American independent Jon Jost at his most personal and mordantthe film is dedicated ironically to his father. It’s a bleak tale about crumbling patriarchy and male hysteria in a remote part of Utah, where a failed entrepreneurbrilliantly played with compulsive, all-American cheeriness by Tom Blair, who also starred in Jost’s Last Chants for a Slow Dance and The Bed You Sleep Ingoes hunting with his son. Visually inventive and striking, as Jost’s films always are, this is as good as his All the Vermeers in New York, and given the landscapes and manias on display here, perhaps even more authentic (1991). (JR)