WILD CANARIES

Film Info
Director:Lawrence Michael Levine
Running Time:98 min
Country:USA
Year of Release:2014

Description

Wild Canaries centers on bumbling twenty-something Brooklynite, Barri, as she becomes convinced that foul play was involved in the death of her elderly neighbor. Meanwhile, her thirty-something, jaded and grumpy husband-to-be, Noah, does everything in his power to reign in what he sees as foolish speculation and meddlesome tendencies on the part of his fiance. Enter the couple’s roommate Jean (an outstanding turn by Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat), whose maybe-not- so-platonic feelings towards Barri increase tensions in the household and may help to inform her belief that Barri is on to something. As the plot thickens, so too does the pre-marital discord.

An outstanding ensemble cast fleshes out the rest of the film including Kevin Corrigan (Martin Scorsese’s The Departed) as the decedent’s vaguely creepy son and Jason Ritter as the couple’s boozing artist landlord who has secrets of his own. Wild Canaries’ interplay between genres and themes forms an elegant and uproarious whole that showcases the filmmakers’ many talents, upping the ante on their previous works. A highly entertaining and carefully crafted film that gleefully and smartly references the likes of Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery and Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? and their genre-classic forebearers, while maintaining a thoroughly modern sense of life in 21st century New York. As if the pressures of big city living and an impending marriage weren’t enough, there just might be a killer loose in the building! –Maryland Film Fest

Starring Sophia Takal, Alia Shawkat, Lawrence Michael Levine and Kevin Corrigan