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Film Geek More at IMDbPro »

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7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:

Haven't you still got some shrink wrapping to do?

Author: manuel-pestalozzi from Zurich, Switzerland
2 October 2006

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It was fun watching this movie. And yet it left me somewhat irritated. The main character being a FILM geek seems to be arbitrary – he could just as well be an auto repair part geek. His knowledge of film consists mainly of data that is basically meaningless. His being an author of comments on movies with an appeal to others is not very convincing as it is not supported by anything he says or does. There is a moment when I hoped that the essence of his addiction to film would come into the open. I am alluding to the dinner at the Mexican restaurant with the girl he is smitten with. Unfortunately the scene turns out to be very short and the opportunity to provide this movie with a message (concerning the question what movies are doing to us or to Scotty Pelk in particular) is missed. I regretted that as in the end Pelk really and definitely turns out to be a pretty annoying babblemouth. Shrink wrapping does seem to be more productive. And it leaves room for introspection.

Film Geek would only have been half as good hadn't Melik Malkasian played the main character. He seems to be an actor with a lot of talent and a huge potential. Just watch him in the sequence when Pelk is getting fired! Somehow he reminded me of Buster Keaton and Jimmy Cagney, he moves equally well. I just hope some good parts come along for him and that he can be seen again soon.

12 out of 19 people found the following review useful:

Quirky and Charming

Author: jerry_linn from United States
4 April 2005

I saw Film Geek at the Longbaugh Film Festival in Portland, OR not knowing what to expect, but I found that I discovered a wonderfully entertaining and quirky little gem of a movie. Melik Malkasian gives an incredible performance as Scotty Pelk the film geek who is a socially lacking, movie-obsessed video rental store clerk. When he is not at work, he spends most of his time serving as webmaster for his movie review website which hardly gets any traffic, masturbating, and obsessively watching movies alone in his apartment. The rest of the time he pathetically lusts after the bratty Kaitlin and and the icy-blonde Cindy who both despise him. Being as utterly clueless as he is he continually pursues them despite their rejection of him. In one of the funniest scenes in the whole movie life hits the bottom of the barrel for Scotty when he is fired from his job at the video store. He goes crazy running about the store turning everything into chaos. For this scene alone Malkasian should garner some awards attention. He combines the perfect balance of humor and quirk that is nothing short of brilliant in this scene.

Despite the low point Scotty has reached it also turns out to be a turning point when he meets the captivating Niko. Niko is a cool, Portland-hipster who loves movies (almost) as much as he does. Unlike everyone else in his life she doesn't mind discussing them with him and connecting with him in general despite his nerdy ways. Scotty soon realizes that he might just have met the love of his life. One of the main problems is that her scummy boyfriend just isn't going to let go so easily. Will Scotty's eventual fame at having his website be discovered enable him to win Niko in the end? Or will his clueless ideals and delusions just keep getting in the way? James Westby does an impressive job with his direction, writing and heartfelt realization of the many memorable and engaging characters and situations that make up Scotty's odd, crazy, hilarious and yet at times somewhat sad story.

5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:

Why are there no DVDs in this film?

Author: Benoît A. Racine (benoit-3) from Toronto, Ontario, Canada
22 August 2006

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I think this film is a prime example of what can be done with talent, imagination and no money. I do not subtract points because the subject of movie geekdom is "easy" for a film geek.

But I would really want to know why all the videos in this film are VHS. Since this is not a historical recreation, and a lot of the films mentioned are recent, why no DVDs?! To make Oregon look backward? Or was it because the filmmakers were not allowed to tamper with the DVDs on their location shoots? I really wish someone would explain that to me but I won't subtract any points for that either.

Oh, and I really, really liked the irony of the very last scene!

P.S.: James Westby himself (!)just e-mailed me the following message the day after I posted the preceding:

(start of message)

Hey man

The omission of DVDs was (sort of) to make it feel somewhat anachronistic and more like like an '80's after school special. I realize how pretentious that sounds.

Thank you for the nice review - it means a lot.

Best regards

James Westby

www.filmgeekthemovie.com

(end of message)

2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:

Lame Remake of The Last Laugh

Author: Scott Andrew Hutchins (scottandrewh@yahoo.com) from New York, New York
24 February 2011

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Being a film geek myself, I was expecting to see a lot of myself in Scotty, but he got on my nerves, going into things that I would rarely say aloud to keep from alienating people. His tastes are also pedestrian and mainstream. The essential story is that a man gets fired from a job that he loves, is forced into another job where he is completely out of his element (in this case, an auto parts warehouse), then has an improbable ending. In F.W. Murnau's _The Last Laugh_, to which I'm surprised the film makes no explicit reference, a man is forced out of a job as a doorman that he loves to a job as a washroom attendant, in which he is ashamed, although the pay is higher. In that film, which is silent with text only in the mise-en-scène until an intertitle punctuates an improbable (in the film's own words) ending in which the man wins the lottery, which he was never shown entering. This film takes the same structure, only it's punctuated with Scotty nude and masturbating before a sink (there are several previous egregious such shots in which he has his rear end hanging out--Mr. Westby, did you really need so show more than Scotty going into the bathroom with a picture of a girl?) rather than a cinematic device. In this case, it reveals that Scotty's Hollywood ending was pure, unmotivated fantasy, even though it at least worked in a semiplausible "how."

This film is alternately cloying and cringe-worthy, with most of the cringing coming from Scotty's alienating persona, and cloying when he discusses his love of film. The biggest laugh I got was when he whispers in his neighbor's ear that Niko's ex likes scat, in reference to a scene earlier in the film in which he saw her while trying to abscond a video that she essentially stole from him.

The most likable character in the film is the beautiful Tyler Gannon, but even she is unpleasant in the way she uses Scotty, and is essentially a bahng-smoking ne'er-do-well who wants to make her boyfriend jealous. If the film were more satirical, it would work, but it seems to want us to like both Scotty and Niko, and fails miserably.

It's easy to understand why Scotty would be fired from a mainstream video store, less so that a niche video store would refuse to hire him, when he clearly has the credentials to do a job. Kim's Video in New York would probably hire this guy in a second, but this guy lives in Portland, Oregon.

Overall, the characters are incredibly flat. There is nothing to Scotty beyond his interest in film, and though Niko is a collage artist, we mostly see someone else's paintings and only get brief flashes of any collages, presumably because nothing suitable could be obtained or made in time for the shooting.

I disliked _Napoleon Dynamite_ immensely, and the comparisons between films are fairly valid, even though the likable girl in that film seemed almost out of place.

If the film had been darker or more satirical, it might have worked, but it mostly goes for cheap laughs with cardboard characters that essentially fall flat. The film is mired in mediocrity. Why didn't Scotty at least try to study film in college instead of live in a tiny apartment as a video store clerk? At least then, the temp services might offer him something more than a warehouse job, although in the current economy, probably not. The film does seem set in another time, probably the late 1990s, as DVDs are only starting to infiltrate the store. As Video Connection is not a niche store, by 2005, it would probably have abandoned all of its VHS regardless of whether a DVD of a particular title was available. These days I know of no walk-in video rental stores with the exception of a few niche shops or a Blockbuster franchise.

2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:

Spoiler is in plot description

Author: chrisleb1 from USA
2 September 2008

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

To say in the plot description, "The story of Scotty Pelk, a socially inept video store clerk who gets fired from his job and becomes a sensation as an online film critic," is itself a spoiler.

Thank goodness I watched the movie without taking a look at its IMDb page.

I would rather see something like, "The story of Scotty Pelk, a socially inept video store clerk who gets fired from his job and tries to find another way to put his encyclopedic movie knowledge to good use."

I thought the movie was rather sweet, and a useful portrayal of a misfit who I assume suffers from Asperger's Syndrome.

3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:

Clerks for the current DVD generation

Author: DJJOEINC from Virginia Beach
20 May 2007

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Film Geek - a pleasant surprise- a funny indie about a video store clerk obsessed with movies.Sadly his social skills and over-eagerness make him a pain to work with - so he gets fired from the one job he seems to be cut out for.Lots of funny stuff in this one- as we watch his doomed courtship with the cute artist who likes Cronenberg and electronica.His attempts to catch up to her hipness are also funny. I work at a video store so I get an awful lot of the inside jokes in this one- but there are enough funny moments that are universal that folks that enjoy smaller films should enjoy this one also.The DVD also has a humorous short film The Autuer which is basically a porn director shooting commentary for his recent epic. B+

6 out of 11 people found the following review useful:

Lets Speak Geek

Author: fwomp from United States
24 August 2006

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Watching something like FILM GEEK makes me feel good. Sometimes I sense my social skills slipping, but watching Melik Malkasian play Scotty Pelk in this flick boosted my confidence several rungs. You see, I'm into films, too (pretty obvious since you're reading this on a film review site, eh?) Undoubtedly, I compared some aspects of the Pelk persona with myself. Thankfully, I couldn't make many connections (Whew!)

Pelk is a video store employee with an encyclopedic knowledge of film and film history. Trouble is that's all he knows (he even has a zero-hit website devoted to film reviews, film history, and comparative film theory). He drives everyone around him nutso. Employees. Store patrons. Passersby on the street. No one is immune to Pelk's social ineptness. And dark days are headed his way. He's fired from the video store and is forced into a job at an auto-parts warehouse where he continues his film history harassment to anyone within earshot. But then he runs into Niko (Tyler Gannon, THUMBSUCKER), a funky artist who takes a strange liking to Pelk. They meet. They go out. And Pelk becomes enraptured to the point of stalking. He's so infatuated with her that he masturbates daily into his bathroom sink while staring at her picture. Obviously this isn't going to work. When Niko's old boyfriend shows back up, Pelk is on the outs again and has a meltdown. He tears up his little apartment and falls back into more masturbatory behavior ...only to have his phone ring. On the other end is a newspaper editor who wants to do an article on him and his website. The FILM GEEK becomes an overnight success, his website gets massive hit numbers, and movie-goers comment on his accurate film assessments. Even Niko comes back to him ...or does she?

Director James Westby lets us make up our own minds about what happened in the end. Did the FILM GEEK actually become popular? Or was his mind spewing forth fantasies while he let loose his physical emissions into the sink? The dark humor is deftly handled (no pun intended) and the scenes involving Pelk's discovery of his own social limitations are pulled off very well.

Comparisons to NAPOLEON DYNAMITE are appropriate here. Both movies had limited budgets. Both had quirky characters with poor interpersonal relationships. Both main characters succeed (?) due to the very thing that makes them so dysfunctional.

Although FILM GEEK had lower production standards than Napoleon Dynamite, FILM GEEK certainly ranks up there with it in terms of script, acting, and freaky character development.

14 out of 27 people found the following review useful:

Scotty is wonderful

Author: jraypdx from United States
7 April 2005

Wow....two weeks later and I'm still amazed at how good Film Geek was. It's just good clean and sometimes not so clean fun. If I had a DVD copy of it I would rearrange my collection and place it right in-between Rainman and Napoleon Dynamite. What a character study. Scotty was a believable little weirdo the entire movie. He's the kind of character you just fall in love with. I found myself at the video store where the director works "Videorama" searching for a movie and I thought to myself, what would Scotty rent. A must see for anyone who loves a good off beat character study....checkout Film Geek. I want to watch it right now, I guess maybe I have a little bit of Scotty in me. Hurry up and get it to DVD!

Pure Inspiration!

Author: Kylegrnwd from United States
10 March 2013

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This movie starts off a little slow but it's strange obscure style grows on you as you continue to watch it. The story is quite realistic, while portraying the rarely attainable fame and fortune mentality of today's society. Overall this movie is entertaining, and awe-inspiring in it's own weird geeky way. I had a few good laughs with the occasional care of character build up in this move. This movie also shows the kind hearted side of people and how they can look past themselves, but who often get distracted by irrational decisions in their life. This film helped me put things into perspective in my life including the inspiration that I need to declare a major in college!

Squeeze one off

Author: Joe Bob Jones from United States
1 October 2012

Film Geek is an excellent fantasy for any guy who has stood at the sink and squeezed one out. You know you have.... I did just the other night. That said, what the hell is wrong with a well made nerd done good story? Nothing, if it is spot on, and Film Geek is. Of course it is improbable, yet it is such a genuine sad sack coming of reckoning film, you have to like it. The absolute geek manner of Scotty, at times he even causes you to roll your eyes, whose genuine nature draws in the nerd viewer due to the purely over the top dumpkopftnedness (new word), is wonderfully earnest. He fumbles, he is quite simply retarded, he knows no boundaries. Still, this allows all of us to rest humorously in the viewing security that we ourselves, surely, didn't do so blatantly badly with women, or even the most basic social situations. In that way, we all fall in love with Scotty, which is part of the whole directive. Awkward nerds rejoice, we can still find a hopeful and victorious way out. Why not love this film? I did.

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