Ulee's Gold

If you value fiercely independent filmmaking--intelligent, personal, character-driven, uninfluenced by market considerations--it's impossible not to respect and admire Victor Nunez, whose Florida-based oeuvre is a testament to his patience, tenacity and scruples. If you value excellent filmmaking, however, it's impossible not to wish that Nunez would find a talented screenwriter with whom he could collaborate in future. Ulee's Gold, like his previous feature, Ruby in Paradise, is a carefully crafted, beautifully acted, quietly passionate film intermittently crippled by atrocious dialogue ("You're almost a good man, Ulee Jackson, but you try too hard") and hamhanded literary tropes (Ulee is short for Ulysses; his wife's name was Penelope; he has to save a woman named Helen...deliver us from freshman comp). Fortunately, the quiet, reflective moments outnumber the dramatic ones by a ratio of about 3:1. Indeed, the mundane daily tasks that beekeeper Ulee performs are far more interesting than Nunez's routine plot: Ulee's jailbird son hid a bundle o' cash in a nearby swamp, and now the son's dangerous but unfailingly polite cohorts want their cut. Forget about the story and just enjoy the peaceful sight of other people performing manual labor. Recommended. (M. D'Angelo)[Blu-ray Review—Apr. 19, 2016—Kino, 113 min., R, Blu-ray: $29.95—Making its first appearance on Blu-ray, 1997's Ulee's Gold features a nice transfer and a DTS-HD 2.0 soundtrack. Extras include “Selected B-Rolls” segments (6 min.), audio “soundbites” from costars Peter Fonda (3 min.) and Patricia Richardson (3 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a fine character study makes a welcome debut on Blu-ray.]