the audience applauded

Perfect cast and a good story

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

If you love beautifully slow paced movies with irregularly modulated sound, fairly good acting and an intensity that will rivet your head to a pillow, then this is the movie for you.Here we have your typical brilliant university scientist whom apparently lost his wife and child. He becomes neurotically reclusive and anti-social, swallowing more pain pills than House. He limps around with a cane (like House), for reasons unknown and peeks out the window a lot. He is building some kind of contraption, whose purpose is only vaguely hinted at. He never talks much but when he does, he swears and is angry…like at his friends and neighbors. He hasn't been to work for years and can't handle his liquor.His contraption breaks down. So he orders some parts. The parts, a Foo-foo valve and some Kenitson bits I think, are then installed in this…whatever it is. A wheel with a light turns around and it sucks all the power out of his house. The lights get real bright then they dramatically go out.New neighbors move in. He's some kind of chauvinistic, business-like, metro yuppie (at first) and she....well, she's kinda homely, I guess. She seems drawn to him, for reasons unknown. She comes by to say hi in one visit and the next time, to invite him to a housewarming party. He basically keeps tells her to GTFO. She is not happy with metro-yuppie man.He turns on his thingamajig and that's where things get a bit convoluted and fuzzy. Stuff happens to him. I'm not really sure what though.The movie has nice background music. If you like vague plots that make you fill in the blanks, see it.

This had the potential to be a really good and thought-provoking indie film and then they had to go ruin it by beating everyone over the head with the pro-life message at the end. It was very disingenuous to build up the tension in the story and in the characters only to solve everything with a "don't have an abortion, babies are awesome" message at the end. That made the movie instantaneously preachy and left me, at least, feeling very cheated. I went in expecting a story and movie that was somewhat of a mix of "white noise" and "solaris" and instead got a really long commercial against abortions.other than the one scene that singularly destroyed the whole movie, the scientist is well acted and shot -- if you count out the main character's eye twitch, which was way overused.

I expected to be confounded by "The Scientist," a low-budget film with a science-fiction premise and a humanist message.Instead, I found director-producer-writer Zach LeBeau an efficient, and fairly linear, job of storytelling, which makes it all the more effective.Often, I've found films made on a shoestring — and that's most of them — are either too short to adequately get their point across, or sabotaged by the filmmakers' indulgences. Many a good indie movie has been undercut by a director's need to over-cut — to over-edit, over-think and over-"art" their films. Either through film-school pretense, an attempt to compensate for the lack of big-budget special effects or simple ego, they turn what might have been fine stories into jumbles of flashbacks, distorted images and other pretentious, unnecessary trickery.(I'm thinking of one film in particular, which I rented recently to see the performance of an actor-friend of mine. The filmmaker made the mistake of including the original opening scenes as "bonus material," which made it glaringly honest that his "final cut" had been turned into an incomprehensible mess.) Happily, LeBeau keeps his story (he co-wrote the screenplay with Chase Brandau) at the forefront. Though the film, a taut 88 minutes, is artfully edited and beautifully shot (by Matthias Saunders), it never loses track of the story it's trying to tell.It also benefits tremendously from the performance of its lead actor, Bill Sage, a veteran character actor who offers stunning proof that he's capable of carrying a film, with work of great intensity and emotion.Sage plays Marcus Ryan, a physicist who's been coming gradually unhinged since the deaths (the result of some unnamed tragedy) of his wife and young daughter. He's holed up in the family home, which includes a laboratory where's secretively constructing a machine that generates psychic energy — ostensibly to try to make some contact with the spirits of his dearly departed.He's visited by a colleague, Alan (Adam Lefevre) and the couple who move in next door, Jessica and David (Brittany Benjamin and Jamie Elman). But he's oblivious to everything but his project, and his pain. He's already tried to take his own life once — and hobbles over a cane because of injuries suffered in what Alan tactfully refers to as "the fall" — and, in the film's single most gripping scene — is thwarted in a second attempt by a gun that providentially jams.It's at that point — when Marcus has hit bottom, undone by his grief and frustration — that the wonder of his invention, and of LeBeau's story, begins to kick in.Until then, Sage has given us a portrait of a destroyed, desperate man, tragically submerged in the memories of his family and consumed by his long-shot bid to re-establish some sort of contact — cross-consciousness, cross-dimensional, however — with them. At one point, he screams his frustration at the machine, "Bring them back!" After his second failed suicide attempt, Marcus begins to see evidence that his contraption, whirring away in his lab, might actually be working — creating or transferring energy, cutting through waves of consciousness, opening lines of communication. Its work manifests itself in echoes of voices and subconscious glimpses of his wife and daughter, but also in his ability to "overhear" the thoughts and conversations of those physically near him, including the couple next door.Through his psychic eavesdropping, he learns that he doesn't have a corner on the unhappiness market. The young wife, Jessica, is trapped in a marriage to a complete tool, and carrying a baby she's convinced she's neither ready nor willing to bring to term.Thrilled by the hints of success, Marcus is transformed. Realizing his invention might prove much more than just a conduit to his lost loves, he rediscovers his own humanity — and, consequently, cops a shower, a shave and some much-needed sleep before offering the comfort that Jessica needs.As mentioned before, the film is pretty to look at. Saunders swathes its nondescript outdoor locations — Council Bluffs, Iowa, Omaha, Neb. and Minneapolis — in glorious fall colors and comforting sunlight. He also avoids the indie-film bugaboo of dark interiors, allowing us to clearly see what's going on even when the lights are out.The sound department doesn't fare as well, though. The more forte bits of Steve Horner's otherwise-lovely score, and some of Marcus' more intense experiments, are loud to the point of distortion.The film also falls victim to a few minor sci-fi clichés (like the pensive solo-piano accompaniment through much of the early going), and takes a few narrative shortcuts (like David's almost jarringly sudden transformation from tool to non-tool). But there's nothing that detracts from the storytelling — the holes that are left are not gaping, and, thankfully, LeBeau hasn't tried to plug them or distract from them with cheesy special effects he probably couldn't afford anyway.The sci-fi aspect of "The Scientist" won't dazzle you. But it's really just a component of the storytelling, which is admirable both in its aspirations and its execution. With the terrific Sage as its centerpiece, it's interesting, thought-provoking and affirming — attributes that are consistently lacking in big-budget, CGI-dominated movies, sci-fi or otherwise.

I saw "The Scientist" at the sneak preview on March 2nd. The only thing I found enjoyable about the film was the fact that so many people I am connected with had something to do with it. The ONLY actor whose performance actually made an impression on me was that of Adam LeFevre. I thought the plot moved along entirely too slow, not to mention there were several points at which the sound was PAINFULLY loud. I left the theater feeling offended, not only by the abuse to my eardrums, but also by the fact that the main character decided to influence his neighbor about her reproductive choices. It was obvious that she didn't really want to have an abortion in the first place, but it was his arrogance in that regard that I found so offensive. It also didn't seem as though the writers actually did any research as far as what kind of process and treatment by the clinic a woman experiences when seeking an abortion. It's a sign of ongoing dysfunction that the couple "connected" once they decided to keep the baby. It made me unsure if he was being sincere or just faking it to get her to do what he wanted. I left wondering if this was just anti-choice propaganda disguised as a sci-fi film. And I don't think that is what it was supposed to be. It needed to focus more on the scientist himself, his work, and his family rather than the neighbors'. I am happy for all my friends who got to be in it, but otherwise utterly disappointed.