DVD Review: Junk

DVD Reviews, Reviews

I was pretty excited when Junk showed up at my house to review. As a filmmaker myself, I am always interested in other people’s perceptions of the filmmaking experience, or in this case the film festival experience. I mean, it IS every filmmaker’s dream to get a film into a festival. The other reason I wanted to see this film is that I had already reviewed and enjoyed writer/director Kevin Hamedani’s first film Zombies Of Mass Destruction.

Junk tells the story of two best friends/writing partners Kaveh and Raul (Kevin Hamedani and Ramon Isao) who have had a huge falling out. It’s only when their B-movie Islama-Rama 2 gets into a film festival that they are forced to reconcile as to survive the festival experience.

Things start off rough for Kaveh. As Junk opens he has recently broken up with his girlfriend and just found out that she’s already dating someone else. Outside Kaveh and Raul repairing their friendship they’ve got to deal with several other problems. Legendary film producer Yukio Tai (the amazing James Hong) is being honored at the festival and they want to pitch him a film of theirs to produce, however he has armed guards around him at all times. The other problem is a rival filmmaker TD Largo (Sean Nelson) is trying to pitch him a similar film. As if that wasn’t enough, their liaison to the film Billy (Brett Davern) knows nothing about films and one of the lead actors in their film, Connor (Cooper Hopkins) is an obnoxious jerk. Whew… I’m exhausted just writing all that! (and all of this is set to the music of OK Go.)

One of the more fun aspects of Junk is when Kaveh and Raul pitch each other ideas for bad horror sequels like Gremlins 3 or Chucky POV. They talk about the scenes a bit, then we get to see how some of those scenes would play out. These are easily some of the funnier moments in the film.

This is a fun film that shows what it might be like when traversing the trenches of a film festival. This obviously, isn’t everybody’s experience, but I’m sure the things that happen in this film aren’t too far removed from reality.

Junk is an okay movie. By no means is it a bad film, but outside a few moments and never reaches into the good or great category. Kaveh and Raul are hard characters to like, they both come off as jerks in the beginning, though they slowly do become likable characters, it just takes a while, maybe too long for my taste. Though, if you don’t have problems with unlikable characters you probably won’t have the problems I did.

The film is presented in a 16:9 widescreen format and stereo sound. For a low budget film, it looks really good. The sound it a little flat at times, but it doesn’t distract from the entertainment of the film.

You get commentary with Kevin Hamedani, Ramon Isao and Brett Davern. The Deleted Scenes are a mix of deleted and alternate scenes and run almost an hour, this almost a whole other film in of itself. There is also a Making of (9 min.) that’s okay and music videos for two OK Go songs This Too Shall Pass and White Knuckles.

Most of this film is obviously ad-libbed, and most of it works. It’s a little clunky and awkward at times, but over all a pretty entertaining film about their experiences in the film festival circuit. I imagine filmmaker type people will enjoy this film more than those are a just fans of film, but then again, I might be wrong. I also really appreciated seeing George Hardy (star of Troll 2 and Best Worst Movie) in a small roll.

Breaking Glass Pictures presents Junk. Written by Kevin Hamedani and Ramon Isao. Directed by Kevin Hamedani. Starring: Kevin Hamedani, Ramon Isao, Cooper Hopkins, James Hong and Brett Davern. Running time: 104 minutes. Rating: Not Rated, contains vulgar language, sexuality and nudity. Released: March 25, 2014.

Mike Noyes received his Masters Degree in Film from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. A few of his short films can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mikebnoyes. He recently published his first novel which you can buy here: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-Years-Mike-Noyes-ebook/dp/B07D48NT6B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528774538&sr=8-1&keywords=seven+days+seven+years