a review of

man, so many thoughts about this one. do bernier's other films look this good? holy hell. still can't tell if this was shot on film, and the internet won't tell me, but the grain looks amazing. the lighting is solid the whole way through in a way that never really stands out, but *always* stays out of the way. the fucking camera angles. i know there's nothing super ground breaking here, but i loved it. the angles were just so lock step with the emotions elicited by the writing and acting. incredible. the super close up shots in the car. the super close up circling shots of them kissing, dancing. real real real nice to go along on this visual ride. opening shot tracking the exact pace of her gait. even some cool drone shots. samara weaving what the absolute fuck. not often i see someone do this much with somewhat of a standard script. the writing is fine. some of the dialogue is immaculate. some of the dialogue is a complete flop. the overall story arc is pretty exciting most of the time if you can suspend belief about this rule-following, super model, small town white girl meeting a boy she kinda thinks is a scumbag and stalking him a little, then asking him to go skinny dipping with her in the middle of the damn night deep down a country road where nobody could hear her scream for help, then learning how to pick pocket in like three days, then the week after asking him to start robbing banks with her, and things just escalate *so, so fast* and yet somehow she never stopped to think what would happen if any single thing went wrong at any point in their crime spree. so, whatever you make of all that. then, i'm just scratching my head about who the target audience for this is. some kinda-acab country-ass white people? there can't be more than a couple hundred of those in existence, and maybe that's why this only opened in two hundred theaters. i just gotta know more about the american flag people who are eager to watch films with criminal, cop murderin' protagonists in this day and age. fascinating. hey though, i'm glad this got made. samara weaving puts in an all timer performance. pretty neat to see the emotional character arc steal the show in a film like this. there were more than a few points in this film i thought we were heading for a four and a half star movie. mostly just some clumsy, reductive writing choices held this one back.