Digging for Fire (2015) poster
2015 · comedy · drama

Digging for Fire

Directed by Joe Swanberg1h 23m2015
ElsewhereIMDb5.87kRT64%Metacritic69
  • measured
  • gentle
  • intimate
Movie DNA

Warm, measured, gentle comedy / drama, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

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Tim and Lee are married with a young child. The chance to stay at a fancy home in the Hollywood Hills is complicated by Tim's discovery of a bone and a rusty old gun in the yard. Tim is excited by the idea of a mystery, but Lee doesn't want him to dig any further, preferring that he focus on the family taxes, which he promised to do weeks ago. This disagreement sends them on separate and unexpected adventures over the course of a weekend, as Tim and his friends seek clues to the mystery while Lee searches for answers to the bigger questions of marriage and parenthood.

Our read · Digging for Fire (2015) reads as a warm, measured, grounded comedy · drama entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Digging for Fire

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a loose LA weekend about marriage, mystery, and mumblecore charm.

ends warmyou’ll be fine aftersteady all the waygrips by minute 5attention 2/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-updrug usenudity

Skip it tonightYou need plot payoff; the backyard mystery deliberately fizzles out.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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