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Prince Avalanche | 2013 | R | - 5.3.4

Two highway workers (Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch) spend the summer of 1988 rebuilding a highway after a massive fire. Their summer of isolation leads them to reflect on themselves and the city lives they left behind. Also with Lance LeGault and the voice of Lynn Shelton. Directed by David Gordon Green. [1:34]

SEX/NUDITY 5 - We see a young man who appears to be masturbating in a sleeping bag next to a man (we see movement around the young man's crotch area and no nudity is visible); the man rolls over and the young man stops and then begins to masturbate again; the man rolls over a second time, appears to be slightly awake and the young man rolls over and presumably goes to sleep.
 We see a young man wearing wet, brief-style underwear as he appears to be bathing in a creek (his bare chest and back are visible). We see a portion of a young man's bare back as he sleeps shirtless with a sleeping bag covering most of his back. We see a young man wearing overalls with no shirt under (his bare chest is visible). We see a young man wearing swimming trunks (his bare chest and back are visible).
 A young man tells a man that he had taken a young woman into a bedroom with the intention of having sex with her; he explains that he had begun to manually stimulate her when she pulled away and that the young woman had promised to have sex with him until she saw her ex-boyfriend, who then punched the young man (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details); the young man then explains that he tried to have sex with another young woman, but that she was "making out" with someone else (he begins to cry). Using a crude term, a man asks a young man if he had sex with a young woman the previous weekend and the young man says that he had not; the man then asks for details of their sexual exploits and the young man explains he had manually stimulated the young woman. A young man tells a man that he had sex with a young woman on previous occasions, then pantomimes waving his hands, saying that the young woman would wave her hands strangely while climaxing. A young man asks a man if he is "really okay" with not having sex all summer and the man tells the young man that he is okay being in solitude; the young man responds that he becomes sexually excited while in nature. A young man tells a man that he has plans to attend a beauty pageant, where he assumes he will have sex with a few of the competitors, citing that he had success "hooking up" at similar pageants in the past. A young man tells a man that he had impregnated an older woman that he had "slept with" a few times in the past; the young man tells the man that he had told the woman that she either has to get an abortion or take care of the child on her own. A young man remarks that he could not go an entire summer without having sex and then tells a man that the man's girlfriend (the young man's older sister) shared a bedroom wall with him and could "hear moaning" from the woman when they were in high school. A young man tells a man that the man needs to have sex. A young man asks a man if it "feels different" to have sex with a woman who had previously had sex and the man tells the young man that it does feel different; the young man asks for examples and the man does not respond. A man's voiceover, as he writes to a woman, states that a young man (the woman's brother) is interested in having sex (using a crude phrase). An older man tells a young man to not sleep with the same woman more than three times in a row. A young man tells a man that he and a young woman were "making out" the last time they were together. A young man tells an older man that there are "no girls" out in the forest and the older man advises the young man to go to town and meet people; the older man makes a vague reference to meeting up with young women and possibly impregnating them.

VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - We see massive fires ripping through a forest after a title page explains that in 1987 a massive fire destroyed parts of Texas and left four people dead.
 A young man, holding a wrench, chases a man and they run through the woods until the young man stops, out of breath, slams the wrench into a tree and howls; we then see the man at the bottom of a hill as he tells the young man, "I think I messed up my hips" and the young man comes to his rescue after the man tells the young man that he had jumped off a cliff; the man tells the young man that his hip is not broken, just bruised and we later see the man putting a cotton ball on a small cut on his knee (no blood is visible). A man folds up a comic book and repeatedly smacks a young man with the comic book, hitting him on the arms and legs; the man then grabs the young man's watch (not on the young man's wrist), smashes it on the ground and storms away. An older man knocks over a young man's radio.
 We see a young man's black eye and he tells a man that he had been punched in the eye by a young woman's ex-boyfriend. A young man tells a man that he could beat him up until the man flexes his arm muscle and says that he could beat up the young man.
 A man shouts at a young man and the young man shouts back, asking the man why he had not "killed himself" before; the man shouts back and throws a large sledgehammer in the young man's direction (it does not hit him). A young man shouts at an older man who tells the young man to calm down and the young man stops shouting. A man shouts at a young man, the young man shouts back and the man shouts at the young man, telling him to listen to the man. We hear a man and a woman on the phone as the man raises his voice and the woman tells the man, "You're killing me" and hangs up. A man tells a young man that he had wanted to kill himself by jumping off a cliff and the young man criticizes the man, saying that it was a 12-foot hill. A man tells a young man that his pet cat had died. A man and an older woman dig through the burned debris of her house and the woman remarks that she feels like she is "digging in her own ashes" when digging through remnants of her burnt-out house. In a man's voiceover, we hear him writing a letter to his girlfriend, saying that he believes the woman's younger brother is learning disabled or has a terrible disease.
 We see a run-over turtle with blood and gore visible through its cracked shell being scavenged by a skunk. We see a man sautéing what appears to be a dead rabbit in a frying pan.
 A young man wakes up with a start, he pants for a moment and gets his bearings. A man passes gas in front of a young man and the young man makes a crude remark.

LANGUAGE 4 - 17 sexual references, 3 anatomical terms, 1 mild obscenity, a young man makes a vaguely racial remark about a man's ethnicity when he says that the man might be "Mexican," name-calling (worthless sack of [scatological term deleted], stupid and old like me, worst person in the world, crazy person, never amount to anything, loser, jerk, dummy, all fat and old, weak, tenuous, feeble people, funny fish, not the idiot some people think you are, old fatties), 3 religious exclamations (e.g. Christ, My God).

SUBSTANCE USE - A man tells a young man that he is on "lots of prescription medication" and we later see the man take unidentified pills from a prescription bottle. We see a young man and a man drinking shots of unidentified clear liquor on multiple occasions and they appear slightly intoxicated, an older man asks a young man and a man if they have time for a drink and we see them drinking ginger ale before the man pours an unidentified clear liquor into the men's bottles and they cheer and drink, an older man takes off driving while holding a spiked bottle of soda, an older man gives a young man three bottles of unidentified liquor, and a young man tells a man that he had a beer and the next night he had cocktails with friends. A man asks an older man for a cigar and we see the man smoking the cigar as the older man advises the man that he looks stupid when he smokes, and a young man smokes cigarettes on multiple occasions.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Wildfires, mediation, time away from the city, coping with depression, lack of human interaction, imaginary friends, loss, rebuilding, loss of a relationship, coping with loss, importance of time alone, meditation.

MESSAGE - Traumatic events can form very close bonds of friendship.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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