Love & Distrust

If not for the presence of quasi-A-listers like Robert Downey Jr. and James Franco, I would have refrained from reviewing the wretched Love & Distrust, since it feels like clippings swept off the floor of a film school editing lab. Featuring five unconnected stories that all begin in lethargy and finish in dead ends, Love & Distrust is the true nadir of the indie-short comp we thought we’d reached with New York, I Love You. Robert Pattinson merely cameos in The Summer House, a stuffy trifle set in 1969 France, yet his name is above the title and the poster shows him kissing a girl in front of the Empire State Building. If that’s not enough of a red flag, you haven’t seen Amy Adams grit her teeth through Pennies, a cutesy-poo comedy short that Kevin Smith would dismiss as sophomoric.