Bellflower

I thought this was going to be cool but was really disappointed by on the view and degradation of women 👎🏻

“…dominates his women and they fucking love him for that.”

That’s disgusting.

I thought this was going to be cool but was really disappointed by on the view and degradation of women 👎🏻

“…dominates his women and they fucking love him for that.”

That’s disgusting.

To tell the truth, I have been attempting to watch this movie for about a week now. I want to turn it off whenever I sit down to watch it. However, this week, I decided to challenge myself and forced myself to watch this without any breaks — that is until I got tired and had to go to bed because working at 6 AM makes you exhausted for the whole day if you haven't slept well the night before. So, I broke this film up into two parts this time around.

So what about this movie was calling out to me that I had to seek it out in the first place? Well, I saw that some mutuals had the film at a high rating (three and a half stars), and I was curious about it since I hadn't heard anyone talk about this little movie—some background about Evan Glodell is required for this film to make more sense. Glodell was a man living in Wisconsin who moved to L.A. to make a name for himself and get into the filmmaking business. While there, he took time, like any young filmmaker does, to make short films with his friends on no budget. However, what sets Glodell apart is his passion for modifying cameras to create a distinct look to all of his work. Having this ability to create a look that is unique to the story you're telling makes your voice stand out amongst the sea of indie filmmakers trying to make it. Bellflower was conceived around 2003-2004 and worked on borrowing many of the film's first half from Glodell's personal life, admitting that the film might be uncomfortably personal. Glodell eventually entered Bellflower into the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where it was later acquired by Oscilloscope Laboratories and was released later that year in theaters.

So now that we have laid out the background, I can fully dive into this film. Bellflower is a strange film. Glodell has called it a love story, and others have referred to this as a coming-of-age kind of film. While the film lives in those genres, it doesn't do much to take advantage of those traits or the story's concept. Bellflower is about two friends, Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson), who are obsessed with Mad Max and are building their flamethrower to make their post-apocalypse gang, Mother Medusa. Their friendship is challenged with Woodrow meets Milly (Jessie Wiseman), and the two hit it off, eventually falling in love. This strains Woodrow and Aiden's friendship and forces Woodrow in a position to reevaluate his life.

So you have this conflict about growing up and wanting to keep the pace of life as is. There are mountains of interpersonal drama to mine in this film. We can explore how the two friends deal with the emotional distancing as time passes on. Maybe Aiden finds another friend with similar interests to add a push-pull factor to the narrative, something to animate this movie. I wish that there was something to make this movie interesting without having to know the context of the film. While I know that can be a self-defeating statement conjured with broad strokes, I need something to make this movie watchable.

A lot of this film is unabashedly male rage. All of the men in this film handle every aspect of their lives terribly. Many of them resort to violence as their only way to cope with the world around them. Now, I am not making the case that movies cannot have terrible people as the central figures of their films, what I am saying is that there needs to be something that is interesting or unique to the perspective shared. Glodell, for lack of a better term, seems angry all the time. The script is about a dude who gets into some emotionally straining situations where he has no way to cope beyond getting drunk and smoking cigarettes all day. The film is based on a lot of his personal experiences, making this film uncomfortable for me since this is just an excuse for the director to be around a lot of naked women and commit some violent acts against them. Now I am not taking the leap to say that Glodell is someone who would do these things, but it shows that the man is emotionally unbalanced with the way this film transforms in the second half. It is quite a striking image to see a man hit a woman when the man you're playing is a stand-in for yourself.

While the script for Bellflower is terrible, it leaves out Aiden for most of the script, making him the best friend character with undying loyalty. It does a terrible disservice to a whole pillar of narrative drama. While I wasn't expecting the acting to be out of this world, Bellflower struggles to make itself believable. Glodell is not a good actor. He has this odd cadence to everything. When he agrees to the most mundane topics, he says it with emphatic joy, like he just won the lottery. Maybe it's done on purpose to indicate that Woodrow is not good at regulating his feelings, but I think I would be gaslighting myself if I succumbed to that line of thinking. Wisemen does a good job with Milly's lack of character, but there are only so many ways that you can make the rigid dialogue feel "natural" because this problem is something the whole cast suffers from.

Bellflower was not a movie I can really say I enjoyed. I will say, that I do enjoy that Glodell took the time to modify his camera to give it a distinct look. It gives a very hazy summer day feeling which can feel appropriate at times with the stuff taking place on screen, but without this camera effect, there wouldn't be anything to distinguish this film. Most of it is a pain to get through, and when the film eventually goes wild, it's too late for it to make up for lost time. There was potential with Bellflower, but male rage got the best of this script and boiled down the dude-bro Reddit film to its absolute worst traits on display for 106 minutes.

Source

To tell the truth, I have been attempting to watch this movie for about a week now. I want to turn it off whenever I sit down to watch it. However, this week, I decided to challenge myself and forced myself to watch this without any breaks — that is until I got tired and had to go to bed because working at 6 AM makes you exhausted for the whole day if you haven't slept well the night before. So, I broke this film up into two parts this time around.

So what about this movie was calling out to me that I had to seek it out in the first place? Well, I saw that some mutuals had the film at a high rating (three and a half stars), and I was curious about it since I hadn't heard anyone talk about this little movie—some background about Evan Glodell is required for this film to make more sense. Glodell was a man living in Wisconsin who moved to L.A. to make a name for himself and get into the filmmaking business. While there, he took time, like any young filmmaker does, to make short films with his friends on no budget. However, what sets Glodell apart is his passion for modifying cameras to create a distinct look to all of his work. Having this ability to create a look that is unique to the story you're telling makes your voice stand out amongst the sea of indie filmmakers trying to make it. Bellflower was conceived around 2003-2004 and worked on borrowing many of the film's first half from Glodell's personal life, admitting that the film might be uncomfortably personal. Glodell eventually entered Bellflower into the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where it was later acquired by Oscilloscope Laboratories and was released later that year in theaters.

So now that we have laid out the background, I can fully dive into this film. Bellflower is a strange film. Glodell has called it a love story, and others have referred to this as a coming-of-age kind of film. While the film lives in those genres, it doesn't do much to take advantage of those traits or the story's concept. Bellflower is about two friends, Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson), who are obsessed with Mad Max and are building their flamethrower to make their post-apocalypse gang, Mother Medusa. Their friendship is challenged with Woodrow meets Milly (Jessie Wiseman), and the two hit it off, eventually falling in love. This strains Woodrow and Aiden's friendship and forces Woodrow in a position to reevaluate his life.

So you have this conflict about growing up and wanting to keep the pace of life as is. There are mountains of interpersonal drama to mine in this film. We can explore how the two friends deal with the emotional distancing as time passes on. Maybe Aiden finds another friend with similar interests to add a push-pull factor to the narrative, something to animate this movie. I wish that there was something to make this movie interesting without having to know the context of the film. While I know that can be a self-defeating statement conjured with broad strokes, I need something to make this movie watchable.

A lot of this film is unabashedly male rage. All of the men in this film handle every aspect of their lives terribly. Many of them resort to violence as their only way to cope with the world around them. Now, I am not making the case that movies cannot have terrible people as the central figures of their films, what I am saying is that there needs to be something that is interesting or unique to the perspective shared. Glodell, for lack of a better term, seems angry all the time. The script is about a dude who gets into some emotionally straining situations where he has no way to cope beyond getting drunk and smoking cigarettes all day. The film is based on a lot of his personal experiences, making this film uncomfortable for me since this is just an excuse for the director to be around a lot of naked women and commit some violent acts against them. Now I am not taking the leap to say that Glodell is someone who would do these things, but it shows that the man is emotionally unbalanced with the way this film transforms in the second half. It is quite a striking image to see a man hit a woman when the man you're playing is a stand-in for yourself.

While the script for Bellflower is terrible, it leaves out Aiden for most of the script, making him the best friend character with undying loyalty. It does a terrible disservice to a whole pillar of narrative drama. While I wasn't expecting the acting to be out of this world, Bellflower struggles to make itself believable. Glodell is not a good actor. He has this odd cadence to everything. When he agrees to the most mundane topics, he says it with emphatic joy, like he just won the lottery. Maybe it's done on purpose to indicate that Woodrow is not good at regulating his feelings, but I think I would be gaslighting myself if I succumbed to that line of thinking. Wisemen does a good job with Milly's lack of character, but there are only so many ways that you can make the rigid dialogue feel "natural" because this problem is something the whole cast suffers from.

Bellflower was not a movie I can really say I enjoyed. I will say, that I do enjoy that Glodell took the time to modify his camera to give it a distinct look. It gives a very hazy summer day feeling which can feel appropriate at times with the stuff taking place on screen, but without this camera effect, there wouldn't be anything to distinguish this film. Most of it is a pain to get through, and when the film eventually goes wild, it's too late for it to make up for lost time. There was potential with Bellflower, but male rage got the best of this script and boiled down the dude-bro Reddit film to its absolute worst traits on display for 106 minutes.

Source