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.

Yeah, strange title, I know. But honestly, I wasn’t really sure how else to put it. It does. It really does. I guess what spurred this post right at this time is a couple of deaths I encountered recently. One was the death of my mom’s best friend. She passed away last week. (I don’t know why I always tend to try to use “passed away” instead of “died”. It’s not like it’s any different either way. I guess it just sounds less harsh to me. Death’s a harsh reality, so maybe it makes it a bit softer? Not really. Anyway.) Apparently, she hadn’t been too healthy lately. Getting old kind of sucks sometimes too. But I remember spending a lot of time with her and her husband when I was a kid. They were my parents’ best friends, and they hung out with us quite a bit. They had known my parents’ since high school and were practically an aunt and uncle to me. My parents’ didn’t do the whole “godparents” thing, but if they did, I have no question that this couple would have been my godparents for sure. The guy passed away (there, I did it again) in 2004, and that had been difficult. He was a really cool guy. They never had any kids, but they were great with them. He was always a fun person to talk to. He was pretty into cars, and had this really neat slot car racetrack set up in his basement that I remember playing with as a kid. They were just a really neat couple. Everyone loved them. I know he has been really missed for a while now, and his wife will be now too. Especially by my mom.

The second thing that has this on my mind is the death of a good friend of mine’s dad yesterday. It sounds like it was pretty sudden and he had some health issues that didn’t really come up until pretty recently. I really felt for her when I saw her post about his death on Facebook. Losing a parent… well, there’s not really anything you can compare it to. And there’s no way to know what it feels like until it happens to you. There’s not really any way to prepare yourself for it. And there’s not any way to “get over” it. It basically just creates this hole in your life that will be there from then on. You don’t get rid of the hole, you just get used to it being there. It never gets any smaller. You just learn how to live with it. It will always hurt, you just figure out out to live with it hurting. Life goes on despite the pain.

I’m not really sure of the point of this post, other than just to articulate what I have been feeling. Losing loved ones changes you, especially losing a parent. There’s just no way to prepare yourself for the death of one of the people that brought you into this world and raised you. I know my friend will be ok, but I also know she’s forever changed now. I guess for me this scene from Grey’s Anatomy just sums it up. I know I’ve posted it before, but here it is again. Welcome to the dead dads club. I seem to have several friends that have been inducted into it now as well, and it pretty much sucks. But the rest of us members will do our best to help you through.