Love & Distrust (2010 but not really see below– 94 mins) R. Pattinson, S. Worthington, J. Franco, A. Adams and a host of others…

   Love & Distrust really is just a compilation of 5 short films ranging from 2000 to 2008. I don’t have as much of a problem of the idea of seeing short films as I do the marketing of them as a “movie”. Let’s look at what they even list in the RedBox and on IMDB as the description

   Tale of the passions and perils of love in all its forms. Split into five stories that focus on the lives of a group of beautiful yet troubled twenty-somethings, this film explores the dark heart of romance, the secrets we can never tell and the heartache it can cause. Battling temptation and the pull of seduction, the fight for love can never be easy.

This is fairly laughable as a description. It makes it seem like these short films have some way of intertwining or making sense of each other. Well, they don’t. If you look at this film looking for some way to put them all together to make sense of it you won’t like it at all. A few of these shorties are a bit too short and bit devoid of story, but then a few of them when you get down to what they are, are actually decent. None of them really give you the satisfaction you get of a good feature film tho so the whole thing tends to leave you unsatisfied as a whole. They all look like film students made them and b/c of the amount of star power, as if they called in a  few favors as well. 

Now I say the description they have of the film sucks, but to have a descreption of the shorts in it helps a ton for the enjoyment. It might be spoilerish, so bare with me and skip to the verdict if you don’t want any spoilers.

• The Summer House (2008)- The first short of the film is possibly the worst of the 5 in my mind. It centers around a young french woman in 1969 (T. Riley). She has apparently has been wronged by a boy (Pattinson) and comes to a crossroads when she encounters him at a social party on the night of the moon landing. It’s an ok story but entirely too short and entirely too devoid of a real story.
• Blue Poles (2004)- The second film is also one which takes place in a past time frame. It centers around a young woman who isn’t entirely sure what her life has been through and what it is becominning. It isn’t until she gets a ride from a farm man (Worthington) who writes his observations of her in his diary that she gets an outsider’s prospective of herself. It’s a bit slow and confusing but after digesting it a bit it’s not too bad. This one like a few others might be a bit better on a second watch to take it in again.
• Grasshopper (2006)- Grasshopper is a heady tale of two people who are grasshoppers in their own worlds. Travis (JAmes Franco) is a successful-type traveling businessman who hops from town to town with his only communication being his smart phone. Terri (R. Miner) is hopping in an opposite way. She seems to hop to avoid a past life she would rather leave behind. They intersect on a train when Travis loses his phone and it brings them briefly together. What happens next will change them both. It’s a real heavy tale that will just make you think and make you wonder. I have a hard time really putting my finger on if it’s good or bad, which itself is prob a good thing. It will definitely make you feel something, what that is I will leave for the watcher. To me one of the good shorts here.
• Pennies  (2006)-  In this one, Charlotte (Amy Adams) must come up with an amount of money to a shadowy figure on the other end of the phone for something for her daughter. We don’t initially know what it is, but we know she will stop at nothing, and do anything to make sure she gets the money and see her daughter’s smile again.  It’s a good short a decent story with some good humor involved. Anyone who has waited tables before will recognize and laugh at the characters she encounters while working.
• Auto Motives (2000)- The oldest and one of the better shorts of the bunch is directed by Loraine Bracco, thus it includes some A-listers like James Cameron, Robert DOwney Jr., Michael Imperioli, and Allison Janney. This one moreso then any other makes alot more sense when we learn the whole movie concept. It’s a story of people and how they have, live, and use their cars. If you don’t think about that you think it’s just a random story with random characters doing random things. But if we think about it the way it’s intended we enjoy taking it all in as an interesting take on people and cars.

Verdict—> Being a collection of short stories it’s not for everyone. People who enjoy film making, aspiring actors, and film nuts will like it more then the average person. I also have to repeat that this might be a better watch if you do so more then once. Once you take in the whole beginning to endings of all the different shorts, you will be able to understand/enjoy them better. If you are one of those types I mention above then pick it up you will likely enjoy 3 or more of these, but if you are looking for a good entertainment movie then you won’t like it.

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