Joe Swanberg

Kent is turning 50 and his plans for a fun birthday weekend with Sarah are upended when his friend Kev arrives to build him a wall. Joe Swanberg (“Hannah Takes The Stairs,” “Drinking Buddies,” Netflix’s “Easy”) returns to his no-budget roots for “Build the Wall,” a low-key relationship comedy/drama set in the woods of Vermont. After drunkenly agreeing to let Kev build him a stone wall for his upcoming milestone b-day, Kent is surprised and frustrated when a pile of stones shows up to his house, and work on the wall begins. This conflicts with his more soberly devised plan to host a friend from L.A., Sarah, to discuss an artistic partnership and possibly a romantic connection.Read More »

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Young married couple Tim and Lee have planted the seeds of a family in their East L.A. duplex. Three years after the birth of their son, they’re still adjusting to the joy and pain of life with kid, navigating potty talk at the dinner table, disagreeing over preschools, and putting off doing their taxes. For a change of pace, they decide to house-sit for one of Lee’s Westside yoga clients. Once there, Tim discovers something suspicious in the yard that gets the wheels in his head turning, and Lee, worried that he will become obsessed with digging deeper, decides to drop their toddler off with her mother for a much-needed night out on the town. Sans-wife, Tim invites his buddies over, and a “boys-will-be-boys” scenario ensues, full of drinking, awkward joint-passing, and perhaps getting a bit too close to a girl who isn’t the mother of his child.Read More »

Film Threat: When director Joe Swanberg hit the scene with “Kissing on the Mouth,” I was impressed. The film did exactly what it set out to do: take a microscope to inner-personal relationships and show an up close view, warts and all. As much as I liked the film, there’s still a feeling that it’s a cinematic experiment with a loose narrative that soars at times and stumbles through at others. Yet it was undeniably brave and intriguing. With his second feature “LOL,” Swanberg has settled into a solid narrative while still using his “Dogme” type style to look closely at how people relate to one another…or why they can’t.Read More »

AMG: The low-budget, direct-to-video erotic drama Kissing on the Mouth explores the erogenous trials and travails of a clique of college grads. It concerns Ellen, a young woman sleeping with her ex-boyfriend and bucking his attempts to re-instigate a serious romantic commitment. Meanwhile, she does her best to ignore the increasingly possessive and suspect behavior of her flatmate, Patrick. The film (shot by its cast) is marked by graphic sexual content and frank, explicit discussions of coital behavior. For added realism and authenticity, the directors work in a number of documentary-style interviews with college graduates.Read More »

Director Joe Swanberg (Nights and Weekends) goes beyond the mumblecore movement with this revealing drama about marriage. For Alexander the Last, Swanberg reigns over an experienced cast of actors — including Jane Adams, Jess Weixler, and Josh Hamilton — but still incorporates his usual improvisational techniques. Margot at the Wedding director Noah Baumbach serves as one of the film’s producers. —IFC FilmsRead More »