one of my absolute favorites!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This movie is not worth the time it takes to watch it. There is no plot and nothing happens. It's just a lot of disconnected, incomprehensible scenes strung together in a pseudo-"arty" way so that the filmmakers can pat themselves on the back about how "artistic" and "important" they are. The characters are sometimes one person and sometimes another person and all the scenes with the computer are just techno-babble garbage. Ooh, and let's put a completely pointless eye-patch on one of the female characters, just to make it interesting and kind of creepy. Except it's NOT interesting at all. On the other hand, since it was made about 10 years ago, Ally Sheedy looks less ravaged in this than she does lately.

This is a mystery with a charming dose of very low-budget sci-fi added to it about a girl's missing sister, duality, imitation, and the internet. Those looking for an Arnold Shwarzenegger shoot-'em-up will hate this movie because you actually have to pay attention to it and have half a brain. If you do pay attention and do have half a brain, you will be rewarded with a moving experience and be able to enjoy the sites along the way. There are lots of great characters, wonderful scenery, and plenty of wiggle room for going out on a limb. The acting is super. The directing is top-notch. And the story is mighty cool! Thank you Michael Almereyda! Please keep making lots of movies!

HAPPY HERE AND NOW is one strange film. I wish it were on DVD because I very much want to see it again. Encountering it a couple of years back at a festival of the Film Society of Lincoln Center "picks," I was thoroughly mystified even as, moment-by-moment, I enjoyed the movie. The ensemble cast is a really interesting grab-bag of performers (from Karl Geary to Ally Sheedy, Shalom Harlow, David Arquette, even Larry Fessenden), and the writing and direction is by Michael Almereyda, a moviemaker who keeps growing as he matures. What really knocked my socks off, however, is the ending: a phenomenal feat of film editing by Kristina Boden (and, one presumes, Almereyda) that, in a single continuous succession of splices, brings together the entire movie--theme, ideas, feelings, visuals--so beautifully and fully that I found myself in tears. It's the first and only time that film editing has ever had THIS effect on me! Please, someone, bring "Happy Here and Now" to DVD.

As a native of New Orleans, when I heard that a movie was being made here that would involve (singer) Ernie K-Doe, my inner monologue was one protracted groan. We are used to having Hollywood portray the city along familiar lines -- lots of gumbo, voodoo and Mardi Gras as a daily occurrence, and maybe a black guy in a cowboy hat as a member of law enforcement. The Big Easy is a perfect example of such a cliche-peppered representation.I put it together a few days later that the director was the director of Nadja, one of my favorite vampire movies, so I thought, well, maybe this guy will get it.And get it he did, getting down with the superamazing and description-defying Ernie K-Doe, sort of the Muhammad Ali of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues. His club, the Mother-in-Law Lounge, served until his death as sort of a pagan night church that improbably brought Orleanians of widely varying stripes together to backchorus his songs.The central thread of HAPPY HERE AND NOW is the confounding side of New Orleans, a wall against the main character finding information about her missing sister. But the magical, unyielding city offers compensatory joys -- second line parades, Ally Sheedy as an older New Orleans kookster/auntee, and hula hip hop in people's apartments.Have you ever seen a movie set in New Orleans that has NO scenes in the French Quarter? This may be the first. Capturing the oddness of the city in scenes such as David Arquette's character working as a termite man who puts huge tents over Victorian houses, director Almareyda captures the soul of America's bottom, a mystery, overlaid onto a tale which is loosely a "mystery" (where's the missing sister).A discrete and oblique joyful noise leads the viewer to these Pied Piper's New World caves, revealing everyday oddness as beautiful.