Undertow
Creepy rural thriller from David Gordon Green
The movie that David Gordon Green's new thriller conjures up is Charles Laughton's spooky The Night of the Hunter from 1955.
Almost the same situation and setting: In a remote backwater of the rural South, two siblings are shocked when a new member arrives to a family headed by a single parent. They, and they alone, intuit his malicious intent and try to warn the parent, but to no avail. The new family member then murders the parent and maliciously hunts the children through a kind of dream landscape, as he believes they know where certain treasure is hidden. They must, as children, defend themselves.
In Laughton's eerie version, the "hunter" was played as a bogus preacher/psychopath by Robert Mitchum, in one of the screen's most repulsive yet stunning evocations of evil. In Gordon's variant, it's the young actor Josh Lucas. No, Lucas is no Mitchum -- who could be? -- but his frightening Deel Munn is a satanic-enough evocation in this singular film.
Jamie Bell? Sounds familiar. Where did Green locate such a strong young southern actor, who so perfectly looks the part as a son of a red-dirt state, tough and resilient? Well, actually Bell is English and he broke through, believe or not, in the cheerful, infectious "Billy Elliot" of 2000. How he could go from Brit ballet boy to true-grit verisimilitude seems incredible; but then I suppose it's merely acting of a special sort.
The movie builds slowly to its grinding climax, and the suspense -- the standard by which a thriller must primarily be judged -- is first-rate. (S. Hunter, Washington Post)
Undertow
Mon January 31, 2005, 7:00 & 9:15, Muenzinger Auditorium
USA, 2004, in English, Color, 107 min, Rated R • official site
Tickets
10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission.
$7 w/UCB student ID,
$7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.
Parking
Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the
Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters
along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.
RTD Bus
Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus
International Film Series
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Established 1941 by James Sandoe.
First Person Cinema
(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.
C.U. Film Program
(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil
Grillo.
Celebrating Stan
Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.
C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts
Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.