If toiling in the commune of capital city cubicle workers is inducing cravings of coffee flowing from the kitchen tap, then a film that’s an absurdist amalgam of “The Office” and “Fight Club” (“with a happy ending”) may be a fitting non-escape from reality as the end of the week nears.
All Sorts, a 2021 microbudget movie about the surreal workday happenings in a generically gray Data-Mart set in the Pacific Northwest is scheduled to screen at the Gold Town Theater at 7 p.m. next Thursday, Sept. 8. J. Rick Castañeda, director of the film and numerous other eclectic projects since 2009, said in an interview Tuesday from Los Angeles it’s the sort of thing Juneau’s sizable number of residents employed by bureaucracies ought to be able to relate to.
“I feel like there’s something in the north in the wintertime when you’re not getting so much sun,” he said. “This is like a winter movie…time melts away and you don’t know what day it is. That’s kind of the feeling this movie is talking about.”
One character, for instance, has a day-by-day calendar that progressively gets weirder, in no small part because the days start wandering far from being sequential, Castañeda said.
And this being movie with a male protagonist encountering a strong female lead, there’s potential for sparks to fly as “the two make their way into the secret world of underground filing.”
“It’s kind of that feeling of winter romance when you’re cold and you’re hoping the person you really love is going to return that warmth,” Castañeda said.
The movie earned mostly positive reviews while screening in various towns throughout Washington, where it was filmed, as well as a scattering of festivals. A preview description by the Seattle International Film Festival, in contrast to most reviewers trying to explain the narrative, states “to describe All Sorts in a single sentence is fairly easy.”
“When a young man (Diego) gets a job at an office building, he discovers the magical world of underground competitive folder filing behind a secret door and falls for his talented coworker (June), who may have the talent to win it all,” the festival’s description states.
Collette Costa, Gold Town Theater’s manager, said she was contacted by Castañeda several months ago about screening the movie and “he just happened to catch me on this very odd day.” She said the fact it’s a comedy with a “hooky plot” set in the Pacific Northwest, rather than a macabre crime and/or horror film that seems more typical in depicting the region, was part of what convinced her to bring it to Juneau.
“I really appreciate it has a different spin and it seems timely,” she said.
• Juneau Empire reporter Mark Sabbatini can be reached at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com
