Amy Seimetz's SUN DON'T SHINE proves a well-acted but tiresome road trip nowhere

Think of it as Double Indemnity for cretins. And without even any insurance policy! Amy Seimetz, recently so good as Upstream Color's leading lady, has here written and directed her first full-length narrative, the well-titled SUN DON'T SHINE. She has cast her movie with two good performers --multi-hyphen-ate actor/writer/
director/producer/editor Kentucker Audley and the alternately winsome and whiny Kate Lyn Sheil -- and filled it, plot-wise, with lies, deceit, betrayal and corpses. That ought to do it, right?

Wrong. What's missing from this mix is anything approaching believable characters. Despite the very game endeavors of Audley (below, right) and Sheil (below, left, and further below), who deliver moment-by-moment "truth," so ill-conceived are these two lame-brained clunks that the film comes as close to unintentional comedy as it does to anything else. This is too bad because, with a bit more effort in terms of plot and character in both concept and screenplay from Ms Seimetz, shown at right, the movie might have gone somewhere more believable and delivered something more genuinely appalling.

Instead we get a couple of lovers on the lam who are constantly at each other's throat, with momentary departures into oh-how-much-I-love-you territory that rings decidedly phony after a very short time. (If this is a couple who would kill for each other, it might be nice to see even a spark of the passion that ignites them.) Not only is our twosome tiresome, they also appear to be about as dumb as they come. The more we learn of them and their "plans," the more ridiculous their ideas and actions seem. It is not only difficult to render what we see happening as credible, the very idea that these two could have made it all the way to young adulthood without first self-destructing is pushing things.

I understand that, in movies such as this one, budget constraints are usually foremost. But Ms Seimetz errs in providing us two corpses without showing us either murder. Granted one takes place before the film begins, but the seeing the second one might have given us a bit more entrance into the character of the murderer. It's easier, though, to glide right past this, as happens here. And -- oh, yes -- we also get the kind of perfectly-timed coincidence in which one character manages to show up and look through the window at precisely the right moment to see... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are some good things here, aside from the acting: Ms Seimetz's ability to begin in media res and grab us rather firmly; hints of a society (in the U.S. south) so enfeebled that the line, "It's not my fault!" (but of course, it is) echoes down the movie as a societal indictment; and a totally new (to me, at least) use of bleach as a deodorant for the dead.

Sun Don't Shine, from Factory 25 and running but 80 minutes, opens today, Friday, April 26, in Manhattan (at the Cinema Village) and Seattle (at the Grand Illusion Cinema). You can access any other currently scheduled playdates by clicking here and then scrolling down. Factory 25 will also be releasing the film digitally on April 26th via cable VOD, iTunes, Amazon VUDU, X-Box, Sony Play-station and other digital outlets, with a DVD arriving late summer.

Special Note: personal appearances and 

a Q&A will be made by the film's director and her 

 two stars at the Cinema Village this Friday and Saturday 

(at the 6 and 7:45pm showings) and Sunday at 6pm only.

On DVD-Blu-ray: Rian Johnson's LOOPER--enormous intelligence & empty characters

You've got to hand it to writer/director Rian Johnson, shown below, who's given us Brick, The Brothers Bloom and now LOOPER -- out this week on Blu-ray and DVD. Few film-makers have been this "creative" and original with plot points and genre expan-sion, while placing all this in the hands of characters who are nothing more than constructs to carry off those terrific story surprises. Consequently, as inventive as are his tales, you may begin, as did we by the halfway point, to long for a mo-ment or two of genuine quirky humanity from the people on view.

Don't hold your breath. These are among the most robotic of suppo-sed human beings (and no, robots are not among the plot points here), despite being limned by a crew of very good actors, on whom you can usually count to provide some nice touches along the way. Instead, their every action and response seem at the mercy of a wickedly convo-luted tale of time travel amongst hit men that cherry picks its delectables by way of everything from The Terminator to Logan's Run (but with double the lifespan). This is almost the reverse of Safety Not Guaranteed, which was all quirky, wonderful characters but included little sci-fi or time-travel info.

Consequently, actors like Joseph Gordon-Levitt (above right), Emily Blunt (below) and Bruce Willis (above, left) seem somehow caged. Blunt tries hardest as the put-upon mother, while the two guys remain cool as cucumbers throughout. Everyone rises to his or her cliché. Events may surprise us; characters always remain hostage to them.

Interestingly enough, it's Jeff Daniels (shown below, left, with Noah Segan) as the big boy in charge who registers most strongly. He's honest and scary and seems, overall, to be somebody real.

There are some good, if gross, special effects here and there, and even an unusual explosion involving a human being. The finale is fun, and as creative as all the rest of Johnson's oeuvre. It would even have been moving, had I, by that point, cared a fig about any of the people I was watching.

 If you missed it in theaters, where it had good success worldwide, Looper arrived yesterday, December 31, on DVD and Blu-ray -- for sale or/or rental.