Hellaware

I don't know how much this thing cost, but it's been described as a "micro-budget" movie. A 25-year-old New York hipster artist photographer (although he uses a point-and-shoot camera) decides he wants to explore other cultures, so he drives down to Delaware to see some white rural teen rappers. He tells them he can help get them a record deal and can get them prescription drugs. He takes pictures of them. Unable to get a prescription for the drugs he wants, he steals his grandmother's meds. He's a horrible, horrible person, but in a realistic way---more realistic than most horrible movie characters.

The movie was entertaining, amusing. It was an attack on New York hipster artist types who seem like easy pickin's. I read an interview with the director who said that if they were such easy targets, why were there so few movies successfully ridiculing them. There was nothing very surprising, but I liked it well enough.

Available on Fandor.

It might make an interesting double feature with What Goes Up starring Steve Coogan as a reporter sent to the town where Christa McAuliffe, the teacher perished in the space shuttle Challenger disaster, lived and worked. Coogan arrives in town before the space shuttle launch. While the rest of the school prepares to celebrate the shuttle launch, Coogan reports on a class of outcast teenagers placed in a class in a separate building who are mourning the death of their beloved teacher. He had known the teacher years earlier in college, and he lets the students think he had been his "best friend" in order to get a story.

Available on DVD from Netflix.