Daily Plastic: Ballast

Movie	Our Take	Other Takes
Ballast Trailer . IMDB	There's great pleasure in watching characters solve their problems by standing on them like ballast, and there's great pleasure in discovering a new filmmaker who's more interested in watching the rise than the fall. Robert Davis Daily Plastic	The camera’s discretion renders its work almost invisible.... That neither Smith, Riggs, nor Ross had ever before been in front of a camera suggests that Hammer, whose first feature film this is, has an immense talent for casting and directing actors.... Ballast is a highly sophisticated film, but moment by moment it is such an organic expression of the Delta and the people who live there that it feels made up on the spot. Amy Taubin Artforum But these particulars aren’t quite so important as the film’s mood and its vast collection of stolen moments... This gives Ballast the feeling of having been composed with the camera, not the pen.... [However] once Ballast has gotten its fill of wallowing in the barren, unforgiving landscape and the misery of its characters, things take a turn for the slightly more conventional. Matt Prigge Philadelphia Weekly Opens with arty longueurs? It's strong, and quietly moving material. My colleague Howard believes that what I call the arty longueurs of the first half to be essential, that the process of the film finding its own voice is an essential part of what it's about. I'm not so sure. Glenn Kenny In the Company of Glenn Hammer has a nice eye, and his premise develops engagingly in the final half hour, as he raises provocative questions about whether one man can truly step in for another. But it takes the poignancy of the final scenes to redeem what comes before. Noel Murray Onion AV Club

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