Firefly (NR) **
WORLD PREMIERE
Directed by Pete Marcy
3 p.m., Saturday, June 11; plus 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 14
About halfway through Firefly, we're introduced to a character with psychic abilities. He regularly wakes up to find he's scrawled a series of seemingly unrelated words on a notepad, but eventually these notes all interconnect in some future event. The whole film works much the same way. There are several mundane and unrelated subplots, but eventually a twist ties them all together. And though it's somewhat satisfying to see how everything connects by the end, for the bulk of the film's running time, we're looking at an uninteresting laundry list of nonsense.
The ending's revelation is a flashback explaining what happened to three people who have blacked out a portion of Halloween. Brandt (Chris Marcy) woke the next morning, floating in a river, Susan (Lindsay Hinman) may or may not have been raped, and Del (Pete Marcy) is haunted by nightmares of some crime he's committed. With the help of a spastic clairvoyant, the three amnesiacs ultimately discover how they connect to one another, but in the meantime, we're forced to watch episodes of their daily lives, all of which are less than compelling. The ending twist is pretty wild, and some viewers may be unwilling to accept it, but even those who are willing may find themselves fairly bored getting there.
Matthew Scott Hunter
Directed by Pete Marcy
3 p.m., Saturday, June 11; plus 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 14
About halfway through Firefly, we're introduced to a character with psychic abilities. He regularly wakes up to find he's scrawled a series of seemingly unrelated words on a notepad, but eventually these notes all interconnect in some future event. The whole film works much the same way. There are several mundane and unrelated subplots, but eventually a twist ties them all together. And though it's somewhat satisfying to see how everything connects by the end, for the bulk of the film's running time, we're looking at an uninteresting laundry list of nonsense.
The ending's revelation is a flashback explaining what happened to three people who have blacked out a portion of Halloween. Brandt (Chris Marcy) woke the next morning, floating in a river, Susan (Lindsay Hinman) may or may not have been raped, and Del (Pete Marcy) is haunted by nightmares of some crime he's committed. With the help of a spastic clairvoyant, the three amnesiacs ultimately discover how they connect to one another, but in the meantime, we're forced to watch episodes of their daily lives, all of which are less than compelling. The ending twist is pretty wild, and some viewers may be unwilling to accept it, but even those who are willing may find themselves fairly bored getting there.
Matthew Scott Hunter
