Gorgon Reviews

Touch Me was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Saturday, August 2nd as part of the festival, and it was the Canadian Premiere of this film!

Do you have someone in your life whose simple touch is enough to drive you insane and pleasure? Well, that is sort of what is happening in this movie!

Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is going nowhere in life, and her slacker roommate (Jordan Gavaris) is going there with her. Joey was recently in a relationship with someone though, Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), who just knows how to drive her insane. He speaks so calmly, he can dance, and well, he has tentacles.

Oh yes, he is actually an alien on earth, and building a society. But that touch? That ALIEN TENTACLE TOUCH? Just does something for her. Hell, it does something for her roommate too. It is clearly the best thing in this world, and it is from off world. It is like the best drug, and they need it more, and more, and more.

But, why can her roommate join in? Why isn’t she good enough for herself for Brian? Does Brian have any ulterior motives? You know it!

Also starring Marlene Forte.

That tentacle touch drives my world into new colors.

For a film about an alien’s super sexy tentacle touch, I expected, and this might come across as crude, a lot more sexy tentacle touch! Come on, if you are going to make it a little erotic, give me more than a couple strange colored vague scenes. Make me want that tentacle touch. Not that tentacle touches were on my mind the past. Like, if you are an independent movie with a real freaky theme, I would hope you really get freaky with it, you know?

And that is the main part of complaint. Give me more weird stuff!

Because the three leads all did a really great job. Main character, roommate, and alien, they were all super strange and I loved their roles in this movie. I think the ending gets a little messy in a good way, and things of course crumble down, but this is a movie that could do more showing and less yapping.

I am just saying, the people who are into this thing, might be disappointed with how little we get, and the people who aren’t …well, aren’t going to watch it anyways.

Maybe the next sexy alien tentacle movie will deliver more, but for now, this was a decent first shot!

2 out of 4.

Désolé, Pardon, Je m’excuse was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Wednesday, July 30th as part of the festival, and it was the World Premiere of this film!

Who doesn’t love a good torture flick? Wait, not torture flick, but actually someone getting tortured. Yeah, apparently in this world people can just release videos of themselves torturing people and people just like, watch it and think its interesting. Go figure.

Ella (Eva Prévost) works in some job and has to do customer support, but when these new torture videos hit the net she is all over it. Who cares about jobs and responsibilities? And for some reason, her boss (Tobie Pelletier) is totally fine with it, because she is hot. Anyways, Ella has dreams of getting into the torture game. It sounds fun! So she begs to take her bosses AirBnB so she can torture someone to death. Again, normal thing to do.

He says she should start smaller, maybe a nice dog, but sure, she can have two days.

Well, long story short, she ends up capturing a guy to torture accidentally. And it doesn’t go well! More and more people get involved, and well, shenanigans!

Also starring Luc-Olivier Boutet, Julianne Boucher-Telmosse, Jo Cormier, and Guy Jodoin.

Getting tortured is best done with someone who can smile.

Well. First thing that takes getting used to is how really into torture the people in the world seem to be. Like, the beginning is so silly, it is almost confusing as a viewer. But once the plot gets established, and Ella gets going, we realize she is just a confused young woman who doesn’t know anything and just wants to help people. Even if she is bad at it.

Honestly, the movie was a blast though. The main character is just so…silly and yet earnest at the same time. She is hard to describe, but she is the main character and we are here to figure out how to get out of her weird scenario that she is totally responsible for. I didn’t expect a second person to get involved, nor did I expect 5 or more.

And yet, the movie goes in a way that makes sense, and ends in a way unexpected. Another fun slight contradiction, but this is the realty and we have to accept it.

3 out of 4.

Buffet Infinity was watched as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Monday, July 28th as part of the festival, and it was the World Premiere of this film!

What if you went to a buffet that had…everything? Every food you can imagine, and every food you cannot imagine. Endless refills, for affordable prices? A fantasy for sure, and, that is still true in this movie. But let us set up the scene.

Somewhere in the US, there is a town, that is set in the 80s or 90s, a little vague on purpose I imagine. And in this town, we watch TV and are channel surfers through the local channels. And we apparently watch a lot of advertisements. Because that is what this movie is. Local ads, and news reports, and occasionally something else a little bit weird.

We will learn about insurance agents, lawyers, pawn shops, and the local restaurants, like a really good sandwich shop, and a new buffet. They want you to come out and visit them. But, somehow, people end up going missing. Large groups of missing adults, and kids. Where are they going? Why is the restaurant getting bigger? Is any store actually manned by real people, or is everything a lie? What is the BUDGET of these local eateries and businesses to make so many commercials?

A mystery and a strange one, for sure…

Missing Person? Probably not important!

Buffet Infinity is what we call one of them there experimental movies. You go in with an open mind, and you are going to get a very different movie experience than you are used to. And it is a movie that surprisingly, would benefit from multiple watches I imagine. To watch as things get more bizarre, to pick up more clues along the way.

As I saw it as a screener, I also had the benefit to watch it in breaks. I might have lost info, but I definitely saved myself a headache at one moment, which I believe was a personal sick issue, but the type of film that it was, constantly shifting its commercials/news/frantic nature, it didn’t help. I love it when movies try something, and this is the type of thing that would take a person a lot of planning to do. I guess local TV ads are relatively easy to make, that is how local businesses can get it done. But to plan on where your ads go, and how they evolve, and to make the thing longer than 30 minutes? That requires a lot of creativity.

This film was less scary, and more bizarre and amusing. It has the vibe completely correct for this type of movie, and likely a budget to match. I can say with all certainty that I am still not fully sure what happened by the end, but the ride was worth it for me.

3 out of 4.

Good Game was watched as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Sunday, July 27th as part of the festival, and it was the World Premiere of this film!

Esports, it is so big right now. And Good Game is not the first movie to exist about esports in a “underdog sports story” and it certainly won’t be the last, but it is definitely the one to talk about right now.

To set the stage, we are in Hong Kong, and we have our group of ragtag people ready to make a team. We have someone aptly named Solo, whom was just kicked off of his esports team for trying to do too much on his own. We have Tai, who owns a failing internet cafe, because kids only play games on their phones now, and he employs his daughter Fay, who cannot hold a normal job at all. And we have Octo, a former movie star, now also faded to obscurity, who just likes to play games with his wife because she is losing her mind, literally, and the games help keep her functioning and thinking.

So of course, these four are going to make a team, to compete in a upcoming tournament for a lot of cash that they can just enter and it is perfect timing! But, their main problem is, they aren’t very collectively skilled, especially against groups who play together all the time. And they all have issues that will, of course, get in their way of achievement.

Starring Yanny Wing-yan Chan, Man-Chung Lam, Will Or, and Meng Lo.

Don’t worry about the fifth person here. They are not on the team!

Okay, so, like I mentioned, a ragtag group of people coming together to do sports and succeed is not a new concept. Nor is it a new concept for Esports. So going into this movie, I was a little bit waiting for it to really wow me with somethin new. And unfortunately, it did the absolute opposite, and I kind of hate it.

First note, and every E-sports movie does this. They are not playing a real game that people know about of course, it is a made up one for the movie. It is FINE. But when we have to watch the “game” for so much of the movie, it becomes awkward. Regular sports don’t have this issue. Even movies about made up sports don’t have this issue because they can still play them. But I am left watching a generic shooting game, with rules that fit for the movie, and just have to trust their word. In an attempt to make it more exciting, the Player Characters that they controlled were played by real people too, to give it an action feel to it, but when we don’t even know the real rules of the game (because its made up and just sort of winging things), it never really grabs the excitement that can exist for real properties.

Now secondly, movies need tension for people to care. And sometimes that tension is obvious, like this movie. Ailing wife, mother disapproving of the gaming, anger issues. And they will all happen, and none of them really…seem to matter. Who cares if a mom is upset, when you are an adult, and literally doing it with your other parent? If your wife is sick, and she approved of the game playing, she will still be fine with it even if she is unconscious. (That does sound more shallow than I want it to be, but…it is a movie).

More importantly, there is one pivotal scene that really just got under my skin. The rules of the match where to protect a single player for the game time, if they do, then they win, and if they lose, they lose. An attacking and a defending team. For the movie to have the group have a FALLING OUT, because the player who needed to survive to win, did whatever he could to survive, makes absolutely no sense. It is a video game they are playing, for money they all need! I can’t imagine a scenario with real people where using teammates as shield would piss them off in this scenario. No one is getting actually hurt, and they all have the same goal.

It is just…It is a movie that is trying to use real sports drama in esports, for age groups and morals that don’t exist in gaming community. The movie stated out standard and cliche, but it became a bad film and I struggled to get through the last half hour, knowing it not only offered me nothing new, but absolutely bad plot points.

0 out of 4.

Hellcat was watched as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Friday, July 25th as part of the festival, and it was the World Premiere of this film!

I will say I think HELLCAT is a terrible name for a school mascot, but not a terrible name for a movie. I am sad to be the one to tell you this, but this movie has nothing to do with the TV show from 15 years ago named Hellcats, about competitive cheering. And I watched that season of a tv show, I think!

No, this Hellcat is about a lady, who wakes up in a trailer and confused, very confused. Lena (Dakota Gorman) does not remember how she got in this little slice of a home, but she knows she is alone in it and it is moving down the highway. Eventually, she is able to communicate with the driver, Clive (Todd Terry), who says that she is safe, and he is going to take her to a doctor.

A doctor, what for? Well, seems like she was bit by SOMETHING, and is infected, and this guy saw it happened, and is going to try and get her cured before it is too late. That is, unless its all a lie and she was abducted and is being gaslit.

Oh what a time to be stuck in a trailer.

Also starring Jordan Mullins and James Austin Johnson as a talk show radio guy.

I have seen beds like this before, but it is not due to murder.What would you do, if you were locked away and had to believe your captor? Specifically kept away from information and loved ones in the process? You know, like 10 Cloverfield Lane, where your bunker is barreling down the highway. The thriller element is a lot stronger than the horror element in this film, even though I would say by the end of it, there is a tad little bit of horror element into it. But honestly, this is a thriller movie by and by.

It was also a longer movie than I thought it would be given its limited scope of action pieces. I guess the outside of the trailer is explored, as is front seat, and a couple of set locations. Honestly might have worked better as an almost entire, shorter, bottle episode like film. I think Gorman and Terry did a wonderful job portraying these characters and the huge amount of distrust and confusion over this situation. It is just one of those things where the story itself doesn’t live up to the acting.

It is a simply story, which isn’t the issue. Just the few reveals we get along the way aren’t as exciting as the initial premise. It has its cool moments! The film still warrants a watch and has some fun conversations with the leads and other side characters. But I can’t tell you where things wrong. Maybe a discrepancy with budget and what they wanted to do, or the search for a bigger payoff and twist. But it is a simple story that should have stayed a little bit more simple. Hell, I watched Locke, which was just Tom Hardy on the phone for two hours, and it was gripping. We could have done a lot more with talking and not showing in this case.

Hellcat, an interesting idea, good acting, but a poor payoff in the end.

2 out of 4.

Here at Gorgon Reviews, we are always trying to check out more and more festivals out there, to see what new films are coming our way. And Fantasia Fest has been on my radar for years! I just missed out on it last year, the timing wasn’t there for me, but I am happy to say I am finally able to get to watch a few of the movies this year.

Without wasting too much time, here are some titles in particular I am excited for.

All You Need Is Kill“The innovative, time-looping Japanese sci-fi novel finally gets the anime version it deserves, visually striking, dynamic, and intense, with fierce and fluid action, and a look all it’s own.”

For many of you, this title should sound familiar, even if you didn’t read the book (I know I did not). Because it is absolutely the story that Edge of Tomorrow was based on (notably NOT called Live Die Repeat despite the confusing advertising). I do not know how close Edge of Tomorrow was to the source material, but I am excited to see an anime take on it, given the novel itself is also from Japan.

Anything That Moves“From the director of All Jacked Up and Full of Worms comes a darkly comic erotic thriller about a bike-courier sex worker caught in a deadly small town conspiracy and a serial killer’s reign of terror.”

This film I am excited for partially because there are so many descriptor words here that just almost feel like pulled out of a random word generator and a movie was born. But also, All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is absolutely a movie I have seen before, and I don’t remember how it was or where I watched it. But it is the type of title one cannot forget. Let’s see what this director can do.

The Bearded Girl“A rebellious, sword-swallowing bearded girl decides to leave her carnival sideshow home behind in search of love and adventure. A debut feature that’s charming, dryly funny, and filled with a fairy-tale aesthetic.”

I can’t be specific, but this absolutely gives me some Princess Bride vibes. You know, if the princess had a beard and went and had an adventure on her own. A fairy tale aesthetic really sells it home, and I always love when my protagonist in a movie has a beard. ALWAYS.

Fixed“From the visionary director of PRIMAL and SAMURAI JACK comes an adult animated comedy about Bull, an average, all-around good dog who discovers he’s going to be neutered in the morning!”

I realize that there could be more words to hype up this movie, so let me go ahead and state it hear. I mean, this is the guy who brought us Dexter’s Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls as well! He also directed every Hotel Transylvania movie, which I can forgive, because this is a movie made for adults with Idris Elba as the lead voice, as a dog about to lose his manhood. That sounds like a recipe for success.

The Girl Who Stole Time“What will unfold when a village girl with the power to control time encounters a cold-faced assassin? Top-tier digital animation from China, with a heartfelt story and on-point humor.”

The description itself lacks a little hype, but it also has a lot of mystery over what the story is really about. In all honesty, this movie sold me at the title alone, and I can’t wait to see what comes from it.

Good Game“Tai and his team of oddballs underdogs will have to combine their strengths in gaming if they’re to win a fierce esports competition.”

A movie like this sure, has a pretty generic and standard plotline for films. Plenty of underdog to champion stories out there. Why is that? Because they work. They are fun. They are having good times. There is room for shenanigans and silly ways of achieving success. So yes, I do want to see it work in the esports format as well!

Hold the Fort“An HOA turns out to be more hellish than usual in this wildly amusing, creature-packed horror/comedy about newly minted suburbanites forced to take part in a battle against monstrous forces.”

All of my homies hate the HOA. I moved time zones to go to a new place with one of our main focuses being no HOA to deal with. Now, I don’t think I am mistaken here, but I don’t recall a single horror movie about HOAs in general turning out to be evil demonic entities. We did have a movie called Karen from the BET, which was about, well, a Karen. But she was just a regular nasty woman in the neighborhood. So yeah, give me a horror movie dealing with an HOA. It reflects reality the most of any movie on this list.

Influencers“CW is on the prowl again. With the versatility of a chameleon and a spider’s skill in weaving a nasty web, she’ll welcome nasty twists and fatal errors in paradise!”

This description of a film made me laugh. I hope it wasn’t meant to be remniscient of superhero movies and shows, but hearing Chameleon/Spider and a character named CW, which of course is a TV network with a ton of heroes, it is where my mind absolutely went. This might be the film on here that sounds closest to a regular film you might actually get to see in theaters somewhere someday, so I am surprised I included it, but by golly, it looks interesting.

OBEX“Conor’s life takes a turn for the fantastical as he is transported into the video-game world of OBEX, where he must rescue his kidnapped dog and come to terms with the grief buried deep inside himself.”

I will be honest. Almost every single movie about someone getting sucked into a video game makes absolutely no sense. It feels like they were made by people who have never played a game before and only had them described. They lack consistency, make obvious references, and usually just feel like a game of unrelated puzzles and no plot. Will OBEX break the trend? I don’t know, but I always give this plot line a chance, hoping for the one that finally excels.

Terrestrial“Jermaine Fowler shines in a completely original and unpredictable dark comedy sci-fi thriller about belonging and paranoia, from the director of HOT TUB TIME MACHINE.”

And finally, a movie with almost no real description in it about the plot, a few genre buzz words, so on its own, might not be something to notice. However, it did say it was by Steve Pink, and I will give the man who gave us Accepted a shot.

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If you are going to Fantasia Fest, let me know what you are hoping to see, and stay tuned for hopefully a lot of reviews and interviews from the pictures coming out of Montreal!

Remaining Native was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Saturday, May 17th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle Premiere of this film! You can also see my interview with the director, Paige Bethmann, here!

What if you could run away from all of your problems, and never look back in fear? Well for me, personally, I can barely sprint, so running that far seems like the main issue. Cross country running is not my passion.

But it is the passion for Ku Stevens, who at the start of this documentary is a high school student in Nevada, who has made long range running his deal since he was much younger. And basically he was the only one in his school who liked to run at that. And of course, he is a Native American. He stood out in many ways. No one cared about his running, but he was very good at it, and won many a competition, without having many to compete against to really prove himself.

Now Ku has lived in this area for a long time, including many generations of his families. Including his Great Grandfather. Who, like many around that time, were taken from their families and brought to boarding schools just for native kids, where they would be indoctrinated into “American Society” and values. And by that, we also mean abused, beaten, killed, and more if complete assimilation was not met. A tragic place, where many lost their lives, but not Ku’s great grandfather. No, he escaped when he couldn’t take it anymore. And he did it, by running, and hiding, almost 50 miles to get back to his home.

And this documentary is about Ku honoring that legacy, and setting up something called the Remembrance Run. A journey of 50 miles over two days, in the desert summer heat months, to explore his great grandfathers sacrifice, and push himself to his own challenges for his life.

Running doesn’t me escape my problems, but, that’s more because I cannot really run. There are quite a few documentaries lately about these Indian Boarding schools, in the US and Canada, especially due to the discovery years ago of the pit of bodies found outside of one. A mass, unmarked grave, making people couple with this past. I mean, non-natives learned about them in a quick sentence in a class once probably and never again, not knowing the full great and powerful impact. But those families always did, and it is time for the rest of the world to catch up.

I watch every single one of these documentaries I can, and I can say that Remaining Native is the first to tackle the subject in a very specific way. It talks about the tragedies, of course, but also on how to overcome them, how to learn from them, and how to grow from them. It offers a chance of hope. Sure, no one now can really experience and realize how these things were, and know it in their bones, but there are things we can do to make sure these experiences are never repeated, and things we can do to make sure that these forced sacrifices are not completely in vain.

Ku is a kid who was a lot more brave than I was at any point in my life, and wise beyond his years, to set up an event like this. I think he is a great role model, a guy in college right now, still with his whole life in front of him. And Remaining Native is a hard hitting documentary, taking on a hard hitting subject, while keeping it personal at the same time.

3 out of 4.

Fucktoys was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Friday, May 16th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle Premiere of this film! You can see my interview with the director, Annapurna Sriram, here!

Trashtown is not the world you know, it is a sort of alternate universe, where the depraved and hidden aspects of society are allowed to flourish and everyone can live the life they want to live. Without getting judged and ridiculed in response. Sex, drugs, and a little rock and role. Prostitution, psychics, fetish life, showing off your body, all of this and more exist in Trashtown.

Which brings us to our hero on a new adventure, AP (Annapurna Sriram), who has felt down in her life. And according to her psychic, she has been CURSED. But it isn’t that big of a deal, a curse can be gotten rid of with a specific ritual, which would just cost her about $1,000. Hey, that’s a good deal to get rid of a curse. So AP, who already is a sex worker, decides to put her work into overtime to get the cash and get rid of the curse ASAP.

Along the way, she gets to meet Danni (Sadie Scott), an old friend, who is back in AP’s life, and they are going to help her get the money for the curse, and AP is going to help Danni get some work in the process.

Also featuring others like François Arnaud, Damian Young, Brandon Flynn, and Big Freedia.

When the drugs finally hit, your experiences may vary.

Fucktoys does a good amount right for what I would describe as a very experimental movie. First, it gives traditionally underused actors and actresses the ability to play roles they may have always wanted to play, but never an outlet to play them. It gives underrepresented groups more screen time, without making their underrepresented qualities their reason for the role. Everyone just plays a person! It is wonderful to see.

The film intentionally gives off a seedy 70’s indie exploitation film vibe, with the film used and the scenery. I honestly couldn’t tell you when it was set, as the technology use was not fore front. Did someone use a cell phone? Probably! I don’t remember. And it didn’t matter too much to the story, so the strange world created can also be independent of any time period. It can just be free love, man.

Despite the very unique vibes, and free spirited nature of the film, it does seem to still lack something else. No character fully stands out to me. Everyone just exists. The plot feels like a loose vehicle to show off the world, and that is it. For the main character it becomes a repeating loop of “let’s do this activity” and then something goes bad, so her attempts to get the $1000 keep faltering. So the story is light, and almost like a TV pilot just to introduce various concepts. I wish the story had some more intensity too it, but at the same time, the light hearted nature of Trashtown was also the point.

2 out of 4.

Drowned Land was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Friday, May 16th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle Premiere of this film! You an see my interview with the director, Colleen Thurston, here!

A Civil Action. Dark Waters. Films about lawyers going after corporations who have poisoned the water in communities and refuse to take action to fix it. Films where the little guy has to stand up to Mr. Moneybags, and well, it doesn’t go well. Sure, there is some success, but when compared to the extreme damage done to these communities, it gives a strong Pyrrhic victory vibes behind it.

So, what is the problem can be stopped at its source?

In Drowned Land, we head to Kiamichi River, where many natives in Oklahoma live, after being moved during the Trail of Tears. Not just Native Americans either, plenty of other folk use the valley and the river. But we have, like in those movies, a company who wants to come up and turn it into a hydroelectric dam, flooding parts, affecting the wildlife, and the residents both up and downstream in different amounts.

And this documentary is about the local residents coming together to put a stop to this. They don’t want it to be touched. They want to save it, and so they go to the hearing, with personal narratives, facts, science on their side, to see if they can prevent future tragedy from befalling upon their community.

And its not just about protecting beautiful sights, but hey, its a bonus. You know the beginning of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where Earth apparently didn’t make the hearing to save itself, so it went kabloom? Well, apparently those meetings are useful. Splice with scenes of community members talking about the river, and museum visits and more, we get to see snippets of the two day hearing, where community members brought their voices and expertise to say why the dam should not be built.

And of course, the most surprising part about this, is they were successful.

For now.

Because this was not the first time it was attempted, and won’t be the last time, unless they can get legislature protecting the area forever. Which is the next goal. But holy shit, they won? Even if just a small step towards staying free from this construction, that is such a massive uplifting feeling. I have seen a lot of protest documentaries about constructions on native lands, and trying to stop corporation take over. I feel like the corporation always wins, and we see why everything is corrupt.

If anything, this documentary should be shown just to see that it can be done, it just takes a village working together.

But besides that, I am sad to say, the parts between the hearing just failed to keep my interest as much. I am a political and legal junkie, I would have loved it if the whole thing was just that one aspect myself. The human interest stuff, I get it, but it felt a little bit more like padding than anything else.

2 out of 4.

Four Mothers was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It was the opening night film of the festival, on Thursday, May 15, and it was the Seattle Premiere of this film!

How many mothers is the right number of mothers to have? An average number has to be somewhere around 1 I imagine, but people sometimes have fewer, sometime they have more. But rarely do they have four. And thankfully, our lead doesn’t actually have four here either.

Edvard (James McArdle) is a romance novelist for the YA crowd. He is a gay man, and his books feature gay romance, but he thinks his writing is a bit better and more important than simple romance. Right now his book is set to come out in America, and it is getting strong buzz before it comes out. So he wants to really capitulate on the buzz and maybe earn him the success he always felt he deserved.

Unfortunately for Edvard, he also lives with his mother, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan), who doesn’t speak anymore and uses a tablet to speak instead. She is old, she is closed to death, and he is her caretaker. It does mean he has no social life and he is thinking about of leaving her in a home, just to give him some time to find that life success. But he is also a coward and doesn’t think he can do it.

Regardless, he is about to set up a US tour for his book when his two best friends, also gay and also caretaking their moms, decide to ditch their mothers on his door step so they can go to a big pride festival for a few days. And his therapist, older, in the same scenario, drops his mom off too. Oh look. Four moms! So now he has to juggle four older women, with different schedules and temperaments, while he is trying to do something great in his life at the same time. Hooray!

The other mothers are played by Dearbhla Molloy, Stella McCusker, and Paddy Glynn.

They are probably not watching porn here. I think we need more Irish films for sure. Such a small country, with a small population, but they got stories to say too, even if things get a little bit US centric with the plot line. (Damn United States, always butting in other countries stories…).

Anyways, I will say I liked this concept for a story. A struggling author of a niche topic, looking to get big, dealing with underrepresented groups could lead to a lot of things. And this is a caretaker story at the same time, and caretakers, despite being a pretty large group, are often underrepresented in media as well. Or, if they are represented it is usually more of a tragedy drama, than a comedy or uplifting drama. This falls into the latter category. And, because of that, I don’t think it is able to reach the lofty goals it aspires to be.

The stronger emotional moments I feel go away too quickly. For example, the father who is clearly not in the picture, and his story, is brought up and leads to conflict, but only in smaller amounts despite holding a lot of weight. The idea of a temporary home while he invoked on a 2-3 week US tour made a lot of sense, and the drama behind it felt…extra. It was a shame. The film didn’t seen to hint enough to find out why certain decisions were derisive, and I just felt bad for the main character most of the film.

The ending itself is exactly where someone would probably assume this movie landed. You know, knowing it is a comedy/drama instead of a tragedy/drama. So I wasn’t surprised when we arrived at the ending. But unfortunately the journey wasn’t fully worth it either.

All of that to say, I liked most of the main characters, including our main guy. I think the side stories of his life had a lot of heart behind them, and the acting from everyone was still top notch. But pleasant films aren’t always going to be the most exciting films.

2 out of 4.