"Shotgun Stories" opened in New York this weekend, which prompted reviews from Matthew Zoller Seitz of the New York Times, David Edelstein of New York Magazine and Lou Leminick of the New York Post. Not surprisingly, both reviews are very favorable of Little Rock native Jeff Nichols' fine film.
Writes Seitz, "Shotgun Stories," "defines the classic western phrase “doing what a man’s got to do” as both a moral imperative and a biological compulsion."
Edelstein raves, "As a male movie critic with both liberal-humanist convictions and a hypersensitivity to injustices large and small, I seesaw between contradictory impulses: to denounce screen fantasies of vigilante vengeance as antithetical to social harmony, and to get royally pissed off when bad guys don’t die with enough gurgling and hemorrhaging. My inner divide is one of the reasons I was so moved by Jeff Nichols’s Shotgun Stories, a mournful drama in which two sets of brothers—they share a father—engage in a deadly feud."
Leminick, in his brief review, notes, "debuting director Jeff Nichols has an eye for small-town America and a sensibility that he shares with fellow North Carolina School of the Arts alumnus David Gordon Greene ("Undertow"), who served as executive producer. "Shotgun Stories" also features a riveting performance by Michael Shannon as oldest son Son. He's definitely an actor to watch."
Writes Seitz, "Shotgun Stories," "defines the classic western phrase “doing what a man’s got to do” as both a moral imperative and a biological compulsion."
Edelstein raves, "As a male movie critic with both liberal-humanist convictions and a hypersensitivity to injustices large and small, I seesaw between contradictory impulses: to denounce screen fantasies of vigilante vengeance as antithetical to social harmony, and to get royally pissed off when bad guys don’t die with enough gurgling and hemorrhaging. My inner divide is one of the reasons I was so moved by Jeff Nichols’s Shotgun Stories, a mournful drama in which two sets of brothers—they share a father—engage in a deadly feud."
Leminick, in his brief review, notes, "debuting director Jeff Nichols has an eye for small-town America and a sensibility that he shares with fellow North Carolina School of the Arts alumnus David Gordon Greene ("Undertow"), who served as executive producer. "Shotgun Stories" also features a riveting performance by Michael Shannon as oldest son Son. He's definitely an actor to watch."
