Like Ratcatcher—but without that films aura of wounded interiority—Junebug covers familiar terrain unfamiliarly. An ethereal golden boy returns to his Southern Baptist home with his Brit-chic, art-dealing wife. Once arrived they’re met by his domineering mother—a Pagganini of passive-aggression—his taciturn-to-the-point-of-autism father, his curdled, second banana brother (Ryan from The O.C.) and Ryan from The O.C.’s almost psychotically good-natured wife (a luminescent Amy Adams). So far so what, you say? Of course, the cloistered eccentricity of small towners is a trope as old as, well, small towns but the filmmakers through a cocktail of complementary sensibilities manage to afford the film the texture and suppleness of a short story as well the austere angularity of a piece of minimalist sculpture. I’m mostly serious!
Angus McLaughlin’s bouncy, oddball screenplay is a marvel of stylized naturalism, where a thousand minutely observed details seem to magically cohere into dense quilt of strained familial relations. (Just witness how Amy Adam’s infatuation with meer cats devolves into a minor domestic cataclysm in the above series of clips). All of the piquant dialogue seems character-appropriate and region-specific, but also funny and revealing and just plain strange. And director Phil Morrison treats this bustling environment with cool obliquity.
Unassumingly shot on Super-16mm but exactingly framed, flatly lit but punctuated by sprucely arrhythmic editing, everything in Junebug seems right on and slightly off. The spare, spacious camera style adds an astringent melancholy to scenes of intense activity. Indeed, Morrison’s most quietly radical formal trope may be having the main action of a scene play out in, say, the kitchen and intermittently cutting to other rooms, seemingly at random, to check up on the other characters or simply to observe empty space. Used carefully, this a nifty, haunting way of articulating the peculiar loneliness of living within a suffocatingly close-knit family.
In short, Junebug is a wonder on nearly every level and despite somewhat stock characters (though every performance is inspired) and a stale conceit the movie arrives on the screen like a bushel of fresh produce
I recently posted about our recent screening “Movies Made by Other People” on August 7th. Here are some photos from that fateful day.
I invite you to take a look at your leaser and to notice how much fun everyone is having. If you weren’t able to make it don’t feel too bad, you’re allowed to look at these as many times as you want.
And if you want more information about the show – click here.
I recently screened a short at the Movies Made By Other People event called ‘Regular’. It’s a brief meditation on how I hate being a regular at restaurants – inspired by a recent conversation with James Vandewater where I learnt that this type of antisocial behavior is strange, and that I should be ashamed of myself forever.
Richard here, played another Regular at the restaurant. He was a craigslist gem that went on record as saying that his beard was the only thing he had ever accomplished:
The film came about in the midst of fundraising for another project called I Spyders and was a simple idea that I was able to film in a day, cut in three days, and screen a week later.
The main cost of the production was minimal as I was able to source most things for free: a camera a la Michael Pierro, a cast and crew that worked for food, and an awesome free location: The Bloordale Pantry – 1285 Bloor St. W. (At Lansdowne and Bloor).
The owner, Rose was 100% into the idea of helping out the community so she gave us the run of the place. We shot MOS scenes around customers from 2-4pm, then the restaurant closed and we were able to kill it.
I’ve experienced filming in restaurants on borrowed time before and was amazed at how cool the owners were as Kevin Walker sawed away at the bearded mans face while people ate. Last time we did this, our friend Milan Malisic (who played the manager in this film) had to scream shirtless in Mexian Wrestling attire while the rest of us watched ‘seniors dinner’ at Mama’s slowly get ruined. We weren’t welcomed back.
With no lights and three actors that knew their shit and were certainly legit – I was able to throw on a dress to play the masked waitress and direct the piece in drag like Ed Wood. Fortunately the fucker didn’t turn out like an Ed Wood film and is now an unexpected film that I’m proud to be able to screen for nutcases all around.
