Stop the Pounding Heart

This slice-of-life film is 96 painful minutes of pointlessness focused on sad and tragic people trapped in poverty and squalor. The filmmaker spent 2 months filming these life slices, which he then re-assembled to create what appears to be the observation of a teenage identity crisis. Set in east Texas, the film is a modified documentary-style with very limited dialogue, moving the limited story-line forward through pensive looks, forest walks, feeding and milking goats, and bull riding. The main family is shown repeatedly reading or justifying their lifestyle through their bible interpretations. These scenes are interspersed gun shooting, and with young men covered with tattoos who ride mechanical, and then real, bulls. Through all of these scenes, you suppose that, perhaps, there's a love interest developing. You have a lot of time to think/anticipate what the movie is about since there's so little of consequence happening on screen. Skip this movie and do something more stimulating, like watching moss grow.