Synopsis
A hired hand's plans to take over his boss farm are shattered when the landowner's son returns to claim his birthright.
Hands That Bind
2021 Directed by Kyle Armstrong
Cast
Paul Sparks Susan Kent Landon Liboiron Nicholas Campbell Bruce Dern Will Oldham Luka Armstrong Beck Armstrong Katrina Beatty Sandra Nicholls Brendan Hunter Geordie Cheeseman Brian Copping William MacLean John Warkentin Kar Luke Ian Leung Robert Nogier Lianna Makuch Patrick Lundeen Darren Frank Ray Pearson Marcel Scherger John Klicman Corb Lund Derrick Campbell Garrett Gregory Mitchelle Maetche Chris Warwick Show All…
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Armstrong's gone and made a movie movie, which happens to be Letterkenny as written by Philip K Dick. It's as scattrshot and prone to whiplash as that comparison implies, but it is all bound by Armstrong's intense commitment to his deeply felt anxieties and singularly honed visual sense, as well as incredibly sensitive performances all around from an exceptionally chosen cast (all anchored by Paul Sparks' fierce and nuanced central depiction of repression and paranoia).
In the spirit of unique shoot-the-moon ambition over perfection, I cannot recommend that you see this more. Don't fuck this guy twice.
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very eerie, very camp, just like what living in alberta’s really like
you go mental
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Andy is a farmhand in 1980’s Alberta. The boss’s ungrateful son takes over the farm putting Andy’s employment in danger. Meanwhile, Andy keeps seeing strange lights in the sky and finding the mutilated corpses of cows.
This is great! The merging of southern-gothic and UFO imagery sounds odd, but the film balances it’s influences well.
The film is well balanced in general! The script manages to maintain an atmosphere of foreboding but still includes moments of levity. It’s filmed with a great degree of naturalism and then hits you with flashes of horror and surrealism.
Its cast is a treasure trove of cult actors. Paul Sparks (Broadwalk Empire), Susan Kent (Trailer Park Boys), and Bruce Dern (Nebraska) all give superb…
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VIFF #11
I may be the only one who came to watch this because of Susan Kent. Got to rep the ol’ Newfoundland ladies. The camera always loves her.
Solid cast of people in this movie. Definitely my kind of movie this is and reminds me of the kind of people I lived around as a kid though I was a oil patch kid I definitely know a lot of guys like Dirk from my days living in the patch.
Feel like I would have been the bartender if I stayed in rural Alberta.
Solid movie all around, as I have said my kind of movie or at least the most like my kind of movie from 2021.
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This turns out to be a very hard film to rate, but there is quite a lot to admire about this Alberta production.
These are people you don’t see in many movies, working people who just want to work the land in peace.
Will Oldham and CanCon vet Nicholas Campbell fit in perfectly to this milieu, and actually almost all the performances are sterling.
Of course this life has many obstacles, and our protagonist family has more then their fair share of them here.
Our family is depicted a quite loving at the beginning, they eat dinner together every night, and Dad asks about what the kids did in school—everyone’s cowboy boots lined up at the…
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Incredibly eerie, I had a feeling that story that Will Oldham tells in the bar was going to be the key to understanding this whole movie. I must give credit that Paul Sparks completely nailed the Canadian accent and I'm frustrated he isn't recognized as one of the better actors around. Kyle Armstrong is going to be one of these directors to keep an eye on.
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Why would you wanna go to alberta?? That's a bad choice there (i'm kidding please don't hurt me)
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Paul Sparks plays farmhand Andy, who intensely stares a lot and is a man of few words in this gothic prairie drama set in southern Alberta in 1981. Everyone asks him about his dad, and he doesn’t want to talk about him. Strange things slowly begin to happen. A dead cow ends up in a tree and Andy’s wife can’t stand the smell and vomits often. Andy continues to stare as he struggles to support his family. Beautiful landscape photography juxtaposed with evocative UFO imagery sometimes overshadow the intention to comment on the complexities of rural culture. Abrupt edits seem to move faster than the film’s deliberate pacing but with some patience there’s much to enjoy.
I wanted to see this for Paul Sparks and ended up having a laugh from Bruce Dern, as Hank: "It’s been really hot… I saw a squirrel the other day putting suntan lotion on his nuts."
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Glad to have watched this online via Vancouver International Film Festival's streaming option. This film is well-directed by Canadian newbie helmer Kyle Armstrong, but the real star is the solid cast led by Paul Sparks. Why he's not more well-known is a mystery to me. Bruce Dern also makes an appearance and further proves there are no small roles, only small actors. Aside from these two, Canadians Susan Kent and Landon Liboiron also deserve your attention.
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At first, it looked like a general reward film which story was about the conflict in the family or some kind of feeling that called home, but using the alienated thing represented in term of physical and mental challenges made this film more psych. The exploration of main character was intriguing and brought a lot humane feelings.
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Seen at VIFF 2021. An unfocused slow burn that leaves many more questions than answers at the end. Andy Hollis (played by a very good Paul Sparks) is an honest, hard working ranch hand who hopes to take over his boss's land one day. That is, until the boss's good for nothing son, Dirk, shows up after a failed bid on an oil rig to stake his birthright. Dirk is a real son of a bitch. He is lazy, a drunk who beats his wife, a thief and cheat, and is downright smug, rubbing it in Andy's face that he will never own land or be able to take care of his family.
At many points during the film, I…
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Ashland Independent Film Festival 2022 #2
A simmering study of knotted masculinity and a desperate community that doesn’t know where to look for answers, this feels so typically neo-western in those themes and in its expansive visuals, and so compelling as pure drama, that you can almost forget in the spans between the more eerie events that it’s also something strangely more. (Or is it? Will Oldham’s bartender summarizes the film’s attitude toward its mysteries, psychological and possibly-supernatural alike.) I liked this a lot.