Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Clarissa Mora
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
jake-flys-helos
This movie was really entertaining and had a lot going for it in the story, but I felt like the last 20 minutes of the film just got cut out. Climax, then straight to end credits, with no resolution. The characters and their plights were all appealing and drawing, but the lack of resolution really left me disappointed.
secondtake
The Little Death (2014)A quirky, funny indy film about young people trying to stay in love through sex. It involves a series of different couples who each try to keep their love lives alive in different ways—and with most of them backfiring. While never quire hilarious, it is consistently witty and surprising. Yes, a dark comedy of sorts, but very bright and light, too.The lynchpin is worth seeing the movie alone. That is, a deaf man calls a sex line through an online interpreter, who can read his hand signals and repeat them to the sex call provider. The layering, the surprising wit and double entendres, the wonderful acting both restrained and comic, it's all nothing short of brilliant. Textbook brilliant. See it, at the end.There is eventually an interweaving of stories that might seem forced, but really this is about the individual story lines that rotate back and forth, in parallel. In all a beautifully rendered look at young lives in Australia, ordinary people shown to be more than just average. Like all of us.
Dex Sinister
Shot as a series of vignettes, the film is quite uneven. It is very loosely tied together by a man canvassing the neighborhood to inform people that he's a registered sex offender, using a unique and amusing device to distract them from his message -- by gifting nostalgic cookies that evoke happy childhood memories, that are long- discontinued because they were racist (an American equivalent would be "little black Sambo" cookies, if such had existed). This is the first film for the writer / director, and it seems quite obvious that he took a psychology class on Deviant Sexual Behavior, utterly didn't understand the material, formed the conclusion that anyone with out-of-norm sexual interests is doomed, and decided to write a comedy about the subject. Four-fifths of it doesn't work, (unless you like your comedy about people whose lives and relationships are falling apart due to lack of communication) and the end appears to have been desperately cobbled together because he ran out of inspiration.Apparently, there's no Internet in modern Australia, so no one can use it to find out anything about exploring non-standard sexuality, nor is there any open and honest communication between long-standing couples, such that they could discuss their desires in a productive way. Therefore, the "comedic" elements of the film consist of increasingly desperate spouses discovering an interest that excites them, then spiraling out of control and destroying their relationships while trying to either trick their significant other into satisfying their interest, or complying with that interest so outlandishly that it meets with disaster. Or both. The saving grace of the film (and the only reason I didn't rate it a "3", is the beautiful and luminous 5th vignette about the public service sign-language-interpretation-for-the-deaf operator who inadvertently gets stuck interpreting a call to a phone sex line by a deaf person. Because the writer didn't understand the paraphilia of making obscene phone calls, he wasn't able to make "light" of it, and instead the skit becomes about two people making an hauntingly- intense, if brief, connection while coping with an awkward situation. If the entire movie had been like this one skit, it would effortlessly have been a "10".
Claudia Puig
The Australian sex comedy "The Little Death" coyly takes its title from the French idiom for orgasm. It toys with the idea of being racy and dabbles in dark humor. Similarly, it flits around several couples struggling with intimacy issues and it meanders between various types of tone. Basically, it won't commit. There is simultaneously too much and not enough going on in writer/director/co-star Josh Lawson's feature debut. He crams in too many people and plot lines but offers too little in the way of character development and credible emotion. And he weaves a supposedly hilarious sexual assault thread throughout the proceedings, which may leave you feeling icky. As we're introduced to each of the Sydney couples and their sexual fetishes, we begin with Lawson himself and Bojana Novakovic as Paul and Maeve. While awkwardly messing around in the bedroom one night, Maeve informs Paul that she would like him to rape her, a misunderstanding that's played for uncomfortable laughs. It's her fantasy, she explains—but she doesn't want to know for sure that it's Paul if and when it actually happens. The misguided notion of rape as a source of sexual pleasure, rather than an act of aggression, consistently taints this story line. Dan (Damon Herriman) and Evie (Kate Mulvany) also are trying new ways to reignite that spark. They're just not communicating their needs to each other these days. Their couples therapist suggests a little role playing, which Evie initially has trouble doing with a straight face. But Dan takes this assignment seriously to the extent that he starts thinking he's a real actor, with increasingly elaborate costumes, props and back stories for his naughty characters. His self-seriousness provides a few laughs here. Meanwhile, Richard (Patrick Brammall) and Rowena (Kate Box) are in an even more tenuous position. They've been trying methodically to have a baby for the past three years, rendering sex a matter of scheduling rather than spontaneity. ("How's your cervical mucus?" he asks politely one morning.) But when Richard's father dies suddenly—and Rowena discovers the sight of him sobbing surprisingly turns her on—she starts finding ways to make him break down and cry to prompt passionate romps. It's an amusingly twisted concept, but it also results in the darkest of the film's endings. The marriage of middle-aged Phil (Alan Dukes) and Maureen (Lisa McCune) is in the worst condition of all. He's a milquetoast corporate drone; she's a belittling shrew. She consistently rejects his efforts to get frisky. But when Phil realizes that he's attracted to Maureen when she's asleep—and quiet, and pliable—he begins drugging her tea at night, then having his way with her. This mostly consists of dressing her up and cuddling, but the idea that she's being physically manipulated when she's practically unconscious is also a little queasy- making. Lawson bops around between all these couples as their individual fetishes escalate, resulting in a few amusing moments and a lot of jarring tonal shifts. "The Little Death" veers from wacky physical comedy to forced poignancy to tragedy to romance, none of which is ever terribly convincing. Much of the problem lies in the fact that we don't really know anything about these people outside of these small boxes in which we view them. They're defined almost exclusively by their relationship problems. When Rowena shows up at Maeve's house late into the film, and Maeve mentions that they're longtime friends, it's like: "Huh? Where did that come from?" But Lawson also ostensibly aims to tie these stories together with the appearance of a 60ish new neighbor named Steve (Kim Gyngell). He knocks on each of their doors with a friendly smile, homemade cookies and the admission that he's a registered sex offender, but they're all too distracted or busy for this piece of information to register. It's an element that never quite works and has an odd payoff. The last couple we meet, though, is the most intriguing of all. Monica (Erin James) is an operator for an online video chat service that makes phone calls for the hearing impaired. Sam (T.J. Power) is a deaf man who rings her up in the middle of the night with an unusual request: He'd like her to help him connect with a phone sex operator. The result is hilarious and awkward and sweet, and it allows Monica and Sam to bond quickly and powerfully. This may sound like a contrived meet-cute, but it ends up being the most accessible and charming story of all. Here, Lawson comes up with a clever concept and executes it effectively. Despite the raunchy, graphic places this segment goes, it wraps up in unexpectedly romantic fashion, and it finally finds the tricky mix of tones that had eluded Lawson all along.
