Returned

Magandang pelikula!

When you are watching urban, you are not watching a regular, general-purpose film. An urban is intended to reach black and brown youth. It carries a message for them, and not for you. The message is in the form of a motion picture, showing them themselves in the world. It gives them examples of how to be. And also, it is an infomercial for the black film industry, itself. Location filming is often done at black-owned businesses. I gave it five stars, because it is not meant to be judged as a usual film. So my five, is a neutral score. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site, which has all kinds of indies, foreigns, and older major studio film. Now Tubi has live TV.

I saw this movie last night and finished watching it this morning. (I did sleep well, thank you Lamant.) Seriously, this movie looks like a pilot film for a TV series, or at least a film student's work. Mix-marriage couple has a son. The father has a nose bleed and he and his wife leave their son with Grandma and disappear. Years later the son has a nose bleed due to cancer. He also goes on a flight and disappears. What follows is a search as to where he was and why he came back while everyone else on his flight are still gone. Interesting story. The bad parts... At the beginning of the movie the camera man appears to have chosen to hold the camera after drinking a pot of coffee. I was getting motion sickness at all the extreme close-ups that did nothing for the movie. A couple of times the idea of this being a "God's message" movie crept up as the question of "Do you believe in God?" and "Do you have faith?" was said a few times. Blue Kimble did a nice job at times in his role but others seemed to be "going through the motions" since they seemed to either be acting students or upset for giving up a three-day weekend to be in his film. Diane Kirby gave a nice presence in this film. However, Agent Smith (Theresa Sullivan) kept smiling through every conversation until the end. Then we have Lethomas Lee and his so-out-of-character beard and over-the-top testosterone-driven acting. Yeah, we know his character is a bad ass with a sophomoric attitude to shoot first and ask questions later. Overall, the first 4/5 of the story progressed with the speed of an ice glacier... slow, dragging, non-threatening. Just a character running from the "Captain Obvious" FBI agents while chasing down a TV anchor woman. But when the action FINALLY started to take place I was held to the screen. If this progressed into something more, I would keep Blue Kimble and Diane Kirby and scrap the rest of the cast. Give it a season on TV and reintroduce Lathan's parents. I would also get more people to help poor Lamant Gant, since it appears he held every position in making this movie.

I can honestly say I enjoyed this movie. It was clearly made on a very small budget and upon finding out it was only $7000 I was actually more impressed than before. People don't often understand where the budget tends to go and don't know much about the inner workings of how movies are really made. Space rentals, catering, actors, crew members, costumes, makeup artists, equipment, extras, ad spots, cgi, posters/promotional materials, etc all have to be bought and paid for with that budget. For a movie to be made with only $7000 and still be pretty darn good is a feat in and of itself. This movie has great bones, the story was compelling and hooked me pretty early on. The cgi was better than some syfy channel productions with millions in budget. The acting was ok across the board, some were better than others but it was forgivable because the whole movie was very interesting. And the makeup for the alien woman was really quite neat! Heck, I would cosplay it. I have seen a lot, and I mean A LOT, of outright terrible, nauseatingly bad, horrendous, "who even funded this?", "people had to okay this and nobody said this is trash, utter trash.", type movies (I really do mean a lot), and Returned was NOT one of those movies. I say give credit where credit is due and applaud the whole cast and crew for doing a great job with what they had to work with. With a bigger budget behind this film I bet it would turn out better than the mediocre mess that was Mortal Engines. I appreciate and enjoy this movie for what it was and you can tell the cast enjoyed making it as well. All in all, engaging story, decent cgi considering the shoestring budget, mostly good acting (I mean really, everyone in the cast was better than Kristen Stewart), and well edited/put together. 6/10

16 May 2017. First off this is a Lamont Gant's film, his fourth. He was apparently the director, one of three writers, one of three novelists, producer, director of photography, production designer, editor, costume designer, visual effects supervisor, music supervisor, one of two casting directors, and even the boom operator for this movie. This movie won't appeal to many audience members much more used to the big multi-million dollar sci fi action blockbusters. Besides the mostly human wooden performance except when she becomes really angry, Theresa Sullivan (her second casting in a Lamont and only other movie) as the important FBI agent Jourdan Smith, the cast performs decently overall. Unfortunately, because Agent Smith's role is a prominent one, her inability to offer an expressive demeanor takes a significant bite out of the entire movie. What is appealing about this movie is its rather unique take of experimenting with various photographic approaches and angles. The audio sound of this movie is sharp and crisp if not a hundred percent in sync as well as a more than adequate sound track. The alien landscapes and alien atmosphere are eerily inviting and inventive. Additionally, the alien make-up, costume design aren't half bad at all. The movie has elements found in more subdued, sci fi movies that emphasize narrative and characterization over action (K-Pax 2001; Melancholia 2011; Another Earth 2011; Safety Not Guaranteed 2012; The Signal 2014) and its usually live video quality of the developing dramatic narrative is where this movie excels. Yet towards the end, the movie as it gets into more of the intriguing sci fi aspects, the pacing and emotional momentum falls off somewhat. The existential theme of the movie towards the end was commendable, but its portrayal was somewhat weak in its depiction, all the morality, and goodness, the softly twisting ending that most sci fi monster movies avoid. In short, this movie is more like a university graduate student project that actually for its attempt is a decent one. But as a full feature film in competition with major independents, it falls a bit short.

The sci-fi aspect of this was okay, the idea had promise, it's just the movie needed better execution. The lead actor did well but had little to back him up. An example being Agent Smith delivering in the flattest of ways " I don't know how to tell you this but there were no other survivors" Until the final 20 minutes, everything just seemed a little half-hearted. I'm sure some sci-fi lovers will love this, I just felt it was a chance missed.

Like the way you slipped the title of the next film in the series(they will Return) Diane, Blue the cast and Lamont. Brilliant job and you know some technical things need to augmented and though an Oustanding Production. Maybe some folk might be dazed and not quite WOKE yet, however that's Hu man's 4 ya. Looking forward to another Adventure before returning to that EAR th Consider me a fan. Peace👽😎 kmd.

Ben Lathan (Blue Kimble) is flying to NY with stage 4 cancer. He never gets there. Twelve years later he shows up floating in the ocean (too low budget to see). His parents had disappeared in 1992. He has a fascination for news caster (Diane Kirby) as he tries to recall through his dreams. The FBI wants to know what happened and we find out with a detailed explanation at 74 minutes into the film when the film moves from drama to science fiction...in case you get bored and want to FF. The acting was downright bad. Atlanta has good actors and none of them showed up for this film. The sound was uneven and the soundtrack didn't rate. The plot was simple and similar to other features. I would say they made a mistake revealing the explanation all at once. They should have eased into it as a subplot using vivid dreams and flashbacks. That would have broken up the bad drama scenes. Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity. Sets up for a series, hopefully with Roy Thinnes.

I would like to congratulate Lamont on his work. I am amazed that for a budget of $7000 or somewhere there, he had written, produced, directed and cast as many actors in a film like this on such a small budget. In addition, he has sond effects, special effects, computer effects and even stunts. This is actually amazing - given the super small budget to film and edit and then to market this. There are production companies and studios given hundreds of millions of dollars to do movies and they don't come out 1 /10th as good, not do they have a good story. While this movie has flaws, yes - some are obvious, what is truely remarkable is the ability to deliver an actual story- where so many films fail to do so. Whomever Lamont is - and whatever happened to him after this, somebody in the major studios and production houses in LA or New York or any major film location - should seriously seek him out and hire him right soon. After countless hundreds of big-budget flops which I've seen - paid or free, this is a nice refreshing change. Is this film worthy of a 10 to me? Not with the faults which a poor budget brings - but it's a ten in the method that with as much was required to even get a 30 minute film complete, this has matched andd surpassed that by delivering about an hour and a half story. To those who voted this a 1 or a 2, - you seriously need to re-evaluate films and the effort that it takes to make something - and once again, to make it on a super-small budget - as much as a decent used car and to then handle the marketing - all around for $7000, well that takes a genius to do - and somebody who really knows what they are doing. There have been movies made with less - yes, but they were shaky cam, go nowhere plot which relied of cheap scares and offered a fraction of the value shown here. Everybody in this film did a tremendous job, while in the same breath, not all the actors were good. However - with all things equaling out, this movie is pretty solid - and I would love to see what the crew can do with a budget of 5 or 10 million - or more. In a world where remakes after remakes and franchise films populate the theatres, this is a fantastic fresh and interesting take on science fiction, drama and film overall. I'm sick of the Batman movies and the Transformer movies and all the hyped up crap that gets pumped out every 2 months from Universal or MGM and basically Hollywood in general. Hollywood has relied upon Iron Man and Superman and Spiderman and Star Wars for far too long and as far as I'm concerned, those franchise films failed many years ago. The last Ghostbusters was a horrid piece of trash and the budget was thousands of times more than this. Lamont and the rest of the cast and crew did a wiccked job and they should be proud, they certainly impressed me to make me review this film with such a high rating, because there are not too many that do. Looking forward to your next pieces of work folks - and good luck out there. Thanks for making something I enjoyed watching and I hope you all do well in your fields. Interesting story and fantastic work.

...and better written. It is impressive the film had a 7000 $ budget. They probably could have done it cheaper still though. There is a lot of this movie that just doesn't seem necessary. The audio is just painful to listen to. The music at times is louder than the dialog. Other times there is no dialog and the music is too quiet to elude to it being on purpose. If you just listen to this movie, I think it would be a contender for worst movie ever. The actors are trying to read lines that actual humans don't say and it comes off sounding that way. I'm suspicious they had no latitude to say the same thing with a minor alteration or lacked the confidence to try it. The camera work doesn't need to be great but steadier and mediocre would have been a lot of help. Some redeeming points, the actors are all nice and handsome people. They seem articulate and there is nothing to say, with more work, they couldn't someday look back on this one with a chuckle. I also appreciate the effort to entertain even with such an impossible budget. That being said, the story lets them down here. And the special effects I thought were bad but it's not a deal breaker for me. Story > acting > audio > sx imo. If they are so bad it breaks the immersion and instead of following the story, you start feeling embarrassed for the crew, it's bad. I didn't necessarily get to that point with the special effects.