American Honey, the first movie set in the States by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank), finds the director working with some fairly ludicrous self-imposed hindrances: a largely untrained cast, Shia LaBeouf at his most methody-bedraggled, and a nearly three-hour running time. That she makes these all meld together beautifully feels like some kind of weird alchemy, really.
Tag: Shia LaBeouf
Film Review: ‘Fury’
The longer Fury goes on, the more surreal it becomes. The action takes place during a single day and night at the end of World War II, but there can’t possibly be enough hours in a day to accommodate everything that happens. Probably this was intentional on the part of writer-director David Ayer (End of Watch). Ayer’s goal here seems not so much a slice of realism but a distillation of hell, in which each new horror lasts long enough to prepare us for the next one.
Our world is a U.S. Army tank in Germany in April 1945. The leader of this crew is Don Collier (Brad Pitt), whose unsentimental ways have kept his men alive since North Africa. Most of them, anyway — as the film begins, a baby-faced typist named Norman (Logan Lerman) is abruptly conscripted to take the place of the soldier just killed inside the tank. Norman’s first job is to clean up the remains of his predecessor.