Review of Leaves of Grass (2009) by Davey M — 28 Nov 2010

What a script. What a movie. Comedy and tragedy, philosophy, religion, romance, poetry, pot, and gunplay, "Leaves of Grass" really kind of has it all. Edward Norton gives the best performance(s) I've seen from him, and the rest of the cast is equally terrific--Keri Russell, Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss, Josh Pais, and writer-director Tim Blake Nelson.

The story is something like a blended-together concoction of "Pineapple Express," "Adaptation," "A Serious Man," and "Junebug," but it is always absolutely, completely, refreshingly original.

All in all, it's one of the most refreshing movies I've seen--a movie that seems at times to gallop along, and yet also has a number of wonderfully quiet, gentle scenes that keep everything grounded both emotionally and thematically.

It twists and turns and some critics apparently accused it of tonal whiplash, but all of the shocks are appropriately shocking, and really the emotional journey struck me as incredibly, almost unbelievably organic.

I'm not sure if I've ever called a movie jaw-dropping before, but, from probably a half hour into the movie until the final blackout, I just sat there, with my mouth open stupidly, awestruck and kind of blown away by what was going on on the screen.

Not because it's the sort of movie with a crazy twist ending or anything like that, just because it was all so perfect. The humor, the human drama, the explosions of action, the development of character, the infusion of philosophy.

Basically what I'm saying is this movie is a masterpiece. The best movie I've seen from 2010, pretty easily. The fact that it more or less when straight to DVD is some crazy, crazy crime. It should have been some kind of an art house blockbuster.