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Indie Flix
By PHILIP BOOTH and STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 3, 2001
Movies in limited release:
An overlay of wistful charm
George Washington; not rated (89 min.) -- There's a certain Southern-tinged poetic lyricism that informs the first feature from 25-year-old filmmaker David Gordon Green, a Texas-born talent who shot his impressive debut project in a small North Carolina community. Photographed by Tim Orr as a sort of earthly dream world, this is a land that time forgot, a little town blighted by junkyards and abandoned buildings, made beautiful by flowing creeks and evergreen foliage.
The kids, refreshingly, are oddly disconnected from consumer culture, and their dialogue is strangely free of profanity. Instead, they talk in the language of romantic philosophers, none more so than Nasia (Candace Evanofski), the story's narrator, a precocious 12-year-old girl who is dumping her 13-year-old beau Buddy (Curtis Cotton III) in favor of George (Donald Holden).
The teen and preteen kids, including the odd couple of big, tall African-American boy Vernon (Damian Jewan Lee) and tiny blond Sonya (Rachael Handy) are soon forced to deal with the accidental death of a friend and its cover-up. Quiet, introspective, deeply sensitive George finds a way to become the superhero that Nasia imagines him to be.
George Washington has its rough edges, including wildly uneven performances by the inexperienced actors. The movie drifts along, seemingly killing time with bits of conversation and other sequences that do little for the story's momentum. But those qualities are oddly endearing. Green has real feeling for the sticky, slow rhythms of his setting, and a surprising ability to make something magical of these raw performances. B+
You, sir, are no Woody Allen
Hit and Runway (R) (105 min.) -- The downsides to Neil Simon's and Woody Allen's careers are that so many talentless people want to write like them. Simon and Allen make bumbling urban neurosis and romantic philosophy so cozy together that it must be easy, right? Director and co-writer Christopher Livingston thinks so.
However, Livingston doesn't even deserve the title "impersonator" for Hit and Runway, despite cribbing an odd-couple scenario and stealing lines from Manhattan. He even sticks an Allen look-alike into one scene to hammer home his dull point.
Alex (Michael Parducci) wants to write a screenplay for an action movie, inspired by a silly dream sequence when a rugged actor (Hoyt Richards) shoots everyone at a fashion show. "Hit and runway," get it? Alex goes to a writing class, where he flirts with one student (Teresa DePriest) and ignores another (Judy Prescott) who's a better catch except (gasp!) she wears eyeglasses.
Meanwhile, Alex's new gay friend Elliot (Peter Jacobsen) knows how to write, but his love life is sinking. Presto! Alex will teach Elliot the ways of love, and Elliot will teach Alex how to write. The fact that Alex seems totally incapable of either skill doesn't matter to Livingston.
Hit and Runaway lacks personality, wit, originality and taste, considering Elliot's screeching, stereotypical behavior. Movie romances like this give love a bad name.
Opens today at Channelside Cinemas in Tampa. D-
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