Good start, but then it gets ruined

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

I'd really like to be able to tell you that this movie is worth seeing, that this little indy flick about small town Iowa life and the perils of methamphetamine is gripping and smart and honest. But this film isn't gripping. It isn't smart. It isn't honest. It is steaming pile of confused and confusing storytelling mixed together with a relentless kaleidoscope of visual stylizing. From inexplicable accents and morphing beards to nonsensical schemes and magical lacerations to ridiculously excessive editing and a character that looks and acts like he just stepped out of The Time Tunnel, Iowa is just one stupid and irritating thing after another.While it's ostensibly about a pair of young lovers named Esper Harte and Donna Huffman (Matt Farnsworth and Diane Foster) descending into a meth-fueled haze of violence and hallucinations, there are too many elements of this tale that don't make sense on the most rudimentary level for it to be about anything except how much it sucks. I mean, it's clear that writer/director Matt Farnsworth wants to say something about the meth problem in Iowa. It's also clear that he believes he can say it by ineptly aping the style of Requiem for a Dream. What's absolutely unmistakable, however, is that Farnsworth is incapable of telling any story more complicated than "see Spot run".Let me just give you one example of the head-scratchingly incompetent writing at work here. Early on in the movie, Esper gets thrown in jail on a drug charge by corrupt corrections officer Larry (Michael T. Weiss) as part of a plan to kill him and get the money left to Esper by his dead father. All we see of Esper in jail is him slumped up against the wall in a prison cell with someone leering at him. Larry then asks Donna to come down to his office, whereupon he spends several hours raping her over and over. He lets Donna go. She gets some money and bails out her boyfriend…and that somehow foils Larry's attempt to kill Esper. There's never a hint of how or when Esper was supposed to get murdered. There's not a glimmer of an explanation for why Larry decided to spend an evening raping Donna or how he thought he could get away with it. Nothing in the entire sequence of events makes a lick of sense.And it's not just big stuff like that which is screwed up in this movie. It's also little things like Esper's beard constantly changing shape and length. It randomly ranges from relatively trimmed to nearly Amish-like in dimension. Esper gets a cut on his forehead. Then the cut disappears. Then it reappears. And that's not because the story jumps around in some non-linear fashion. They simply forgot the cut makeup one day while they were shooting a scene. And then there are these weirdly southern accents that creep into the dialog at times. Unlike people from Minnesota or Wisconsin, Iowans are renowned for having a dialect without inflection. But this film seems to believe that all white trash are descended from the same tribe somewhere in Kentucky.By far the strangest aspect of Iowa is the character of Larry. It's not that he's cartoonishly evil. It's that while the film is clearly set in the early to mid 2000s, Larry looks like he wakes up every morning in 1973. His clothes, his manner and his facial hair are all from a completely different era than every other person in the story. Michael T. Weiss appears to be having some fun playing this walking, talking anachronism, but that doesn't change how awesomely misplaced the character is in this movie.As someone born and bred in the Hawkeye State, it pains me to say that Iowa is one of those films where all you can do is sit and marvel at how awful it is.

"Iowa", the movie, premiered in New York City at the TriBeCa Film Festival on Monday night. The movie addresses the scourge of the methamphetamine (aka crystal meth, crank, speed) plague that is ravaging Iowa and many rural states; however, in no way does the movie glamorize crystal meth or its users, abusers, addicts, or manufacturers. Iowa graphically shows the horrors of the dead-end street named crystal meth. Iowa should be mandatory viewing for all high school seniors, who would certainly be "scared straight". At the same time, Iowa makes a powerful statement against the so-called War on Drugs, where Draconian punishments have only fostered the growth of a fungal industry of private prisons, drug-testing companies, and other parasites.Iowa was filmed on location in Centerville, Iowa, and environs. In his youth, Farnsworth visited Centerville to see his grandparents, the late Beryl and Thelma Farnsworth, and was stunned witnessing the hellish degradation crystal meth had wrought on the bucolic community. The movie features many scenes from the Centerville Square ("the world's largest square"), the streets and alleys of Centerville, the reservoir, Lake Rathbun, Mystic, and the countryside, as well as the appearance of many local denizens as extras.The TriBeCa Film Festival was created by Robert Di Nero and associates in 2002, primarily to bring life back to lower Manhattan after 9/11. "TriBeCa" refers to the triangle below Canal Street, and lies near the southern tip of Manhattan. The movie theatre sits catty-corner from the old World Trade Center site. Walking west on Vesey Street, one passes a huge hole, several square blocks in area, the remains of the WTC towers and the place where 3,000 innocents were slaughtered on September 11, 2001. The sky was spitting some frozen pellets of precipitation on April 25, as a cold wind blew off the water. A few gin martinis followed by a steak dinner helped to ward off the chill.Yet no bracer in the world could prepare a viewer for the full-bore assault that is Iowa, the movie. Quentin Tarantino, move over; there's a new sheriff in town. Matt Farnsworth, the writer, director, and star of Iowa, makes Quentin Tarantino look like a little girl dressed in pink ribbons and bows with frilly ruffles on her underpants. The comparison most often heard after the movie was to Tarantino, director of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and the Kill Bill flicks, but there is far more depth to Farnsworth's work, and this makes it soar high above Tarantino's.While comparisons were also made to David Lynch, especially in his symbolism and his ability to frame pictures of idyllic small-town life interspersed with scenes of dystopian debauchery and depravity, Farnsworth's closest similarities lie with a New Yorker. Farnsworth is something of a Plains Woody Allen, both in his multifaceted roles (multitasking, in the current lingo) and in his abilities to capture the zeitgeist of a certain place and time and to delineate characters of the moment—but only if Allen had testosterone oozing from every pore, snorted a quarter-ounce of crank up his nose, and sported the handsome visage of wholesome milk ad model.Farnsworth stars in the movie as Esper Harte, a young Iowa man struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over his head. Esper, whose father has died recently, is the beneficiary of a $200,000 life insurance policy that he will receive if his father was not on drugs at the time of his death. Esper is dating Donna (Diane Foster), whose father is the insurance agent responsible for investigating Esper's father's death. Esper hopes to take the money, marry Donna, and, together, leave Iowa to find greener pastures. Esper and Donna's labors to protect their love form the core of the plot of the movie.Farnsworth, who may be known to some viewers from his TV work on 7th Heaven, gives a performance that is tour de force; he clearly is the "next big thing" to come from Hollywood. Foster shows a luminous presence that captures a viewer's full attention whenever she's on the screen, yet she is not just a pretty face, and displays the full gamut of emotions through her facial expressions. Michael T. Weiss is outstandingly evil as Larry Clarkson, a corrupt and sadistic parole officer. Amanda Tepe is a bewitching drug-and-sex fiend. Other notable performances include those of Rosanna Arquette as Esper's mother and John Savage as Donna's father. Andrew Parke, the director of photography, deserves special mention for his loving pictures of southern Iowa.The audience in New York City, a "tough" audience if any ever were, audibly gasped at the movie's shocking denouement, and then applauded enthusiastically at the movie's conclusion. As the lights went up, we saw that Farnsworth and Foster were in the audience, and they were soon swarmed with well-wishers and glad-handers.Iowa is a movie that will haunt your daydreams and nightmares for years to come. Every scene, every word, every note, rings true. Iowa is a movie you must see.

I saw this film in L.A. at the Sunset 5. I had no idea what to expect but that is what I like about independent film. Independent being the key word here. I usually do not comment on IMDb but I felt compelled to after reading a few of the verbal assaults on this film. I am a successful person in the entertainment world and I have seen this happen before. A great film gets slammed by a lot of jealous people who wished they had made the film or film students who think they would have made a better one. Well you didn't and like 99.99 percent of the world you never will. I can see that the comments range from very negative to very positive minus anything average. People either love this movie or hate it. That is because there is a lot of passion behind it. I vividly remember parts of this film and considering the budget it was probably made for, "IOWA" is an amazing accomplishment. It is my understanding that this is also a major problem in the Midwest. Farnsworth should be regarded as pioneer. Not a copycat. People are calling this just another drug film with similarities to Spun, Natural Born Killers, and many other films made by seasoned industry vets who's first films would probably not stack up against Farnsworth's. The film does have faults but the sheer fact that names Like David Lynch are mentioned in the New York Post review of "IOWA" should tell us we have found a new voice and we should pay attention because whether or not you love the film it's choice of topic is a Noble one. There has never been a film made about meth in the Midwest to my knowledge. That means this is not just another drug film. I feel this film will gain momentum even with some of the negative reviews and people will open up to the new director. Honestly when I first saw the poster I thought is was Scarlet Johansson and Brad Pitt in a film I had not heard about. That alone is enough to make some of the not so pretty people out there write with unneeded negativity and pound away at the keyboard. Not everybody has the ability to do all the things Farnsworth did on "IOWA'. As strong as it was I am really interested to see him do a film with only one or two jobs.

I just saw this film at the Tribeca film festival and it had some great moments. It is reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, Blow, and Natural Born Killers, except it only takes place in a small town. Farnsworth did a brilliant job, especially considering it is his directorial debut and how young he is. There are some very gory scenes and it is definitely suspenseful. The camera work is very good. The beginning is a little slow, but most of the film is powerful. I have no complaints except that maybe there was a lot of stuff that was done for shock value. I am sure this film will get him some attention and more work. I recommend this to people who like films with drug and violent themes. There are some messages in it, but this is not a highly intellectual film. I don't normally write reviews, so I hope this is helpful.-J