For the latest bundle of online store additions, the titles chosen are Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant,” Milos Forman’s “The Firemen’s Ball,” and Gregg Araki’s “Smiley Face.”
One of the biggest surprises of operating Foreign Exchange Blu-ray Imports for the past 11 months has been the popularity of “Smiley Face,” a stoner comedy starring Anna Faris that rarely stays on the shelves more than a day or two whenever it comes back in stock. The film was a departure of sorts for Araki, who’d just made “Mysterious Skin” (which he calls “a dark, serious movie” on the “Smiley Face” Blu-ray’s “Making of” featurette) and was in search of something “a little more, kind of pop-y and fun.” A pot laced cross between “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and “Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl,” “Smiley Face” is the story of Faris’s Jane, a plucky stoner whose impaired judgement sends her bounding from one stressful dilemma to the next, invariably making matters worse despite her best efforts while maintaining her resolve to keep pushing forward.