Ten 'til Noon (2007)

The Age of Commercialism

People are voting emotionally.

As Good As It Gets

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie went bad faster than a jug of milk left outside on a summer day in the Sahara Desert. These filmmakers came up with one good idea and then spent the 87 minutes of 10 'til Noon proving they had absolutely NOTHING else to offer. After watching this, I now believe inspiration should not strike some people.The good idea of this film is that it is about what happens one day to an interconnected group of people between 11:50 AM and Noon. The story is told in 10 minute segments where we see what happened to a different character in that amount of time. The first two segments are okay. They're not great, but they're good enough to keep your interest. Unfortunately, the 67 minutes that follow are awful and get worse as they go along. And when I say awful, I mean crappy 1970s sitcom awful.The first 10 minutes focuses on Larry Taylor (Rick D. Wasserman). He's a rich man who wakes up to discover Mr. Jay (Alfonso Freeman) and Miss Milch (Jenya Lano) starring at him. They're there to kill Larry. Mr. Jay is one of those hit men who talk like he went to finishing school and then got a philosophy degree. Miss Milch…just stands there.The second 10 minutes focuses on Larry's wife, Becky (Rayne Guest). She's having rough sex in a hotel room with Alan Free (Jason Hamer). Becky seems like the angriest woman in the world, yet Alan still inexplicably cares for her.The third 10 minutes focuses on Carter and Rush (Daniel Hagen and Dylan Kussman), two surveillance experts who masturbate in front of each other. Do you see what I mean about the story going downhill? Carter and Rush are spying on Becky and Alan for a man named Mr. Duke (Thomas Kopache).Mr. Duke is the subject of the fourth 10 minute segment as we see him arrange everything that's happened in the movie so far. I will admit there are a few moments in this stretch that are pretty good when Mr. Duke explains his plans to one of his henchmen, thanks mostly to the acting chops of Thomas Kopache. That doesn't change the fact you could cut this entire segment out of the film and it wouldn't affect anything.The fifth 10 minutes are about Leo (George Williams), the unintentionally buffoonish gangster that is Mr. Duke's boss and the reason why Becky is getting spied on and Larry is getting killed. Leo is more like Al Bundy than Al Capone, right up to having a wife he wants nothing to do with. Sheba (Jennifer Hill) walks around topless most of the time she's on screen and has a really ugly boob job. Whether these filmmakers deliberately cast an actress with a really ugly boob job to make some sort of point about the character of Sheba or if they just wouldn't know an attractive breast if it slapped them in the face, I can't say.I'll leave the remaining segments of 10 'til Noon to your imagination because, frankly, what you come up with in your own head will be better than what's actually in the movie.This is also one of those movies that doesn't have an ending. It just stops. When I was watching it and the end credits came up, I thought there HAD to be something more. Well, there was…but it was an epilogue that had nothing to do with the nonsensical way the main story finished. The epilogue did include some atrocious acting, making sure you finish the experience of viewing 10 'Til Noon with the worst possible aftertaste.The truth about 10 'til Noon is that these filmmakers came up with 20 minutes of watchable stuff, added 40 minutes of pointless dreck and another 27 minutes of drivel that made less sense than a dyslexic hamster. They should have just come up with 10 more minutes of decent material, add that to the first 20 minutes of this movie and been happy with a nice film festival entry. Instead they came up with a feature film that sucks. As Dirty Harry said, "A man's got to know his limitations".

I've seen bad movies. I live for bad movies. This wasn't a bad movie. I read reviews and expected a bad Pulp Fiction or Usual Suspects knock off, which this isn't. If it was attempting to emulate Tarantino, thankfully it failed. There are a few "what just happened" moments, a few "what does this have to do with" and while it comes together in the end you're left wondering, just enough to make it worthwhile. At one point I thought it would be a great time to end, with maybe some questions unanswered and sure enough that's when it ended. This should be one of those that people talk about at work the next day, and unlike the kind of stuff I usually watch, the next 10 minutes are unexpected ... every time.

I should've realised it was a sign of things to come when the trailer for this film bored me.Having watched several "indie" films on the strength of the reviews on here, and subsequently finding that my view is completely opposite to those other reviewers, I began wondering if it's possible I am watching completely different films from these people, or are they perhaps friends/family etc of the film makers trying to 'big up' their work? Hmmm.Are you interested in seeing an amateur's homage to Pulp Fiction and 11:14, except done with worse actors, a silly score (undermines various scenes) and unbelievable jumps in logic? If not, then skip this film.Here is my open letter to two of the players in this film.Alfonso Morgan, please, please, please, stop trying to 'be' Samuel L Jackon a la Pulp Fiction. No-one can do what he does as well as he does.Director, please come up with something original. It does you a disservice to churn out this stuff pretending to be Quentin Tarantino.Simply dire, and I really cannot see how anyone could say this is a good film. It is a disgrace that people have somehow managed to put a score of 8.5 on this, the same as films like Pulp fiction or Goodfellas. It is no-where near these movies; a 4 or 5 would be a more reasonable average rating, I give it a 3.

I recently had the privilege to view the motion picture Ten 'Til Noon. This movie is an edgy flick that's not for the whole family. It has many twists and turns that keep you guessing. Just when you think you knew what's going on, you find that you didn't know. This movie has it all; suspense, laughter, violence, betrayal, sex and a surprising love story. The story is told in the same ten minutes of the different characters that are linked in what appears to be a home invasion robbery. My mood was apathetic when the movie first started, but as each tale evolved my interest peaked. I couldn't wait to see what was next, even though it was sometimes shocking. The movie reminded me of a Quentin Tarantino directed movie and it had some of the suspense of "The Usual Suspects". After the movie was over, I found myself wanting to see it again. I feel that it would have this effect on most people or it would completely turn you off. The only question I had was "…what happened to Reuben?"