Blue Ruin
Sundance Film Festival
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Refn and Tarantino can fuck off now that Jeremy Saulnier has joined their ranks with his genre-defying revenge flick. Saulnier manages to keep the audience on the edge of their seats throughout with a main character who remains expressionless and silent for nearly the entire film—yet draws us in better than Ryan Gosling’s pretty pout ever did. Macon Blair is on point as Dwight, introduced to us as a vagrant whose violent behavior in the first 15 minutes of film goes unexplained, until it’s revealed his parents were killed by the hillbilly thug he’s just knifed. Dwight picked the wrong backwoods family to fuck with, and bloody mayhem ensues—but as it turns out, Dwight turns out to be quite the MacGyver of murder. That’s what makes this film stand out, really—it turns the everyday into a murderous montage without bogging it down with unrealistic, witty dialogue (at one point, Dwight even says, "I don’t have a speech for you…" to a friend as he’s asking to borrow a gun). In fact, the best spoken moments of the film are when obvious points are made about the situation with a bite of black humor. This is top-notch cult classic material that won’t disappoint when it hits theaters in April.

Screenings:

Time: 1.25 9 PM Venue: Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City