Big Bad Love (2001)

Lack of good storyline.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The acting was good but the travails of an alcoholic would-be writer didn't do much for me. Yes, it was nice to see Debra Winger again and a surprise to see Angie Dickinson, but the movie bored me to tears. Only the little touches were pleasing: the 55-gallon oil drum acting as a wastebasket; the repeated stuffing of the mailbox with outgoing book manuscripts; the presence of trains (especially the "boxcar as mural"); the kudzu growing everywhere (that WAS kudzu, wasn't it?). I knew nothing about the protagonist/director before seeing the movie, but while watching it I noticed that he looked a lot like the musician Stephen Stills. I was sad to see the mural boxcar taken away at the end---its presence on the siding next to the main character's yard was reassuring.

Incredible. I need to see it again. Mississippi, Faulkner, searching for redemption, crying out "corpsman" in his sleep ... there is a very lot packed into this film. Arliss Howard is perfect for this role. Did the boxcar have to roll off at the end?

Big bad love is a truly beautiful movie. Arliss Howard has done what I have been eagerly expecting for a long lime,i.e. portrayed a tormented human being without the typical Hollywood string-quartet having to tell you when to feel something. The acting itself along with the perfect script and footage render this film a credibility and sincerity seldom found in American movies. Thanks Howard Arliss!

During the entire decade of the 1980's and toward the early 1990's,Debra Winger was one of the hottest actresses working in Hollywood at the time and she had a beau of leading actors that took her to the title of the box office queen. Some of her leading men were John Travolta,Richard Gere,Marlon Brando,and Jack Nicholson as well as with actors Robert Duvall and Ed Harris. However,she would win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1983 for "Terms of Endearment",and after that she went in submission for a while.......only to resurface.However,Debra Winger makes her return here in one of the best performances of her career. "Big Bad Love" is a film based on the writings of Mississippi author Larry Brown. She people think that she retired from the cimema in recent years(her last film was nine years ago under the direction of Bernardo Bertlucci),but takes this chance to star opposite her real-life husband Arliss Howard(who stars,directs,and wrote the script). Howard plays,Leon Barlow,a depressive,alcoholic Vietnam veteran and aspiring writer. Aside from holding a candle for hs ex-wife(Winger),most of Barlow's time focuses on daily trips to the mailbox,sending off plies of manuscripts,and following enough rejection letters to wallpaper hs bathroom. He is played as a sympathetic ne'er-do -well,lovable enough to be excused for shirking his familial responsiblities as a father(including his two precious children),until the end of the film,when tragedy strikes and Barlow is forced out of his cynical melancholy.Strong performances from Angie Dickinson as well(in a grand return to the silver screen)as Rosanna Arquette(whom I haven't heard from since the 1990's)and Paul Le Mat. This movie had the heart,the guts and the soul that makes it a piece of grand cimematic work. A must see!Rating: **** out of *****