Thematically, Brotherhood might be as simplistic as any American film this year.
Local Color takes every cliché of nascent-artist movies and serves them up with an arrogant lack of shame.
In virtually every scene, Ponsoldt strives to tease and discombobulate with an offbeat, high-E.Q. flow of images.
The film is full of truisms and guided by a Forrest Gumpian philosophy that might best be summed up as “Life is like a knuckleball.”
One more ’50s housewife role for Julianne Moore and a biopic on Betty Crocker can’t be too far behind.
Though convinced it’s helping people to rediscover their roots, the film succeeds only in planting corn.
While this DVD edition does justice to the film’s sinister color scheme, the cast and crew commentary leaves much to be desired.
Mean Creek slots itself nicely in that catalog of macabre coming-of-age stories like River’s Edge and Stand by Me.
Since Hardball will play better with younger audiences, the disc’s meaty extras might go unsung by their little ears.
It negotiates a child’s pain for his dead mother via his relationship with an old woman straight out of Eudora Welty.
François Ozon did this kind of thing better with his Criminal Lovers.
Tender loving adult care may go far, but survival in the ghetto seems to be one part adult intervention and one part blind luck.