Opening on a mountaintop, The Evening Hour pans slowly across a vast Appalachian landscape, soaking in birdsong and morning light. In the distance, a series of explosions disrupt the surrounding idyll, but only for a moment. As plumes of ash and debris hang in the still mountain air, the shot holds into a static composition, those ominous detonations newly part of the tableau.  Braden King’s second feature, his first since 2011’s Here, maintains this painterly sensibility – one of observation over action, meditation over movement  – throughout its patient, precise portrait of a Kentucky mining town, its inhabitants, and the […]