Sling Blade

Sleepy, creepy, oddly moving fable about a small-town misfit who tries to go home again, from actor-screenwriter turned director Billy Bob Thornton. Twenty-five years ago, 12-year-old Karl Childers (Thornton) killed his abusive mama and her lover with a sling blade, and was sent away to a hospital for the criminally insane. Now he's returning to the tight-knit community where he's become a bogey story with which to scare children. The beetle-browed Childers is a mesmerizing creation, in the tradition of John Steinbeck's Lenny (OF MICE AND MEN) and Harper Lee's Boo Radley (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD), but -- quite literally -- with his own unique voice: He speaks in a g...