The World to Come

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Tom

Release: Tuesday, March 2, 2021 (VOD)

👀 Sundance 2021 Premiere

Written by: Jim Shepard; Ron Hansen

Directed by: Mona Fastvold

Starring: Katherine Waterston; Vanessa Kirby; Christopher Abbot; Casey Affleck

***/*****

Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, a beguiling romance set on the American frontier, is often literally perched on the edge of light and dark. Though its many contrasts are obvious they’re not always literal. This is a love story set in austere times yet delivered in a rather lyrical way, both through the language of its characters and the lens of André Chemetoff, whose rugged landscape photography is well-matched to the material.

The World to Come is an adaptation of a short story by Jim Shepard which tells of a clandestine relationship between two neglected wives and how their mutual attraction comes to threaten the patriarchal order in two households. In bringing it to the screen Fastvold prioritizes the characters and a gritty realism over groundbreaking storytelling. The resulting film, which uses a female perspective to explore its themes, certainly plots familiar footsteps. Yet with Fastvold’s detail-oriented approach and exceptional performances all around it remains throughout an engrossing and often tense affair.

A slow vertical pan down through the trees lands us on a farmstead somewhere in upstate New York circa the mid-1850s. Life here in this seclusion, where mail is delivered on horseback, on the outside looks quaint and peaceful. Fastvold wastes little time in ripping down that idyllic veil and apprising us to the immense challenges of settler life. What strikes you right away — beyond the silence — is the tedium (and amount!) of manual labor. However the setting is crucial in more ways than a convincing mise-en-scène, the central conflict far more complex than the physical.

Dyer (Casey Affleck) and Abigail (Katherine Waterston) are a humble farming couple who have suffered a tragedy on top of an apocalyptic winter that has wiped out nearly all their food. It does not take long to notice the lack of joie de vivre here. Little else seems to be shared beyond the toiling, the couple communicating with all the intimacy of complete strangers — brought together not as a match made in heaven but as a partnership of utility. Affleck’s Dyer may as well be on the moon emotionally as a devoutly pragmatic man who has known nothing but hard work and strife. It’s a very good performance that will catch you by surprise with its pitifulness and yet still have you questioning whether feeling pity is appropriate.

Abigail, on the other hand, is an intellectual who has become jaded with her rather plain existence. She’s realized through an arguably career-best Waterston whose soft-spoken mannerisms are most often heard in voice-over. In a rare example of narration actually contributing to the story rather than feeling like an unnecessary layer, Waterston reads entries from Abigail’s diary, largely a colorless record of the slow decline of a marriage that never seemed happy to begin with, as well as her own mounting frustration with her station as a housewife. Aside from establishing a crucial point of view these brief moments of introspection intimately connect us with the character in a way that makes us not observers but rather acquaintances.

Following a change of seasons — and a cacophonous storm sequence that remains the movie’s most vivid — those diary entries become ever more a testimony to what has been missing, or how much has been lying dormant under a façade of submissiveness. The arrival of spring brings with it a pair of fresh new faces in Finney (Christopher Abbott) and his wife Tallie (Vanessa Kirby), a well-to-do couple who move into a nearby (well, near-distant) farmstead. The free-spirited, enviably outspoken Tallie has an immediate affect on passive Abigail.

What begins as a neighborly gesture — donated fruit for a cobbler, for instance — soon turns into long afternoons spent under shady trees and entangled in philosophical conversation. It’s not long before the menial and the mundane are being forgotten, replaced by meaningful moments. A trend, of course, that does not go unnoticed by the men. The strength of the script, provided by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, is in subtlety and nuance even if the developments are mostly foreseeable. Affleck’s enigmatic to the bitter end, his masterful body language telling a story both of irrevocable change and permanent resignation. Abbott, on the other hand, isn’t as fortunate, playing an obvious cad who is easy to boo from the get-go.

Quite obviously though it is the women to whom The World to Come truly belongs. Kirby’s presence charges the scene with exciting energy, and with her waterfall of ginger hair she makes for a wonderful muse for Chemetoff’s camera. Waterston captures demureness in a way that’s equal parts charming and crushing. Together, and despite their different backgrounds, these leading frontier ladies have the kind of chemistry that keeps you utterly invested despite the misery that encroaches on all sides.

Beautiful and bleak in equal measure, Fastvold’s period romance feels much more like a snippet of reality than a Movie Production. Prior to the Sundance screening she described the shoot being challenging. That’s something that comes across in the texture of the film. The world feels entirely lived in, authentic and with no traditional script-y exit doors in sight. The mood is undeniably heavy and somber, perhaps trending more towards the dark than the light. But that makes the oases of comfort and warmth, however fleeting, such a delightful contrast.

You’re my sun.

Moral of the Story: The film’s moral resolution may not be to every audience member’s satisfaction, and the themes of physical/emotional isolation and patriarchal oppression may be familiar but its the lack of force and politicization in conveying those ideas that make The World to Come an even more attractive period piece.

Rated: R

Running Time: 105 mins.

Quoted: “Meeting you has made my day.”

“Oh, how pleasant and uncommon it is to make someone’s day.”

Check out the quietly explosive trailer here

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: imdb.com; Sundance Institute/photo by Vlad Cioplea

Manchester By the Sea

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Tom

Release: Friday, November 18, 2016 (limited)

[Theater]

Written by: Kenneth Lonergan

Directed by: Kenneth Lonergan

A good movie offers escapism. A better movie makes us think. But some of the best movies don’t necessarily allow us the luxury of escape. They challenge us to face the world that actually includes us, holding a mirror up to our own realities and daring us to keep looking closer. Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By the Sea is one such movie, a stunningly perceptive drama that’s not only technically impressive but emotionally heavy-hitting as well. Despite almost unrelenting bleakness, it just well may be the year’s most relatable movie.

The titular town is not much more than a small port, a few fishing boats and about as many red lights; a crusty blue-collar town clinging to the Massachusetts coast hardened by more than just brutal winters. It doesn’t announce itself as a happening place, but for one man who once called this harbor home, everything that ever mattered to him happened here. In this most unexpected of places we will, through a series of devastating revelations, be reminded of a few brutal truths about the human experience.

The film pairs its creaky, rundown setting with subtle (but powerful) performances to effect an intentionally mundane aesthetic. It tells of a man named Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) who reluctantly becomes his nephew’s guardian when the boy’s father (Lee’s brother Joe who is, confusingly enough, portrayed by Kyle Chandler) passes away suddenly. The premise may seem simple at first but it is pregnant with complexity and nuance. Lee leads a spectacularly unspectacular life in Boston, making minimum wage as a custodian for an apartment block. It’s perhaps not the most ideal line of work for someone trying to avoid people at all costs, but it’s pretty darn close. Aloof in the extreme and prone to violent outbursts, Lee is not a protagonist we immediately embrace. He’s actually kind of a jackass: spurning women’s advances and getting into bar fights because someone gives him the wrong look.

But there’s a method to the madness. Working from a screenplay he originally intended to be his sole contribution to the production, Lonergan steadily reveals layers to a character in a protracted emotional crisis. Flashbacks play a crucial role in the process. Lee is first evaluated as a worker, as a pee-on to the average white-collar Bostonian. A series of interactions Lee tries not to have with his clients — tenants whose lights have broken, whose toilets have clogged, whose bathtubs need sealant and whose goodwill is eroded by the man’s social awkwardness — gives us the impression Lee kinda just hates his job. But the bitterness runs a bit deeper than that. He seems to have a genuine disdain for the human race.

Manchester By the Sea uses flashbacks both as a gateway to the past and as our exclusive access into the mind of a thoroughly depressed individual. The cutaways occur incredibly naturally, manifesting as a sort of internal response to external stress. A visit with the lawyer to get his brother’s affairs in order proves to be a particularly sensitive trigger. What to do with the family boat, the house and other possessions, funeral arrangements — the whole headache rekindles feelings he would rather not have. This moment sends us on a trip down memory lane and into the drama’s darkest moments. What Lee has apparently been coping with for years — what ultimately drove a wedge between him and his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) — proves bitterly poignant.

On the other side of this flashback we view Lee as a different person. Not that our empathy is garnered in one fell swoop, but looking back, if we were to point to a specific moment when our perception started to evolve, it undoubtedly is this epiphany. It is here where we start to view his world through a much darker, cloudier lens. Back in his hometown and daunted by new, unexpected responsibilities — most notably looking after his nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges) — Lee is also left with little choice but to confront his demons and try to stake a new path forward. But is he really up to the task? How would we deal with all of this?

Manchester By the Sea evokes its strongest emotional and psychological responses from its characters. The narrative certainly stimulates the mind, but the people are what appeal to the heart. Affleck plays a man who seems tailor-made for the actor’s unusual real-life persona. His controversial behavior in his private life (at least as of late) makes the transition into playing an emotionally unstable anti-hero a less surprising one. Gossip is pretty useless really, but is it not ironic Affleck has allowed a few of his own character defects to become things for public consumption in the run-up to the release of a film featuring a severely flawed character? Gossip is also useless because I am only assuming he’s fired his publicist. He’s probably done that in spite of claims that he “doesn’t care about fame.”

And this is stupid because all of this is just padding my word count. As is this.

Before my ADHD gets the better of me, other names are certainly deserving of what remains of this page space. Hedges and Williams in particular make strong cases for Oscars consideration. The former introduces a compelling new dynamic and the perfect foil for Lee’s anti-socialite. Popular in school, on the hockey team, a member of a garage band and currently juggling two girlfriends, Patrick is the antithesis of his uncle. He makes an effort to connect with others. Aspects of his personality and his attitude are going to feel familiar, but this is far from the archetypal teenage annoyance. Williams, in a limited but unforgettable supporting role as the estranged ex-wife, mines emotional depths equal to her co-star who is given ten times the amount of screen time. That’s not to detract from what Affleck has accomplished. Quite simply the actress achieves something here that’s difficult to put into words.

Manchester By the Sea uses one man and his struggle to speak to the melancholy pervading the lives of millions. The language of the film is pain, so even if the specifics don’t speak to your experience the rollercoaster of emotions, the undulating waves of uncertainty and despair surely will. And yet, for all the sadness in which it trades, Lonergan’s magnum opus finds room for genuinely affecting humor. Hedges often supplies welcomed doses of sarcasm to offset Affleck’s perpetually sullen demeanor. And it is surely welcomed, for if it weren’t for the laughs perhaps it all would have been too much. The best films know when enough is enough.

Recommendation: Powerfully performed and confidently directed, Manchester By the Sea may on the surface seem like a certain kind of crowd-pleaser — perhaps more the critic-circle variety — but I’d like to think the film’s technical merits and the minutiae of the performances are what has drawn a 97% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The story’s ability to make you empathize is worth recommending to anyone who appreciates a good story about “normal people.” This is a potent, vital film about the human experience and a testament to the indiscriminate yet seemingly random cruelties that life presents.

Rated: R

Running Time: 137 mins.

Quoted: “I can’t beat it. I can’t beat it.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Triple 9

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Tom

Release: Friday, February 26 ,2016

[Theater]

Written by: Matt Cook

Directed by: John Hillcoat

Triple 9 could be a really great film. I’m not saying that to be facetious or hypothetical, like, “I have all these suggestions to make it better and here’s how you do it,” or “I’m seeing this tonight and I hope it’s going to be great.” I mean I’m genuinely not sure if it was any good or not. It’s such a bland, flavorless take on the crime genre that it’s difficult to remember anything about it, even days later. But the film is well-produced, so that counts for something. Right?

John Hillcoat, who has distinguished himself with gritty, typically criminal-infested features that tend to smother audiences with the hopelessness of the situation, isn’t exactly out of his element here, turning Atlanta into a bubbling cauldron of deception, corruption and a whole lot of violence. The rather convoluted plot revolves around a group of corrupt cops and legit criminals who are blackmailed by the nasty Irina Vlaslov of the Russian mafia (and of course when you mention them you naturally think of Kate Winslet) into taking on “one more job.”

Of course the mission won’t be simple; not even close. Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is in it deep as he has had a child with Irina’s sister (Gal Gadot), and Irina won’t let him see the money or his kid until he and his cronies have recovered crucial government documents regarding the status of Irina’s mafioso hubby. (Really, there’s nothing cute or overly affectionate about any of these relationships, I just think that ridiculous word seems to fit given we’re talking about ridiculous things like Winslet as a Russian mob boss). Michael employs his thug friend Russell (Norman Reedus) and Russell’s younger brother Gabe (a much more comfortable looking Aaron Paul) to help carry out the job but they’re unsure of how to do it.

‘Triple nine’ is code for “officer down,” a call that results in any and all units in a given area to respond to the scene. Michael and his crew, which includes crooked Atlanta cops Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Franco (Clifton Collins, Jr.), realize they can use a triple nine call as a distraction to carry out the heist elsewhere. Marcus has just gotten a new partner, Casey Affleck’s genuine good-guy Chris Allen and Marcus nominates him as the officer who should act as the distraction (i.e. he wants to kill him). To confuse readers more (or just to make sure I have included all major names involved here), Allen has an uncle on the force, Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson) who is determined to get to the bottom of a bank heist case perpetrated by Michael and company as part of an earlier favor to the Russians.

Essentially what Triple 9 boils down to is a matter of trust. A grimy, ominous milieu established from the opening shot of the city leaves little to the imagination. This isn’t a place where we’re going to like many of the characters we come up against (the sheer quality of the ensemble cast ensures this isn’t a deal-breaker). Nor are they the people we can count on to do the right thing. In this Atlanta, you can’t trust a soul. All of that is well and good; the simmering tension underlying Ejiofor and Winslet’s interactions — I stop short of saying relationship because there’s simply not enough time in this movie for relationships to truly be established — make for some of the film’s more interesting moments. But no one has much of an identity. Everyone either starts off miserable or ends up that way, or they end up dead.

In the vein of David Ayers’ infinitely more brutal Sabotage, which saw a team of DEA agents being picked off one-by-one after their unit was compromised, Triple 9 is a no-win situation in which the characters we are introduced to drift further and further away from us. It’s next to impossible to care about these trigger-happy thugs. The mood is perpetually dour, and most of the actions our (many) characters take rarely surprise, and because they don’t, several significant double-crosses don’t register with the power they ought to.

Performances are universally good; they’re nothing special but they’re functional. (And for what it’s worth, Winslet makes that accent work!) Instead it’s more problematic with how forgettable substantial chunks of their collective effort become. The film boasts a few impressive shoot-outs, particularly one in an abandoned warehouse — why do the good ones always take place in The Warehouse? — but for whatever reason, the bulk of the film, all of the talky stuff and detective work going on in the background just never quite connects. Conventionality isn’t a crime but I think I’ve finally made up my mind on this: Triple 9 is neither a great film nor a terrible one. It’s just something that’s there.

Recommendation: Violent, dark, confronting but still somehow boring and uninspired, Triple 9 undoubtedly prefers the art of storytelling over character presentation. Despite such a strong cast it’s kind of ironic that those characters get so forgotten by the end. But hey, at least this film has Woody Harrelson in it. If you are a completionist then see it for him, but everything else there’s either MasterCard or much better movies.

Rated: R

Running Time: 115 mins.

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

The Finest Hours

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Tom

Release: Friday, January 29, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Scott Silver; Paul Tamasy; Eric Johnson

Directed by: Craig Gillespie

Chris Pine just wants to be the captain of everything. And I guess that’s a good thing because every time his number is called he responds with some kind of grand gesture that usually involves multiple lives being saved under his extraordinary captainship. The Finest Hours isn’t exactly Star Trek but if he continues to shine in these capacities, I say let him have a crack at Captain Planet. (Certain captains are, of course, off-limits. Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Phillips and Captain Morgan — they don’t need overhauls. They’re doing just fine without Pine.)

The Finest Hours isn’t so much interested in captainship per se (if you want to get technical, Pine’s role hews closer to coxswain than captain this time), but it is still a movie that champions leadership and courageousness. The only catch is Craig Gillespie directs a very Disney-friendly version of the events that comprised one of the most dangerous rescue missions in US Coast Guard history.

It’s February 18, 1952 and a brutal winter storm is tightening its grip on New England. After receiving a distress call from an oil freighter just off the coast, its hull cracked in half from battling twenty-plus-foot waves, Chatham Station Commander Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana, with an awkward southern accent) assigns the young and amiable Bernie Webber to the rescue mission, one that has all but been dismissed as more of a suicide mission by other, more experienced seamen.

Ignoring the cautionary tales of his elders, Webber puts together a four-person team with Richard P. Livesey (Ben Foster), third class engineman Andrew Fitzgerald (Kyle Gallner) and Ervin Maske (John Magaro), a mailboy, joining him in his CG 36500. The most significant and perhaps most deadly obstacle will require Webber to maneuver the 30-foot life boat through violent surf crashing over shallow sand bars just off shore; passing through to open water has never been successfully executed in storm conditions. From there it’ll be a battle against high winds and impending darkness.

Bernie, of course, is soon to be marrying his beloved Miriam (Holliday Grainger) in April. Gillespie reminds us several times that if there’s any reason for Bernie to return home safely, it’s for her. Miriam isn’t a typical 1950s girl, she’s headstrong and demands to be kept informed during every step of the procedure. Miriam has little patience for dealing with gender roles and bureaucracy, so much so that she at one point walks right into Cluff’s office and demands he abandon the mission. Grainger toes the line between confidence and impertinence and while she is refreshing to watch, the question can’t help but rear itself: was the real Miriam Webber this pushy? And where does the line between fact and dramatic license blur? Even still, her defiance of rules and Bernie’s adherence to them has a nice symmetry.

The picture’s not complete until we’ve addressed Casey Affleck‘s meek and mild Ray Sybert, a brilliant engineer stuck in the bowels of the stranded SS Pendleton. The scrawny New Englander finds himself up against one of the greatest technical and physical challenges of his life as he sets about preventing the engine room from taking on more water. There are concerns like the pump flooding, losing power, losing steering ability, and then finally, losing crew.

Rather than drowning in the waves of mounting stress — they have only hours before they sink — Sybert sets about trying to solve the problem rationally. In some ways, The Finest Hours is actually more interested in these embattled blue collared fellas working as a well-oiled machine under Sybert’s semi-reluctant guidance. Despite these being the most politely-spoken New England-based seafarers we’ve ever met (thanks Disney), we understand fairly well Sybert is far from a chosen leader. Other voices are louder, stronger, more adamant. Affleck imbues his character with such quiet strength, a composure that no one else manages to summon.

The film is considerably less compelling when things aren’t falling apart. The Finest Hours won’t be remembered for its romance nor the acting in general. The trio of Pine, Affleck and Grainger have clearly put in the hours but the others, including Bana, leave hardly an impression at all. Somehow that’s okay if you focus on what good the film does. Even though it never breaches those depths of remarkable filmmaking, this optimistic and entirely earnest effort to recount a most unlikely rescue mission is still well worth watching.

Recommendation: The Finest Hours, hampered by a slow opening half but bolstered by heart-pounding action sequences in the middle and towards the end, is a mostly satisfying mixture of action and human drama. Based on the true story, the film feels most comfortable detailing the toils of the stranded freight crew rather than showing how the Coast Guard responded. A little strange then, that the film decides to credit the latter and ignore the former in a pre-credits photo montage. This film isn’t just about the Coast Guard’s decision to make a daring mission. It’s about enduring grave danger as well.

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 117 mins.

Quoted: “I’m not afraid of the water, Bernie. It just scares me at night, that’s all. You can’t see what’s underneath.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Out of the Furnace

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Tom

Release: Friday, December 6, 2013

[Theater]

Sneaking up on you quietly, toxically, like steam billowing from the chimneys that scratch and tear at a skyline of charcoal gray, this original screenplay from Scott Cooper is most likely not the product most people were expecting. It is a solemn look at the not-so-quiet life in the Appalachian region; a story that’s as laced with brilliant performances as it is populated with shots of its gorgeous, rustic backdrop.

That the affairs ongoing in this unrelentingly dark tale might lead anyone other than Russell Baze (Christian Bale) to the breaking point much sooner than the two hours it takes for him is not really the surprising factor that I refer to. A title like Out of the Furnace is — yes, okay, grimly poetic — but moreso foreboding, and the title alone should be enough for most people to realize that what they are laying down $10 for is not for the sake of comedy.

Just as the thick plumes of smoke snake ever higher into the air, eventually to caress and blend in with the clouds, expectation levels of this particular story have similarly soared. Not that that was an unexpected phenomenon, or anything. Cooper’s ensemble cast in 2013 far and away outdoes that of his critically more successful debut film in 2009, and is probably one of the best casts of the year. Understandably, it’s difficult not to imagine a film featuring a cast like this offering up dramatic and epic grand gestures, scene after scene.

That’s not the case here, though. There is such a thing as actors also humbling themselves.

If the main impetus for seeing Out of the Furnace is for the performances, then it is going to be equally difficult to consider this an underwhelming experience. The talented cast should leave audiences speechless, as only one this good can.

Bale in particular is exceptional. In fact, he might be less recognizable as this down-and-out, soft-spoken countryboy than he was behind a cape and cowl. As Russell, Bale plays the elder brother to Rodney (Casey Affleck) with a heartbreaking tenderness and vulnerability that should virtually wipe clean any memory that he was indeed our Dark Knight.

He works a dead-end job at the local steel mill in an effort to keep a roof over his and his beautiful girlfriend Lena (Zoe Saldana)’s heads. At the same time, his family life burdens him. Russell splits his time working longer hours to pay off Rodney’s ever-mounting debts — for reasons he doesn’t quite know — and caring for their terminally ill father. As if this isn’t stress enough, Russell is for the longest time left oblivious to the real reasons his younger brother is in such debt. Until the day Rodney goes missing in New Jersey.

Rodney, desperate to pay off the debt himself and already having fallen in with a tough crowd, forces local bar manager John Petty (Willem DaFoe) to put him into a legitimate street fight in which he could stand to win good money. Rodney’s been serving in the military for years and whenever he’s back home he fights for money, finding himself unable to take up a normal job or joining his brother at the steel mill. Unfortunately his pride, blind determination and short temper land him in a ring overseen by the notoriously violent and demented redneck Harlan DeGroat (an ice-cold Woody Harrelson). He’s told to take a dive (intentionally lose) in this match, but will his ego be too big to obey this simple request?

Out of the Furnace examines these issues — pride before the fall; showing mercy versus seeking vengeance; the deliberate counting of one’s own sins — using a myriad of characters facing a different set of circumstances to show what they would do to right the wrongs. In so doing, the film takes a much more graceful, deliberate pace than many might be expecting to undergo. It might be difficult to understand that each of these brilliant actors, each with a legend preceding them, are much less of a “key” factor in the story as they more quietly assume puzzle pieces in a tragic story — much like the gigantic cast of Prisoners. Instead of jumping off the page as we all might expect them to do — an exception might be Harrelson, as he’s truly the personification of vile filth here — they end up passionately coloring in an otherwise black-and-white story of loss and redemption.

There are more than enough emotionally charged and nuanced performances that, even if are unsuccessful in breaking your heart, will at least make it ache.

The last thing screenwriters Scott Cooper and Brad Ingelsby are likely to be accused of here is a convoluted script. The hotheaded Rodney falls into the wrong crowd and it is up to Russell to try to bail him out. While the describable “problem” that arises out of the story is about as simple as that, the overarching story is actually an emotional journey that is something to behold.

The steam that belches out of the factories suitably obscures good guy from bad here. The moral ambiguity on display runs fathoms deep; hence, the beauty of this film. Each character, acting on his or her own reasons, is rendered with deep flaws, some perhaps more severe than others. DaFoe operates as a bartender, yet he finds himself balls-deep in debt with DeGroat and several nasty fellas up north as he spends a lot of money betting on bad street fighters. . .namely, Rodney. Saldana’s limited role as Lena is not without complication, either. Undoubtedly though, Bale’s character is the one who stands to lose the most, and becomes the centerpiece to this grim tale.

It’s not a film without its shortcomings, however. Forest Whitaker, as Sheriff Wesley Barnes, feels a little underused to say the least. As does Saldana. In fact, trailers seem to be quite misleading as the cut that is used in a rather dramatic moment involving Whitaker’s character does not actually make final cut. (This appears to be one of the movies that suffers from a pretty misleading trailer, in terms of its editing anyway.) Suffice it to say, though, that the limited screen time Whitaker gets he uses to its full potential. Ditto Saldana. The two add more concrete evidence for the argument that each character involved is deeply flawed, on some level.

There are also a few moments that feel a bit drawn out and redundant, but mostly these boil down to editorial issues rather than the innate elements that compose this surprisingly harrowing story. It’s again nothing to do with how unwelcome these people will likely make you feel; these are their woods you are trespassing in, and Harlan DeGroat’s neck of the woods is the meanest of all.

The acting is inspirational. It’s cinematography almost dreamlike. Cooper’s follow-up film respectably relies on its remarkably talented cast to bear the weight of the heavy emotions that penetrate these small towns and unstable relationships. It doesn’t need to lean on big-budget police chases, the high-stakes dramatic stunts and whatever else may go into what may be getting misperceived as a blockbuster film to get its brooding message across.

Recommendation: The film is quite simply incredible, while still possessing a few dents in the armor. Look to this film for it’s powerful performances and beautiful scenery; the story may be a bit lacking for some, and it’s likely this will become more obvious on repeat viewings; however it’s more than easy to overlook simplicity for the sake of some of the year’s most provocative performances.

Rated: R

Running Time: 116 mins.

Quoted: “The people up in those hills, they have their own breed of justice, and it does not include us.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.wegotthiscovered.com; http://www.imdb.com

Thomas J

My Journey Through Film

Tag Archives: #caseyaffleck

The World to Come

Manchester By the Sea

Triple 9

The Finest Hours

Out of the Furnace