The East
Dir: Zal Batmanglij
2013
***
The partnership between writer-director Zal Batmanglij and writer-actress Brit Marling goes from strength to strength but just a little bit at a time. I really liked the story but at times it all gets a little too wishy-washy. What should be an edge of your seat thriller, ends up being a little bit of a cold drama. The performances are good, I'm not a big fan of Ellen Page but the brilliant Patricia Clarkson and Toby Kebbell make up for it and Brit Marling and Alexander Skarsgård have good chemistry between them and both have an eerie watchability about them that is impossible to look away from. The East's strength is the brilliantly written script and its focus on what is important as far as storytelling goes. To conclude the film as the credits are still rolling was effective and original and I look forward to seeing more from the writing duo but lets have less ambiguity and more provocation.

Sound Of My Voice
Dir: Zal Batmanglij
2011
**
A great idea ruined by a bad script and a poor choice of cast. Brit Marling was perfect in her role, suspicious, untrustworthy, Innocent but ultimately contradictory. Christopher Denham and Nicole Vicius however overacted terribly but then their characters are badly written. Was this supposed to be a fake documentary? that's how it started, did they just give up on that halfway through because they lost patience? It seems very amateurish, small budget aside. I forgave Brit Marling for the ending in Another Earth but I'm not sure I can do the same here.