Red Flag (2013)
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 18
Fresh: 14 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Critic Reviews: 10
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 346
My Rating
Movie Info
A laugh-out-loud road trip comedy, starring writer/director Alex Karpovsky ("Girls," TINY FURNITURE) as Alex Karpovsky, a newly-single indie filmmaker who hits the road with an old friend (Onur Tukel) to promote one of his films. As the pair travels from one half-empty theater to the next, pursued by an adoring fan (Jennifer Prediger) who drives them into an exceptionally uncomfortable love triangle, Alex-as-Alex is forced to suffer an endless series of humiliations, each one more absurd than
Feb 22, 2013 Limited
Tribeca Film
- Official Site
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All Critics (18) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (14) | Rotten (4)
Alex Karpovsky picks at a navel better left ungazed.
Top CriticIn an era when awkwardness is the new self-confidence, the director manages to be palpably neurotic without trying too hard.
If it's all reasonably familiar indie-comedy terrain, it's delivered at a brisk, economical clip with plenty of laughs, and a series of running gags that keep getting funnier.
If only "Red Flag" were funnier and tighter and had a sharper idea about what it means to blur the lines between self-interrogation and self-absorption.
Karpovsky's anxiety-ridden shtick here combines the crippling doubt and self-loathing of many Woody Allen protagonists with the obnoxious solipsism of Larry David.
Owing a debt to Albert Brooks' early comedies, "Red Flag" might be too much if it weren't just right.
Starring roles in two of his own micro-budget indie films suggest a future that won't involve lattes or Lena Dunham.
It surprisingly abandons its obvious meta elements and unfolds as a straightforward road-trip flick, opting for an exhibition of self-loathing rather than self-reflexivity.
Modest, personal, and nicely proportioned, Red Flag resembles one of Hong Sang-soo's self-reflexive doodles about relationships and filmmaking-Oki's Movie, in particular-and it wisely doesn't take too big a bite.
This could be a recipe for excessive self-indulgence, but the meta quality of "Red Flag" is entirely irrelevant to its low key charm and persistent irreverence -- anchored, as always, by Karpovsky's loopy screen presence.
Karpovsky is an engaging screen presence, doing comic artistic neurosis in "Red Flag"..an explosion of work from an intriguing filmmaker.
Establishes Karpovsky as the Woody Allen of the digital media generation: As he presents himself here, he is as self-absorbed as Allen, but his comfort with new technology results in a lo-fi video diary that the perfectionist Allen would eschew.
...your tolerance for Karpovsky himself, who has appeared in several Lena Dunham projects, will determine your appreciation; based on an informal survey, I find him more amusing than most.
When Red Flag really hits its stride, which happens somewhat late in its second act, it becomes the film it should be through and through -- a funny, well-observed, keenly acted feature about drama, trauma, and second chances.
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