Hey folks, Harry here... This is our badass intern, Muldoon, with a look at THE LOST COAST. He's running a completely separate schedule than I am - But that's great - as we're seeing different things. Here's his views on THE LOST COAST...
Hey Guys, Today was just as insane as any at SXSW and I was able to get into two films and sit in on a few panels. The "Script to Screen" panel was great and I can't wait until tomorrow where it looks like I will be camping out at all day the convention center where all of the discussions are. I don't typically go into festivals with serious plans on what I "need to catch" or what the "buzz" is all about (since those films typically come out in theaters a few months later), so I tend to go into a theater knowing absolutely nothing about whatever is going to be presented. With that said, THE LOST COAST was one of these random "know nothing" shots that I just ended up seeing. The movie follows a twenty something year old, Jasper, and his friends out on Halloween night looking to score some drugs and have a good time after not seeing each other in a while. That may sound like a cliche that's been played out over and over, but it is by far one of the most unique films I've seen in a long time. Jasper is about to get married to his fiance, Wendy, and visits with his best two friends from high school, Mark and Lily. Mark just happens to be gay and not too much is really played upon with that in the beginning, but soon you start to realize there's something odd with the relationship these three old friends have. Something's not right and questions start to pop up at the right time to constantly keep you tuned into what's going down. Apparently, the two guys had some sort of "thing" going on during high school which never quite got resolved. Had I known this was the story, I wouldn't have gone in to see it, I would have gone to see something with more explosions or more violence. That's the good thing about a fest that's programmed like this one, you can check out a film you would never have once thought to check out and to be completely frank, the weirdness of the man-love really did fall off. I'm not all that liberal at all and yet this movie had something to it that made it not about who is gay and who isn't and that was something that I dug. It'd be easy to imagine the film with the Mark character taken out and replaced by a female. Aside from THE LOST COAST, the only gay themed movie I have ever seen was BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, so I really don't know too much about the subject or how other filmmakers might have approached the material. Fleming clearly has a talented eye and manipulates the camera very intelligently. The landscapes and exteriors are beautiful and the acting is pretty damn good. I know it looks like I fell in love with the flick, but I didn't. It's not flawless (which very few films are), but it's worth checking out if you are at all interested in that type of stuff. I'm curious to see how the movie is perceived by homosexuals, since I'm assuming it's geared heavily towards them. I could be totally wrong about that, but either way it's worth checking out if you get the chance. -Muldoon
