All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Though there is something oddly hypnotic about All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which tracks one family in the American south in the ’70s, it’s ultimately just too deliberately paced to particularly work. It’s very, very slow, with Raven Jackson’s ultra-leisurely direction making Terence Malick look like Tony Scott. Certainly, there’s a lot to like here, with the film’s style and pacing giving much of it a soothing beauty (even if the movie’s odd emphasis on close-ups of hands can sometimes make it feel like it was beamed in from an alternate universe where people emote with their fingers instead of their faces). In fact, it might be a little too soothing; I’ll admit that the film’s infrequent dialogue and “relaxing sounds of nature” soundtrack lulled me to sleep a couple of times.

** out of ****