Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Alex Fernandez The Director certainly did a wonderful job of putting this film together. He used very short scenes, avoiding a lot of editing that would come about with long scenes and poor acting. Great job of getting the audience into the mood of the film with very frequent cuts as people move about in the film and interact with each other.These frequent cuts can also be annoying to some viewers.The actors aren't very good and although the very short scenes hide this fairly well, the scenes with a lot of dialogue have a very flat and rehearsed mood. This is especially true when the boy is speaking to the main character about suicide, while holding him at gunpoint. The flat, uninspired acting works well for the guy who is dealing with the suicide, but not so well for the other characters.I am surprised this film has nominations and wins for acting. Though not too surprised to see some nominations for new director.Overall, I thought the directing was solid, making maximum use of minimal talent. Storyline is cliché, but still OK.

timmy_501 I first became interested in Ballast when I heard about its setting: it's very rare to find a film set in the Mississippi Delta. It's also quite rare to find a serious drama with mostly black characters. I was afraid that this would either be a sappy melodrama or an attempt to make some "profound" point about how racism exists and is, like, bad and stuff. Thus I was quite pleased to find that this film manages to have a uniquely Southern setting without resorting to clichés or caricatures and that making some grand social statement is evidently the last thing on the mind of first time director Lance Hammer. Instead, we have a deliberately paced character study with a nicely handled mise en scene.The film opens with the attempted suicide of Lawrence, a shopkeeper distressed over the (extremely) recent death of his twin brother/partner/only friend. Lawrence's recovery is complicated by his brother's will which indicates that the recently deceased man's ex-wife and teenage son are entitled to his share of the store and part of the property the brothers had co-habitated. Things start off tense due to the boy's involvement with some disreputable older boys that he owes money and stay that way due to Lawrence's troubled partnership with the boy's mother. This is a quiet, contemplative film for the most part and it offers no easy resolutions. Instead, it manages to realistically capture some unique characters in a woefully ignored section of American society.

Jim Chevallier I took a while to trust this film, since it is one of many new indies to start very slowly, with much that is unexplained and not only minimal sound effects, but in fact even minimal ambient sound. There's a number of new films that start this way and never get anywhere after that. Here however there's a slow but inevitable build, and much of what's unexplained becomes intuitively clear as the film progresses. The uncle's first few encounters with his nephew are beautifully set up and played, with their undercurrents clear early on. The story at one point becomes a bit predictable, but nonetheless engaging. The characters are very rich without any surface effort or telegraphing. I'm iffy on the ending, and I don't know that I'd want to watch a number of films like this in a row. But it has definite authority, and shows immense promise.

BobMustgrave A lot of people sidestep traditional methods when it comes to film-making, and even film releasing these days, but it takes a film with quality to truly buck the system and make it a viable option for future filmmakers. This is that film.Slacker did it in '91.Head Trauma made some serious waves in '99Four Eyed Monsters took a step in the right direction in '06.But this is the first truly cinematic American Indie to make a serious case for maintaining creative control.Worthy of the criterion treatment I'd say (heck, George Washington got one).