Ian Buckwalter at NPR has reviewed Stone:
This is a film about people who are lost, and the filmmakers draw a direct line between their characters’ existential wanderings and the religious obsessions they find for themselves. For Jack, it’s the conservative Christian radio that soundtracks his commute to the prison; for his wife, Madylyn (Frances Conroy), it’s a deep involvement in their church.
I’m amazed at how many of these reviews have pointed to the “radio talk show” element in the film.
[The Director John] Curran (“We Don’t Live Here Anymore,” “The Painted Veil”) layers the movie with snatches of late-night talk-radio pleas for redemption, and turns Jack and Stone’s parole sessions into a kind of confessional. That idea may not be new, but how Curran and his cast chew into it is often mesmerizing.
I beginning to get it. Though my voice in John Curran’s Stone is essential to the plot, it serves to present Christian talk radio as irrelevant to the real stuff of life. At least that’s the impression of Stephen Whitty, the film reviewer for the New Jersey Star-Ledger:
“…the movie is dotted with Christian imagery and influences (including a soundtrack awash in evangelical radio — static, the film implies, which we have to tune out if we’re ever going to really hear).”
Seriously?
Whitty also calls Stone “the most religious film of the year” and “a meditation on faith, in all its forms.”
Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune has just published his review of Stone:
The film’s soundtrack is flooded with the sound of talk-radio callers and a broadcast of what is apparently the only show anyone in the greater Detroit area listens to: a faith-based, paranoia-stoking program called “All Voices Under God.”
UPDATE: Paul talks to the Director of Stone, John Curran AUDIO
I’m privileged to have my voice appearing alongside Robert De Niro and Edward Norton in the new John Curran film, Stone which opens nationwide today and in Detroit on October 22.
The New York Times has just posted their review of the film. The reviewer opens his review:
As far as Stone can tell, or as far as the movie initially suggests, the only thing standing between him and the outside world is an unsmiling parole officer, Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro), who, when he’s not shuffling papers, listens — in his car and at home — to Christian talk radio.