Welcome to Pine Hill

At times the improvised dialogue seems too schematic and superfluous, especially in view of such exploratory and observant handheld camera work. Otherwise, though, this is wonderful stuff. Full Review

[Mr. Miller's] film shows the influence of other recent work in the American neo-neo-realist vein, notably Ramin Bahrani’s “Goodbye, Solo” and Lance Hammer’s “Ballast,” and like them relies on understatement and indirection to arrive at a powerful and resonant meaning. Full Review

Miller’s ace in the hole is the hulking, regal Harper, whose round face vacillates between childlike mirth and lung-stomping sadness. His casual charisma not only commands our attention and affection, it sidelines every social or thematic concern to this singular, tentatively aspiring life. Full Review

Welcome To Pine Hill is a short, docu-realistic film, with very little plot and scenes that play like loose improvisations. Miller is mainly interested in the various spaces Harper inhabits, and how he inhabits them. Full Review

While far from perfect, Welcome To Pine Hill works more often than it doesn’t and is an intimate and existential character study of a man out of place with his past, himself, and his surroundings, and the push and pull of former and future worlds beckoning him. Full Review