suck it

thumbsucker has gotten a lot of bad press from the cinema scene here in sacto. dan over at the barnesyard panned it during its theatrical release, as did kiefer over at SN&R (the bee syndicated their review with ebert's 3-star thumbs up). denby at the new yorker wrote that mike mills' (tsucker's director—NOT r.e.m. bassist with golden locks) film has "a quiet camera style, a restrained color palette, and a way of shaping ... scenes that is searching and open-ended," observations that i don't agree with at all. the palette is not necessarily bleak, but it's by no means restrained—maryse alberti's fleshed out jersey tones in happiness first comes to mind. the camerawork is almost too efficient: a blindfold, a 48 fps hallway tracking shot, a pipe rip, etc ...

find your power animal, sucka'!


minimalist and at times perfunctory; going through the motions. as for scenes being "searching and open-ended" i have to go back to db's review at the barnesyard: mills practically holds our hand from one sequence to the next, either with a musical cue (hit and miss polyphonic spree with good elliott smith) or by returning to a wide-angle shot of justin (with thumb, in bed, on the jon, etc...). i think mills has a great sense of pacing and the film, faults aside, held my interest and was occasionally quite funny. queue it up and watch it with friends. FFT.