Less is More: The Movie! Quiet scenes with spaces. Visual, verbal and emotional. Here’s what I liked best about this film. Usually movies about fringe characters (in this case, a motel owner in the middle of shit nowhere Texas and her recovering drunk husband) there is a little Rage Against The Machine. The mill closed down. The bosses are keeping us poor. They don’t let us in their clubs because we look different. The only burning conflicts you’ll find in this film are against the physical laws of the universe. Time always moves forward. Everybody dies. Oddly, the movie takes great solace in God and the Church (which, you figure, is the one power that could change these laws, if you believed in them.) I guess, then, this is a movie about the power of faith. The power to keep people from going completely off the deep end, but keep them just miserable enough so they squint into the sun a lot and mumble. Robert Duvall sings in this one and he is terrific, proving my rule that the truly talented can do anything.
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Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.