Film two on my Film Fest list was Jeff Nichols’ Mud. This has been a while coming but finally I saw this last Saturday with Seema. We both saw Nichols’ previous film, Take Shelter, a few months back and loved it. Mud has a similar tone and pace to Take Shelter although its subject matter is quite different. I won’t go into the plot as you can pretty much gather this from trailer below. Suffice to say that this is an excellent film that had me engrossed from start to finish. Superbly shot, timed, with authentic attention given to its characters. Worth also mentioning the excellent acting by the two main protagonists Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Mud (Matthew McConaughey). Perhaps the slightly over explained and contrived ending was the only let-down … I would’ve preferred more mystery. But this is a minor quibble in what was a suberb film. I cant wait to see what Nichols comes up with next.

Tonight’s NZIFF film is Mistaken for Strangers. Will report on this tomorrow hopefully.