Reviews

If you have a soul and if you think about life versus half of these slubs reviewing then watch this film. This is serious stuff for adults and not the mindless rabble brought up on popcorn bs. Forget these crap artists. This is a poem in film. A rumination on adult themes for adults and not the slobbering mindless who get bored easily. Again, if you want a movie for thinking people with brains and soul watch this. Forget the bad reviews of these booger eating pond dwellers who have no capacity to feel and are scared of real emotion. This is for adults and not thrill a second children raised on action movies . Trust me you will be rewarded and if the ending doesn't make you weep about what it says about life and the frailty of love then check your pulse.

Another in the welcome line of modern westerns such as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (an obvious influence in tone), No Country For Old Men, etc. Tim Blake Nelson is a revelation here, and the entire cast is outstanding. The ending will F you up unless you are really paying attention and even if you guess it's done with style and aplomb. The soundtrack is moody and haunting, the setting perfectly bleak. The flashbacks may confuse and distract at first but make sense when you know the ending. A shame this has flown under the radar, but search it out as you will like it. It's haunting.

Making a film today is hard, especially quirky and thoughtful ones. The story was intriguing, the acting top-notch, art and cinematic direction was also better than expected. It's a brave little movie willing to stretch the envelope while staying believable. Bowers is a mix of. Jason Schwartzman and Bruce McCulloch with a drop of Crispin Glover lunacy around the edges, while Jimmi Simpson has traces of early James Spader creepiness. Look quick and see Chris Hardwick in a cameo, too. Not a bad or off performance in the movie. Dee Wallace shines as the mother and. Mark Boone is great in a droll performance as is Kevin Corrigan. Give it a try.

Most of the budget must have gone to the actors as that would explain the cheap sets and pedestrian direction. It totally depends on the cult of personality to make it mildly interesting as the actors involved do no more than phone in their witless dialog and pull faces. A paean to an era long gone and a time when something this dreadful could be financed by a Hollywood studio. No style, no substance, no need to really see except for a chance to see old Hollywood cough up its last gasp. Really boring, badly executed dreck that barely rises above B-grade cinema. Not even a "so bad it's good" film.

The end? She did all of this for that schlubby scrub? Really? He can't even grow a beard. My God... I understand he doesn't have to be a GQ model but THAT guy? Wow, I question her sanity...

She is playing the "Miss Ross" idea of Billie Holiday--she doesn't even attempt to sing like Billie. A shameful showcase for "Miss Ross" and a disservice to "Miss Holiday. Dreadful.

It's difficult, and somewhat unfair, to judge any artistic work based on the prejudices and attitudes of today, yet one can't go back in time and judge them from those of its own era. The best one can do is critique from known and accepted principles, in this case, a film, on acting, story and execution.

On acting, it's hit and miss. The best actor is evened out by the worst, so it's a wash. On story, it's an idea, not a plot; a rambling series of incidents portraying the time--to that, it's a disjointed mess. Sad instead of poignant; whimsy instead of humor; bathos instead of drama. On execution, well it is Arthur Penn so it does have a certain flair, a certain style, yet it never catches hold; the themes are muddled and unclear; the characters are at times more pathetic and irritating than involving; oddly joyless. The editing is also haphazard. If Penn was going for "a statement" he instead created "a comment;" a cinematic throat-clearing. It's fine to make a film that creates more questions than answers, but the viewer is left to puzzle things out that shouldn't have been a puzzle, which just creates more mud. In the end, AR is of its time, one long past, and in hindsight perhaps best left on the shelf, for as the one thing the film does show is that "the hippie dream" was born in false freedom, filth, suspect mysticism and beliefs, and ended--like the movie--in confusion, sadness, heartbreak, and an eventual acceptance of society norms.