Undertow

Jamie Bell is phenomenal (he's rather adept at playing abused young boys by this point), and Gordon Green achieves some fantastic stand-alone moments, but the screenplay is half-baked, and as a result, only 50% of it takes off. Any other scene involving Josh Lucas is painful to watch.

If this were David Gordon Green's only film, I'd be finding ways to praise it, because it shows alot of potential. Green finds unusual locations that you don't see in movies. There's never a dull shot & I'll give him this much: He's trying. But it's his 3rd film. The improvisations are sounding less fresh & more forced. Some of the stylistic tics, like the freeze-frame, just don't work. I left thinking Green needs to adapt a literary work, just so he can be tethered to something less effluvial.

Really powerful and heart-warming movie. DGG does fantastic things with the story and the result is a perfectly executed and performed story about tragedy and emotions. Each of the characters are written with great depth, and the ending is a real mover. Stunning film, Jamie Bell is superb.

This starts out as interesting, but ultimately doesn't live up to it's promise. The detail and subtlety of the initial scene-setting is undermined by the ham of the ogreish villian; it's trying to be two things- odd location-piece and a standard thriller, and it doesn't quite realise either.

66.

uneven but a worthwhile watch

Somewhere towards the end of the movie, something goes wrong with the pacing, the acting, the directing, the everything. David Gordon Green is a genius in the making, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. The first 75% is great anyway.

With flashes of poetry, but somewhat uneven.

Feels like I just watched a film students mid year project that they had to rush to get finished, but with decent actors.

Starts off a lot better than it ends - spends too much time setting itself up as a Southern Gothic thriller, but then meanders with its second and third acts turning more Southern Gothic fairytale. Mixes both to ill-advised effect. Also contains a scene that feels written deliberately to avoid saying the phrase "undertow", which if nothing else draws more attention to how much they don't want to spell out the themes, but they do so anyway. And that's awful.

Excellent retelling of Night Of The Hunter.

The first half of the movie is excellent, but once the shock comes, it seems to unravel a bit. I didn't take issue with any of the performances or the way it was shot (that was all excellent), but the way the screenplay was written really wasn't even at all. While I enjoyed the ending and felt it put a nice cap on everything, the movie really could've been more. Being a Gordon Green fan, that's disappointing.

The first half of the film was interesting and engaging.The second half was cliched and dragged on a little to long.

"The rich soundscape of natural noises creates a palpable sense of enveloping environment." - Nick Schager

Grim and menacing - but the freeze frames and effects didn't add really add anything to it. Great performances.

Wake me up when the idiot who made this gets an editor.

David Gordon Green's first experiment with genre filmmaking ends up decidedly average. Good performances combined with Green's eye for locations should be enough here, but the tone and the pacing feel off, the film dragging quite a bit for most of the final two thirds.

Pretty dope movie but the ending doesn't really explain what happened...not that it's an "open" ending for interpretation...it is definitely resolved but it just doesn't really show how stuff went down.

not all that compelling