A lot of fun.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

American Crime is a film that takes on two different genres in two different mediums, so it's not surprising that it ends up trying to be two different things at the same time. But outside of a little too much dramatic license and a very arbitrary ending, this movie manages to be fairly entertaining, even though it never quite settles on how it's trying to entertain you.These filmmakers try to meld together the "real video" movie with a take on the true crime documentaries that infest television today. A young reporter named Jesse (Rachael Lee Cook), a young intern named Rob (Kip Pardue) and a producer from KCQN-TV named Jane (Anabella Sciorra) stumble upon a disturbing video tape while investigating the seemingly simple disappearance of a stripper. The tape shows someone stalking the stripper and includes images of another woman being stalked and killed. Then Jesse, Rob and Jane get another video of the stripper being stalked and killed, with images of Jesse being filmed without her knowledge on the tape as well. Then Jesse literally stumbles upon the dead body of the stripper. This stuff is clearing trying to invoke the atmosphere of films like The Blair Witch Project and Video X, with supposedly real video of actual events making up the story. But though Rob is constantly filming everything and we get flashes of pseudo-real video throughout the film, it is largely shot like a regular movie.But American Crime also introduces us to the story of Jesse, Rob and Jane as though they are the subject of TV show called "American Crime" hosted by Albert Bodine (Cary Elwes), a character who starts out annoying the snot out of you but slowly grows on you like moss or a fungus. Here the filmmakers combine elements of all three distinct levels of the TV crime documentary. They have the snooty and somewhat prissy narrator who is common on cable TV crime documentaries, along with the talking head interviews that dominate network TV crime docs and the sensationalistic, tabloidy video of the syndicated real crime TV show.Eventually, more tapes of women being stalked show up and Albert Bodine ceases to be a narrator of events that have already happened. He shows up in town to investigate what's happening with Rob and Jane, Jesse already having fled in fear. Albert, Rob and Jane, despite neither liking nor respecting respect each other, join together to find out who's killing these woman and what's behind these mysterious video tapes. And…okay, I have to admit. The plot kind of falls apart after that. There's some Scooby-Doo-ish investigating and they end up in the country at big empty house and some things happen that don't make much sense in the context of the rest of the story or even in their own right.Weirdly unsatisfying ending aside, this is a decent film. It's more than a bit uneven, sometimes being very much a horror/suspense story and other times forgetting it's trying to scare you and turning into an indy movie about drama in the workplace. But the scary scenes are relatively disturbing, the workplace drama is real enough to be intriguing and American Crimes shifts from one theme to the other smoothly enough, mixing them together like peanut butter and chocolate.The best thing about this movie is probably the performances. Rachael Lee Cook is generic as Jesse, but the other three lead characters are all appealing while not being that likable. Rob is really annoying, but in an honest way. Kip Pardue captures an essence of youth with Rob being so caught up in his dreams of being a great documentarian that he has absolutely no sense of himself or how he behaves. Albert is really, really aggravating at first. I mean, you really hate when he shows up and starts yapping away. It seems like Elwes is putting on a very mannered and pretentious performance, but as the story goes along you see it's actually Albert who putting on that facade to cover up who he actually is. Jane isn't annoying, but she is very sympathetic. Annabella Sciorra shows us that Jane's bad behavior isn't due to a lack of self-reflection like Rob or self-deception like Albert. Jane's an unhappy, lonely woman who feels trapped in her life and is clumsily trying to find her way out.This is also a visually creative movie. It has one of the best opening credit sequences I've ever seen and it effectively blends that "real video" look with traditional camera work. It's able to evoke that "this is what's happening" feel even when the images are like a normal film.There are too many times when the movie cheats and things happen in a way they couldn't happen in reality, like many a crappy horror flick. And again, the filmmakers may have thought they came up with a very smart and provocative ending…but they didn't. You can tell what they're trying to do, but they don't come close to doing it.Even with its flaws, if you can go with the flow and follow along as American Crime swerves from one thing to another, I think you'll enjoy it.

The reason I may have enjoyed this film is because I had extremely low expectations when I decided to sit down and watch it. I liked the idea of it and enjoyed parts of it but ultimately it is a very poorly executed wannabe thriller with so many clichés that it's almost sad. It's a good time if you turn your brain off so don't expect anything too intelligent at all.The acting isn't terrible, I've definitely seen worse and Rachael Leigh Cook is definitely easy on the eyes but there are better actors out there for sure. The story was definitely a good idea but it was executed very badly and in the end, it fell flat for me. I wanted it to work and I wanted to love it but it was nothing more than an okay film for a rainy day.I really have nothing more to say about this one. See it if you want, but if you decide not to, you really won't miss much.

The crew of a television of a small town composed of the reporter Jesse St. Claire (Rachel Leigh Cook), her lesbian supervisor Jane Berger (Annabella Sciorra) and the intern cameraman Rob Latrobe (Kip Pardue) are investigating the disappearance of the stripper Diana Cox (Julie Cialini). Rob received a videotape and found the shooting of another woman, Linda Mitchell (Amy Arce), in the same video, and he is convinced that the killer stalked his victims while filming them. When Jesse vanishes without a trace, the reporter Albert Bodine (Cary Elwes) from the syndicated television show "American Crime" joins the team in their investigation.First of all, I can not say if "American Crime" is a thriller supposed to be funny or a dark comedy. Indeed, it is a very boring low budget movie, with a promising beginning, but silly in the end story. Cary Elwes is simply awful, being a caricature of the most important character of the plot with one of the worst performances I have ever seen. Consequently, the direction is terrible, wasting what could have been a good story. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "Crimes em Série" ("Crimes in Series")

I thought this was another movie when I was preparing to watch it, so I was going to skip it. But in the beginning sequence I saw some names (not Kip Pardue, because I already knew he was in it); Rachael Leigh Cook (one of the most beautiful women on earth) and Cary Elwes. The director (Dan Mitz)…Didn't know him, neither the writers (Jack Moore, Jeff Ritchie). Anyway, I got into it.What I found out as I watched it is that is one of those, I don't know if independent or low-budget projects that try to bring some different and original stuff to the table. In that sense, the film reminded me to "My little eye". In a way, "American Crime" is not as good "My little eye", but it's not my intention to compare them or anything. As it happens with these projects, they're not always perfect. The film is flawed, and suffers from script problems, music, cinematography and direction.Writers propose an interesting enough premise to keep one focused for the entire ride, but before you realize, they're not giving any background to the actions of their characters, not even to the killer. It's OK, it's not an obligation to do that, but in this picture you start getting lost in the plot, because you just stop knowing who's who, what's what, why is everything happening in the first place. Big problems right there that remain unnoticed because of the outstanding screen presence given by the cast. I imagine these situations played by a lousy cast of actors…I would have been awful.I must say, first, that Kip Pardue (Rob Latrobe) it's a good actor. If I didn't find him good enough in "Driven", it was for the character he was playing; it was a very clichéd and easy character. But I saw him in other movies, and the kid can do it. Rachael Leigh Cook (Jesse St. Claire) lies between the best young actresses of her generation. Totally underestimated by the industry, she has stepped the lines of independent projects, giving always proofs of the unnoticed talent she is. In other cases, she has taken regular films to the top because of her performances ("Josie and the Pussycats", "Texas Rangers" "Tangled"). This performance is just one more proof. Anabella Sciorra (Jane Berger) is the weakest element of the cast, but that doesn't mean she's bad. Her character hasn't got the depth the others have, and she seems unimportant most of the time. And Cary Elwes (Albert Bodine) as a British investigator with personality problems…He's in top form, with an excellent accent and faces you'll remember.Going back to flaws, Dan Mitz makes mistakes in his own direction and cinematography. This is fault of the script, and it all combines to a major flaw. What can we follow when we're first watching a TV show (American Crime) hosted by one guy, that tells events occurred in real life, supposedly with footage taken from cameras, with personal interviews and people names…But what we see is filmed like a common movie, no cameras, and seems real, not to be shown by the TV show. The crimes in the show are about a guy that follows young women, taping them, and then kills them. Well, the characters get involved and are eventually being chased…And what about the show that was telling everything? At the end, when we have forgotten about the show, another guy talks as if the show was ending. Come on! We also get the actors presented in TV way at the end; looking at the camera.Then we have an easy music, not very trapping. There are these loud sounds with string sounds, but this is not scary anymore, because we can't know what will scare us. There's the obligated "cornfield chase" scene, decently edited by Todd Miller, who had proved his skills in "Joy Ride".As a consolation price, we can only think the characters knew they were being filmed, and that they were in one of those arranged shows, that pretend to be real, but actually never are; and everybody knows what happens.