Saw David Gordon Green's "Undertow" awhile back w/ David Gordon Green in attendance...

Undertow is basically David Gordon Green applying his approach to moviemaking in remaking "Night of the Hunter" w/ some 70's drive in movie conventions (most noticeably the opening credit sequence). The movie was shot in Savannah, Georgia and from David's approach the story and characters all evolve out of its landscapes and locations. David says he likes to shoot in places he would like to live versus movies full of artificial bland towns and shopping malls that are lifeless. The movies narrative also takes from stories a real life runaway told a 911 operator... and these wild stories and how on some level the real horrors in the stories are dealt with in the kids mind and turned into adventure (if that makes sense).

The movie is well made... yet it does get repetitive in the last half. I appreciate the effort and there are many moments that feel pure and void of the usual movie cliche... it really does feel like your seeing and experience sides of characters often neglected in movies... the movie shows you lots of different shades and sides of the characters (quite moments, ponderings, hidden vices, etc.,). As the movie develops and progresses as genuine and sincere as the movie portrayed its characters I never fully got into its narrative... I liked the characters... but the overall arc left me more indifferent than anything. I wanted to feel more at the movies climax but I didn't. It might be the repetitiveness of the last half and how it leads to the climax that detached me some from the movie... it doesn't mantain the right cinematic notes to hold me in and then build me to emotionally follow it to its catharsis. Perhaps the approach to making the movie by basically throwing out the script from the get go and having no real script during the shooting of the movie and lots of improv is some of the reason for my indifference, this approach can capture lightning in a bottle, yet at the same time lead to a movie that is more excercise in filmmaking than movie with a solid arc and narrative that wants to take you from a to c with the right notes and development and scenes to get you there.

I do admire the ambition of the movie and like it, there is some great use of freeze frames, optical effects, sound design w/ 3 layers of sound blending in together like a unified score - you might hear a fan in the background slowly blur into the sound of the score or environment around it, etc.,

Jamie Bell from Billy Elliot is a real stand out in the movie and does a great job... he takes on the southern US accent without any real glitches.

I was going to tell David Gordon Green if he liked freeze frames in movies so much to check out Kinji Fukasaku's "Blackmail is My Life." David Gordon Green did mention he totally ripped off Night of the Hunter, and was inspiried also by 70's made for tv movie "Bad Ronald" (yeah that boy hiding in the wall movie), Macon County Line, Electra Glide in Blue, and others for Undertow.

Of his mentions of his next four possible movies, the one that sounded most intriguing was a Jennifer Aniston horror movie. He also mentioned it would be interesting to do his approach and do a version of Friday Night Lights.

He also has a short film with an old cowboy in tighty whitey's and a horse thats funny for him and nobody else that no studio has let him release on DVD as an extra as of yet. Someone mentioned to David that in all his movies there is a shot of someone in tighty whitey's... to which David replied he himself wore tighty whitey's and it was at least something to laugh at twice a day, when you put them on and take them off at night.

mostly agreed. I love Green's eye for detail and really enjoyed UNDERTOW for most of its running length, but near the end the debt to NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and mechanical nature of the plot just got too much to take. It's a bummer to see something so alive and full of possibility just hew itself into a formula path at the end. Still well worth a look and well above most movies, and in most years it'd probably hit the low end of my top ten. (This year, the strongest year for movies in this century at very least, it may not even hit my eleven-way tie for eleventh that usually snarls up at the bottom of the list.)