Dreamland

I am surprised in this day and age that Dreamland has been picked up by a distribution service like Hulu. I found this film to be a nearly unwatchable low-end indie production with very little for casual viewers to enjoy. If anything - its value is for students as a case-study in problems shooting under-financed - covering both the technical AND creative side of film-making.

I won't focus on the problems that others have nailed, but the major lesson for students is that no matter what your budget (or credit card limits) - you need a strong script, a cast that gels and all of the support details needed to make them look good or at least interesting (they are supposed to be "stars" right?).

As far as looking for that "break-out" indie film, unless I am at a festival, I always use IMDb and scan reviews before buying a ticket. If there are a small number reviews and they are mostly 10's - those are likely family and friends so beware (it is very hard to get a general audience to shill for a bad film). More honest reviews will usually have lower ratings with solid reasons for those numbers.

As far as Mr. Lay and his team - it is a minor miracle when ANY film actually gets made and distributed so a major tip of the hat. Hope his next film is over the top!

Meghan (Jackie Kreisler) and Dylan (Shane Elliott) are crossing the Nevada desert in an old car to visit her foster parents, and Meghan sees a little girl alone in the desert. They stop at the "Little A'Le'Inn" diner, a weird place decorated with alien motive, to eat a hamburger with milkshake and they have a conversation with the bartender Blake, who tells stories about UFOs. They leave the diner and they have to stop in the middle of nowhere due a car problem. Dylan faints and Meghan sees the little girl and ghost that tell her that they know who she is. Is Meghan losing her mind or are the weird events for real?

"Dreamland" is a promising and intriguing low-budget movie with a messy conclusion and fake reviews. I read a couple of explanations in IMDb that help to understand some points but the result is very confused. In my point of view, any movie that you need to watch several times to try to understand is not a good film unless when it is a cult-movie that is not the case of "Dreamland". My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Área 51 - Zona Mortal" ("Area 51 – Mortal Zone")

It was intriguing. It would have been better with a Pink Floyd score. It wasn't so much a movie as a Twilight Zone without Rod Serling to make it seeem important. I think I would have understood it better if I'd watched it again, but I somehow feel that understanding it is missing the point. This movie is dada revivalism. Also, why would I want to sit through it a second time? It was hard enough to sit through it once.

I'm giving this movie three stars, because I've seen movies that are much, muich worse, and more than two because the bartender was quirky, but really, some movies invite speculation and others invite somnabulism.

I never comment on a film, but I have to say that this was one of the worst films that I have ever seen. I feel it was made by a beginner film student and not to put down talented film students, but this was horrible! I did not buy the lead actress and felt I was in acting class with her while she was on film. Her decisions were very safe and I feel she was mimicking other actresses in films and not acting and making her own decisions. The direction was very confusing and the sound was louder than the actors themselves. The end may have made a little more sense if there was someone narrating the events and not a song. I love Patsy Cline but she her songs appear quite frequently in films. Maybe the song selection could have been a little more original. The song "crazy" was such a cliché. As I said before I never comment on films and have seen my share of good and bad, but this was the worst. Sorry.

This film has absolutely no redeeming features. It's not even worthy of being in the 'so bad it's good' category - it's simply bad. Badly acted, badly shot, badly written, badly directed, terrible sound recording and the whole thing is just incredibly amateur. Quite how this got a release is beyond me.

Oh, and could someone PLEASE tell the lead actress that if you're playing 'mad' that does not mean that you should constantly fiddle with your hair - in a film that was generally irritating, this was probably one of the most irritating things of all.

On the plus side, I think this is the only film ever to feature a Nazi carjacker ...