The year is winding down, which means the competition for your movie-going dollar is getting fiercer – at least if you’re in the market for smart pictures for grown-ups. With ostensibly small movies getting big releases and studio movies eyeballing the impending awards season, some of the movies on this month’s outsized indie guide are considerably “bigger” than others. But all are worth your time.
By Sidney Lumet
Release Date: Out now (New York); November 4 (Los Angeles) Director: Nancy Buirski Cast: Documentary
His main job as a director, Sidney Lumet explains early in Buirski’s enlightening profile, was to answer one simple question: What is the movie about? Not plot, which is self-evident, but “what is it about emotionally?” That organizational principle is wisely adopted for this American Masters production, which punts the conventional chronology/survey approach to instead follow the thematic crests of Lumet’s filmography. His commentary is pulled entirely from a previously unseen 2008 interview, with no other talking heads or narration, and that’s the right approach; it’s a conversational film rather than a biographical one, which allows Buirski to take unexpected detours and draw buried connections. These forays include some unfortunate exclusions (as it seems there always are in these types of things, at least if you’re a fan), and some of the clips run on a good deal too long for the points they’re making. But it’s a treat for anyone with even a passing interest in cinema, and one more chance to say goodbye to this remarkable artist and innovator.
Loving
Release Date: November 4 Director: Jeff Nichols Cast: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Michael Shannon
It’s sort of amazing, how delicately writer/director Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) sidesteps all the clichés of the based-on-a-true-story prestige drama to dramatize the union and subsequent legal battles of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose eventual hearing before the Supreme Court would end the criminalization of interracial marriage. Nichols tells their extraordinary story in a refreshingly ordinary way, with an off-hand intimacy and an emotional resonance, making it not about two people who wanted to change the world, but two people who were in love and wanted to spend their lives together. Nichols and his actors (a marvelously taciturn Edgerton and the excellent Negga) never step wrong, and never overplay these modest scenes. They don’t have to. They end up with not only one of the year’s best films, but one of its most honest.
Dog Eat Dog
Release Date: November 4 (New York / Los Angeles); November 11 (VOD/wide) Director: Paul Schrader Cast: Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Matthew Cook
It’s probably entirely impossible to put Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe together in a Paul Schrader movie and not come up with something bonkers. But even the pedigree won’t prepare you for the utter insanity of this adaptation of Eddie Bunker’s novel, which is part heist movie, part drug-fueled character sketch, and full-on exploitation movie madness. Schrader adopts an oversaturated, over-caffeinated, slam-bang style to tell this story of three con buddies hired for a risky baby-napping. Matthew Wilder’s script is entirely aware of its one-last-score clichés; he and Schrader are more interested in the focal trio’s interactions and intimacies, following them off on tangents that are both inexplicable and weirdly touching. It’s a messy movie, and plenty of it doesn’t work, but Schrader’s enthusiasm (especially after grim slogs like The Canyons ) is infectious.
Bleed for This
Release Date: November 4 (limited); November 18 (wide) Director: Ben Younger Cast: Miles Teller, Aaron Eckhart, Katey Sagal, Ted Levine
This is, it must be noted, a recommendation with reservations – several moments in Ben Younger’s boxing melodrama are so clichéd, they could drop into an Airplane-style spoof movie with no adjustment (Eckhart is first seen sprawled on the floor of his gym, empty bottle in hand, as sad piano music plays), and its gender politics are so retro, they might as well’ve called it Madonna/Whore Complex: The Movie. But it tells a remarkable story well, with a lived-in feel that mostly manages to transcend the unavoidable been-there-done-that quality of the enterprise, drilling down a traditional sports story to its universal essence: the despair of being good at one thing, and then knowing you can never do that thing again. Teller makes for a convincing Jersey brawler, but Eckhart’s busted-out trainer and Levine’s slimy-ish promoter (who always talks outta the side out his mouth) steal the show.
Off the Rails
Release Date: November 4 Director: Adam Irving Cast: Documentary
Over the course of thirty-plus years, Darius McCollum was arrested thirty-plus times for impersonating mass transit workers in New York City, taking over trains and busses from the MTA, NJT, LIRR, and Metro North. The press gave him memorable nicknames (“The public transit bandit,” “Train in the neck”), but he wasn’t just a colorful New York eccentric. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, he found in these systems’ schedules and rituals a comfort, and an obsession; he often knew more about the vehicles and routes than the people he was impersonating. Irving’s sensitive portrait takes a deep dive into his troubled childhood, and the escape and acceptance this world offered, doing McCollum the favor of taking him seriously and treating him fairly, while acknowledging the complications of his actions. Some of the stylistic touches don’t quite land (the reenactments are particularly dodgy), but there’s a real and relatable story here, about the difficulty of changing who and what you fundamentally are.
Peter and the Farm
Release Date: November 4 Director: Tony Stone Cast: Documentary
One of the first sequences of this prickly documentary portrait finds farmer Peter Dunning shooting one of his sheep in the head, and then graphically stripping and carving it up. The message is clear: this is not some overly romanticized, soft-filtered, back-to-nature situation. Dunning is a bitter, foul-mouthed hard case, isolated from friends and family, basically drinking himself to death on his Vermont farm. But Tony Stone’s tough and uncompromising film isn’t some sob story; its approach amounts to hanging out and listening, with Dunning’s biography (and the discoveries within it) wheeled out as often in casual conversation as moments of distress. What first seems a hazy character study gradually reveals itself as an emotionally walloping portrait of addiction, depression, and loneliness.
Rainbow Time
Release Date: November 4 Director: Linas Phillips Cast: Linas Phillips, Melanie Lynskey, Jay Duplass, Tobin Bell
I’m still not quite sure if writer/director/star Linas Phillips’ family comedy of awkwardness entirely works; some of the pieces just don’t fit, and Phillips’ legitimately irritating character feels like too much in parts. But there’s a lot that engages and lingers: refreshing sexual candor, convincing sibling relationships, emotional honesty, and yet another wonderful performance by Melanie Lynskey, who you totally buy in every moment (even those where the script hangs her out to dry). It’s hit and miss, but there’s more of the former.
Elle
Release Date: November 11 (New York); November 16 (Los Angeles) Director: Paul Verhoeven Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny
Paul Verhoeven’s new movie begins with a rape. It’s the first thing that happens, and thus the first thing we know about Michèle Leblanc (Huppert, fierce and fearless), and that’s key, because everything she does after that must be considered through the lens of that assault, even when she’s choosing to ignore it. Verhoeven doesn’t soft-pedal what happens – it’s brutal and scary, and hard to watch, and the film returns to it just as she would, first revisiting, then revising. But this is not a survivor story, or a revenge one, though both of those elements are present; it’s a sticky stew of art drama, dark comedy, and exploitation movie, and just when you get used to one tone, he switches to another. It sounds more unnerving and uneven than it is, though even when it’s firing on all cylinders, there’s a lot in it to reckon with. Recommended, though it may be the “your mileage may vary” movie of the year.
National Bird
Release Date: November 11 (New York); November 18 (Los Angeles) Director: Sonia Kennebeck Cast: Documentary
“I was still under the impression that America was saving the world,” Heather says, explaining why she chose to go into the Air Force, and the shiny, slick AF recruitment videos juxtapose startlingly with her raw memories and post-traumatic stress of manning a drone aircraft, bombing targets based on questionable intelligence, blurry images, and hunches. Sonia Kennebeck’s smart and haunting documentary couples the powerful testimonials of Heather, an analyst, and an intelligence agent with moody cinematography and a frightening score to illustrate a warfare program that’s troublingly indiscriminate – but is also a genie that’s hard to imagine going back in its bottle.
Hunter Gatherer
Release Date: November 16 Director: Joshua Locy Cast: Andre Royo, George Sample III, Kellee Stewart
Writer/director Locy’s feature debut is many things at once: character study, experimental dreamscape, buddy movie. But it’s most effective as a portrait of love lost, with protagonist Ashley (The Wire’s Royo, excellent) returning from a prison stint to discover the girl who said she’d love him forever has moved on. Locy crafts a whole world for Ashley to move through, one where everyone’s working an angle – in their personal or professional lives – and those hustles are bound, at some point or another, to fall apart in their hands. Bold, strange, and occasionally heartbreaking.
Manchester By the Sea
Release Date: November 18 Director: Kenneth Lonergan Cast: Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams
Writer/director Lonergan’s first film since the contentious and troubled Margaret is a genuinely moving piece of work – all the more impressive since he rarely, if ever, reaches for his effects. Set in a tight-knit seaside Massachusetts town, it tells the story of two tragedies that befall one family, about a decade apart; one of them is everyday and one of them is the kind of personal horror that can come to define your life, try as you might to resist it. Yet this is also a warm and very funny picture, finding its humor in the kidding-on-the-square so essential to these relationships. Chandler is perfection and Williams is shattering, but the key player here is Casey Affleck, and his matchless skill for seeming to do nothing while conveying everything.
The Edge of Seventeen
Release Date: November 18 Director: Kelly Fremon Craig Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick
Ms. Steinfeld comes on like a Roman candle in this terrific high school comedy/drama from first-time writer/director Craig, capturing the very specific jerkiness of a cynical outsider teen, and Craig’s most impressive accomplishment is the complexity of the character; there’s no one way she wants you to feel about her, so she can be a million contradictory things at once, just like so many women of this age are. She’s a mess that movie teens – even in great teen movies – rarely have the luxury of being, and Craig carefully constructs a narrative and a world around her that seems familiar, not based on those films, but from our own teenage years, which so often feel like a tunnel you’ll never come out of. Whip-smart, empathetic, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Nocturnal Animals
Release Date: November 18 (limited); December 9 (wide) Director: Tom Ford Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon
Director Ford (A Single Man) finally gives us a follow-up feature, interweaving the story of a successful art dealer (Adams) who is sent a novel by her ex-husband (Gyllenhaal) with the events of that novel, presumably inspired by their marriage. As expected, Ford is in total command of his aesthetics, from the sleek L.A. interiors to the dusty roads of West Texas, but he seems less in control of his tone, which takes some odd turns. But you can’t beat it as a showcase for the considerable talents of Ms. Adams (watch the look on her face as she contemplates the emotional violence of the closing scene), and Shannon, who’s kind of in another movie, but one worth peeking in on. The film requires a bit of wrestling; powerful and potent in some scenes, empty and easy in others. But when it works, it really works.
Always Shine
Release Date: November 25 (New York); December 2 (Los Angeles) Director: Sophia Takal Cast: Mackenzie Davis, Caitlin FitzGerald, Lawrence Michael Levine
Actor-turned-filmmaker Takal’s tightly-wound thriller begins with two similarly framed close-ups, with two actresses in uncomfortable situations; one (FitzGerald) smiles and acquiesces, the other (Davis) pushes back without hesitation. No prize for guessing whose career is on the crest. Takal’s keenly observed script sends these two pals/rivals off to Big Sur for a weekend getaway, where their friendly interactions and casual shoptalk give way to jealousies and jabs, every conversation loaded with subtext and suppositions. And every once in a while, there’s an inexplicable but unsettling flash of what’s to come, jagged hints that juxtapose disturbingly with their bristles and pokes. Takal has an Hitchcockian flair for toying with her audience, teeing up conflicts and making us wait for them, and her control of mood and tension is virtuosic. This is a thrilling piece of work.