Gideon58's Reviews

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HUSH
Director/co-screenwriter Mike Flanagan and co-screenwriter/leading lady Kate Siegel reveal definite promise as filmmakers with a somewhat compelling little thriller called Hush, a 2016 film that does provide a couple of effective "boos", but there are just way too many holes in the screenplay to make the film the solid shocker it should be.

Siegel plays Maddie, a deaf writer staying at an isolated cabin in the woods trying to finish her latest book. Maddie is observed bonding with a neighbor named Sarah (Samantha Sloyan) who is learning how to sign and has just read Maddie's last book. A short time later, Sarah is observed pounding on Maddie's kitchen glass doors because she needs help and she is then observed being brutally murdered right in front of the window and once the killer (John Gallagher, Jr.) figures out that Maddie is deaf, it is clear that she is the guy's next victim.

Flanagan and Siegel have definitely seen their share of slasher movies and thrillers, but not enough that there is a whole lot unexplained and illogical going on here. For instance, the killer's motivation for killing Maddie, or Sarah, for that matter, is never made clear. In Wait Until Dark, the thugs terrorizing Audrey Hepburn are looking for a doll filled with heroin. The screenplay never addresses why this guy wants Maddie dead or why he had to kill Sarah to get to her. Early scenes reveal that Maddie is still stinging from a bad relationship with a guy named Craig and I kept waiting for it to be revealed that this killer was Craig but said reveal never came, and not knowing why this guy was stalking Maddie made it kind of hard to invest in what happens here.

Other problems include the clear pictures of Maddie walking around the house that the killer was able to take from outside the house on his phone which were Maddie's first alerts of the danger she was in, or the fact that after killing Sarah, the killer comes back to the house equipped with a crossbow...a crossbow? Seriously? Can't even remember the last time I saw a crossbow in a movie. It would have been an intriguing idea except that every time someone got shot with an arrow, they just pulled it out of their body and went about their business. What's the point of having a useless weapon? And did this guy actually tell Maddie that he could come in the house at anytime, but it "wasn't time yet"? I haven't heard a piece of dialogue that corny in years.

Despite all the problems with this film, Flanagan and Siegel really show some promise as filmmakers and seem to be aware of what a proper thriller should like, but they need a little help with their writing, which is definitely not up to snuff with the direction and the acting, which are actually relatively competent, but without a more carefully constructed screenplay, it doesn't work the way it should.



Like I said, there's some real directorial skill displayed in this film, but the screenplay left too much unexplained and featured a lot of illogical stuff.



PROOF
A talky and pretentious screenplay and an unconvincing lead performance keep the 2005 film version of David Auburn's play Proof from being the compelling entertainment it should be.

Catherine is reeling from the recent death of her father, a once brilliant mathematician and college professor whom Catherine cared for during the final five years of his life, during which he apparently suffered a complete mental breakdown and instead of having him institutionalized, Catherine chose to care for him at home because that was what she felt was best for him. But now that he's gone, Catherine is deathly afraid that the same thing might be happening to her.

Enter Hal, a teacher and former student of the professor who has come to the house to help go through the professor's things, including 103 notebooks full of mathematical theorems that might have the potential to be published and Claire, Catherine's tightly wound older sister who thinks Catherine's continued presence in the house is unhealthy and wants her to move to New York with her (which would allow her to sell her dad's house in Chicago).

Auburn's play had a solid run on Broadway, over 900 performances, so there is entertainment value in the story and director John Madden does an OK job of opening up the story so it doesn't look like a photographed stage play, but I think where he errs is in his casting and presentation of the two lead characters. This brilliant but insane mathematician never really comes off as insane and his brilliant and caring daughter comes off as not really having a brain in her head, not to mention being chronically unhappy and unlikable (she doesn't crack a smile until about the halfway point), which is why the tentative romance broached by Hal and Catherine doesn't work either.

Gwyneth Paltrow's interpretation of Catherine is mannered and a little broad for the screen, a performance more suited for a Broadway stage that really needed to be reined in and director Madden must take some blame for that. Anthony Hopkins is lovely as Catherine's father, a performance rich with humor and fire that made me wish the story was more about him. Jake Gyllenhaal is charming as Hal despite a definite lack of chemistry with Paltrow and Hope Davis is terrific as Claire, but the story is centered on Paltrow's character and the inability to latch onto this character made it difficult to latch onto the entire story.



END OF WATCH
A blistering and unapologetic look at the life of beat cops, 2012's End of Watch is a gritty and relentlessly unpredictable look at the dangerous game of Russian Roulette that is the life of a beat cop.

Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is three years out of the Academy, has ambitions beyond being a beat cop, including studying pre-law, which has him videotaping the events that unfold before us. He is single, not due to a lack of female attention but he's looking for a woman he can actually have a conversation with after they get out of bed. Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) went to the Academy with Brian and they have been partners and BFF's ever since. He's married and has a baby on the way and is wishing the same for his partner.

Writer/director David Ayer mounts this story in the form of a documentary, or even a feature length episode of Cops...an episodic look at the varied situations that cops finds themselves drawn into, from an actual throwdown with a thug which forces Zavala to take off his badge and put his gun down to an accidental encounter with a human trafficking ring. We are given an up close and personal look at a pair of cops who never back from the risk involved in their work and always seem a little unfulfilled but they do what they have to do. There is a telling episode where they get to be genuine heroes by pulling a pair of children out of a burning building which gets them recognition and medals, but they are still not feeling like the heroes they are told they are.

Ayer has crafted a story that offers no easy answers and will make anyone think twice who thinks being a police officer is glamorous work. He also gets a pair of rock solid performances from Gyllenhaal and Pena as the ultimate servants of the thin blue line...these actors invest completely in these characters and the ugliness of what they have to do and have us holding our breath every time they respond to a call on their radio.

Ayer, who also wrote the screenplay for Training Day, has an imaginative directorial eye, which includes textbook use of the hand-held camera, which has rarely been utilized to greater effect in a film. The film also features effective editing and a pulse pounding music score that perfectly frames the story without every overpowering it. Ayer, Gyllenhaal, and Pena deliver the goods in this ugly story that doesn't promise happy but does deliver hope.



FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS
Yet another extraordinary performance by the amazing Meryl Streep portraying a real-life figure is the centerpiece of 2016's Florence Foster Jenkins, an exquisitely mounted valentine to a wealthy socialite with a passion for the opera, who came to be known as the world's worst opera singer.

It is 1944 in Manhattan where we meet the central character, a woman with an all-consuming passion for music, but sadly her talent does not match her passion. We watch amazingly as the woman is savagely protected by the people who love her (and are using her as well), led by her in-name-only husband St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), who does not live or sleep with Mrs. Jenkins, but loves her in his own way and supports her musical passion to the point of buying fans and positive reviews of her performances, performances that are populated with an audience carefully orchestrated by Bayfield in order to protect his beloved Florence (not to mention keeping his own pockets lined). Health issues have temporarily sidelined Florence, but we see her preparing to resume her career with the hiring of a new pianist, who is shocked by Florence's lack of talent, but he too is entranced by her passion and agrees to aid her husband in continuing the charade, though deep down, he knows this is wrong.

Director Stephen Frears and writer Nicholas Martin have crafted a richly entertaining tale that initially produces a lot of laughs when it is revealed that Mrs. Jenkins really can't sing, but the mannered and deliberate reveal of her backstory, including a bout with syphilis, which she contracted from her first husband, we understand why it is so important to everyone in Mrs. Jenkins' orbit to protect her, but as a viewer, we also know that this charade cannot last forever and we spend pretty much the second half of the film waiting for this terribly sad cinematic shoe to drop. Unfortunately, we have also fallen in love with the character by this point, understand her husband's motives completely and begin to dread the eventual heartbreak that this woman is going to experience.

This motion picture provides vibrant moments of rich hilarity and equal heartbreak and that is primarily due to the breathtaking work of our greatest living actress, whose Oscar nominated work in the title role is a joy to behold...Streep fully commits to this character and never for a moment allows you to believe that Florence Foster Jenkins can sing, even though Meryl Streep can. Hugh Grant has never been better in what is clearly the most complex role in this story, the husband who really does love Florence in his own way and puts her happiness above everything else, even if it doesn't always seem that way. Simon Helberg, co-star of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, also gives a star-making performance as Cosme McMoon, the young pianist who falls under Florence's spell.

Frears' direction is meticulous, beautifully recreating 1940's Manhattan with period appropriate settings and Oscar-nominated costumes as frosting on the cake, but the cake here is the gift that keeps on giving...the divine Meryl Streep.



The People V OJ Simpson

A horrific double homicide that was the springboard for the criminal trial of the century as well as the media event of the century is recreated with just the right amount of dramatic flourish in a 2016 mini-series called The People V OJ Simpson, a 10-hour mini-series originally broadcast on FX that won the Emmy and Golden Globe for Outstanding Limited Series, which in dazzling docudrama fashion, through the use of fact and assumed speculation, chronicles the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, the pursuit of OJ Simpson as the prime suspect, and his eventual trial, which became a media beast that no one expected and refueled racial tension in this country with a vengeance. This drama also sheds a light on some of the principal players that was overshadowed by the drama of the trial. It also provides a surprisingly balanced look at all the aspects of this harrowing and riveting story.

I would like to preface this review by stating that this is intended to be an analysis of this mini-series for its entertainment value. I am not writing this because I want to get on any kind of soap box regarding this trial or the defendant. I am not here to discuss the verdict nor is it my intent to initiate any kind of discussion regarding this trial or the verdict. I will say that whatever your opinion is regarding the verdict, that viewing this mini-series will probably not alter your opinion, but for those who were children when all this was happening, and I know they are members here who were, this mini-series is a fairly accurate recreation of the events, with some exaggeration of particular events for the sake of entertainment value and since this piece purports to be nothing more than a piece of entertainment based on real events, on that level, it works.

For those who were children and don't remember any of this, back in 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and her then lover Ron Goldman were found brutally murdered on the front steps of Nicole's home and eventually, Nicole's ex, football legend turned actor OJ Simpson came into focus as the primary suspect, Simpson panicked and hopped into his white Bronco, driven by his friend Al Cowlings, with $8700 in cash and a gun to his head, leading police on an memorable chase on a California highway that eventually led to his arrest and what was, in essence, the trial of the century.

Ryan Murphy, the genius behind Glee, Scream Queens, and the dazzling HBO movie The Normal Heart was the creative force behind this monumental project, which, more than anything, puts human faces and flawed behavior on the principal players involved in this drama, and shows how their lives were forever changed by their involvement in this drama and how most of them initially resisted getting involved with this case, which on the surface, seemed like a no-brainer but turned out to be anything but. The drama carefully documents the assembling of the prosecution and the defense, a group of high-powered attorneys who eventually were tagged "the dream team", some of the best legal minds in the country who actually found a way to fight the overwhelming physical and forensic evidence that continued to pile up against their defendant.

We watch as Marcia Clark is pegged to head the prosecution and when her original second chair falls ill, the second chair is filled by a dynamic young attorney named Christopher Darden, who initially wanted nothing to do with the case and whose promotion to second chair might have had more to do with the color of his skin than for his litigation skills.

The "dream team" consists of Robert Kardashian, OJ's best friend whose children, future reality stars Kim, Khloe, Kourtney, and Rob, referred to OJ as "Uncle Juice", the perpetually oily Robert Shapiro who initially headed the team until the arrival of Johnnie Cochran, another player who initially wanted nothing to do with this case until his wife asked him how he would feel if OJ got off and Johnnie had nothing to do with it. Legendary attorney F. Lee Bailey also comes on board, but is pretty much reduced to a figurehead and is not happy about it.

This film takes an up close and personal look at the personal lives that were interrupted and forever altered by this trial. It wasn't until watching this film that I realized that all during this trial, Marcia Clark was going through a nasty divorce and custody battle for her children, but never took her eye off the OJ prize...this woman was a shark in the courtroom but this movie provides a glimpse into a troubled wife and mother who put everything in her life that was important to her at risk in order to bring OJ to justice.

Johnnie Cochran was revealed to be the true leader of the dream team who pushed Bob Shapiro to the side because he didn't feel Shapiro had OJ's best interests at heart. I loved at the first full meeting of the dream team when Shapiro asked if anyone in the room felt OJ was guilty and everyone, Cochran included, just looked at him with their mouths open. Cochran even managed to maintain his poise and minimize the damage caused when news of his own past with domestic violence came to light.

As for the defendant himself, this mini-series paints OJ Simpson as a spoiled, petulant child, who once he became a superstar, forgot he was black and spent his life trying to be part of the Caucasian good life. The man spends every minute he has onscreen screaming to the heavens of his innocence, but every move he makes once he becomes a suspect screams guilt. I'm not saying that the character is portrayed as being guilty, I'm saying that the OJ that is presented in this story does not behave like an innocent man. An innocent man would not have initiated that bronco chase on an LA highway with a gun to his head. This man was panicked about going to jail but he never stopped thinking either.

The other thing that this mini-series nails is the way the media devoured these events and life in the United States became "all OJ all the time." Kennedy's assassination didn't get the attention this story did. There's a terrific little scene at a television network where the president of a network is being persuaded by his underlings to cancel all daytime programming in order to cover the trial 24/7 and it actually takes a minute for him to be convinced that it's the right thing to do. The film also offers a couple of prickly glimpses at the jury at the drama surrounding their part in this. Jury selection was interesting especially where black women were concerned...the prosecution thought black women would resent OJ for his history of domestic violence but the defense didn't want black women on the jury because OJ was married to a white woman. Love the scenes of jurors being eliminated from the process while Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" fills the soundtrack.

This film, actually based on a book by Jeffrey Toobin called "The Ride of His Life: The Story of OJ Simpson", features an intelligent and unapologetic screenplay and absolutely brilliant and meticulous direction by Murphy, Anthony Hemingway, and John Singleton. The cast is pretty much on the money, led by Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, a performance that won her an Emmy and a Golden Globe, Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden, which won him an Emmy, and especially Courtney B. Vance, in a powerhouse performance as Johnnie Cochran, which galvanizes the screen and mesmerized this viewer, winning him a Globe as well. John Travolta is appropriately oily as Robert Shaprio and Cuba Gooding Jr. provides an alternately sympathetic and pathetic OJ Simpson. This is a once in a lifetime television event, that is a bit of a time commitment (almost 10 hours), but this was the swiftest most entertaining 10 hours I've spent in front of a television screen in my entire life.



Please indulge me...there were some superb performances in this film and there are a few more I would like to mention that I didn't include in the review:

Bruce Greenwood as Gil Garcetti
Rob Morrow as Barry Scheck
Steven Pasquale as Detective Mark Fuhrman
Christian Clemenson as Bill Hodgeman
Kenneth Choi as Judge Lance Ito
Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Al Cowlings
Keesha Sharp as Dale Cochran
Connie Britton as Faye Resnick



LA LA LAND

Damian Chazelle, the creative force behind Whiplash has provided musical lovers with the ultimate valentine to their passion, an exquisitely mounted valentine to the genre called La La Land, which breaks all the rules of contemporary filmmaking but strictly adheres to the rules of making movie musicals. And to be perfectly fair, if you're not a fan of movie musicals, you should stop reading right here.

As with most musicals, the story is pretty simple: A cocktail lounge pianist named Sebastian whose real passion is jazz and someday owning his own club meets Mia, an aspiring actress who, while waiting for her break, works as a barista at a coffee shop on the lot of Warner Brothers Studios. Sebastian and Mia's instant attraction to each other is thrown off course when the pursuit of their individual passions come between them. Ready to give up on an acting career, Mia takes Sebastian's suggestion and writes a one woman show for herself to perform. Meanwhile, after losing his job at the cocktail lounge, Sebastian gets an offer to join a successful jazz band headed by a rival musician with whom he has a volatile past, where he finds commercial success but his dream of owning his own club seems to go up in smoke.

I must confess to having issues with Chazelle's Whiplash, but this ridiculously talented writer and director made up for anything wrong with that film here. Chazelle has clearly done his homework here and somewhere along the way, has had more than a passing acquaintance with movies like Singin in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris in his mounting of this stylish musical fantasy that revels in its celebration of everything musical comedy, displaying endless inspiration from the golden days of MGM and never apologizing for it.

This musical takes the classic route of the leads meeting cute and initially displaying nothing but disdain for each other, but find their common footing in a song or a dance step that appear completely unmotivated on the surface, but that's what musical comedy is all about. If you're looking for something steeped in reality, you're looking at the wrong movie, but if you're accessible to the magic of movie musicals, you might have a stupid smile on your face throughout this movie the way I did.

The tuneful song score by Justin Hurwitz and Ben Pasek includes "A Lovely Night", "Another Day of Sun", "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)', "Someone in the Crowd", "Start a Fire" and the Oscar-nominated "City of Stars", all performed with sincerity and energy by the stars, not great singers, but Chazelle has taught them how to sell a song and Mandy Moore's sharp choreography serves the score without overpowering it...the staging of the opening number "Another Day of Sun" on a crowded California highway is on the money.

Chazelle struck gold with the casting of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as Sebastian and Mia, who create an Astaire/Rogers chemistry that is hard to resist. John Legend also impressed as Keith, Sebastian's pal who hires him for his band, who makes the most of an underwritten role, my only problem with the screenplay...I would have liked to have had a little insight into Sebastian and Keith's troubled past, but I was able to look past it. I would also like to thank the director for not staging any scenes on the Hollywood Sign. The film won seven Golden Globes and has been nominated for 14 Academy Awards and though I'm not completely sure it's worthy of all that award love, there are definite rewards for the few of us genuine musical lovers left on the planet. This movie was a journey of champagne and chocolate truffles gliding to a lovely and bittersweet conclusion.



Gideon, that was one helluva good review.

Very professionally written. Detailed with interesting facts, and you gave an excellent description to the reader that made the mini series a must watch.

I love how you opened with a gripping first sentence that catches the reader's eyes and make them want to read on. Your opening paragraph, which is always the most important in any review, is also very well done:
A horrific double homicide that was the springboard for the criminal trial of the century as well as the media event of the century is recreated with just the right amount of dramatic flourish in a 2016 mini-series called The People V OJ Simpson, a 10-hour mini-series originally broadcast on FX that won the Emmy and Golden Globe for Outstanding Limited Series, which in dazzling docudrama fashion, through the use of fact and assumed speculation, chronicles the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, the pursuit of OJ Simpson as the prime suspect, and his eventual trial, which became a media beast that no one expected and refueled racial tension in this country with a vengeance. This drama also sheds a light on some of the principal players that was overshadowed by the drama of the trial. It also provides a surprisingly balanced look at all the aspects of this harrowing and riveting story.
I was glad you said this about the mini series:
I will say that whatever your opinion is regarding the verdict, that viewing this mini-series will probably not alter your opinion
And I'm sure it wouldn't change my mind. I remember those days...I watched the news events on OJ's chase and eventual arrest as the news story broke live. I watched much of the trial. The only time I've ever watched a criminal trial.

I remember when Marcia Clark walked into the court room sporting a new hairdo and the room broke into applause. I remember watching OJ trying on the dried-blood soaked, leather gloves that didn't fit. I remember Johnnie Cochran say "if they don't fit, you must acquit".

Yes, I remember those events, which are seared into my mind and I wish that they weren't.

Your review is one of the best I've read. I know from writing reviews myself just how long it takes to get them right.

I'm sure The People V OJ Simpson is powerful television and well deserving of the Emmy and Golden Globe awards it won. But I could never revisit that trial, just thinking about it as I am now has demoralized me. I don't like to watch shows that stir up such strong emotions.




Gideon, that was one helluva good review.

Very professionally written. Detailed with interesting facts, and you gave an excellent description to the reader that made the mini series a must watch.


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Thank you so much for taking the time to read it, Citizen...I was freaking out about this review and just needed an outside opinion. Thanks again and I can understand not wanting to watch because it will definitely stir up memories of the time and if you don't wish to revisit, I understand, but thanks for reading the review.



I'm really glad they put that series on Netflix recently. I was almost about to buy the series on blu ray actually, I really wanted to watch it. I'm about to start it soon, I hope it's as good as everyone says it is!

Also, what a surprise that Travolta is in it.



I remember when Marcia Clark walked into the court room sporting a new hairdo and the room broke into applause. I remember watching OJ trying on the dried-blood soaked, leather gloves that didn't fit. I remember Johnnie Cochran say "if they don't fit, you must acquit".


One thing I will remember as long as I live and I was so anxious to see if this movie was going to recreate it...when the court clerk announced the verdict, she fumbled the pronunciation of OJ's real first name (Orenthal) and I was curious to see if they would remember that for the movie and they did! I couldn't believe it!



FENCES
Denzel Washington has an artistic triumph as the director and star of Fences, the 2016 film version of August Wilson's 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play. Washington has done the impossible here and made a viable motion picture experience out of a stage vehicle that was most likely never meant to be a movie.

Denzel takes on the role that was originated on Broadway by James Earl Jones and won him a Tony Award and it has earned Washington his seventh Oscar nomination. It is the 1950's and Troy Maxson is a hard-working garbage man who every Friday brings home his paycheck to his devoted wife, Rose while finding constant excuses to keep from building the fence around their home that he has been promising to build for years. Troy has a grown son named Lyons, who is an unemployed musician who shows up at his father's house every Friday to borrow money and refuses his father's offer to get him a job where Troy works. Troy also has a high school age son named Corey who works part time at the local grocery story, but is also a football star of such promise that a college scout is en route to talk to Troy about Corey's future. Troy also has a mentally challenged brother named Gabriel who has him enveloped in guilt because of how Troy has taken advantage of Gabriel to line his own pockets.

Troy appears to be a man haunted by a troubled past and seems to be taking it out on his boys, simultaneously wanting a better life for them but only if they work for it they way he does. Troy makes it clear that he is the king of the castle because he pays the bills and that no one else in the house has any kind of right or say in anything because he pays the bills and we understand the kind of person Troy is to a point, but a major revelation about Troy's life occurs halfway through the film that shows us a side of Troy that almost destroys his family and his somewhat comfortable existence.

Washington has taken on a lot here, bringing a stage piece to the screen that never really escapes its origins as a stage piece, but with a major assistant from August Wilson's adaptation of his own play, Washington manages to mount a compelling drama that is slightly confining, but never uninteresting, thanks to an often reprehensible central character who you want to strangle at times, but you can never take your eyes off of him either. Watching one of our industry's most likable actors completely invested in this realistic, yet deeply flawed character had my stomach in knots for a good chunk of the running time.

Fortunately, director Washington doesn't allow his star to be the whole show. Viola Davis, a Best Supporting Actress nominee, is nothing short of brilliant as the endlessly patient and neglected Rose. Davis beautifully internalizes this character's pain and still manages to hit the viewer right between the eyes with it...there are very few actresses out there who can make their eyes well up completely with water and not allow a tear to fall, but Davis makes it look easy. Davis received a supporting nomination, though this role is clearly a lead, I guess in an attempt to give her a better chance of winning. After two previous nominations, Davis may have found the role to do it for her. Jovan Adepo does a star-making turn as Corey and mention also must be made of Mykelti Williamson, most famous for playing Bubba in Forrest Gump, who gives the performance of his career as the mentally shredded Gabriel. It's a little talky and takes a minute to get going, but the work of Denzel Washington and Viola Davis make this well worth the serious filmgoer's time.



MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Kenneth Lonergan, the creative force behind the 2000 sleeper You Can Count on Me has triumphed with 2016's Manchester by the Sea, a beautifully crafted and emotionally-charged look at grief, family dysfunction, and family responsibility and the emotional chaos that can ensue as the manifestations of same begin to blur. This moving and mesmerizing drama received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Casey Affleck turns in the performance of his career as Lee Chandler, an apartment complex handyman in a suburb of Boston called Quincy, who receives word that his brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler) has lost his long battle with heart disease and travels to neighboring Manchester to handle his brother's affairs but more importantly, be there for his teenage nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Lee is thrown when he learns that Joe has requested in his will that Lee become Patrick's legal guardian, which would require Lee to move back to Manchester, which is something Lee cannot do.

Lonergan proves himself a masterful storyteller here, providing a leisurely pacing to a story that, even though it is told out of sequence, is very easy to become enveloped in and relate to everything this central character Lee is going through, but patience is required of the viewer and it is spectacularly rewarded, with an absolutely shocking backstory that not only clarifies why Lee has become the social hermit he is now but, more importantly, why there is no way he can resume a life in Manchester.

Lonergan's intricate screenplay first introduces us to Lee, Joe, and Patrick when Patrick was still grade school age and then moves back and forth between the past and present as we watch Lee take care of business and his nephew while simultaneously trying to handle the pain that this return to Manchester is causing him. I was impressed by the maturity of the relationship that develops between Lee and Patrick after Joe's death...Lee steps up where his nephew is concerned but never tries to become his father. I love the scene where Patrick asks Lee if it's all right if his girlfriend sleeps over, expecting a fight from Lee about it but not getting one. There's also a realistic sense of Patrick realizing that he can get away with things with his uncle that he was unable to get away with his dad and he definitely takes advantage of it up to a point.

I think Casey Affleck deserves the Oscar that has alluded him up to this point with a beautifully controlled and internalized performance that provides some truly shocking and explosive moments because of the actor's control of his performance, which I'm sure director Lonergan (who also makes a brief cameo) had a lot to do with and the relationship Affleck cultivates onscreen with Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges as Patrick is lovely as is the one with ex-wife, Randi, effectively brought to life by Michelle Williams in a performance that earned her a 4th Oscar nomination and Kyle Chandler also scores as Joe, a character we only meet in flashback.

The film is beautifully photographed (can't believe it was not nominated for cinematography) and this is one of the first films in a long long time that features music from Handel's Messiah as part of its score, but it works beautifully. More than anything, this is a testament to the talent of Kenneth Lonergan.