Finally, time to review one more from the Phoenix Film Festival!  Last year, I reviewed quite a few films from the festival, but I think this year I’ll just pick the best one from each day.  Except Saturday, there were two I really liked, so I might just review both of them.  The first of those two is a movie called Listening.  Listening was the first film I saw on Saturday, and probably my favorite.  It’s also probably my favorite out of all the films I saw at the entire festival, honestly.  I just really liked it.

Listening is about these two college students, Ryan and David, who have been working on a project to try to listen to and decode human thought.  They meet another student, Jordan, who joins the project and has some ideas that put a whole new twist on it – humans listening directly to each other’s thoughts instead of using a computer to decode them.  Listening is the story of what happens when their project starts to take off.

Listening really has it all.  It’s a very intelligent movie, but not so intelligent that the average movie-goer can’t follow it.  The premise may sound like sci-fi, and it basically is, but the film also has touches of comedy, romance, and drama as well.  It really was just a very interesting and entertaining feature.  It covers quite a bit of territory, but never strays from the main premise of the power of telepathy.

I’m never too disappointed in most of the films I see at the Phoenix Film Festival, and in general, they are all a step above most of the ones I find in mainstream movie theaters.  Listening was definitely one of those films.  With deep and interesting characters that you end up caring about, it takes you into their personal lives alongside the project they are working on.

Listening is also not a predictable film, at least it wasn’t to me.  One complaint I had about a couple of the films I saw this weekend was that they followed patterns that had just been done before and weren’t original enough.  Listening definitely broke the mold.  The premise may have been thought of before, but I’ve not seen it done like this, and it was a very enjoyable adventure to witness, one I would highly recommend if you get the chance to see it.

I have been so busy watching movies at the Phoenix Film Festival that I haven’t had time to review any of the ones that I’ve watched yet!  Time to change that.  The second movie I watched at the festival on Friday was a film called WildLike, starring Bruce Greenwood and Ella Purnell.  It was one of several drama movies that I’ve now seen over the last two days.  In my own experience, films at the Phoenix Film Festival tend to be of a higher quality than most movies I see in the theater these days.  As a friend of mine put it when I was trying to explain it, it just seems like the people making these movies are more passionate about their craft.  I added that they are not in it just to make money, which seems true.  They are more about telling a story and hoping their audience appreciates it as much as they do as opposed to just making a film that looks appealing enough to get people to buy a ticket so they make some money, which is what a lot of films out of Hollywood seem to be trying to do these days.

WildLike definitely tells a good story.  It’s the story of Mackenzie, a teenage girl who’s been dealt a hard lot in life up until this point.  Her dad has just passed away and her mom is heading to a drug rehab center, so Mackenzie goes to live with her uncle in Alaska.  The relationship with her uncle soon turns sour and Mackenzie heads out on her own with little cash to try to make it back to Seattle where her mother is.  She soon realizes it won’t be easy and discovers Bart, a lone hiker with scars of his own. The movie is about their story as they try to make it across the Alaskan wilderness.

The main characters in WildLike, Mackenzie and Bart, are the kind of people that you meet in this world that have become hardened enough by life that they almost try to make it hard for you to like them.  One common theme in several movies I’ve seen at the festival so far, WildLike included, is a lack of trust.  As humans, a lot of us have learned (or thought we learned) that people in general can’t be trusted.  Everyone’s been through a lot, and it’s pretty much all been caused by other people.  Why should we let any of them in?  We don’t know who might be the next one to hurt us.

The thing we have to learn, though, and the thing that Bart and Mackenzie come to learn in WildLike, is that we must trust someone.  Despite what we’ve been through, despite what people might have done to us in the past, we need other people.  No man is an island, and in Mackenzie’s case, she couldn’t make it on her own.  People do dumb things, and there will always be the possibility of getting hurt, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still need each other.

WildLike tells the story of two hurt souls venturing across an amazing backdrop of beautiful scenery who learn what it’s like to trust again and what can come of that.  It’s a story we could all stand to hear, and the filmmakers did it beautifully in WildLike.  We find two characters in Bart and Mackenzie that we can sympathize with, and the telling of their story made for a very scenic and moving film.

It’s that time again!  This will be the third year in a row that I have attended the Phoenix Film Festival.  I heard about it in 2013, the first year I was here during it, and decided it sounded fun, so I volunteered in order to get a free ticket.  While volunteering was fun, it took up a lot of time and made it hard to work full-time, volunteer a total of 24 hours over the course of the event, and see all of the movies I wanted to see.  So last year I decided to try to get in as press and cover the event (and the movies) for my blog.  And I succeeded… I blogged and I tweeted and I watched and reviewed films. I also met some really cool people including another movie reviewer (Hi Caleb!) and a filmmaker and cast of one of the films.  <insert shout out to The Shower here>

This year I will be attending the Phoenix Film Festival as press once again.  I didn’t find out for sure if I would be until today, so way back last year when they had festival passes on sale for the least amount of money and I knew I wanted to go, be it as press or just a Phoenix Film Festival attendee… I bought one.  So now I have my press pass as well as a festival pass, and I’m ready to share the love and have some company and someone to discuss movies with during the fest.  It should be fun!

For those of you who have never been and love movies, I highly recommend it, even if you might normally just be an occasional movie goer.  You will find some great movies at this festival that you might have never heard about otherwise.  On top of that, a lot of the filmmakers and cast are actually there during the festival and you can meet them and ask them questions (and even drink with them!).  It’s easy to just get caught up in the “big” movies with big stars that hit theaters and miss the independent films out there.  Believe it or not, while filmmaker might sound like a glamorous title, there are those out there still trying to make it big and hoping their flick becomes a success.  I’ve gotten more insight into just what goes into making a film since I started attending the Phoenix Film Festival.

If you like movies at all, I encourage you to check out the website for the Phoenix Film Festival and stop by, even just to see one film.  I’m guessing you won’t regret it.  The festival runs March 26 through April 2, and more information about tickets can be found on their website.