From The Los Angeles Times
An Intimate Look at the Writer's Life; Arliss Howard directs and stars in 'Big Bad Love,' a brave and admirable portrayal of an author on the brink. Read More>>

From The Chicago Tribune
Debra Winger has been out of sight too long. It's been seven years since her last movie, 1995's "Forget Paris," a forgettable romantic comedy with Billy Crystal, and her new picture, "Big Bad Love," reminds us how terrific she can be. There's a sass and bite to Winger's acting, a grinning intelligence, unabashed sexiness and total immersion that make her one of the movies' few hipster female stars. And this is the right sort of return vehicle for her: a cranky and sometimes ravishingly poetic labor of love that she produced for her writer-director-actor husband, Arliss Howard - and in which she plays, selflessly, a small part as a feisty ex-wife. Read More>>

From The Hollywood Reporter
A smashing directorial debut by actor Arliss Howard in which he also plays the chronically smashed lead character, "Big Bad Love" is an underdog IFC Films release that opens today in New York and March 9 in Los Angeles. The film premiered at last year's Festival de Cannes and also screened at Toronto, where it failed to pick up any awards or much critical support. Read More>>

DEBRA WINGER and her husband, Arliss Howard, are accustomed to questions about why Ms. Winger left the movie business six years ago. And they have a good answer as to how Mr. Howard, the star and director of Ms. Winger's new comeback film, "Big Bad Love," lured his wife back into acting.

He promised her a Highland cow. Read More>>

From MSNBC
Legend has it that Mississippi is home to more writers per capita than any other state in the union. Arliss Howard's "Big Bad Love," based on stories by the Mississippi writer Larry Brown, takes place in a ripely literary corner of Dixie. Leon Barlow, the hero and narrator (played by Mr. Howard) sits at his Royal manual and bangs out lyrical prose and feverish poetry, and the world he inhabits springs from a sensibility not far from his own. In this Mississippi, a land of courtly bohemians and magic-realist oddities, country blues plays on the radio, and barroom conversations turn to the Aeneid and the Iliad - a book, Leon tells his drinking buddy, that "you can wear like hip waders." Read More>>

From Filethirteen
Sort of a "Requiem for a Dream" about an alcoholic rather than a heroin addict, "Big Bad Love" is a tourdeforce from husband and wife actors Arliss Howard and Debra Winger.

Winger costars here and acts as producer behind the scenes, but it is Howard who is the real driving force behind the film. As star, director and co- scripter, Howard has taken the seemingly semi-autobiographical work of short story author Larry Brown and molded a story and a group of characters that are unique to filmdom. Of particular interest is Brown's character of Barlow, played by Howard. Barlow is a drunken divorcee living in the rural south who continually writes and attempts to get published. The character is pure blue collar angst but with a brain. Given to verbal rants of his written work, Barlow spirals down a dark and lonely pathway attempting to find himself - or perhaps lose himself. Read More>>

From New York Press
A wise actor said that if you seriously want to break typecasting, you¹d better create your own role. Arliss Howard, who first arrived on moviegoers¹ radar screens playing a gentle-souled Marine in Full Metal Jacket and has played more than his share of gentle-souled fellas ever since, appears to have taken this advice to heart in Big Bad Love, a funny, haunting, distinctive film about Leon Barlow, an alcoholic Vietnam vet and writer living in rural Mississippi, coping with literary rejection and the emotional fallout of divorce. Read More>>