River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt) - re-release

Started by wilder, December 19, 2015, 04:25:35 PM

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wilder







Quote from: The PlaylistKelly Reichardt made her debut feature over twenty years ago with "River Of Grass." The 1994 film picked up four Indie Spirit Award nominations but has been out of circulation for good while now. However, the folks at Oscilloscope Laboratories teamed with Sundance, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and TIFF to restore the picture and give it the attention it didn't quite get the first time out. And a new trailer is here to celebrate their efforts and the re-release of the movie.

Set in the area of southern Florida where Reichardt grew up — the swampy and sweltering suburbs of Broward and Dade counties, between Miami and the Everglades — River of Grass focuses on Cozy (Lisa Bowman), a middle-aged housewife who dreams of something beyond her monotonous existence. Hoping to spice things up, she goes for a night out at a local dive bar and meets brooding bad boy Lee Ray (played by indie legend Larry Fessenden). A night of heavy drinking that leads to a dip in a neighbour's swimming pool takes a turn for the worse when Cozy accidentally fires Lee Ray's gun at the unsuspecting homeowner, forcing the duo to take it on the lam.

Deciding to embrace the outlaw life, this bumbling Bonnie and Clyde embark on a would-be crime spree that amounts to not much more than a few stolen records and a motel shootout with a cockroach, as their sluggish surroundings prove impossible to escape.

Filled with acerbic wit and deadpan humour, Reichardt's bleak depiction of the backwaters of a consumerist America stands as one of the best independent films of the nineties.


Starring Larry Fessenden and Lisa Bowman
Release Date - River Of Grass will screen at Sundance next month and open in cinemas in March




wilder


wilder

How much cooler can a movie be? Every frame in here is a photograph, textural, evoking a potent sense of time and place, like something out of William Eggleston's head. Fessenden and Bowman are electric together, and their characters are full of movie-world personality but still seem completely real. This is a film for filmmakers, and it pushes the limits of dynamism possible in the cinematography of a low-budget feature: a serious lesson in how to block, frame, light (or work with available light) on a limited budget and still create something expressly cinematic and full of visual style. Definitely more along the lines of Reichardt's later film Night Moves than Wendy and Lucy (I never saw Old Joy) with its precise compositions and static shots. I think it deserves to be mentioned alongside the canon of 90s independent debuts from Tarantino, Soderbergh, PT, and everyone else you usually hear about: Unique personal spin on a small, age-old story, taking place in an unpretentious and long gone world full of down-to-earth inhabitants. The Oscilloscope blu-ray has a wonderfully restored transfer that makes the movie feel brand new. Highly, highly recommended.

matt35mm

Quote from: wilder on May 08, 2016, 01:58:11 AM
(I never saw Old Joy)

See it. It's a seminal movie for me, though I can never really explain why, except to say that it captures so many feelings in so many ways that I haven't felt before or since. I'm a big Kelly Reichardt fan and I think that OLD JOY is still my favorite.

ElPandaRoyal

Quote from: matt35mm on May 08, 2016, 12:21:18 PM
Quote from: wilder on May 08, 2016, 01:58:11 AM
(I never saw Old Joy)

See it. It's a seminal movie for me, though I can never really explain why, except to say that it captures so many feelings in so many ways that I haven't felt before or since. I'm a big Kelly Reichardt fan and I think that OLD JOY is still my favorite.

What you said. It's a really beautiful and engaging movie and I can't really explain why. I wouldn't say it's my favourite of hers, maybe Wendy and Lucy, but Reichardt is a fascinating filmmaker.
Si