Reviews

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  ★★★½ review by Sofa Sinema on Letterboxd

  Character driven and actor driven and that's the reason to recommend this, beyond the obvious curiosity of it being one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's last major roles. Based on the first novel of Pete Dexter, who also wrote The Paperboy and Paris Trout, it's a heady and uncompromising portrait of small town corruption in the seventies.

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  ★★★½ review by Mike D'Angelo on Letterboxd

  63/100

  The Dissolve review. Really surprised by how dismissively this was received at Sundance. It's wobbly, for sure, but I don't think there was a single scene, apart from the admittedly awful sex/accident cross-cutting*, in which I didn't find something to enjoy.

  * "But that trick never works!"—Rocket J. Squirrel

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  ★★★½ review by Waldo on Letterboxd

  Well observed blue collar crime movie. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, damn, what more can be said? A gritty film. Actor John Slattery has an eye for it, probably grew up watching those 70's crime films and wanted to do one himself. A neighborhood where crime is a way of life. A place where you see a man searching garbage cans for empty beer bottles to see if there's still beer in some of them, where you step out of your car and the empty cans fall out. Hoffman reluctantly investigates the death of a lowlife stepson of his on a work site. Turturro offers solid support as always. What matters here is not the plot but the characters and the world they live in. I liked it.

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  ★★★½ review by SnowboardJunkie on Letterboxd

  About a week ago I finally got around to watching one of the last Philip Seymour Hoffman classic's, The Master. Something about a story of a cult leader that looks dangerously close to Scientology etcetera just wasn't moving the needle for me. But anyhow I did it. This isn't a rehash of my thoughts on that film but suffice to say Im thankful I got to see at least this legendary performance from Mr. Hoffman as if he was still here for me. But it got me thinking. Were not gonna get one more underrated gem, not one more indie that only the cinema snobs talk about until three years later the regular Joes start stumbling upon and ask themselves why hadn't I heard of this, this guy is great. Because he's gone. His addictions took him too early and I found myself sinking into the couch and genuinely sad for a man I didn't know beyond his repeated master works of performing art. But I don't want my first thoughts of him to be about what a shame it is he's gone. So starting with God's Pocket Im going down memory lane, visiting one of the all-time best actors of this generation, of any generation. Thank you Mr. Hoffman, for leaving us so many memorable showcases of a man's bleeding heart. For your fearless creation of such deeply human character's. God's Pocket may not have had the strongest writing but damned if you don't make it shine bright anyway.

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  ★★★½ review by Adrian Z. on Letterboxd

  A drama of absurd people behaving absurdly within a neighborhood which, as it turns out, is named with irony. Philip Seymour Hoffman is compelling as an emotionally distant meat truck driver reluctantly trying to raise money to cover his nasty step son's funeral, while his estranged wife (Christina Hendricks) turns her mourning into an affair with a boozing, womanizing newspaper columnist (Richard Jenkins). Mad Men's John Slattery's directorial debut is a sardonic, twisted story that is never joyful, but engrossing nevertheless.

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