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"Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother" is a stylistically excellent film with several nuanced performances that has trouble coming to a worthwhile conclusion, despite its commitment to character tension. Its frenetic action and absurdist humor reminded me of cult favorite "Boondock Saints" and even carries over that films vague holy vengeance motifs. Mahershala Ali's portrayal of Latif feels like a direct decedent of Forest Whitaker's "Ghost Dog" and it too shares that movie's rambling, doesn't entirely make sense sensibilities. The general through-line is fun! After his wife's recent death, a Dad needs to provide breast milk to a colicky baby. This leads him into mosques, strip clubs, evangelical churches, and even a Mormon guitar circle. There's certainly a plethora of extreme religiosity in the movie, but I couldn't quite figure out the greater meaning to all of it. Did Tarif only come to religion through his wife? Is he himself actually religious? Is this more a commentary on how his daughter finds it? By the end, I decided the backdrop of religion, like Boondock Saints, was merely window dressing for a somewhat absurdist plot that is only vaguely vigilante in its delivery. I came out of the theater thinking, this is just an action movie, and I'm being tricked by indie flavored shot composition and quirky, well-delivered characters. Maybe I'll see more in a second viewing. Worth noting that John Cho creates an electric, weirdo villain in Pastor Hwan. Similar to Tarif, and the porn peddler Hatty, we're not quite sure where any of these characters fall in God's hierarchy, but a confusing moment near the end where Hwan's character recognizes a miracle, and asks "Who prays for you?" to Tarif suggests that maybe he too is touched. Why any of these characters deserve God's grace is beyond me, and I could never reconcile this with their despicable nature and motives. Ultimately it's why I left the movie shrugging. It was an interesting ride, but I wanted a deeper payoff of redemption. Perhaps I lack faith.

"Heart of the Beast" feels like the type of movie that is programmatically generated to do solid box office. As a dog lover, I went into it knowing why I was there (a dog story) and knowing that almost all dog stories have sad endings. That's just how dog stories work. The movie stars Brad Pitt, who can carry a movie on his own, which he sort of has to here, because outside of five minutes of JK Simmons, he's the only actor on screen. Except, you know, that lovable dog. He's so well behaved! The movie's nearly two-hour run time contains exactly what you'd expect from watching the trailers, and will feel familiar to anyone who has read Jack London. Our hero + dog must cross the wilderness, escaping certain doom every ten minutes, while Brad Pitt says the equivalent of "that was close... I love you boy" to a sometimes CGI, sometimes not-CGI dog. To the film's credit, there were only a few key moments when I could spot the difference. The action is predictable, but well shot. What is not predictable is just how prepared Brad Pitt and his dog are for mishaps. Odin the dog carries a veritable bag of holding on his back, containing everything one might need to survive the harsh elements of Alaska. Need a splint for a broken arm? It's on his back! Need a gun? Conveniently lost. Some wet bags work, others don't. This isn't a story of someone trapped in the wilderness with only a knife and a dog. It's a story of a dog and a man that are so specifically prepared for the troubles ahead that I found myself wondering if they were overweight on the planes tonnage guidelines. Who comes that prepared then throws caution to the wind when deciding when and where to cross a river? The flashbacks in this movie are pretty terrible, and have so much sepia haze and jitter in them to make me wonder if there was a lot more footage and story in this script originally, but then someone (likely correctly) decided... no one cares about this cliche war story, and it doesn't look that good, so let's just focus on the wilderness mainline instead. Still, I love dogs, and if you love dogs too, you'll get choked up at the parts they want you to get choked up for. That's what dog stories are designed to do. There's just better survival movies both in story ("The Edge") and the fantastical ("The Grey") that I can't be bothered with a mediocre, schmaltzy one that treats the whole adventure like a series of trials from "The Last Crusade". Only a penitent dog shall pass.

"The Sisters Brothers" starts off as a fairly typical genre movie and ends up somewhere more personal. Tonally it shifts between themes of manifest destiny, inerhited violence, exploratory soul searching, and the brotherhood of men (biological or otherwise). It has a fearsome foursome of actors at their zenith, with no character necessarily playing the lead. This is an actor's movie and highlights just how good Riley, Gyllenhall, Phoenix, and Ahmed are at making characters from thin air. The ending is unsatisfying, and Rutger Hauer does a Kevin Costner "Big Chill" reprisal by spouting no lines and being a dead man in a casket. Likely he had lines, but stylistically director Audiard chose that an enemy only referenced by others is scarier than one who speaks. I felt cheated. Who doesn't want to see old-man Hauer yell at someone? Most half-good movies are either great at the beginning or the end. "The Sisters Brothers" is the first movie I can say I've seen that I enjoyed the middle parts more than the opening or end. The brothers, who eventually find their prey, are confused to find comradery at its conclusion, and partake in that idyllic, free-ranging happiness of the American West and its lonely verandas. It only works because we've traveled with these characters a bit and can witness their change simply in their physicality. Pushed to pick, I think Riley is my favorite of the characters and he centers the film. Of the brothers he is the most questioning and wanton. I appreciate that while he isn't the natural killer, he seems to be the most professional, and the most ruthless when it comes down to it. All these characters are missing something, and searching, in their own ways, for a better life that is free from their past. That's always the spirit of westerns, but "The Sister Brothers" does a solid job presenting it in a more personal way. It's unfortunate that its overall story is so weak. The movie is more a Malick style thinker that can't find footing between it's traditional western storytelling and its introspective indie leaning. In the end it feels rambling, much like its characters.