THE CLIMB (A-minus) - This novel take on the buddy movie (and the age-old pitfall of the love triangle) comes from a fresh pair of voices, two guys named Kyle and Mike who play friends named Kyle and Mike.
Michael Angelo Covino takes the director's chair to oversee the script he wrote with Kyle Marvin, who starts out the film as the chubby friend to Mike, who waits for an arduous uphill portion of a bike ride to reveal that he has slept with Kyle's fiancee. Mike stealing Kyle's betrothed is just the first darkly comic twist of this bruisingly funny film.
But he narrative doesn't go where you think it will. Quickly, Mike's fortunes crash and burn, and he becomes a pathetic mess. Meantime, Kyle, who has moved on to another fiancee, has cleaned up and shaped up and is trying to live a good life, said to be the best revenge. Slowly, the estranged friends start to warm to each other again, realizing their long-standing, if co-dependent, connection. Will Mike sabotage Kyle's relationship with a woman who, if we're being honest, is a bit of a controlling witch?
Covino and Marvin mix witty dialogue with old-fashioned slapstick but also penetrating observations in a thoughtful study of these characters. It is both laugh-out-loud funny at times, deeply moving at other times. It might make you wonder if a buddy -- and not the women you pursue -- could be the one best qualified to serve as a soul mate. This feature debut, expanded from a short that survives here as the extended cycling sequence that opens the film, heralds promising talent.
MARTIN EDEN (B) - This would-be epic based on the writings of Jack London -- transplanted to an indeterminate era in Italy -- keeps threatening to break out as a great film but never does. Director Pietro Marcello teams with writer Maurizio Braucci to adapt a novel from 1909 about a working-class autodidact determined to prove himself as a writer in order to win the love of an aristocratic woman.
Lucas Marinelli has the good looks and charisma to pull off the bigger-than-life title role of the fiercely resolved seaman who won't let anything stop him from getting published. Martin Eden fashions himself as a rugged individualist who refuses to get swept up in the socialist cause. He's a bit of a brute, and it is in defending a colleague in a fight that he gets invited to the friend's home and meets the friend's sister, Elena (Jessica Cressy).
Martin can come off as a boor, trying to hard to prove his love for the lovely but somewhat bland Elena -- or at least to prove his worthiness. She insists that he go off and resume his education and seek out a mentor to learn the craft of writing before returning to her to be married. Martin, rejected by a school, buys a typewriter instead and perseveres by sheer dint of will and hard work to overcome class barriers.
This all has the earmarks of a classic love story, and you cheer for director and cast most of the way through. However, a jump in time to the final reel -- where Martin's fortunes have changed, both for better and worse -- completely loses the momentum and the connections that had been scrupulously stitched together during the first hour and a half. (This one overshoots two hours, and it's poorer for that bloated runtime.) By the end, the wheels come off, any pathos is unearned, and it feels like a different movie altogether. It's a shame, because this one had promise.
BONUS TRACKS
From our title track, Liz Phair with "Girls! Girls! Girls!":
From "The Climb," a country dusty from Gary Stewart, "Drinking Thing":
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