First Winter (2012) Reviews

• Saw it...puked...then died a little on the inside.

  thecoloroftea2012-11-19

  I think this movie came out at a good time: right after hurricane sandy. The main difference between the two disasters is that hurricane sandy was actually devastating because people lost their homes and some lost their lives. This one though is basically just a bunch of kids who don't have power. And its cold. Didn't the pilgrims have to go through the same thing? Only without a house to stay in or drugs? Yes all of the kids here do drugs. But they also have sex and do yoga, and thats about the extent of their collective character. In fact i don't even remember the names of any of them, but there were about 7 main ones. There were 4 guys: Big Beard Guy, Short Beard Guy with Long Hair, Short Beard Guy with Short Hair, and Mustached Guy. Then there were three girls: Asian Girl with Bangs, Blonde Girl and Other Blonde Girl. There might have been another one too but i think she died. You are introduced to these characters with an annoyingly close-up yoga scene. And after this you'd expect the camera would get a little less close up but it doesn't. The whole movie is pretty much shot in close-up. I read some other reviews that said this makes the viewer feel they are right there in the "action", but don't be fooled by this because there is no action. In fact, not much happens after the yoga scene besides long silent pauses. The characters lose power and complain that its cold. Well duh, its winter. The main character, Big Beard Guy, pulls out an iphone at this point. Right here their dilemma seems much less dire to me because couldn't he just, you know...call for help? Or they could all drive away, like the few who did and ditched them (these were not main characters). Annoying? Yes. Much like the main characters beard. There were several scenes where he was holding a candle and i was praying to god he would accidentally set fire to it, but no. He and his beard have sex with all of the ladies in the house and is met with much disdain by Short Beard Short Hair, who likes heroin. So there's some...drama(?) between the two. Then Big Beard gets what he deserves by getting poisoned after selfishly eating some of the little food they had with one of the ladies he has sex with. She dies, unlike him for some reason. Despite his selfishness, Asian Bangs Girl adores Big Beard and wants to be only with him instead of having threesomes. But this feeling is not mutual. So at this point everyone besides Asian Bangs decides Big Beard is a menace, and Short Beard Long Hair tries to shoot him. He does not though. If these characters don't sound very interesting, they will after you remember there are three other characters who do absolutely nothing: Mustached Guy, Blonde Girl and Other Blonde Girl. Between scenes (still close-ups mind you), you may catch glimpses of them and say, "oh yeah! they're in the movie." then instantly forget, and question yourself after the movie is over if they were ever there at all. I for one cant really do this because i left the movie before it was over. The reason being i lost power during hurricane sandy and was stuck for several days being bored out of my skull, and this movie just made me re-live it all over again. To me, that was about as entertaining as Formica, so i left. But if you like watching people who have run out of things to talk about and starve and do things that make you go, "huh?", then this movie just might be up your alley. If it is, i assume your alley is on Bedford Avenue.

• What did I just watch? And the point was?

  davidjp-22013-03-16

  Have you ever spent whole morning sitting in a small town coffee shop, looking out the window? I mean, a really really small town. Can you imagine it? I once did. I was lucky, I saw three cars drove by. One lady walked with two children. No dog, no cat, some birds. The shop owner apologized for yesterday's newspaper, his son will bring today's newspaper home in the late afternoon. Nothing happened, or, nothing worthy to talk about. I wondered why the owner kept the shop open, I had learned not to ask the obvious - for whatever reason, what's the point if I asked. Do you get it now? You read my rather direction less, hollow though. Have you learned anything about me? Does it make any difference? Do you care? That's the movie. A group of people lived in a remote house. They did not do much of anything. They did not talk much of anything. They did not plan to do anything. They lived their life, but nothing really happened. They cooked, they ate, they bathed, they slept, they made love -- they lived their daily routine, but where was movie worthy stuff? I don't want to call them hippies, because hippies have dreams; those people were minimalist. I don't want to call this thing a movie; it was just a few post cards displayed together.

• A whole new dimension of boredom

  mickspix20542013-04-18

  This may very well be the most boring movie ever made. The best advice I can give to anyone thinking of watching this thing is: read a synopsis of it, then tell everyone whom you may want to convince that you are a completely pretentious, absolutely phony, laughably artsy fartsy horse's ass how good you think it is. However, if you want to watch something more interesting, I'd say take your shoes and sox off and watch your toenails grow; that would be much more interesting than this appalling waste of time. The seems to have been no script. I have no problem with improvisation if the people doing it are talented enough to pull it off; these people aren't. I doubt if there even WAS a director, and the "acting" was an embarrassment. Unfortunately, one is the lowest rating that can be given here...a negative 64 would be closer to the mark

• hipsters struggle to survive mild winter

  fpurkey-12015-10-25

  *** Spoilers *** I kept wondering 1) why they spent so much energy on chopping down trees and splitting logs when they had several collapsed buildings on the property full of old wood planks 2) why they did not try to go to nearby farmhouses for food they were lucky the winter looked really mild, and i thought the heroin addict would freak out on them at some point (he thought about shooting long beard guy) they did not seem too concerned about the people that left in a car to get gas, and never tried to walk into town not much of an ending

• Hipster fever dream (sex, drugs and yoga)

  jakobstrunk2012-04-30

  More cinematic hipster fever dream than apocalyptic thriller, First Winter (which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival) concerns a group of young city dwellers who retreat to an isolated country house to do (lots of) drugs, practice yoga, and have (lots of) sex. They suddenly find themselves without power after a humongous cloud black smoke appears on the horizon. We take the film's word that getting back into town would be impossible (as it spends little time convincing us) and the characters food supply slowly disappears. Current trends concern themselves predominately with "natural" and "sustainable" lifestyles. This film thrusts it's characters into a situation where they have to use these beliefs to survive. It doesn't shy from exposing the hypocrisy and shallowness of it's characters, either. The film is beautifully shot, and contains some particularly captivating tracking shots and a mostly diegetic soundtrack. It also takes some unexpected plot turns, has some nice bits of humor, and contains an attractive mix of non-actors and trained.