Too Late

Ha, ha, nice find! I'm a noir fanatic/connoisseur, and have been all my life :). Definitely something to check out. First time director, eh? Both peril and opportunity. I'm slightly nervous about the degree to which this is stylized. Also, the main actor (John Hawkes) - a question mark here, insofar as I can see some danger of his "acting" acting at least judging by the trailer (I've never seen him in anything). But he does have a good 'noir face', so at least that's a win. Can't wait.
 
By first time director, I meant features - isn't that the usual meaning? A million people including all film students ever have directed shorts, that's dime a dozen. This guy directed two shorts (as listed by IMDB - unless I'm missing some entry?) previous to this. I think that counts as a first time director, no? In any case, I believe it is generally acknowledged that a feature requires a different skill set than a short from a director - I know for one, if you are writing, a short is a different animal, because the dynamics of dramatic arcs are totally different, so it's basically a different art form, broken out into its own category. If he's never done that before, he's a first time director for features, and Too Late is a feature, so that's the relevant context.
 
OldCorpse said:
By first time director, I meant features - isn't that the usual meaning? A million people including all film students ever have directed shorts, that's dime a dozen. This guy directed two shorts (as listed by IMDB - unless I'm missing some entry?) previous to this. I think that counts as a first time director, no? In any case, I believe it is generally acknowledged that a feature requires a different skill set than a short from a director - I know for one, if you are writing, a short is a different animal, because the dynamics of dramatic arcs are totally different, so it's basically a different art form, broken out into its own category. If he's never done that before, he's a first time director for features, and Too Late is a feature, so that's the relevant context.
Click to expand...

Oh my bad, I didn't read into his filmography - how the films presented in his "known for" I assumed from artwork they were features. Agreed.
 
The main actor has a strong Sean Penn vibe to him. In a few shots looks exactly like him...

Looks good, at least as a trailer on IMDB on my iPad Pro.

Stylz, I actually thought some of the shots had a Movi/Ronin remote gimbal twitch to them. Unless you were just using 'SteadiCam' in the generic stabilizer term. And since you misspelled it, that's probably what you meant.
 
I watched this, so I'm updating the thread. The film is a failure, but an interesting failure. I don't regret spending the time watching it, it was worth it.

*******POSSIBLE MILD SPOILERS BELOW********

It starts OK, and the first part is quite strong - I was impressed, and very hopeful. Very nice camera work, excellent photography, reasonable acting. Fantastic use of space and locations in general. Things were going swimmingly, then it hit about the 35 minute mark, and the movie fell off the cliff. Developments that are so implausible and psychologically wrong that it stops you dead in your tracks. Hardened gangsters acting like... well, only imaginary people would, completely out of character. Shootings capped off with a suicide - something a beginning film student (and not a very good one) would write. Even the technical achievement/conceit showed its limitations - basically, 22 minute long takes, that sort of work anywhere from quite well, to barely, just falls apart here with whip pans that are quite distracting.

The film continues deteriorating from there. Cliches - strip club and its denizens - purple prose dialogue that just doesn't work and is too tedious to follow in detail. Developments that pile implausibilities up to the ceiling and into the second floor. The whole Rope long take approach doesn't bring enough to the table, while limiting the possibilities. Tedious scenes that drag on - a whole song on a guitar, clearly done to feature the writing/playing/singing chops of the actor, put in there as a favor to the actor. Pity too, as the music is not bad otherwise in the way it works in the film overall, pretty decent choices. The private eye dying scene an eye-roller. Just embarrassing.

It feels like a director's first movie, with the pitfalls of ambition greater than execution, overwriting, too clever by half, undue focus on artificial technical challenges. That said, I don't think it was a disaster - just miscalculated. With a bit more reflection, I think the director could do much better. First though he needs to focus on better writing - whether he's capable of that or not, is hard to tell. I wish him well. It was a failure, but not detestable garbage as so much else is. You don't sit there watching it and feel growing hatred. He's not trying to pull one over the audience, not trying to bamboozle with false depth and generally being insufferable.

I would watch another movie from this director. Shows potential.
 
I went back and forth a number of times on this. A few times, I was tempted to stop watching, and other times, I thought it was brilliant.

The Dogme95 style kept me interested, but more than once, the actors seemed self-conscious about not wanting to blow lines and ruin a long take, so the performances suffered now and then.

The story didn't take many chances, but I don't think that was the point. I think it was just something to point the cameras at in order to experiment with the filming style.
 
I downloaded it and watched it sometime after the initial posting. I think I was motivated by the technical aspect more than anything to watch originally. Each scene is a 20 minute "oner" shot on actual 35mm film and they were swapping SteadiCam ops mid-scene(the opening scene is not SteadiCam, though). I liked the movie itself, but the ego of the director, in trying to pull off these "oners" really hurt the overall finished product. Not having "normal coverage" on a lot of the dialogue scenes made them feel like bad local theater and running those extended takes, some of the operating got really sloppy.
 
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