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VOD Pick of the Week

Hide Your Smiling Faces
Two brothers confront the idea of mortality over one hazy summer in Daniel Patrick Carbone’s meditative debut feature Hide Your Smiling Faces. Though time and place are intentionally left unspecified, the film was shot in New Jersey and the presence of a portable CD player and a Rubik’s Cube seem to set the film in the 1980s.

Eric and Tommy are brothers. Eric is the older brother in full adolescence under the grip of testosterone. He seems to be comfortable with the overtly masculine attributes of his pending transition into manhood but has issues dealing with the sensitivity and maturity. Tommy, a pre-teen, is the opposite. He is sensitive and more fearful and less aggressive than his older brother.

Things change when one of Tommy’s friends is found dead at the bottom of an old railroad bridge. The exact circumstances of his death are never made clear. Did he jump on purpose or fall by accident? Was his possibly abusive father involved? Although the details are left vague, it’s clear that this is the first glimpse of mortality experienced by the boys.

Eric seems to have particular difficulty coming to terms. When one of his friends admits that he has thought about suicide, Eric tries to just brush it off but as the thought lingers he ultimately reacts with hostility at being forced to even consider mortality. He does also take on more of a nurturing role of his younger brother in his own way. Prior to the tragedy Tommy was dismissed as just his annoying little brother to be excluded, but afterward, Eric takes him under his wing trying to toughen him up into his image of manhood with a mixture of bullying and compassion.

Hide Your Smiling Faces has the atmosphere of something like David Gordon Green’s George Washington or the scenes between the brothers in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. There is almost a complete absence of adult or female characters. Instead Eric, Tommy, and their group of friends feel alone in nature trying to find their way through the new questions and experiences that are brought their way like a minimalist Lord of the Flies.

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New releases for March 28th

Breathe In: When a pretty foreign exchange student moves in within a family in upstate New York, she puts a strain on the already fragile complicated dynamic. Sophie (Felicity Jones) is a British exchange student who was looking forward to time in the big city only to find out that she is not all that close to New York City. She moves in with the Reynolds family and finds that the father Keith (Guy Pearce) has little in common with his wife and daughter. Sophie and Keith bond over their shared musical talents, and their relationship takes on a more romantic tone despite their 30 year age difference and his marriage.

Mistaken for Strangers: The National has long been a critically acclaimed indie rock band who recently has begun to find more commercial success. When the group embarked on their 2010 world tour, lead singer Matt Berninger gave his younger brother Tom a job as a roadie. Tom is nine years younger and is an aspiring filmmaker who still lives at home with their parents. He naturally appoints himself the tour’s unofficial documentarian and films his experiences behind the scenes on the tour to the point that his filming begins to interfere with his actual assigned duties. Mistaken for Strangers is less of a tour documentary and turns out to be more of an examination of sibling rivalry.

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The Raid 2: The Raid was an action movie sensation when it was released with an approach of sticking to nonstop action with less concern about plot and character. The sequel goes for a more ambitious storytelling approach. When Rama, a surviving cop from the first movie, discovers that the original raid was part of a bigger conspiracy, he is forced to go undercover in a crime syndicate. Though this is more of a gangster movie with more complicated plotting, there is still sure to be plenty of action for fans of the original.