Why Watch? Almost a decade ago, Rian Johnson turned eyebrows with Brick by passionately sticking to noir conventions while subverting them just enough to breathe fresh life into a musty genre. To be fair to that genre, it’s one that will eternally and repeatedly enjoy new resurgences, potentially along the same tidal lines as the western, and Brick hit just at the right moment with all the right ingredients. This short film from Zach Wechter follows that same formula, and through doing so, reminds us that its the familiarity of the story beats that keeps entries in this seedy world so satisfying. Like Johnson’s film, Straight Down Low (announcing its genre right there in the title) asks a cast of high school students to get to the bottom of a gangland murder, and in not attempting to reinvent the wheel, he instead conducts a master class in cool. Beyond...
- 7/15/2014
- by Scott Beggs
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
As I’ve said before on this site, I love films (and especially black films) that go in unexpected directions. And as I have also said, there are 40 million black people in the USA, which means there are 40 million different stories. So as a filmmaker, why do the same old, same old? Here comes filmmaker Zach Wechter with his short film "Straight Down Low," which definitely puts a different spin on things. Don’t let the title fool you, as It’s not some routine gangsta hood picture, nor is it another one of those “nice black woman who marries a good man only to find out that he’s on the down low and now she’s HIV positive,” kinds of films (How many of those have been made in...
- 7/9/2014
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
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