Female Film Critics 24/375
Gritty and sometimes bleak, Annie Silverstein’s Bull is a haunting drama about 14-year-old Kris (Amber Havard), whose future looks about as bright as the dusty neighborhood she lives in on the outskirts of Houston. An unexpected connection offers her a glimpse at new possibilities, but is it enough to permanently change her trajectory?
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Bull, the powerful, poetic debut feature from writer-director Annie Silverstein, is rooted in neorealist tradition. The film’s use of nonprofessionals adds authenticity and atmospheric detail to this fascinating look at the subculture of bull riding among black cowboys in rural Texas.
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What cuts the deepest emotionally in Annie Silverstein’s new indie narrative, Bull, is the power of found family. The film centers on struggling 14-year-old Kris (newcomer Amber Havard) who has little to emulate in her own family, as her mother, doing time in the state penitentiary, offers parental advice like punching aggressive schoolmates to show who’s boss.
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Set in a pin-dot Texas town, Annie Silverstein’s feature debut is an absorbing, carefully observed character study of a tentative relationship that blossoms into an undeniable bond between a youngster in desperate need of a positive parental figure and an oldster who needs someone to focus on — beyond his beat-up self.
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Bull, the powerful, poetic debut feature from writer-director Annie Silverstein, is a portrait of an unlikely interracial and intergenerational friendship that develops between a 14 year-old Krystal, called Kris (Amber Havard), whose mother is in jail, and her middle-aged neighbor Abe Turner (Rob Morgan of Mudbound), a former star bull rider who now wrangles thrashing bulls at modest rodeos.
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