Little Athens

2005 "A whirlwind day in the hapless lives of small town youth."
5.4| 1h43m| en
Details

A day in Athens, Arizona, as teens and twenty-somethings navigate life without a compass. Jimmy has gambling debts and sees a chance to steal and sell a dead-man's stash of drugs. The corpse's cousin smells a rat. Jessica, who is babysitting, abandons her charge to seek someone to defend her from a boyfriend angry that he's caught an STD. Corey is responsible for his teen sister, and he and his pal Pedro have been evicted, so they plot to steal a car, sell it, and get back in their apartment. Heather, an EMT, thinks her cop boyfriend is cheating, and she confides in her best friend. There's a party that night where all comes to a head.

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Reviews

Interesteg What makes it different from others?
AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,
Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.
PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
boib8inla I watched this film because someone whose opinions I respect told me it was terrible and I needed to see for myself. He was wrong. But not entirely.The acting, camera work, script, locations, sound track etc reflect decent production values and an honest intention on the part of the filmmakers, but on the other hand, the main characters are all pathetic losers (which is not the same as saying the acting is bad, which it isn't).There are some brilliant moments like when Jimmy discovers the dead guy on the sofa (and what he does next), and when we discover just who Steve is cheating with, and when Aaron chases his girlfriend out of the house as she escapes with her friend Carlos. But overall it looks like it's going nowhere...it seems pointless...like the lives of those it portrays.At first I was constantly trying to work out how the 4 threads were supposed to interconnect, but they really don't, not even at the end. It's just a day in the lives of 4 sets of people who happen to know each other and whose lives occasionally cross paths either on purpose or by chance as they go about what they have to do. When I realised that and simply watched it for what it was it got more interesting.Some reviewers have panned it for a 'contrived' final scene. I disagree. We have little clues all through that these characters have all known one another, at least in passing, for years and it should be no surprise that they go to the same parties together.This is not the kind of movie I would normally seek out but I'm glad I did.
Michael Burns This just sucked. The "day in the life" approach only works when there is something to care about. At no point are we interested in the characters, the location, or the void where a plot or storyline would be. I would just leave this here if there wasn't a 10 line requirement for comments. It doesn't deserve any more discussion. Do something better with your time than watch this movie. Read a book. Learn a new language. Build a bird feeder. Take a nap. Clean your fridge. Masturbate. Go for a walk. Browse Wikipedia. Cook a new meal. Cook an old meal. See how many Crayola colors you can name. Balance your checkbook. Mow the lawn. Floss. Pretend you're Batman. Clean out your closet. Go to bed early.
larry-411 This excellently-crafted film follows the lives of a group of post-high school graduates (or dropouts), late teens and early twenty-somethings for whom college is not an option. There are 4 stories which proceed independently of each other, occasionally passing off the baton from one to the next, but eventually all coming together.Little Athens is a slice of life in a relatively lifeless environment -- a small town called Athens, but it could be any small town just about anywhere. Certainly, anyone who grew up in such a place knows it well. There isn't a whole lot to do. So you do what you can to get by. These characters' lives are about who you're dating, used to date, or would like to date, who you're cheating on and who's cheating on you, who's doing drugs and who's selling them, getting jobs and getting fired, getting into trouble and staying out of trouble, and trying to figure out who you are in a town where nobody amounts to much unless you leave. Stay and you're stuck, so you may as well make the best of it. In a town with no rock concerts, no sports arena, no dance clubs, no mall, and no multiplex, there's no drama. And when the drama doesn't exist without, you create it from within. Nature abhors a vacuum, so these young people fill the void by creating their own conflicts, because it's so much easier to be discontent than not.If it sounds sad, well, where there's pity there's sympathy. And where there's sympathy there's comfort. We know these people. And that cuts to the heart of what makes this film what it is -- this brilliant young cast does what good actors are supposed to do -- they make these characters real. You never get the feeling that this is scripted, or has been rehearsed -- and the camera similarly stays out of the way.Most of the film is shot in widescreen 35MM, as if to emphasize how small these characters are set against the bleak landscape of this town. We are watching them from a distance, just observers, taking it all in and allowing us to slowly invest ourselves in these people. The last portion of the film uses hand-held 16MM, as the four separate story lines come together towards the climax of the film. Now we are there, with them, because now that we know them we are allowed into their world.The aspects of the film which stand out the most in my mind are the performances and the music. The acting is just spot on. It's always hard to single anyone out in an ensemble cast, but John Patrick Amedori's Jimmy is arguably the most sympathetic character in a film where you tend to feel sorry for everyone. He's perfectly cast -- the story had to have one sometimes sad but hopeful puppy-dog, and he's it.The other highlight for me was the music, but that's always my weakness. After the acting and the soundtrack comes Tom Zuber's intricate story, told with the luxury of one able to write it, produce it, direct it, and edit it. He should be extremely proud of this work.
JonBowerbank The only thing that saves it are the performances by the many familiar faces that star in it, which were mediocre at best. Would have been nice if there was more of an actual story or point to the thing. Every 10 minutes or so I was saying to myself "Is this going anywhere?"I liked the songs they used (respectively), but I felt most of them to be very intrusive and distracting from the story. Especially that riff with the strings that would play at the beginning or end of almost every scene. And there were some scenes where complete silence would have served so much more to what's going on, for instance when that pizza delivery kid was stealing the rest of those drugs while we watched the dead guy. The music killed that scene.Also, I think the writers/directors have some kind of hostility towards women which is displayed time and time again in this film. The way the women are portrayed is as if they're stupid and clueless as to what's going on. The anal sex scene, the brother pushing his sister to the floor and the girl getting punched towards the end just seemed like a way for these guys to express their own short comings with women, and I viewed it as borderline degrading.And that one actor Jorge Garcia, his random Spanish words mixed with his English dialogue didn't seem to make sense, and I speak Spanish fluently. No one throws in fully conjugated and otherwise unknown Spanish verbs while talking to monolingual white guys.I thought the look was alright. The lighting of the party at night kinda made it hard to look at, but it emulated the real life lighting of a party like that I suppose.So yeah, 5 out of 10 for me. It probably could have been better if they'd gone through a couple more drafts of the script.

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