Review: 'The Rivals of Amziah King' is a honey-tinged slice of quirky Southern pulp

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Set us as preferred There’s a moment in “The Rivals of Amziah King” where Amziah (Matthew McConaughey) details the different kinds of bees that make up a hive: the drones, the worker bees, the queen.The longtime Oklahoma beekeeper is imparting his wisdom to Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), a one-time foster kid of his who has recently turned up out of the blue.

After they run into each other at a diner thanks to a sequence of bizarre but fortuitous events, Amziah takes Kateri under his wing as a new worker bee and member of his hive — it’s what he’s wont to do with most of the strays that come his way in this quirky modern western about the surprisingly high-stakes world of honey production.As Amziah demonstrates during this lesson, the queen is the center of the universe and without her, the colony would collapse.The insects protect their queen, collecting in a roiling, humming mass on his hand.

“The Rivals of Amziah King” is the story of one queen replacing another in order to keep the colony intact, but we’re not talking about bees at this point.The film is a tremendous sophomore effort from writer-director Andrew Patterson — a daring, unique and action-packed follow-up to his 2019 debut feature “The Vast of Night,” a 1950s sci-fi mystery made on a shoestring budget.With more resources and more movie stars in tow, Patterson scales up his vision, bringing his closest collaborators along and delivering one of the most surprising and original movies of the year: a rollicking, bluegrass-fueled slice of quirky Southern pulp.

Movies Steven Soderbergh reached out to filmmaker Andrew Patterson after seeing the younger filmmaker’s debut, “The Vast of Night.” The two of them talk about influences and moving forward.It’s immersive, character-driven and stylish; a spiky, enjoyable piece of filmmaking that is wholly distinctive and hasn’t had all its personality sanded down, the kind of...