Frontrunners

[w/o horse]

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/frontrunners/

  Hilarious.  Humorous overlapping motifs between primary elections and opening weekend box office/primary elections of a high school and primary elections of presidency make this high school elections documentary surprisingly rich in humor and breadth.  It also shares a contemporary fascination with tangent idiosyncrasies (I do wish a single reveal, the musical pamphleteering, had been more sensationally implemented, as in revealed for its comedy rather than its documentation, and it's probably the surprising quality of the documentary that makes me consider criticizing an otherwise unarguable point, documentary wise).

  Due in part to these motifs and in part to the unusual high school environment the film feels more sophisticated than the usual high school vision, its strength being in its exchange of maudlin nostalgia or dramatic reinvention for relaxed observation.  Because of the high degree of emotions implicit in the race the film is allowed to be non-obtrusive in the development of the story, similar to what was possible with King of Kong, except King of Kong was more obtrusive than this film is.  This film doesn't choose a side for you.

  I don't think I've used the word hilarious, which I should have started with.  I'm going to add it to the beginning.

  I recommend.

[JG]

meh. a lot of the things w/o horse says are true, but this movie is really underwhelming. the premise itself is nice, but the movie never moves past it.

[w/o horse]

I was thinking the other day that it's been a terrific year for 'underwhelming' cinema, and that all the great films I've seen this year could qualify for that categorization.  It's also paralleled or inspired a personal rejuvenated fascination with independent cinema mid 80s-mid 90s, the decade that this type of cinema truly blossomed.

Maybe that's where I'm at right now.  I think it's been growing, though, because I remember having similar thoughts in 2006, so it's more than a passing fancy (i.e. when I was magnetized shortly by post-apocalyptic cinema).