Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness.

"A low budget musical, highly improvised, shot on consumer video and blown up to film?" grins Karina Longworth in the SpoutBlog. "I'm there. I've been wanting to see Laurin Federlein's Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness since reading write-ups of its premiere at Rotterdam a year ago, followed by a number of conflicted but not necessarily dismissive reviews from LAFF."

Updated through 2/2.

"Commencing abruptly, shaped with jump cuts, and built around improvised conversations between Vincent (Magnus Aronson) and a varied cast of Scottish Highlands locals playing themselves, the film's opening scene serves as an inoculation against any possible ill effects from the 69 minutes of provocatively cheesy-looking and raggedly timed deadpan events to come," writes Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun.

"It wears its roughness as a badge of honor and is all the funnier as a result," writes Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times.

Earlier: Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

Update, 2/2: For Paul Schrodt, this is "a movie every bit as cumbersome and trying as its title" and it "has the distinct mark of self-indulgence."

Posted by dwhudson at February 1, 2008 8:08 AM