Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013)

I'm on the fence with this one. I don't hate it quite so much as to give it one star, as I'm tempted to. The direction and photography feel like a year 10 high school project. True beauty is best captured inconspicuously on film, whereas Saints is obsessed with getting the perfect shot of shivering fir trees and fields of barley coated in gold at sunset - there's no nuance or subtlety to it. It appears ham fisted when the director is obviously choosing his shots carefully, but when he lets intuition guide him he manages to capture some great moments on film.

Like one scene where Rooney Mara's character leaves church, and the local sheriff gives her a tip of a hat outside in a short tracking shot to the tune of a quirky soundtrack - it's simple and effective. Most viewers won't even remember that tiny twenty second scene and are probably too busy salivating over Casey Affleck's felt hats and film student mise en scene.

That being said, while the photography is desperate to impress, the way scenes play out is more effective. The director has some idea of how to generate tension, but at times he flops. The opening action sequence is one example; boring, flat, over quickly. Though perhaps what success there is is more to the credit of the screenwriter than the director, it's hard to say.

Flaws to one side, there are several small, tender moments that elevate Saints. For example, the interactions between Rooney Mara's character and her daughter, which are, at times, heartwarming, and very natural. Ben Foster too, feels well-casted and is careful not to turn his small town sheriff character into a walking cliché. In fact, he did so well you barely noticed him at all. He blends perfectly into the background. Casey Affleck seemed to recycle his character from "The Killer Inside Me," but his performance was tolerable.

So, all in all, Saints makes a lot of swings for few runs, succeeding just enough to be an honourable mention. I understand this is one of the director's first works, so for a debut it is certainly noteworthy. If he can learn to stop grovelling at the feet of critics he may improve in the future.

Fmovies: Ruth and Bob are a pair of criminal lovers with a baby on the way. After they find themselves in a shoot-out with the police, Bob faces a sever prison sentence. Unable to wait any longer, Bob breaks out of prison and heads across Texas to be re-united with his wife and meet his daughter.

The film starts out strong. Casey Affleck gives one of his best performances. Rooney Mara is a little better than she's been in the past. As the film begins, there is a sense the film is going to be part Coen Brothers, part Terrence Malick. But as the film progresses, it begins to go downhill, following a path too familiar. The most surprising part about the film is how stupid Casey Affleck's character, Bob, is. Instead of having any sympathy for him, we grow to dislike this character. Having a dislike or hate for a main character in a comedy can work but for a dead serious dramatic art film, it makes it even harder to watch. It's already a crime thriller without any thrills.

David Lowery is, like way too many other film festival award-winning filmmakers, greatly inspired by Terrence Malick. This is not such a bad thing, Malick is a master and we need more filmmakers like him. But when it's overly obvious the director is trying to be like Malick, it becomes a bad thing.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a film filled with beautiful images and music but it's story is unsuccessful in getting us to care about any of it's characters or any particular out-come of events. A story that makes us not care is a story questionable to bare through.

Deeply indebted to Terrence Malick's style. So much so, it never really becomes its own thing (unlike, say, Beasts of the Southern Wild, which had so much of its own energy Malick's name never popped up in my mind until long afterward). Fortunately, the performances in it are so good that it's quite worthwhile. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara star as a couple who get caught up in criminal activities. The two are caught, Affleck goes to prison and Mara gets acquitted. She gives birth to their daughter, and the two live comfortably under the protection of Keith Carradine and, after a while, a police officer (Ben Foster) who harbors a crush on her. When the child is around 4, Affleck escapes from jail and goes looking for his old girlfriend. All four of the principle actors are fantastic. Mara, whose Oscar nominated performance in The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is one of the few I've skipped in the last few years (I loathed the Swedish original), has blown me away between this and Side Effects. She is the real deal. Affleck unfortunately never became the huge star he deserved to be after The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (that was six years ago!). I really wish his brother Ben would've cast him instead of himself in his last two films (it's one of the reasons that, in my opinion, Gone Baby Gone remains Ben Affleck's best film as a director). Foster, too, deserves to be a bigger star, with Oscar caliber performances in The Messenger and 3:10 to Yuma. I wish the film were a bit more original, but the acting really does sell it.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints fmovies. What is it about the Deep South that's so evocative in cinema? Maybe it's the timelessness. Ain't Them Bodies Saints could be set at any time during the past forty years. The sun seems forever rising or setting in this region, and filmmakers can't help but point their lens in its direction, silhouetting their beautiful actors. Terrence Malick has a lot to answer for.

It's hard not to think of Malick's first film, Badlands, when watching this. The story concerns a couple of young Texan criminals, painfully in love. When Ruth (Rooney Mara) shoots policeman Patrick (Ben Foster), her lover Bob (Casey Affleck) takes the blame and goes to jail. Bob promises he'll come for Ruth, and duly escapes incarceration. Meanwhile, Patrick is making moves on Ruth, oblivious to her guilt. All of this is under the wise, watchful eye of Skerritt, played wonderfully by Keith Carradine. As Bob closes in on Ruth, the cops and the gangsters close in on Bob.

There are times during Ain't Them Bodies Saints when writer-director David Lowery's style and technique comes across as mimicry, of Malick and also of Jeff Nichols, as well as countless American movies from the 1970s. Thankfully, he also has an interesting story to tell, and it is one presented with rich textures. At times the film flows like a visual poem, with Bradford Young's evocative cinematography melding perfectly with Daniel Hart's stirring music. The effect is of something exquisitely handmade.

Affleck's mumbled delivery here exudes danger; he's mythologising himself in the same way he once mythologised Jesse James. Mara is sentimentalised as the angelic mother, but Lowery is wise enough to suggest that this comely vulnerability is an act also - a sophisticated defence against hard men secretly seeking softness.

Perhaps the film veers too closely at times toward stylish vagueness and too far from the broken heart of the story. But there is no denying this is a serious, authored work of art.

Writer/director David Lowery has gathered a superb cast of actor to explore a rather simple story, a cinematic folksong in the western sense (the film is set in the 1970s but could easily be timeless so far reaching are the themes): quite simply it is the tale of an outlaw who escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and the daughter he has never met.

Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and his wife/girlfriend Ruthie Guthrie (Rooney Mara) and their kin Freddy (Kentucker Audley) have been 'raised' by a man named Skerritt (Keith Carradine) and are bank robbers. In their latest attempt Freddy is killed and Ruthie shoots at and wounds Sheriff Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster), but to protect his pregnant wife Bob takes the blame and is sent to prison for four years. Bob writes Ruth daily and longs to be reunited with her and their new daughter Sylvie and escapes the prison by cajoling a guard. Escaping means walking and hitchhiking with a young lad named Will (another impressive turn for Rami Malek). Bob finds a Gilead with Sweetie (Nate Parker) but is determined despite the odds to walk his way back to Ruthie as he had promised. Ruthie meanwhile is making do, raising Sylvie on her own, has been given a house by Skerritt, and is courted by the Sheriff she shot (he does not know that the shooter was Ruthie). There is as much silence in the film as there is dialogue, the characters meditating on the fragility of love and the sense of unpredictable fate. The ending is deeply moving.

Bradford Young provides the hypnotic cinematography, allowing the story to unfold gradually (if a bit too long under Lowery's direction). The performances are all memorable, but it is that of Rooney Mara who likely will be in the running for awards. But foremost it is the concept and the technique of cinematic experimental excellence that makes this film a jewel, the work of an important new artist in David Lowery.

Grady Harp

Well I expected more from this, but then again I usually expect more from things. This basic story, although somewhat cliché, is still good and might have worked if it had been told better. A lot of what takes place seems just to be a general overview of things lacking complexity and intercity, had there been better character development and an a more detailed plot-line, this would have been a good movie. The acting is standard, the characters are pretty flat and so there really isn't much opportunity to compliment or criticize the acting. The directing however is great, it is perhaps what really saves this movie, the slow placed, silent sequenced, coupled with fantastic shots of the rural Texas countryside add structure and really pull you into the story, something that the script sadly does not. In short, you''ll like this if you like minimalist, mood-setting, romanticized drama.