It's been over two years now since I saw Peter Filardi's masterful take on the Ricky Kasso crimes. This was at a festival screening and since that time it almost feels as if the entire experience was a dream - because there's no bloody way for me to revisit this utterly amazing film! From memory as hallucinatory as the teenage wastelands that Filardi's film so accurately portrays, Ricky 6 was a mindblower. I felt it, everyone in the cinema felt it. And now it's nowhere to be found? NOWHERE?! When films as effective (and dare I say it - commercially accessible) can't get properly released I just don't know what to think. Ricky 6 is sharp, startling, surprisingly funny and more entertaining than a true crime film has any right to be, yet unlike its central character, this film has certainly not sold its soul.Its characters are sincere. Its direction is bullet-proof. It's atmosphere is marinated in melancholy yet its tone is energetic and consistently invigorating, with subtle surrealism creeping into day-to-day life like traces of a bonfire long extinguished but ever-present. I can't wait to see what this inarguably gifted filmmaker does next. This is precisely the teen drama that America needs.
Review of Ricky 6
