Following is a Brief Film

The review:

Christopher Nolan’s Following is embryonic Nolan,* and is a good showcase of what we put up with in the 90s when it came to independent films.** I always enjoy a shifting timeline, so that was a win, but I found that the distance of all of the characters made it difficult to care about what was happening on screen.*** It’s nice to know that better Nolan films were on deck.

The verdict: Skip

(Unless Nolan Completest, or watching to keep up with Filmspotting’s Oeuvre-view.)

Cost: $2.99 via Google Play****
Where watched: at home

Consider watching these other Christopher Nolan films instead:

• Memento
• The Prestige
• Inception
• Dunkirk

Further sentences:

*Including its paltry 69-minute (that’s one hour and nine minutes!) run time.
**A lot, including so-so acting. This wasn’t quite the showcase of 90s indie annoyances as Next Stop Wonderland was, but it did have a lot of them.
***The black and white felt like a bit much.
****The median length of a film between 1994 and 2015 is 107 minutes which means this should have cost $1.70 proportionally. (And yes! I just used algebra to solve that problem!)

Questions:

• What did you think of Lucy Russell’s acting? Decent for the role that was written? Or not good?
• Did you figure out the ending before the ending?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Principal photography of this film took more than one year. Because all cast and crew members had other full-time jobs they were only able to film about 15 minutes of footage on Saturdays until photography had been completed.