Campfyre Stories

It’s quite the cumbersome name for a movie and, frankly, sounds rather lame, but once I looked at the cast, I was sold.  There were a bunch of names I recognized and even more faces I recognized, but that wasn’t the best part.

Let me start by saying that Princess and I have been on a most incredible good snobby art house movie streak recently.  It started around the beginning of the year with Mrs. Henderson Presents and, though I know I’m forgetting some, has led us through Inside Man and Thank You for Smoking.  These three were all fabulous and Thank You for Smoking was possibly the funniest movie I’ve EVER seen.  Both of us are constantly bracing ourselves for another bad movie to show up at any moment, but another matinee night came and went with a brilliant movie that we probably came really close to missing entirely.

Apparently the reviews have been mediocre, and I don’t know anyone else who saw this, but it was really excellent.  Not too long, very riveting.  Princess’ head exploded at the end with the most excellent, didn’t-see -it-coming twist that was thrown at us.  i spent a lot of the movie wondering who some of the familiar faces were, but especially so with the kids from the flashbacks, and then I went home to look them all up on IMDB.  That’s when MY head exploded.

The reason I couldn’t place the kids from the flashback scenes is because they aren’t kids anymore.  All of the flashbacks are from a short film by the same director/producer/writer made back in 1990!  I was trying to place the kids, but they were familiar to me as adults.  One of the kids from the flashbacks even had a minor role as an adult in the movie.

Princess and I are both hoping that the original short film will be included on the DVD when it’s released so that we can compare it to the flashback sequences.  This movie already rated pretty high with me before I learned about the short film and now that I’ve got more of the behind-the-scenes information I’m even more in love with it.

If it’s playing near you, try to catch it and, if you can’t, make a point to rent it on DVD when it comes out, it is WELL worth the price.