Flipside

I was lucky to see the premiere at TIFF. What a wonderful film! It's messy in a good way, like real life, like real creation. At first it's not clear where it's going, but Chris Wilcha successfully lands the plane in a very satisfying way. It's also surprisingly deep. It made me question how I'm spending my life, and the pull of practical decisions that make us get away from what we really want to be doing. There are many threads in this film, and the level of difficulty is very high. I'm sure Wilcha's whiteboard has even more complex diagrams than Chris Nolan's. But the central unifying force of the film is Wilcha himself, and he's very authentic in a way that is easy to relate to. His struggles are very common ones, even if we're not making films, and his relationship with his past and the passage of time hit me very hard, as a 41 year old. If you have a chance to see this one, I highly recommend it! The scenes with David Milch is touching, and I now want to buy Herman Leonard's book of jazz photos.