Mud

Mud-480P

Mud-480P

Mud-720P

Mud-720P

Mud-360P

Mud_360P

source: Mud

In Arkansas, the fourteen year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan) lives in a floating house with his mother Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson) and his father Senior (Ray McKinnon). Ellis helps his father selling fish with his best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland). Ellis and Neckbone find a motorboat stranded on the top of a tree in an island on the Mississippi River since a flood and they plan to fix the boat for them. One day, they climb the tree and they find fresh meal inside the boat meaning that someone is living in "their" boat. They leave the place and meet a man named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) near their boat. Soon they learn that the passionate Mud killed a man that had beaten up his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) and now the father and the brother of the deceased man are hunting him down. Mud makes a deal with the romantic Ellis and Neckbone to help him to reunite with Juniper. But when Ellis meets Mud's stepfather Tom (Sam Shepard), he has a different opinion about the love of Juniper with Mud. "Mud" is a sensitive movie about a romantic boy that tries to help a stranger to meet his beloved girlfriend. The story of love and friendship brought recollection of "Stand by Me" because of the charismatic characters Ellis and Neckbone. The performances are top-notch and the cinematography depicts wonderful locations along the Mississippi River. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "Amor Bandido" ("Bandit Love")

MUD is another overrated film that many viewers (and reviewers) seem to mistake for a stylish masterwork. In fact it's a very dull social drama with thriller undertones about a couple of kids who befriend a bizarre homeless man who lives out in the woods, often making a boat suspended in a tree his bed for the night. What the other viewers seem to miss is that it's BORING. MUD has potential, I'll give it that. Scenes of the kids exploring and enjoying a lot hot summer bring to mind the greatness of MEAN CREEK and STAND BY ME, but that's where the similarities end. Instead, this film gets bogged down in small-scale drama, a definite look-at-me style of acting, and way too much sentiment. The inclusion of a crime family and a revenge-fuelled second half doesn't really ring true and when you don't care about the characters anyway, that doesn't help. It also doesn't help that I can't stand the overrated Matthew McConaughey as an actor. He always seems to swan around with his turgid under acting and he bores me to tears whenever he's on screen. At least this film isn't as offensive as KILLER JOE, but I still hated his character. The pity is that some decent character actors are mired in support (in particular, Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks, both of BOARDWALK EMPIRE). And as for Reese Witherspoon - the less said the better!

Caught between childhood and teenage years, two best friends, Ellis and Neckbone, are having to navigate through the murky waters of life that has surprises at every bend. When they arrive their childhood play area - a boat that has gotten stuck in the trees during a storm - they discover an adult is now inhabiting it. Just at a time when they are beginning to recognize their own pre-adult urgings awakening inside them, they discover who is living in their tree house of sort and make friends with him. He becomes a mentor to them just when the murky waters have become too muddy to see clearly, and he tells them how his own life has been shipwrecked because of a love affair that began when he was about their age. The man named Mud had fallen in love with a girl named Juniper when he was a kid and never recovered from the experience. Just as her name implies, she is a bittersweet, prickly creature whose fragrance has gotten into his nostrils and he thinks he can't live without her. On the other hand, she is fickle with love, not appreciating what he has to offer, and only accepting it when it's according to her whims. This mirrors the relationship that Ellis finds himself in with his "girlfriend," May Pearl. Neckbone, on the other hand, has never had anyone love him except for an uncle whose relationships with women are on his terms and usually consist of one night, or to be more exact, one afternoon, stands. On the other hand, his uncle knows how to find the pearls others don't see, and he has found one in the boy he calls Neckbone. Ellis can't help comparing his father's relationship with his mother to his new friend, who will do anything to defend the honor of this woman, even if it means going to jail for the rest of his life, and his father is falling short in his estimation. On one hand, his father is telling him how bad women can be and on the other hand, he has this friend telling him that they are worth everything. This conflicts Ellis, and he finds himself in his own set of conflicts as he defends the girl in his life. Mud's stories are larger than life, and one wonders what is real and what is not. Juniper calls him a liar, but is he really? By the conclusion, one begins to see that Mud's actions are not as murky as they at first seem. In the end, will the river of life lead them to larger horizons where they can grow from their experiences?