Little Birds

Lily is deeply depressed (over what we can’t quite be sure but it gives the right to be sullen, selfish, and cruel) and strikes out in rebellion, often self destructive rebellion. Her father committed suicide in her younger years, and her mother struggles to support her and a totally disabled veteran brother, and they are obviously dirt poor in a very impoverished neighborhood beside the Salton Sea. Nevertheless, Mom tries to get brat Lily counseling. Allison, Ali, her best friend has an alcoholic and nearly incapable father. So these two girls have it about as bad as it can get in the white world – rite? Not quite. Lily has a loving mother, who tries and tries to lure her into reason and being reasonable with her love and loving words. Ali has Uncle Beck – who steps up and helps her as an adult mentor, and Ali being much more adult and amenable to accepting responsibility than Lili - saves the two from their disastrous trip to LA. Lily gets the hots for a skateboard punk who shows up in Salton. They follow these skateboard guys to LA. They get involved in a very ugly seedy underworld even worse than their home town. Ali saves Lily from her the mess she gets into by being the bait to lure men so the skateboard punks can rob them, and is the real heroine of the story, I see everyone fawning here over Juno Temple. Her character was pretty simple – angry, sullen, bitter, self destructive. But Kay Penebaker had a much more difficult role – to be the trusting friend of a self-destructive and cruel brat, the one with a moral compass, the one who had the control in terms of transportation to LA, the one who had choices – moral choices. And had to make them to save her friend. Juno’s character had no choices to make – she was simply a self pitying, destructive brat using Ali, and being used by jerks that she did not imagine existed based on her Salton Sea experience. Kay had a much more difficult role – taking care of the brat, self destructive, girl that Juno played. I thought Kay Penebaker was by far the best actor in this movie. We are simply left with the girls going home, and with the hope that Ali would not be punished for saving Lily, and that Lily would have some kind of awakening that would allow her to assume some adult responsibility for her life. In the real world, the girls left far too many tracks behind, including the punks who used them and would certainly rat them out in a minute, and would likely be found be authorities. Yes, we are all products of our environment to an extent, but we also all make choices. Two girls from the same environment make very different choices - one likely to escape that environment, the other likely to perpetuate the cycle. It is well worth watching, and reflecting upon how much we can excuse the choices we make by the place and circumstances of our birth.

Salton Sea is a desolate place in Southern California not far from LA. People live there (wonder why and how) among rotten trailer parks and abandoned filthy pools. They have kids! Kids are bored, uneducated and have absolutely nothing to do.Lily (Juno Temple) and Alison (Kay Panabaker) are two 15-year old friends that live in this desolate area. Lily lives with her mother (Leslie Mann) who is single (or divorced?). Alison's father is some kind of ridiculous slow, maybe alcoholic individual who is unable to take care of himself and doesn't really care about his daughter. Lily, visits with her young and already washed up Aunt (Kate Bosworth) who takes care of her husband (?) who obviously has problems (...apparently he was shot in the head and is unable to take care of himself, but we never get the story). Obviously, the father figure, like in most movies coming from Hollywood, is missing and when he is part of the plot, the father in most current films, plays minor roles in the life of adolescents. Maybe the problem of today's society starts right there? Fathers are always portrayed as weak and selfish individuals, who most of the time don't understand the "complicated" mind of adolescents.One day Lily and Alison meet a band of young boys who came there from LA and just ...have nothing to do also. Lily falls for one of the boys and decides to follow him to LA. Alison goes with her. And in LA while there are plenty of things to do, still the boys and girls are bored and find nothing constructive to do. Until they decide to do something really stupid and the consequences are serious.I am not sure what would be the message of this movie: the new generation lives in misery and boredom and the parents are at fault? I don't know. The father figure is missing and that may explain a lot of things as far as the behavior of adolescents today.Juno Temple is just outstanding in her role. Recently, I have seen her in the same role of a bored teenager that really doesn't do much all day long, in three movies including this one (Killer Joe and Jack and Diane are the other two). I have seen her in the past in "Cracks" and "Attonement". She is really very talented. "Cracks" is an outstanding movie and the performance of Eva Green overshadows everybody. Still Juno Temple distinguishes herself.Five stars for the acting and the direction. This is not a movie that will remain in the history of cinematography but it is good entertainment that definitely makes you think about what a family is.

...of course I had to see this. I hadn't heard of it, but these days there are so many movies being produced that something has to stand out in order for me to take the time to see it. Maybe I liked it more because of my special interest in the Sea, but it kept me fascinated. It's like a nightmare 'Afterschool Special'! Who can blame teenagers being brought up in Bombay Beach for wanting to leave? Not me, (cause I left a similarly trashy & hopeless place as a teenager) but the way these two ended up was beyond unfortunate!The acting was very good from everyone, as was the photography-even though the locations shot at the Sea were not all from Bombay Beach and no way did these girls walk all these places, but it was much more interesting to watch because of this.The ending left some unanswered questions but I still recommend it IF you would ordinarily watch a movie like this or if you have an interest in the Salton Sea. It's much more interesting than the Val Kilmer movie from a decade ago and has more actual locations to look at.If this movie piques your interest, I also recommend the documentaries 'Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea', & the more recent 'Bombay Beach'.

of all the dvd's i,ve bought and watched, this is the only one i actually threw away when i was done watching. juno temple is a favorite of mine, and i still tossed it. it was that bad....

A movie about bad choices made when there seems few choices to make. How a need to escape can be confused with love; how friendship can be frivolously discarded; how wanting anything but what you have can lead to losing everything. Life on the outskirts of society can quickly lead to losing what little dignity you have. It would have been too contrived to have a happy ending, but at least the two little birds could return to their world unscathed... we think.

"I traveled halfway around the world to find out people are stupid and cruel everywhere," says one older character in this odd movie, and that seems to be its theme. All the characters are cruel, stupid or both. Juno Temple excels as a 15 year old, bored and restless like teenagers living in backwaters the world over, who finds this out the hard way when she goads her needy, downtrodden friend into stealing a truck and driving her to the big city. For those interested there is nudity, sex, violence, drugs, swearing — pretty much anything you might expect in a realistic depiction of teens. Convincing performances along with solid direction and camerawork manage to make an otherwise dreary, predictable story interesting and entertaining. But if you ever had dreams of going to California, this will probably kill them.

thanks