the movie. Apart from that, most of the technicalities were really good.

When it came to the story, all I could get was that it was a dude that was really into this chick, and the chick wasn't that really into him, he felt he was being given some good signals and he didn't know what to do and was really depressed and pretty much drank himself stupid. The problem with it was that, I believe,  the movie spent most of it's entirety showing what we already knew.

To give you an idea, I went to the IMDB of it (because that data base has pretty much everything in existence) and this is the synopsis:

"A young man deals with the interplay between art, romance, pain, and intoxication in the electronic age. A romantic rock melodrama."

All I have to say is that that was it, really. I did not see the art part (maybe the music?), but there was not really a build-up, or climax, and the resolution was pretty much the very last moment of the movie. The idea of the story is what I liked the best. It was more of a good idea, but it needed to develop more kind-of-thing. Not saying it was awful, i actually enjoyed it. The acting was good, but in moments the dialogue looked way too memorized. One thing I didn't notice right away and was told later and then realized, was the fact that it was a movie filmed in Lowell, but there was literally no diversity in it. Were were my Latino, Cambodian, Black, Middle Eastern, Indian people walking around, even at the show? I mean, unless the movie isn't supposed to happen in the real world Lowell... I'm just giving the movie a hard time here, but I would like for a thing like this in a community like Lowell to have more diversity and inclusion when it comes to casting.

Apart from that, I have to say that I feel very happy about something like this happening in my community, even if it is my adopted community. This city needs a lot of more people to take the initiative to do more things like this in the arts. I would really like to see these guys do more films, and I know there are some other people that have already done it before, and would like to see more. It really inspired me, because I have been myself writing a lot of ideas, and seeing people around town doing things, just gives me that extra confidence and initiative that I'll probably come out with one film, or a book, or a play, soon. Who knows!