The review:
Christopher Nolan’s Following is embryonic Nolan,* and is a good showcase of what we put up with in the 90s when it came to independent films.** I always enjoy a shifting timeline, so that was a win, but I found that the distance of all of the characters made it difficult to care about what was happening on screen.*** It’s nice to know that better Nolan films were on deck.
The verdict: Skip
(Unless Nolan Completest, or watching to keep up with Filmspotting’s Oeuvre-view.)
Cost: $2.99 via Google Play****
Where watched: at home
Consider watching these other Christopher Nolan films instead:
Further sentences:
*Including its paltry 69-minute (that’s one hour and nine minutes!) run time.
**A lot, including so-so acting. This wasn’t quite the showcase of 90s indie annoyances as Next Stop Wonderland was, but it did have a lot of them.
***The black and white felt like a bit much.
****The median length of a film between 1994 and 2015 is 107 minutes which means this should have cost $1.70 proportionally. (And yes! I just used algebra to solve that problem!)
Questions:
- What did you think of Lucy Russell’s acting? Decent for the role that was written? Or not good?
- Did you figure out the ending before the ending?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Principal photography of this film took more than one year. Because all cast and crew members had other full-time jobs they were only able to film about 15 minutes of footage on Saturdays until photography had been completed.
The guy who’s doing bad things and is hanging out with bad people gets misjudged as having done something really bad!
I know! Who would have thought!