Blue Ruin Is Astonishingly Absorbing

At the start of the 2010s, crowdfunding through websites like Kickstarter really broke through as a way to get films financed without relying on the money of corporations that could creatively stifle the production. The ideal use of this financing source would be to get off-kilter original indie movies like Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin made, though the biggest of the films benefiting from crowdsourcing were extensions of already-existing franchises like Veronica Mars: The Movie and Super Troopers 2. As the decade comes to a close, it feels like the bloom is off the crowdsourcing rose thanks to a whole bunch of controversial Kickstarter campaigns that have diluted the reputation of the idea of crowdsourcing a movie. At least we'll always have Blue Ruin!

The Front Runner Is Lackluster Fare Desperately In Need Of Some Personality

The Front Runner is a movie after Dragnet's heart in that it's very much a "Just The Facts, Ma'am" kind of production based on the three-week-long scandal that sank the Presidential chances of Democratic Party candidate Gary Hart. It presents the events that happened, a bunch of the real-life people involved with them but never creates a perspective or a personality of its own in the process. Going the "Just The Facts, Ma'am" route may have helped Dragnet solve some crimes in his own TV show, but doing the same approach here ends up meaning The Front Runner just feels empty as a movie. It's a wannabe political thriller without any of the brains, thrills or thoughtfulness that define the best entries in this subgenre.

Hold the Dark Is A Shallow And Tedious Journey Into The Cold Wilderness

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD 

I kept waiting and waiting for Hold the Dark to suddenly click into place for me, but that moment never came. Writer Macon Blair and director Jeremy Saulnier (the latter being the director behind one of 2016's best movies, Green Room) have delivered a feature that only gets more and more inert as it goes on as one gradually realizes that the slow-burn restrained atmosphere of the whole movie isn't going nowhere. Oh to go back to the start of the movie, when I still had hopes for this one realizing its potential. The beginning of Hold the Dark is easily the strongest part of the whole feature, as we're introduced to Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), an author who is contacted by Alaska resident Medora (Riley Keough) to help her find her son who was recently taken by wolves.