Thirteen-year-old Ernest Chin lives and works at a sleazy motel on a strip of desolate suburban bi-way, where he cleans vacant rooms, baby-sits his eight-year-old sister, and works nights charging guests for their three-hour stays. Chastised by his mother for wasting time entering a short story contest, and snubbed as a dork by his fifteen-year-old crush, the fatherless Ernest is blindly careening toward puberty. One night over a midnight snack of fried chicken, Ernest befriends Sam Kim, a self-destructive yet charismatic Korean American guest at the motel. Sam takes Ernest under his wing and teaches the fatherless boy the rites of manhood. From the producers of Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl, and Me and You and Everyone We Know. "Michael Kang's small, perfectly observed portrait of Ernest Chin ... captures the glum desperation of inhabiting the biological limbo of early adolescence." (NY Times) More at themotel-film.com
2005, color, 1 hour 15 minutes, USA