hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2957.txt

Episode: 2957
Title: HPR2957: Lord D's Film Reviews: Ever
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2957/hpr2957.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 13:51:04

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This is HBR episode number 2957 for Tuesday the 3rd of December 2019.
Today's show is entitled Lord D's film reviews Ever.
It's part of the series Lord D's film reviews and it's hosted by Lost in Bronx.
It's 17 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is Lost in Bronx reviews a recent drama slash romance.
Today's show is licensed under a CC-0 license.
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Hello, this is Lost in Bronx.
Welcome to Lord D's film reviews.
The movie review series that's named after Lord Drakkenbluth who was well known in this community.
Today I will be reviewing a film called Ever EVER.
It stars Wendy McComb and Christina Elizabeth Smith.
It was directed and written by Josh Beck.
It's available on youtube.com for free.
You can find it by doing a search forever.
The movie or you could probably go to Wendy McComb's page on youtube.com.
Her last name is MC Capital C-O-L-M.
And finally, the cinematography is by Micah Van Hove.
And that's worth a special credit there because it was very pretty to look at.
So I'll talk about that in a bit.
Okay, so this film is freely available and there's a note right at the very beginning.
First thing you see, it says this film has been made available for free by the filmmakers.
If you enjoy it and would like to support the artists via PayPal at EverTheMovie at gmail.com.
Either way, we're glad it's out, so thank you for watching.
That's a note right at the very, very beginning.
They've released this for free out into the wild.
Okay, now I have five categories that I go through and each category has two questions that can be answered yes or no.
A yes is worth one point.
At the end we tally the points and that's our scale from zero to ten for a particular film.
Okay, and my categories are plot, main characters, genre, construction, and payoff.
So the first category plot does the plot make sense and or is it free of holes?
And that's combined because if it's got too many holes, it doesn't make any sense.
I give that a no and I'll explain that later when I get into this but there's a problem and I'll talk about that in a bit.
So that gets a no right there.
All right, the second question under plot is is it fairly original or not overdone?
How does it feel? Does it feel like we're seeing a lot of this or was it something that seemed fresh?
I'm going to give this a yes but as I describe it you may feel very differently just based on the description that I give you and the impression that it gives you.
But I'll tell you why I gave this a yes later.
Okay, main characters are they realistic?
Yes, emphatically yes, they seem absolutely realistic to me.
Two, do I care about them? Yes, yes I did.
Okay, so that's main characters.
Third category genre.
Does it work for the plot?
Yes, but the genre is very particular in this.
It's a drama, it's also romance, it's also a kind of a coming out film, but not really.
And again, I'll go into that a little bit later.
The next question, was the genre a good choice or a good fit for this particular film?
Could it have worked better in another genre or something like that?
This could have been done in another genre I suppose, but I think it would have changed the film substantially to have done that.
If you had set this in a historical period, suddenly we have what it was like to try to overcome the obstacles these characters have to deal with in a historical context,
which changes the kind of struggle that they're going through if you'd made it a mystery that would have brought something else in.
And much of what's important or what makes this film what it is would have gotten buried under a complicated plot or action or something like that.
So yes, I think this is exactly what it needed to be.
So that's a yes there.
A category four, construction, the first question, how was the acting?
Was the acting good? Yes, the acting was very good, the acting was tops, in fact.
The second question, how was the production and or editing? Was it any good?
And the answer is yes, the production and the editing were both extremely good.
In fact, they get special notes for the cinematography by Micah Van Hove, and also the sound quality was excellent in this film.
And that is often a real challenge for extremely low budget films, which this was.
This was a low or no budget film, and very often sound is what gets the worst treatment in these sorts of situations,
but they paid special attention to it. It sounded great. It looked very, very good.
So yes, on that last category, the payoff.
Okay, first question is, did the filmmakers seem to accomplish what they wanted?
I'm also going to give this a no, but it harkens back to that element of the plot.
When I left this film, that was nagging me. It was an issue that was nagging me.
As I say, I will get into that in a bit. They're basically pinning on the same problem.
These two questions. So that's a no right there.
And finally, the second question is the film emotionally satisfying.
Well, despite those problems, yes, it is emotionally satisfying. I was happy with the ending.
Not that it necessarily has a happy ending. Actually, it more or less does.
But I was happy with the ending. It made me feel satisfied. It made me feel like it was worth my time to watch it.
So that was my categories and my questions. And as I say, each yes is worth a point.
If you've been adding it up as we go, the total is 8.8 out of 10. That's a pretty good score.
Now then, I'm in my car right now. I'm about to get started. I had to read all that so I couldn't drive while I was reading.
But I will get into the plot and the things that I think matter for this film in just a moment.
Okay, I'm on the road now.
Ever is, obviously, it's a low budget film. It's an independent film. Very often independent films.
They suffer from, well, many of them suffer from the same problems.
As I say, cinematography can suffer sound very, very often suffers in low budget independent films.
Acting very often suffers. They often have cast people that they can get as opposed to casting people who are really right for the role.
So this is a film that does not have any of those problems. They really did cover those things. It's a pleasure to watch.
The cinematography, as you might imagine, is not a lot of long tracking shots, wide landscape shots.
Nothing quite like that. There's a lot of run and gun. There's a lot of handheld stuff going on with this thing.
But it's done very well. And of course, you can see those techniques in high budget films as well.
It doesn't get a knock because of that because they did it well and they did what they needed to do to tell this story.
It looks good, in other words. It looks good. It sounds good.
Ever is a drama. In parts, it's a heavy drama.
It starts off with a young woman whose name is Ever. She's the eponymous character.
Ever is in a serious relationship with a young man. It starts off there on a romantic date on the beach.
There's a table there. There's food. It's a beautiful little thing and he's got the ring case. He's ready to pop the question.
He's ready to commit to Ever and she's very clearly deeply in love with him.
Well, he has to pick something up in their car, which is not on the beach. It's parked up by the road.
So he goes up to the car and gets hit by a car that's driving by.
Ever goes up there on the happiest day of her life and finds her now fiance dead lying on the side of the road.
The car that hit him has pulled over to the side.
That's the past. Time goes by. We see that Ever is just spinning her wheels.
She's got a job at a bookstore. It's not a great job. Not a terrible job. Just a job.
We see her with her family. She's got a sister. She's got a mother.
And her mother's concerned about her. Her sister's concerned about her.
But she doesn't really want to engage with life anymore.
Things are pretty bad for her. We don't know where the father is just yet.
That comes in later. And it's an important element.
And it's important actually to my criticisms of this film.
But Ever basically is at an appallingly low point in her life.
This kind of creepy guy hits on her and she agrees to go on a date with this guy.
Not so much because she's interested in him, but partly I think because her family's been nagging her to get out and do something with her life.
And partly because this guy has been a bit of a past and she's like, well, whatever. Let's just try it.
Well, he turns out to be a real creep and terrible date. In other words, she ends up walking the street on her own to get away from this date.
Filled with despair over the state her life is in.
And in a moment of weakness, she finds the front gate to an apartment building open.
She climbs those stairs, goes all the way up to the roof, and goes to the edge of the roof.
And we don't know exactly what she's going to do, but she's up there and it doesn't look good.
When a woman who is up there already asks her to stop and she turns around and this is our second main character.
The woman that she meets as a photographer, amateur photographer, and she was up there taking photos of the city at night.
They strike up a conversation. I think they go grab something to eat and they laugh.
And after a short amount of time, Ever is in a much better place emotionally.
That's a good thing. So they begin spending time together, bit by bit.
They go to parties together and slowly, Ever finds that she's not only starting to become alive again after this tragedy that occurred in her life,
but also that she's developing feelings and the other woman feels the same way.
In a way, you could see this as a coming out film because Ever has never had a lesbian romance in her life.
But it also isn't a coming out because it's not especially a big deal, not to hurt, not to anybody else in the story.
It just is what it is. And it also kind of illustrates the fact that
when you're talking about honest feelings and when you're talking about getting over trauma, getting over grief and loss,
in many ways, questions about sexuality are immaterial. They're secondary.
At least that's what I feel this film is proposing.
The term lesbian, I don't think, is ever used in the film.
The question is brought up in context of, well, I like women, but I like men too.
But it's really more about the person.
Now, there are terms for that sort of thing. Pansexual is a term that people sometimes use.
That term isn't used in this film either because it's immaterial.
I think the point of the film is how you feel about a person matters more than the gender of that person.
As I say, it isn't really a coming out film. It's a getting over grief film.
Well, here's my problem with this movie.
We don't know exactly what it is that drove her father apart from her.
That's never really made clear and it's never super cemented, at least to my mind, where the wedge is.
Well, I'm not sure, even after having watched it, I'm not sure if it's meant that
ever's father is the one that hit her fiance.
If that's the case, that's a ridiculous occurrence in the film because they were just on the beach.
And this is just some random road by the beach that someone driving by hit her fiance.
If that's the case, that's very badly constructed.
Again, it's not clear, right?
And if that isn't the reason why there's a wedge between her father and herself,
then we never find out what the problem is.
So the only problem that's bad enough in her life for the kind of reaction that she has,
any time her father's mentioned, is this thing.
What are the ridiculous odds that her father just happened to be driving by and just happened to be the one to kill this guy?
That doesn't work for me.
I don't think it's a very good plot point.
So I had an issue with that and I have an issue with how the father fits into all this.
Because if he's the one that killed the guy, that doesn't work.
And if he's not, there's no explanation for it, so that doesn't work.
At any rate, whatever her problem with her father, it's a real one to her.
It's a major, major, major issue.
It does get resolved by the end of the film.
And I think it's resolved in a fairly organic way that is to say she comes to accept the loss of her old life.
And her father seeks her forgiveness, either for the killing of her fiance or for some other unknown reason,
but her father desperately seeks her forgiveness.
And by the end of the film, she's able to move on to something new.
Well, she and this young lady be together forever.
We have no idea.
That's not really the point of the film.
Romance is an important part of this film, but it's not what the film is really about.
This film is really about ever's journey from being broken to being whole again.
When they become plays ever in this film, as I said,
she does an outstanding job as this character who is extremely soft spoken.
You might even say, mousey, but all of that hides a massive gulf of pain and anger that only gets to flare up every now and then.
And when it does, it's pretty impressive.
She's able to pull off ever's quiet moments, absolutely brilliantly.
But when she gets riled up, you don't want to be in ever's sights.
As her love interest, Christina Elizabeth Smith does an outstanding job trying to help ever get over this issue.
And absolutely and totally misinterpreting the scale of pain that ever is going through.
Now, it seems a little unrealistic at first when we first see how she's trying to help her.
But I've seen people make appalling mistakes like this.
Just really not quite getting what the person is going through because they themselves have never gone through anything like it before.
Ever's girlfriend is in that position in this film and it's painful to watch.
They get by it too.
As I say, there is a happy ending to this film.
Again, it doesn't necessarily mean that things are perfect or that their relationship will go on to be one of the great romances of the world.
But it will go on and their lives will go on.
I really enjoyed this movie.
I was surprised at how well made it was for what it was.
There are moments that I believe are probably improvised by the actors.
There are some moments that were clearly scripted.
But I don't fault it for those things because I know how hard it can be to integrate a lot of that material together when you have no money.
For rehearsal, you have no time.
You're probably not paying anybody, not any of the actors, the crew, anybody.
This thing, they did an awful lot with absolutely nothing.
And they deserve all the credit in the world.
I do recommend Ever.
8 out of 10 points, I think it's worth your time.
Anyway, that was LordD's film reviews for the film ever available on youtube.com.
And this has been Lost in Bronx.
Thank you for listening.
Take care.
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