Giants Being Lonely

Patterson's elliptical, ethereal approach might appear aimless and wispy at the beginning but "Giants" coalesces as it goes on, casting a bewitching, unnerving spell.

The film asks us to indulge and share the privacy of its characters. That's its moody, free-floating allure.

Nothing concrete emerges from this haze of oblique editing and barely written scenes, acted by cast members who are not up to making the dialogue sound convincing or filling the voids left in place of their characters.

Giants Being Lonely ... shows impressive filmmaking skills from co-writer/director Grear Patterson.

"Giants Being Lonely" may not add much to the landscape of coming-of-age dramas, yet the preciseness of its impressionism results in a striking atmosphere of hormones and vulnerability.

Although the film isn't in a particular rush to get anywhere, and only a few sequences involving prom and drugs and abuse are even vaguely reminiscent of conventional plotting, it's never less than engrossing.

It is clear that there is legitimate talent on display here but it gets lost and buried beneath the film's lackluster focus and execution.

The unfortunate problem, then, is that Giants Being Lonely does a brilliant job of conjuring an atmosphere and not much else.

Pictorially striking but somewhat anemic from a dramatic standpoint, with an ending that's especially off-key.

Although it borrows, in the most overt ways, plot points from "The Last Picture Show" and "Hoosiers," it paints an engrossing portrait of kids being kids - aimless, reckless and focused on "the now" even with the weight of the world on them.