Phoenix, Oregon is a vast improvement on the Grown Ups formula. Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2 were fuelled by seemingly harmless ideas of nostalgia and friendships, but the movies were made disingenuously by the egos of their cast. Phoenix, Oregon, on the other hand, isn’t wired to be smug. Instead of the story solely rooting itself in the past and being self-congratulatory, memories are used as reference points to fuel aspirations to make more memories.
Some of this year’s most endearing performances get buried by Andrew Bujalski’s faulty filmmaking in Support the Girls.
If The People Garden inspired me in any way, it reminded me that I really should mail filmmakers Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas a thank-you letter for 2013’s The Oxbow Cure. I’m not comparing both Canadian dramas (which also, coincidentally, take place in the woods), but if a filmmaker creates a minimalist movie, they ought to have a resonating voice.