This came recommended by my Sundance-attending coworkers, and I would have eventually sought it out myself once I realized that the great Russo (Pan With Us + Populi, two of my favorite short films) had made a feature.

Ethyl:

Once it started (actually, as early as when I saw the “sponsored by credit card company” DVD menu) I realized I was in for a Sundancey indie toilet-humor quirkfest, not my favorite kind of thing, but it was hopefully to be more Donnie Darko than Waydowntown. First half was entertaining as all hell, with fabulous editing, surprisingly good music (by “Awesome”) and some of that chaos-reining stop-motion from Russo’s shorts. After a while it gets quieter and slower, becomes a slave to plot and its characters’ emotional arcs and gives me more time to wonder at the allegory, if any. Wouldn’t call it a hidden masterpiece, but it surely lived up to potential. Make more movies, Mr. Russo.

Little Dory and buddy O.C.:

Dory quits his datameister gig in a huff, and goes religion-hopping while working as a janitor with punk artists Ethyl and Methyl (fake Stanley Kubrick in Trapped Ashes) and O.C. (of Clay Pigeons) and Weird William. Natasha Lyonne (Slums of Beverly Hills) gives them test batches of experimental self-warming cookies, to which they all become addicted, and which cause the men to give birth to fluorescent blue fish, which makes them quite emotional and gives Dory new religious meaning to ponder. Finally he decides not to shut down the evil corporation that’s sneaking awful chemicals into junk foods, but to let the cookies into the world, to allow other snack-craving men with meaningless lives to experience the pain and joy of creating new aquatic life.