Buster's Mal Heart

This peculiar indie drama scores points for originality and impressive performances, though it's elusive in its design and feels unsatisfying on the whole.

Smith's eye for arresting images is as strong as Malek's gift for being both present in the moment and lost in his character's anxieties.

Whatever wavelength the quietly riveting Malek and the equally intriguing Sheil are on, they're on it together.

If you appreciate a writer/director and actor who swing for the fences and chase after big questions ... this has a dreamlike beauty that may catch you in its spell.

Smith's idiosyncratic style isn't going to please everyone, but she deserves top marks for bold ideas and storytelling.

Happily, the weirdness is not for its own sake, and the story, while scrambled, is anything but incoherent.

Sarah Adina Smith teasingly dips to sci-fi, only to haphazardly scatter it all for the sake of philosophy. In lieu of a rule-bound universe, we get a smattering of quantum mechanics, apocalypse myths and a shaking fist at God and the Bible.

These themes of class and ethnicity in Buster's Mal Heart aren't frying pan head blows. They're subtle in order to sneak into your subconscious and reveals how a system, also subtly placed in Reagan's America is shattered.

All work and no play...

Both Malek and Smith are masters at letting the viewer know they're not getting the full story, but keeping them guessing as to what's being hid.