Some Kind of Heaven

Strange dystopia and really entertaining...

It'd be easy to mistake the director's deadpan observation for mocking, but the space he holds for the darker aspects of his characters' individual stories helps to puncture any cultivated cutesyness.

It is a fascinatingly weird place and the film is worth seeing if only to get a sense of that.

The film sits back at a (cowardly?) distance, until all we can do is admire those painterly images.

The awkward silences, deadpan deliveries and semi-comedic tone are often reminiscent of Louis Theroux's early BBC work which gave us a previously unseen slice of middle America.

Intersects with the suburbia of Blue Velvet and, in common with that dark dramatic underbelly, there's a compelling soap opera bubbling under the sterile surface.

On one level, the film is optimistic. Its protagonists may have problems but at least they haven’t given up on life.

What's more remarkable is that Oppenheim manages to give the happier scenes a sheen of grotesquerie without making them feel fake.

This documentary about America's largest retirement community is a much more wondrous film than the preconceptions elicited by that short description may suggest.

[A] winning and funny documentary.