Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2009 > September > 30 > Entry
What I’m watching
Wherein our movie critic periodically shares what DVDs he’s been viewing in his spare time …
- “Wages of Fear” (1953; Henri-Georges Clouzot): Four desperate derelicts, including the strapping Yves Montand, willingly risk their lives to deliver truckloads of nitroglycerin across harrowing terrain in South America. Every bump and jar along the way is an opportunity for explosive obliteration, but the drivers’ need for money supplants good sense. Clouzot’s thriller, at times unbearably tense, recalls Huston’s “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Both are about bootstrap survival and rivalries among men, with setting playing a decisive role. Holds up terrifically.
- “Ballast” (2008; Lance Hammer): Hammer’s stunningly assured, award-winning debut never made it to Austin theaters, but arrives on DVD on Nov. 10. Set in a poor town on the Mississippi Delta, it follows a single mother and her troubled son as they struggle to stay afloat while pieces of their painful past swirl to the surface. Understated and impressively muted, a sturdy entry in the unofficial neo-neo-realism movement and a vital piece of recent American indie cinema.
- “Frownland” (2007; Ronald Bronstein): A fascinating, baffling what-is-it tightly (claustrophobically) focused on a manic, unhinged fellow ((Dore Mann, in a frighteningly committed performance) in the throes of an urban crack-up. This relentless and uncompromising character study basks in its jagged, grainy aesthetic for a concentrated dose of the modern human condition. It’s often hard to watch, with the screen dominated by a spluttering one-man carnival of perspiring neuroses. But it’s equally hard to pull your eyes away.
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By Bryan P
October 1, 2009 7:18 AM | Link to this
Yay, Frownland!