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Pretty Good

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

"Roman" takes the form of a thriller, but functions more as a surprisingly low key character study. An isolated, sad, socially awkward young man works at a factory where he has no friends, and lives alone in a depressing apartment. His only joy is watching a beautiful young neighbor he fantasizes about. In a stroke of luck he ends up on a date with her, but things go horribly, tragically wrong. Before long he has struck up a relationship with a new, free-spirited but death obsessed young artist who has moved into the building, but he remains unable to fully invest himself in the relationship, largely for fear of things going wrong again. The film was shot on low quality video, and looks very rough, but there are times when that adds to the intimate 'reality' feel. At other times it just looks a little cheap. There's a surprising amount of humor, and Lucky McKee, who wrote the script as well as playing the lead does a good job a creating a very strange protagonist you still find yourself feeling for. Certainly this has it's fair share of flaws, and moments that don't quite come off, but it has originality and bravery on it's side, and in it's best moments it achieves a sort of David Lynch vibe. For a first feature Angela Bettis acquits herself nicely.

Well, there's this disturbed guy named Roman who works in a metal shop. He doesn't mix well with others and this isolates him from people especially his co-workers.( The scenes with them are a little sad but also pretty funny.) There are two women in Roman's life. For one of them, well her encounter with Roman doesn't work out too well. The other may or may not be a figment of Roman's imagination. Roman eats a lot of pork and beans.This isn't a straight horror movie but more of an emo-horror-rom-com. It's some kind of experimental meditation on life, death, art, insanity, loneliness and beans. You might love it; you might decide you've had more than enough after a few minutes. I dunno but it is odd and sometimes interesting. The strangest & most interesting aspect of this movie is that it features Mr. Cub himself, Ernie Banks, in his first appearance in an emo-horror-rom-com. I'd love to know the story behind that. Kristin Bell might surprise you. If you like movies that are deliberately paced, twisted, off-beat and macabre, then give it a try.

I watched and watched and kept thinking 'i'll give it ten more minutes'. The film is obviously low budget, (maybe more financial interest may have hurried it along a bit). The lead actor is great, he plays the role great, definitely the type of guy you'd avoid. However,he sits in his apartment, and he sits, and he sits, and he sits, and he goes to work, and then home, and then work and then home....get the point. There are people out there like that, and the story line is menacing, but for heavens sake... hurry it along a bit. Surely in the pre-release stage, someone must have started fidgeting in the first ten minutes and said to the producer, 'shall we go back and tweak it to make it more interesting?' I can only assume that the response was...'too late the money's ran out' Enough said, go shopping instead!

Roman would have made an excellent short film, if it was made outside of Hollywood, by people who knew nothing about film. Oh, wait, did I say film? I meant video. Strangely there is no attempt to escape the camcorder look and scratchy open mic sound. The compression on the incidental sound effects (cars passing, doors closing, etc.) has such an irritating level of attack... I mean... yuck. The lack of attention to technical details is just atrocious. The lighting is two-dimensional, the blocking is repetitive and is all angled either too low or too high.In the sense of story, there is potential. You don't, unfortunately, get the sense that Roman is time bomb where 'the girl' is concerned, which is unfortunate. His big mistake with the girl really has no rhyme or reason. I mean this was shot on video folks, what was stopping you from getting enough takes to reach an appropriate level of intensity. Even Kristin Bell was operating well below her A-Game in this pivotal scene.