I'll admit that I was very biased for this film going in, I was rooting for it to be great. They shot the film in my home town of Ashland, Oregon. I know many people that worked on it behind the scenes. The director and I both had films in a block of shorts in the Ashland Independent Film Festival about five years ago. His film, Wow & Flutter was by far the best of the bunch. I could tell that he was on his way on to better things. It wasn't a surprise when he returned with Steve Zahn in tow to make his first feature a few years later. All that said, I am still judging this film on its own. Thankfully, it turned out to be pretty wonderful.

The titular character Calvin Marshall loves baseball more than anything in life. He wakes at the crack of dawn to hit off a tee, to run the bases and take diving slides in an empty ball field. He donates his time to a little league team, teaching the kids proper technique in how to field and throw the ball. He lives and dies for America's game. The only problem is, he really isn't that good.

At least not good enough to make the team for his junior college Bayford Bisons. His coach, Doug Little, played brilliantly by Zahn, really likes Marshall, loves his hustle and determination so much that he can't bring himself to cut the poor kid. Instead telling him he's "injured" and needs to "get better" first. Which leaves poor Calvin even more deluded, thinking that he's made the team. Calvin puts himself on an imaginary DL list, biding his return to the team by broadcasting the Bison sports show and announcing for the girls volleyball team. His world is rocked by the arrival of Tori Jensen, a beautiful volleyball ace with a dark secret. Although Calvin's pursuit of Tori is fun, the film doesn't offer anything new in the romantic-comedy genre. There is one hilarious scene where Coach Little gives Alex love advice completely in baseball analogies.


Where the film does do something new is the sports aspect. Most sports films tell a similar story, they will either follow somebody destined to be great, think The Natural or The Rookie, or they'll follow a cast of misfits who bring it together to win it all, ala The Bad News Bears or Major League. Calvin Marshall tells a new story, something I don't remember seeing in any other sports film. Having a character who is dead set on becoming great, he'd even settle for good, but simply not having the skill set to get it done. It's heartbreaking to let your dreams go, especially when we're told all our lives that if you work hard enough you'll make it in the end. Calvin works and works and works at baseball, but it isn't to be. The film mirrors his story, with that of Coach Little, he's been the great baseball player, the team star, making it as far as the minor leagues, but not quite all the way. Now that he's older, his skills have diminished and he's crushed that his glory days are over.

Steve Zahn is a bit of a revelation here, he usually doesn't get to show this kind of depth. He's in his comfort zone when he's the hilarious, foul-mouthed coach ragging on his players, but it's in the quiet moments, when he's drinking with the local burnouts or trying to pick up sad and lonely girls, that he shows a whole new side. The entire cast is very good. Newcomer Alex Frost is charismatic, holding his own as Calvin among a cast of recognizable faces. Such as Andrew Wilson as Alex's step-uncle and male-role-model, Jane Adams as Alex's aunt, and Diedrich Bader as the coach of a softball team, the only guy who truly appreciates Calvin's baseball skills. Michelle Lombardo, of Californication fame, looks the part and gets to flex a bit of acting muscles as the volleyball goddess Tori Jensen.

But really, the true star of Calvin Marshall is writer/director Gary Lundgren. For a first film and for the budget that the film was made for, it is an amazing feat. There is a definitive "Gary Lundgren style" at work here. He gets good performances out of a range of actors from veterans to rookies. He knows just how to move the camera and the film looks amazing for it. He understands how to set a scene to music and the exact moments in which to use slow-motion. While Calvin Marshall may not make much of a splash in the film world, and I only say that, because it's such a small film, I believe that Lundgren's career will be prosperous. His debut feature most reminds me of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, only because you can instantly tell that here is a filmmaker that despite the small budget knew exactly what they wanted to do.

Sadly you'll most likely see Calvin Marshall on video shelves, with Steve Zahn's over-sized head staring out at you. When instead it deserves to be the toast of Sundance. I bet that over the years it will gain a cult following, because the story and the filmmaking are undeniably there and eventually that will get noticed. I'm here writing this review in the small hopes that my words will encourage a few more people to see this little gem. Do yourself a favor and seek out this film.

Without doing any research I'm guessing that writer/director Chris Lusvardi is a child of the 80's. Man Maid an independent film made in 2008, feels exactly like a stereotypical 80's comedy. There's the so-called weak and/or nerdy lead male character, this time personified by Vincent, a cleaning man who works in a small town hotel. At the beginning of the film we see him taunted and teased by the hotel's customers. There's Chloe the beautiful girl he desires, who doesn't notice him for who he is, because of her no-good boyfriend. There's his stud best friend who can get any girl he wants. And finally there's the good girl Torry, who nobody pays attention too because she's boring and "plain" looking. Although obviously beautiful, outside the film. Then there's the array of goofy side characters who show up in the lead character's life to either help or hinder him along his hero's path.

With the help of one of those kooky side characters, here portrayed by a gum smacking maid and hotel prostitute, Vincent comes up with a plan to win the beautiful girl's heart by dating the plain girl. Of course he starts to fall for Torry, but doesn't want to admit it, only does so when his plan explodes in his face. He then comes up with a gigantic 80's movie plan to get her back; he's going to produce a benefit concert to raise $40,000 and save the hotel from evil developers. Don't think that I'm giving away anything with this review, if you've seen more than five movies, you know exactly where this story is going the whole time. This film might as well have been set in a high school and produced by John Hughes.

Being a huge fan of 80's comedies, I wouldn't have had a problem with Man Maid if they'd used a few of these old plot devices to bring us into the film, then turn them on their head and created something new. But this script was written long before the filmmakers ever picked up their first camera. There are the music montages; one showing us the love growing between Vincent and Torry and a couple more reminding us of what happened in the last thirty minutes, with inspirational quotes and all. We instantly know who the bad guy is because he wears a suit and hits on Torry in obnoxious ways. We're given Vincent's backstory about why he wants to be a maid, through cheesy soft-focus flashbacks. The film goes from A to B to C with nothing new in between.

I'll admit I was enjoying the movie for the first act. Most of the actors all do a decent job with their cliché roles, they keep it fun for a while. (The film won best ensemble cast at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, where I saw it.) But once they get to the third act, and they're posting concert fliers around town and building a stage on Vincent's property, even they seem to get bored with the story, and the film ends with a thud. It's all put together with as little panache as possible. There's one moment where Vincent floats down the halls of the hotel behind his maid's cart, but beyond that, the camera angles are as plain as possible. The lighting of the film is too bright and flat, the editing as standard as possible. Man Maid is a film produced two decades too late. - Grade: C+

I decided to see Happy Birthday Harris, Malden because it was one of the few comedies playing at my local fest, the Ashland Independent Film Festival. My main reason for seeing it was the trailer below, which I thought made the film look funny in an offbeat way. With the idea of a guy who's psychologically compelled to draw on a mustache every day being something I hadn't seen before. I'm always looking for anything new in film.

The film started off promising, with some fun credits created by animated cardboard cutouts, that tells us Harris's back-story. Unfortunately that proved to be the highlight of the film. I was into Harris for about 10 minutes, they quickly introduce us to the cast of characters; Harris, his brother Melvin, best friend Paul and Paul's girlfriend Susan. Each of their introductions made them seem like interesting characters that would be fun to follow for the next 90 minutes, but unfortunately none of them really grew beyond their first impression. With all of them suffering from major cases of arrested development.

Harris is supposed to be the most messed up because he wears a fake mustache, which his friends and family have been letting him live with, because they believe it helps him deal with the death of his father. Beyond that, he may be the most steady man in the group. (Which now that I'm thinking about it, may have been the point of the film.) Paul is a 25-year-old, somewhat successful architect, who still lives with his grandmother, and is scared of moving in with his girlfriend. When he and Susan get in a fight, he acts like a toddler throwing a fit. Harris's brother Melvin lives in a completely delusional world, which is made worse when a commercial director "discovers" him and constantly refers to him as a future superstar. The scene where they're shooting a commercial in front of a green screen, with imaginary dragons attacking Melvin and two scantily-clad girls, is one of the funniest in the film. Susan plays the stick-in-the-mud girlfriend who wants to pull Paul into the adult world, she causes a major rift in the boys world when she tells Harris his mustache is fake. Paul's grandma, who everybody calls Grams, is also a significant character, she's the kooky voice of reason.

The main problem with the film is that is floats somewhere between a realistic drama and a quirky other-world comedy like Napoleon Dynamite. None of the characters rings true as a real person, and while the acting is universally poor, a lot of the fault falls on the dialog. I'm not sure if this film was badly written or badly improvised, either way, the characters often seem to be having their own conversations, with nobody addressing each other in a real world fashion. Their acting style suggests that they're not trying to create realistic characters, but their actions aren't out-there enough to create an alternate universe.

I really don't like bad-mouthing independent films, there is so much love and work that go into making a film, even more so when budgets are extremely low. So I applaud them for putting this film together, unfortunately it is a jumbled mess. One example of this is Harris's mustache, which constantly fluctuates between being drawn-on and a glued-on felt one, which I'm guessing the filmmakers are hoping we wouldn't notice. Happy Birthday, Harris Malden was written, directed and stars a group that calls themselves Sweaty Robot. Although they went down swinging with this film, there's enough here to suggest that they possibly have a good film in their future. There are a few good moments peaking through, a flash of true comedy here, a dash of real drama there, and I also thought that the film was nicely shot and edited for such a low budget feature. Sweaty Robot, I promise to watch your next film, but if it falls as flat as Harris, I'll probably give up. - Grade: C-

(I originally wrote this review for Ain't It Cool News, when I saw the film over a year ago at the Ashland Film Festival. I was reminded of the film, when I saw the trailer over at JoBlo, and thought I'd repost it here, for posterity and promotional sake. As far as I know, still no release date.)

For starters I’m a huge Bruce Campbell fan, loving every second of the Evil Dead trilogy, enjoying many bad films based solely on his performances in them, owning a few action figures and even going so far as to name my son Ash. Not that I’m that obsessed with the character, but my wife and I loved the name for its strength and uniqueness.

The Ashland Independent Film Festival is in a small town in southern Oregon , the closest festival to Bruce Campbell’s home. Inside this year’s AIFF there was a mini-Bruce-fest. They played Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, Bubba Ho-tep and finished the night with the highly anticipated My Name is Bruce. Bruce himself came out to introduce the film, telling us about filming in southern Oregon , his favorite part being able to sleep in his own bed at night. The film isn’t fully finished; it played with temp music and sound effects and with most of the visual effects still very rough. The audience of 500 Bruce fans ate it up anyways.

The film starts with a couple of dumb teenagers accidentally unleashing the Chinese demon Quan-Di from a small cemetery near the fictional town of Goldlick. The only one who survives happens to be the biggest Bruce Campbell fan alive. The film cuts to Bruce filming a cheeseball flick called Cave Alien 2. Right away he starts spouting bad one-liners in his patented Bruce Campbell fashion, and then lasers down some awful looking aliens, getting sprayed with gallons of green ooze in the process.

After cut is yelled, we see an extremely over-the-top version of Bruce. He’s rude to his cast mates and crew, hitting on a pretty co-star with some more terrible one-liners, treating his fans like dirt, attempting to fire his incompetent agent (played by Ted Raimi in one of three roles), finally retiring to his trashed mobile home where he gets drunk and passes out on Shemp’s Hooch.

Soon the kid from the beginning of the film comes knocking on his door asking for his help in ridding the town of the evil Quan-Di. Bruce refuses, thinking he’s being pitched a movie; he is then knocked out and locked in the kid’s trunk on his way to town. Once there, through the mistaken idea of thinking it’s all an elaborate prank and his lust for the town’s hottie, Bruce agrees to kill off the Chinese demon. He is soon drunkenly leading the town’s citizens into battle, but once he realizes the demon is actually real he retreats in hilarious fashion. From there the third act is very predictable with Bruce learning the error of his ways and helping his number one fan escape peril.

To fully enjoy this film you must be a Bruce Campbell fan. There are endless references, spoofs and jokes about his other films; most of them getting a good laugh, a few of them falling flat. Otherwise the film is fairly bare; it’s pretty much a one man show. Besides some good comic relief from Ted Raimi most of the cast is empty shells, stock characters from other cheesy horror films. Though after viewing, you will be humming the Quan-Di song which is sung by two of the minor players throughout the film; it is one of the more inspired bits, the only one not featuring Bruce.

The main problem with the film is that the Chinese demon is an extremely weak bad guy; he has fun, gory intro in the graveyard but never evolves beyond that. His expressionless rubber mask and limited killing style quickly grows tired and he is ultimately very forgettable. The film would have benefited greatly from a monster or monsters that were more charismatic. I guess they were trying to go for something different here, but it didn’t work. The film might have been better if he’d been battling something resembling the Evil Dead or a variety of baddies from his film catalogue; which would have course lead to more easy jokes.

Overall the film is a fun ride, with the Bruce charm on full blast. I don’t think many of his fans will be disappointed with My Name is Bruce as it delivers on what is promised. But the film could have been much better with a stronger screenplay; one that reached beyond its stock characters, that filled a few of the plot-holes and replaced the really lame bad guy. The film might be improved if they are able to fix a few of the minor problems with more editing. No matter what, the film will go down as a cult classic, based solely on Bruce’s involvement.

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I feel very lucky to live in a small town, that has a high quality film festival. They Ashland Film Festival gets great films and filmmakers to come to a small town in Oregon. It's one of my favorite weekends of the year. The only unfortunate thing about it, is that it's so short, only five days long, by the time I'm getting into it, it's over. So this year I only got a chance to see two films. Luckily, I did a little research, i.e. watching online movie trailers (see below), and found a film that I thought my wife and I could enjoy. Outsourced turned out to be even better than advertised.

Todd Anderson works as a manager of a call center for a company that sells cheap Americana knick-knacks. In the very first scene of the film he is told that his entire department is being laid off and being moved to India. If he wants to keep his job, his stock options, his security, his only choice is to move to India to help train the replacements. Being a straight-laced kind of guy, he does what his boss tells him. A classic fish-out-of-water set-up.

From the moment he steps off the plane he's out of his element. The people mean him well, but their customs seem strange. His new underling wants the best for him, so he sets him up at a friend's house, instead of a hotel; which throws him off even more, as he's now forced to live like an Indian. When taken to his new office and employees, the place is a total mess, the computers are outdated, the employees untrained. Even worse his company won't let him leave until he gets the call times down to an average of 5 minutes, they now average over 15. He has a seemingly impossible task in front of him, living in a land that is completely unfamiliar.

It's fairly easy to guess where Outsourced is going to go. Todd learns to love India and its customs and then falls in love with Asha, a girl from his office. But this film is not about the destination, it's the journey. It is an utterly charming film, full of wonderfully crafted scenes, consistently funny, and even educational.

It has great performances by the lead actors. Josh Hamilton is one of those actors that has been around for a long time, you see him in a lot of things, probably most recognizable from the classic 90's flick Kicking and Screaming, but here he gets the rare chance to carry a film and he does it with a ton of charisma. Asha is played by Indian actress Ayesha Dharker, who you might remember from her very small role as the princess who comes after Amidala in Attack of the Clones, again, she gets the rare chance to shine, and proves that she's as talented as she is beautiful.

Writer/Director John Jeffcoat has created a love letter to India. Through Todd's character we get to learn about the beautiful country and people of India. At the opening of the film he's thrown for a loop by a unknown-child sitting on his lap while riding on a crowded train, by the end he's willing to follow a stranger into the slums for an impromptu meal. His turning point comes during the Festival of Color, one of the only days of the year that the Indian people really let loose, throwing bags of paint at each other, it proves to be an opportunity for Todd to finally loosen his tie. The relationship between Todd and Asha feels genuine, and doesn't go exactly how we expect. Outsourced isn't the kind of film that slaps you in the face, it slowly comes over you, and by the end you'll fall in love with it. - Grade: A-