All Over Albany

Local spots on the big screen

From Winter of Frozen Dreams: yep, that's Schenectady.

A couple of films that were shot in the Capital Region have surfaced lately.

The Skeptic, which was shot in Saratoga and a few other local spots, opens at the Spectrum on Friday. The film's writer/director, Tennyson Bardwell, will be at the theater for a post-screening talk Friday and Saturday evening.

Bardwell told the Gazette recently that Upstate New York is a good place to make movies because there's "not a jaded film community like you see in L.A. or New York." The centerpiece location of the The Skeptic is the Batcheller Mansion in Saratoga -- it's all over the film's trailer.

The other locally-shot movie is Winter of Frozen Dreams, which is based on "the bizarre tale of a brilliant biochemistry student who lead a shocking double life." It was shot at many locations around Schenectady -- in fact, First Prize Mike's shows up prominently in the trailer. WoFD is already available on DVD -- and it's scheduled to be shown at Proctors on May 14.

So are these movies any good?

The aggregated reviews on Metacritic for The Skeptic are not positive -- the Village Voice calls it a "TV-grade suspenser" and NYT's Stephen Holden says he'd rather watch "a bunch of teenagers terrorized by chain-saw-wielding zombies." The reviews for Winter of Frozen Dreams are worse -- one reviewer said "this lady's lame tale stole a hour and a half of our entertainment energies" and a Netflix user review called it "a slow-paced, confusing movie, with a dull script and mediocre acting."