True/False Films

An Alternative to Slitting Your Wrist

In person: director Owen Lowery.

Sneak preview. Not just one alternative, try 52 — one for each week of the year. When director and star Owen Lowery wakes up in a psych ward after a meltdown, he faces a choice: suicide, or create a list of 52 things he's always wanted to do, then spend the next year exploring them. On the list: battle a shark, spit fire, get stung by a scorpion, eat brains, get tazered, hang glide, go squirrel fishing (you figure it out). The result plays like a bucket list for the Jackass generation. Sure, Owen suffers all the angsts common to twenty-somethings. But he faces them with uncommon self-awareness and good humor. So the best way to escape his own skull? List entry No. 28: make someone else's dream or wish come true. (RM)