Bellflower (Evan Glodell) [14 points/1 vote]
"Writer-director Evan Glodell literally takes a flamethrower to the conventions of the lo-fi indie romance in his debut feature Bellflower, announcing a breakthrough talent to be reckoned with in the process. The micro-budget mumblecore movies of recent years have their merits, but few of them possess the go-for-broke passion for all things cinema on display here. Although Glodell shares with the mumblecore movement a preoccupation with the fumbling, crumbling relationships of semi-articulate young people, he doesn’t adhere to its minimalist philosophy. After all, you may only get one chance in this life to make a movie, so you might as well use the opportunity to blow up a propane tank with a shotgun.
But if all Bellflower had going for it was a flair for pyrotechnics, it would hardly qualify as the most electrifying filmmaking debut of the year. The biggest explosions in Bellflower are of the emotional variety, as Glodell taps into the volatile, alcohol-fueled interactions among underemployed twentysomethings in Los Angeles (something I know a little something about from my younger days). At that age, every breakup feels like the end of the world, a notion Glodell takes to its logical extreme by giving best friends Woodrow (played by Glodell himself) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) an apocalyptic obsession with the Mad Max movies. (What a relief it is, for once, that the pop culture touchstone for these characters is not the Star Wars saga.)
Woodrow’s romantic apocalypse begins when he meets Milly (Jessie Wiseman), who immediately demonstrates that she’s no Manic Pixie Dreamgirl by besting him in a dive bar’s cricket-eating contest. Milly is an entirely different variety of idealized indie girlfriend: rough around the edges but up for driving all the way to Texas on a first date (in a car equipped with a whiskey dispenser, natch). She’s the kind of girl who’ll warn you it’s a bad idea to fall in love with her... which only makes you fall harder.
In its last 30 minutes or so, Bellflower roars and vibrates and nearly shakes apart like the engine under the hood of Medusa, the badass, flame-belching Road Warrior car Aiden has built in preparation for the coming apocalypse. (In the movie-saturated view of Aiden and Woodrow, the end of the world is not an occasion to dread, but rather an opportunity to rule the wasteland like the descendants of Lord Humongous.) It’s nearly impossible to distinguish reality from fever-dream as the undercurrents of violence present in the film’s first hour ignite like a string of firecrackers. The imagery grows increasingly abstract and intense, to the point where Bellflower has the blown-out, degraded look of an antique film discovered long after the apocalypse. (Glodell, who studied engineering, designed and built several of the cameras used to shoot the movie.) Given its oft-unlikeable characters and potentially maddening ambiguity, Bellflower isn’t a movie for everyone. But surrender to its singular, obsessive vision, and you may decide, like me, that it’s the movie of the year." - Scott Von Doviak
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