I Like Movies

Hoping to earn enough money to attend film school at NYU, 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence Kweller takes a part-time job at Sequels video store, where he forms a complicated friendship with his older store manager, Alana.

Personally, I feel like I’ve seen this particular indie movie a million times, and if we're being honest here, as Pee Wee once said "I don't have to see it, Dottie. I lived it." But what the hell... I'll give it another go.

Set at some point in the early aughts, deep in the suburban wilds of Canada, 17 year old Lawrence is an aspiring film maker, and… he’s a lot.

Lawrence and his best friend Matt are both obsessed with movies and Saturday Night Live, which they watch every Saturday in a ritual they call "Reject's Night.” They’re socially inept in the usual ways kids can be, but Lawrence is definitely the worse of the duo. He lacks tact. He often makes dubious fashion choices. He lies. He‘s rude. He feels things very intently, one might say, but mostly about movies, and he expresses those feelings loudly and without fear. He’s mean too, but not in a clever or biting way, he’s more of a little asshole, one who doesn’t listen so much as he impatiently waits for his turn to talk. This means that he often disregards the opinions of others, which offends a lot of people, and embarrasses Matt too.

In short, he’s a little shit.

But Lawrence is convinced that he is going to get out of his little snowbound Canadian suburb when he gets into film school at NYU. But when he is finally forced to admit that his single mother may not be able to afford his dream, he gets a part-time job at his local video store, Sequels. It turns out to be kind of dream job, as he gets free rentals. Surrounded by movies, he develops a strange, complex, somewhat antagonistic, somewhat mutually toxic, but still friendly big sister/little brother relationship with his older manager, Alana.

Alana, meanwhile, having moved back home after her own dreams of stardom crumbled, is beginning to feel stuck in a rut, both at her job and in her life, and Lawrence arriving in her life only makes it all seem that much worse.

During all of this, Lawrence and Matt have also begun to drift apart. Lawrence’s shifts at Sequels have gotten in the way of their hang-out time, even Reject’s Night. When Matt suggests that he might move to New York City after Lawrence gets into NYU, Lawrence callously informs him their friendship will most likely end once he moves to New York, because Lawrence won’t have room for him in his new life. He calls him a "placeholder" friend. Obviously, this hurts Matt's feelings.

Because of all this, Matt starts spending his time with others, and has developed a relationship with their classmate Lauren P., a young woman whose interest in film and filmmaking is threatening to Lawrence, as is her and Matt's closeness. This all comes to head when Matt invites Lauren P. to join him and Lawrence as they edit the Class Graduation Video. Lawrence rudely refuses, so Matt and Lauren P. take over the project, icing Lawrence out.

Lawrence is struggling, and that’s when he finds out he didn’t get into NYU.

All of these stresses at home and at school eventually lead to Lawrence to making a mistake at work. It's an event that finally forces both him and Alana to re-examine their lives, and to start making new choices…

I Like Movies is clearly based on writer/director Chandler Levack personal experiences, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that she once had a job in a video store. The film certainly knows its stuff. At one point, the camera crawls along the new release wall at the video store, allowing the audience plenty of time to browse the titles, which was always the best part of going to the video store. At another point, Lawrence’s mom forces him to choose just one movie from his pile of picks… Buffalo 66, Sophie’s Choice, Hard Eight, Spartacus, My Cousin Vinny, Blue Crush, and Mr. Deeds, all of which were video store staples of the time. He's all over the map with this stack, so Lawrence‘s choice becomes an excellant way to illustrate exactly what kind of movie head Lawrence is, in a clear signal to any other movie heads out there who might be watching.

He chooses Buffalo 66.

(Pause for all the film heads to nod in sudden understanding…)

Personally, I would’ve gone with My Cousin Vinny.

I will say that it’s a little weird that the video store gives Lawrence’s mom the choice of whether or not she wanted to pay off her late fee of $25 for Wild Things at that particular time. That’s a recipe for trouble, if you give the choice, customers will just defer that shit forever. That said, the mean notes on customers’ accounts is pretty accurate. I also liked the moment when Alana shows Lawrence how to rotate the soda cooler so that the newest bottles are at the back. That was a little blast from the minimum wage past. I will say that one thing that seemed odd is that it seemed like there’s maybe only four people working at this video store?

The shifts must be murder.

It’s interesting that writer/director Levack chose to tell this story through a male central character, especially when it clearly involves at least some of her own personal experiences. This may account for how realistic the film is when it comes to portraying who Lawrence really is. It’s unapologetic, and unflinching, but it’s also humanizing. It’s unafraid to be honest about him in way that a lot of other films might not be willing to be, especially when it comes to the fact that in the time since the 90s and the early aughts, when they were much more of a regular staple of indie movies, we’ve all come to realize that the budding film bro is often times not a very endearing character.

But it works because Isaiah Lehtinen is amazing as Lawrence. This is basically his show, and he is just as easily hilarious as he is pathetic and unlikeable. With a look, he is able to absolutely nail a joke, or twist the knife in an emotional moment. He’s good enough in his vulnerable moments that it’s easy to forgive him for otherwise being a shit. Because making connections with others, and not being a shit, isn’t easy for Lawrence, and that’s clearly only partially his own fault, and Lehtinen walks that balance really well. There’s a moment where Lawrence has a panic attack in the office at Sequels, and he is sobbing and gasping as he tries to change into his work shirt, and it’s just really a great performance. And he and Romino D’Ugo, who is also really good as Alana–someone whose personal disappointments have left her somewhere she never wanted to be, and now she isn't sure how she is supposed to start over–have a fantastic chemistry together. Their connection is very believable.

It’s all around really good work.

Even if the film stumbles a little at the end with all the neat little bows that it wraps things up with, there is a lot to like about I Like Movies. One of them is that this is very clearly a low budget project, and for once, the writer/director chose to actually work within the confines of that budget. There's no ketchup-splattered zombies. There's no bargain basement drama kid vampires. There's no pixelated blood sprays. There's no weightless CGI aliens. It's just good writing, relatable issues, and better performances.

I liked that.

This is honestly the exact kind of low budget film that low budget filmmakers should aim for. Show us that you can do a good job just making something small and believably human on the resources you have available, instead of doing a bad job failing to make something big and unbelievably inhuman on a budget that it is far beyond your reach. Play with the hand that you’re dealt, people.

So yeah, I’m interested in seeing what Chandler Levack does next.

Telling a story about the ugly reality of the caterpillar‘s struggle to hopefully become a butterfly, I Like Movies is honest about its human characters, but still hopeful, and ultimately allows that people really can change, if they want to.

Thumbs up.