Screening Room: ‘Sword of Trust’

On July 10, 2019July 10, 2019 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, UncategorizedLeave a comment

In the new comedy from Lynn Shelton (Humpday), podcaster, comic, and Glow star Marc Maron plays a disgruntled pawn shop owner who gets sucked into a screwball plot about Civil War truthers when he comes across a rare sword.

Sword of Trust opens this week. My review is at PopMatters:

Sword of Trust is in many ways a quintessentially Southern movie. But that sensibility is primarily expressed in the laconic humor and slippery slides from bonhomie to violence. Shelton expends little effort on a cinematic sense of place, aside from some melancholic insets of faded storefronts around the Birmingham, Alabama pawn shop where the action takes place. That is, except for the obsession with the Civil War, or as some characters might characterize it, “Thuh Wah of Nawthun Aggression”…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Free State of Jones’

On June 23, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey in 'Free State of Jones' — Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey in ‘Free State of Jones’

In 1862, a Mississippi farmer named Newton Knight got sick of fighting for the Southern cause. He gathered a band of like-minded rebels against the Rebels and fought a guerrilla war that (briefly) established a free (of slaves, too) corner of the Confederacy.

Free State of Jones, written and directed by Seabiscuit‘s Gary Ross, stars Matthew McConaughey as Knight. It opens this week. My review is at Film Journal International:

As the saying goes, history is just one thing after another. That’s not true of most historical films. Usually they use a traditional narrative of a hero’s triumph over adversity or tragic end with posthumous glory and dot flecks of history into it only as needed. The history is foregrounded in Gary Ross’ Free State of Jones, an ambitious effort that ropes a cross-racial love triangle and civil-rights saga into a no-holds-barred war film. It isn’t often that you see archival photography or onscreen credits about the Battle of Vicksburg in a Matthew McConaughey film with an eight-figure budget. That occasionally starchy approach leaves the human element lacking at times. But at least it’s all for a good cause: further undermining the myth of the heroic Confederacy…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘The Keeping Room’

On September 24, 2015September 24, 2015 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

'The Keeping Room' (Drafthouse Films) — General Sherman is coming, with fire and musket: ‘The Keeping Room’ (Drafthouse Films)

In the neo-feminist Western The Keeping Room, three women must defend themselves against marauding soldiers at the end of the Civil War.

The Keeping Room is opening this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:

Somewhere in the American South in the last year of the Civil War, a black woman, presumably a slave, hauling wood down an empty country road meets a fierce-looking dog. When it begins to growl and bark, she barks right back. Then she notices the carriage stopped in the middle of the road. A half-dressed woman runs from the carriage, only to be shot in the back by the Union soldier in the carriage who appears to have just raped her. Then the first woman is herself shot in the head by another soldier who appears behind her. It’s a vicious and primal scene, a warning for what awaits the trio of women who are next in the soldiers’ path…

Here’s the trailer: