Armstrong's gone and made a *movie* movie, which happens to be Letterkenny as written by Philip K Dick. It's as scattershot and prone to whiplash as that comparison implies, but it is all bound by Armstrong's intense commitment to his deeply felt anxieties and singularly honed visual sense, as well as incredibly sensitive performances all around from an exceptionally chosen cast (all anchored by Paul Sparks' fierce and nuanced central depiction of repression and paranoia). The film succeeds as an exceptional character portrait of a man trapped in the ideals of a bygone era, with evocative techniques ranging from abstracted genre iconography to visual metaphors to communicate this struggle in a way that is truly invigorating to witness.
It continues in the vein of Armstrong's prior feature in emphasizing emotional sense over the tenets of a conventional narrative, but for conscious viewers in search of something authentically fresh with earned emotional resonance, I implore that this is a film not to be missed.
