Mud Reviews

To be honest, even though I did like ‘Take Shelter’, it didn’t completely blow me away but Jeff Nichols definitely displayed some potential and I was really eager to watch his following directing effort. Eventually, I was quite impressed by this flick. The first thing I really enjoyed was the pitch-perfect depiction of teenage first love they gave here. Indeed, pretty much like this young boy, I was 14 years old when I had my first ‘girlfriend’, she was a friend of my sister and she was 18 years old. So, I pretty much knew exactly what the guy was feeling and coming through and it was pretty much flawless in my opinion. Sure, you can argue that it was just a detail but that’s why this movie was so good, it’s because so many details were done right. Indeed, the way the boys were interacting with each other, pretty much everything done by Matthew McConaughey who has managed to become one of the most exciting actors during the last 4 years erasing decades of underwhelming work, how Jeff Nichols managed to give this time and place a real genuine feeling, all those details worked so well for me. I have to admit it, there were probably too many characters and too many sub-plots but most of it worked really well and I really enjoyed the damned thing.

It was a kinda sequel to 'Stand by me' from the two boys' perspective but McConaughey character do's all the differences in this story. I hated his role in 'Killer Joe' and liked him in here. The places where movie was shot were the highlight, it was beautiful, feels like happening in the Amazon river basin.

The story had many diversions from the main character, Ellis, his connection with a stranger, his parents fight, his best friend and his typical teenager love affair. It won't just explores, it makes us to scratch our head to think where the characters are heading especially of course Matthew McConaughey's mysterious one. The character developments were very detailed which won't take us to any flashbacks but explains as the way it stream.

The third fine art material from the Jeff Nichols after 'Take Shelter' and 'Shotgun Stories'. I feel Matthew McConaughey is at his very best, he and the two boys given an outstanding performance and well supported by Reese Witherspoon. A nice movie which had ability to create a scenario that you are not expecting. Overall it will make your time worth spending for.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Take Shelter so I had lesser of anticipation for his next film, but I must say that this was very excellent indeed. McConaughey has redeemed himself lately in all of these great movies. I'm also pretty skeptic when it comes to children actors, but the 2 boys here were acting the shit out of the movie.