A young woman works at the shoe counter at a Pensacola, Florida bowling alley. Having abandoned the ambitions of her youth, she takes care of her ailing father, who painfully struggles with cancer. With the return of a rival from high school into her long-standing social circle, the stillness that has taken over her existence breaks, leaving her to consider the possibility of a new direction, one which seems tantalizingly close and yet ever elusive. This is subject matter than might seem too comfortably within American independent cinema’s wheelhouse, but in thoughtful hands, even the most seemingly pedestrian yarns can […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 28, 2010Wunderkind-auteur William Friedkin who stormed the Hollywood gates with The French Connection and The Exorcist in the 1970’s enters the21st century with, Bug, a film that depicts the maddening descent into self-destructive paranoia. Adapted from the stage play of the same name, written by Tracy Letts and starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, Friedkin presents a noirish setting of a socially marginal characters inhabiting the outskirts of middle-America Oklahoma; which in this case is a lesbian bar and ramshackle roadside motel. Shannon, who also starred in the stage play version, reprises his role as Peter Evans, an AWOL American soldier […]
by Rupert Chiarella on Sep 24, 2007