Something about writer-director Colin West’s eccentric, disturbing and touching oddball gem “Linoleum” reminded me of an old “Twilight Zone” episode stretched to movie length, or maybe I should call it a mid-life crisis version of “Donnie Darko,” and if you’re thinking this sounds like some kind of science fiction-infused character study with more than a few twists and turns, we’re on the right track.
Much of “Linoleum” is at least initially deliberately vague and fuzzy, including the setting—though we know we’re somewhere in suburban Ohio, and the time period seems to be the late 1980s or early 1990s. Jim Gaffigan plays one of the most unreliable narrators of the year in one Cameron Edwin, a slightly disheveled, borderline absent-minded-professor type who is mired in the quicksand of unfulfillment as he approaches 50.
