January 2025 – The Indie Film Cafe Movie Reviews!

Jonathan Moody back again after a long hiatus from doing these. I just want to make sure everyone knows I never signed up to write these things. This part was all Paul to begin with but since Paul usually hasn’t seen the flicks that I do with other people he doesn’t generally want to put up the write ups for them and that’s fair. He did the last one for Brett Kelly’s film “The Feral Man” cause I honestly got so busy I just kept forgetting or putting it off. Well now I’ve come back to talk about the episode for this flick…. Amongst Friends. Where Paul, Myself, and special guest Tina Krause chatted about.

Here is the story (from Wikipedia)

“Amongst Friends” is a 1993 Crime drama written and directed by Rob Weiss. The film centers on three childhood friends from an affluent Long Island community- Andy, Trevor, and Billy- Who become entangled in the crime underworld out of boredom and a desire for excitement.

What can be said about Amongst Friends? I first discovered this flick when I was reading about indie films in a book called, “Mike Spike, Slackers, and Dykes”. It had interviews with Kevin Smith and Jon Pierson. There was a whole chapter devoted to “Amongst Friends” sadly it was not the friendliest chapter. They went in to things that I was a bit shocked was talked about. Buy the book if you can to find the whole sordid details. However director Rob Weiss made an indie gangster movie. He got Mira Sorvino in it too – and it was a hit at Sundance.

I know Rob Weiss mainly from the TV Series, “Entourage” but the fact that he got a bunch of people together to make something so low budget and indie and still looked really good made me wish he had stuck to doing that too. Made more indie flicks. He still could if he wanted to. It was neat to see Paul and Tina’s reaction as well because they were not familiar with Weiss or this movie. But the Moo Cow loves Mira Sorvino. And it was awesome to hear terms like “Five Towns” which is a series in the world of “Entourage”. Also the first movie Vince is in, “Queen’s Boulevard” I kind of feel is an homage to “Amongst Friends”.

The three actors who play the childhood friends: Steve Parlavecchio (Andy), Patrick McGaw (Trevor), and Joseph Granda (Billy) are all pretty damn good in the roles. Mira Sorvino (who plays Laura) is probably the most famous of all the actors in it. The characters in this make some really stupid mistakes. But hey what’s the fun of a plot if you can’t make the characters do stupid stuff that gets them in more trouble. I mean boredom can get you in a lot of trouble. Especially when it comes to dealing with the mob.

I honestly hope that one day a boutique blu ray label like Synapse or Kino or someone of that caliber will be able to get their hands on this movie and put it out. Kino did release Laws of Gravity another low budget flick that will be coming to Indie Film Cafe in the near future. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets a better treatment. It is available to watch streaming so that’s better than disappearing in to oblivion.

Speaking of disappearing it’s time to wrap this up. So we here at IFC have a Stinkometer score, a 1-10 stink score: 1 being very good, 10 being very stinky. And I had a feeling when I picked this flick that it was not going to be in the stinky category and I was correct. I gave it a 3. Tina gave it a 3. And Paul well he found a few flaws in it and I think expected it to be a bit better than it was. Though Mira herself should have been reason enough for him to go even lower (but I guess she coudn’t even save it) and he gave it a 5.5. Making it a total stink score of 11.5, and a Stinky Average of 3.8. That puts it up there by itself, the first 11.5 on the Ladder of Stink.

Well that about does it for me. I wanna say thanks to Paul for doing the last one. I will try and get the next one done soon too. We wanna be on to Season 7 fast enough. It’s times like this that I regret telling Paul we need to do more movies. At least next season we are back to 3 movies a month. But before then Paul will take it away and tell ya how to find these movies or merch on them. Take it away, MooCow….

Well, we has our trailer right HERE. They gotst one on Daily Motion too. It is on Amazon Prime if you wanna stream it, and you can pay to watch it via Youtube/MGM. If you want the DVD you can find it on Amazon or via the re-sale market at Ebay, but that seems to be about it. No blu ray release as of yet, and no merch or schwag. But if you dug the soundtrack, which was pretty good, you can listen to it on Spotify. The soundtrack CD is on Amazon too. You can read the 1993 Rolling Stone review HERE. Dennis Schwartz does a review as well. If a blu ray release ever comes out we will update the page to make sure everyone knows!
:=8)

Ya know cow in astrophysics we know about the presence of a black hole in space, not because we can actually see one, but because of the effects it has on udder stars and planets, how it sucks energy and matter and stuff away and towards the hole? That’s kind of this moovie: its a critter moovie that doesn’t actually show a critter, just the effects it has one everyone. In particular, one poor schlub named Danny, played by nun udder than writer/director/producer Brett Kelly (My Dead Girlfriend, Prey for the Beast, Pirates Quest for Snake Island, Jurassic Shark, et al), who ain’t having a nice day, and it gets even worse when…something sorta does something to him at his dad’s funeral. And Danny gets a lil…nutso. He’s becoming a werewolf! Well, only if your definition of ‘werewolf’ involves not actually changing into anything, and just wandering around a yapping a lot. That sort of ‘werewolf’. Naturally, Moody, along with special guest co-hosts Ana Xaden and Mark D. Valenti, had to check it out and yap about it on the newest edition of Indie Film Cafe!

Ummmm, yeah, we needed a lot moore of that!

Now we here at Indie Film Cafe loves us some Brett Kelly moovies, and Canuxploitation in general, but this moovie…there just ain’t much to it. It was only Kelly’s like second moovie, so we can cut him some slack, and the idea might could have been pulled off as a short film – the moovie is kind of short to begin with, and just feels mercilessly padded out – but as a full length…not so much. The acting isn’t so bad, nor even the direction is a real problem, and yes it is a microbudget production, even by Canadian standards (it prolly cost moore to fill up at Timmy Ho’s that day), its just the screenplay doesn’t do nearly enough to keep the audience’s attention. Just need a whole lotta moore!

Oooooh yeah, bath full of blood, never a good sign!

The moovie definitely has a sort of camcorder feel to it, and the FX are fairly cheesy, and one cannot help but thank Kelly that he didn’t try to show a critter ’cause that would have made things even worse – decent critter suits are expensive! The acting is earnest enough and and there is definitely some nice eye candy to look at, one just can’t help but want a hole lot moore claw-claw and blood splatter. Is ok, Director Kelly will be on to bigger and better things down the road; for a young filmmaker’s early attempts you cud do a lot worse than this. Some good, some bad, some meh, not too much of anything.

Well the votes are in, and the Indie Film kids gave the Feral Man a total Stink Score of 15 – that’s 4 from Jonathan Moody, a 6 from Ana Xaden, and a 5 from Mark D. Valenti – that’s a Stinky Average of 5.0, which seems to the MooCow to be cow spot on. That score puts it right in the middle of the Ladder of Stink, along with It Waits, Don’s Plum, and a bunch of udders.

You can find the trailer for this flick right HERE. You can find it on Youtube, but only the 49 minute version. The full version is streaming on Prime, and you can pick up the DVD pretty cheaply from Amazon as well as SRS Cinema – the DVD comes with loads of extras, so for you Brett Kelly fans having the physical media is a must-have! It is also streaming on Google Play. It is also out in the re-sale market, especially Ebay. This flick also appears on a double feature special cowllection called Night Creatures which is notoriously difficult to find, but every now and then pops up on Amazon. That one is on Ebay as well. Sorry, there does not seem to be any schwag out there for this moovie, not even a poster, and it is out of print in moost places apart from SRS so go gets yer hooves on a copy from them and check it out!

Month: January 2025

Episode 166: Amongst Friends (1993)

Episode 165: The Feral Man (2002)