Junk

A feature-length in-joke for co-screenwriters and stars Kevin Hamedani and Ramon Isao, Junk centers on the world of B-movie independent filmmaking. Hamedani is Kaveh, an obnoxious yet vaguely sympathetic writer who fails to woo back an ex-girlfriend on the eve of reluctantly accepting an invitation to attend a film festival. Already in a bad mood when asked to bring his schlocky new horror flick to a midnight screening, Kaveh is even more put off when he discovers that his creative partner on that movie—Raul (Isao)—is also at the festival. The feuding Kaveh and Raul soon declare a truce for the sake of their film, but also for a more urgent reason: a legendary Japanese producer of exploitation movies is in the vicinity, and he might hear their pitch. What follows, unfortunately, is an overstuffed comedy about everything that can go wrong (or right) at a festival: sparse audiences, deep rivalries with other filmmakers, disposable sex, impenetrable security, too many drugs, too many sycophants, and numerous opportunities to discover just how irrelevant one is in the big picture. While there are some genuinely funny moments, Junk too often wanders off in random directions without compelling purpose. Not a necessary purchase. (T. Keogh)