Get Low

A rarity: bungling the opening third of the film rather than the final third. Robert Duvall kicks tremendous amounts of ass, wrinkled by time but all the wiser for it, his backstory curious and sad and completely capable of resonance without it resorting to the caricature of the angry hermit with which the story opens; Bill Murray a chimerical blend of suave huckster and honest funeral parlor director who can't get death to cooperate––why can't we learn more about him in those opening minutes, say?; beautiful cinematography, natural lighting, costumes, and expert weaving of the grizzly and rough with the wistful, funny and humane, an expert mastery of dynamics that completely doesn't need the overly simplified taste of deranged-grumpy-old man. Redo the first third and this is an A-, as is, B.

Also, what is it about Bill Murray that makes you want to invite him to dinner and eat some fried chicken and cole-slaw? Slothrop would really, really like to do that, especially if he shows up with that mustache.

Blondie: You forgot to mention the part when you asked me "why I'm crying" at film's end and I socked you in the stomach. I haven't cried that hard, or at least not that uncontrollably and unceasingly, since The New World. And while this film does not quite inspire the symphony of weeping with which I reliably respond to Malick, the gravity and tremendous pathos of Duvall's final speech might be unrivaled in recent cinema.