Director: Mel Eslyn
Cast: Sterling K. Brown, Mark Duplass
Have I Seen It Before: Nope. In a supreme twist of fate, Lora talked me into going to see a movie I had yet to hear about.
Did I Like It: I mean this in the best possible way. This movie is very strange. Go ahead, watch the trailer real quick before we begin. I’ll wait.
Pretty strange, right? Here’s the thing, it’s far stranger than anyone will tell you before actually starting the movie. It’s more than just strange. It’s a perfectly functional buddy comedy, a tragedy (depending on how you read that ending, and how long has it been since I’ve really had to think about the ending of a movie?), and a surprisingly thoughtful deconstruction of what we collectively think about gender now.
You read that right. A lot of that isn’t in the trailer.
On spec, the film appears to be a micro-budget sci-fi piece the kind of which we haven’t really seen since Cube (1997) (one might want to point to Moon (2009), but even that film had to spend a fair amount of money to make the audience believe Sam Rockwell was marooned on ). Then again, maybe independent studios are making this kind of film all the time and this like most of those others will disappear into hazy, incomplete memory all too quickly.
But I really don’t think this one will slip into obscurity, assuming enough people get eyes on it. I for one won’t readily forget the Duplass playing a one of the last men on earth/the President of the United States who is likely—by all accounts, almost certainly—responsible for this sad state of affairs, while Brown plays his boyhood best friend/top aide/last-rational-man-on-the-planet-long-before-the-shit-went down. As “life finds a way” (they both appear to be roughly my age, as their references are just so) their relationship continues to develop, even in the face of their own extinction.
I’d tell you more, but that would be ruining most of the truly surprising parts of the movie. Go see it first and then find me. I’d love to talk about it.