A great indie film that sets modest goals and achieves them: Old Joy

If you could combine, say, Sideways without the sex, My Dinner with Andre without New York, Deliverance without the violence, and Blair Witch without the witches you might have something like "Old Joy," a buddy movie that has essentially two characters only, two guys in late-20s, friends who've grown apart as one, Mark, has moved on with his life, married, wife expecting, and Kurt is still locked in their old days as late-vintage Portland hippies. The two guys go off for a weekend of camping, and it becomes more obvious as it proceeds that Kurt is a deeply troubled young man and unlikely to get along with his life, and that Mark is humoring him or carrying him, out of old loyalty, but Mark has moved beyond those days - the pull of responsibility, his guilt about leaving his pregnant wife back at home, is a torment to him that he can't shake. It would be harder for him were there anything appealing about Kurt, but there isn't - as Mark is well aware. The movie is very simple, based on a short story, and it speaks volumes about friendship and time and maturity, as much by what it doesn't say as by what it does. Also very beautiful shots of Oregon in its grandeur (their trip through the Cascades culminates at a hidden, kind of spooky hot springs spa) and its decrepitude, impoverished small lumber towns and the dreary gray outskirts of Portland. It's kind of a guy movie, though not in a macho way at all, but I think women would not completely "get" Mark's ambivalence and his struggle - though I'm pretty sure the writer/director, Kelly something, is a woman, so go figure. A great indie film that sets modest goals and achieves them.