Mud

Directed by Jeff Nichols

(PG-13)

***

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“Somehow, when no one was looking,” Matthew McConaughey transformed himself into “an actor of serious presence,” said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. Here playing the title character—a likable rogue who’s wanted for murder when two teenage boys discover him hiding on an island in the Mississippi—the onetime romantic-comedy star instantly makes us believe in Mud’s allure as a surrogate father figure. And in a movie that really belongs to the two 14-year-olds, Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland turn in “extraordinarily assured” performances too, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. The boys are kids from unstable homes who’re still young enough to throw their hearts into aiding Mud in his quest to escape downriver with his longtime sweetheart (a “believable” Reese Witherspoon). If not for a “preposterously staged climax,” the third feature from the writer-director of Take Shelter would be nearly flawless. Even so, it’s “easy to love,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. To me, Mud isn’t just effective, it’s “a newly minted American classic.”