Comedy punk heartthrob Ashton Kutcher's attempt to go 'serious' isn't as bad as it's been made out, though it owes plenty to every other go-back-in-time thriller. Vague chaos theory allows our boy to change his past and try to realign relationships with his father and his beloved Amy Smart. But things fall apart, and the mysticism's mystifying.
The epitome of love-it-or-hate-it cinema, Mark and Michael Polish's surreal account of a mid-'50s Montana town about to be submerged by dam waters has absolutely no hook for the viewer other than sheer admiration for the beauty of the landscape, a gutsy disregard for narrative pacing and the detached Lynchian performances. Proudly unique, nonetheless.
Even before Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand cited jangling, DiY indie as a touchstone, it had influenced Kurt Cobain (who covered The Vaselines' "Molly's Lips", featured here), the Manics and Saint Etienne. Essentially, indie-pop continued where Postcard records (Orange Juice, Josef K et al) left off a few years earlier (though minus the soul influences).
