Westender

[Mouseferatu]

So, any of you folks seen this? It's an independent film, shown at various festivals in 2002(?), and just released on DVD by Warner Brothers.

It's an interesting movie. It's obviously made on a shoestring budget--some of the outfits are good, but others are clearly from catalogs, and I recognize most of the swords from Museum Replicas and similar vendors. The story is shaky in parts, the pacing is off, and it's very clear that many of the folks involved lack experience.

All that said... This movie's heart is definitely in the right place, and it shows some real talent in the overall storytelling. In fact, I think it's a better movie, even if not nearly as good a production, than many major releases I've seen.

Overall, I liked it, and I hope to see the creative team move on to bigger (and better funded) things. I was just wondering if anyone else had any thoughts on it.

 

[Mystery Man]

Just saw this last night.

For a low budget indie film it aint too bad. The scenes with the wolf and the hermit in the woods scene were my favorites. I would like to know more about this world and its peoples. For instance what kind of race were those desert people? How did the kingdom fall? I'd love to find out what the Westender does next.

 

[adwyn]

Saw it last year - not bad for a small budget independent film, but the second half did drag a little. It would be nice to see more things done in this vein.

 

[Mystery Man]

Yes it did drag towards the end there, thank goodness entertainment on demand has a fast forward feature.

One thing that struck me about this movie, I'm still thinking about some of the things I saw as compared to a movie like Dungeons and Dragons where I promptly forgot about it as soon as I walked out of the theatre.

 

[The_lurkeR]

I actually made a thread about this movie last week, but no one replied and it's slipped to the second page. While I agree that their heart was in the right place, I really don't think it was worth having to sit through. Maybe like you say, if you're willing to make liberal use of the fast-forward button.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=123471

Short of it : Save your money and avoid this movie.

Long of it : This was a new release at our local video store that my girlfriend and I rented tonight. From the case it looked like your average knights tale type movie. It is an independent film that had on the back that it came in as "4th runner up in the Seattle film festival."

Unfortunately it wasn't until after watching the movie, and checking out the "making of" for laughs that we find out there were only 8 entries. So it came in 5th... out of 8 entries

Anyways I usually appreciate independent films, which despite the lower production values and acting, usually have an unusual or interesting story to tell. Not so with this film. Basically it takes a weak plot that might struggle to keep a TV episode of Hercules interesting, and drags it out through maddeningly long travel sequences in it's self-described effort to make it "epic". Along the way it is sure to check off pretty much every heroic fantasy cliche in the books.

It was painful to endure. :\

 

[Mark]

More info - http://www.westendermovie.com/