Movie Review: The Old Man & the Gun

The Old Man & the Gun **** / *****

Directed by: David Lowery.

Written by: David Lowery based on the article by David Grann.

Starring: Robert Redford (Forrest Tucker), Casey Affleck (John Hunt), Sissy Spacek (Jewel), Danny Glover (Teddy), Tom Waits (Waller), Tika Sumpter (Maureen), Ari Elizabeth Johnson (Abilene), Teagen Johnson (Tyler), Gene Jones (Mr. Owens), John David Washington (LT. Kelley), Barlow Jacobs (Offerman), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Detective Gene Dentler), Elisabeth Moss (Dorothy), Keith Carradine (Captain Calder), Robert Longstreet (Stepgen Beckley Jr., Esquire).

 

If you are going to build an entire movie on the charm, and cinematic legacy, of an actor you could do a lot worse than picking Robert Redford. In what may, or may not, be his swan song as an actor, Redford plays Forrest Tucker, a man who has been in and out of prison his entire life. When he’s not in jail, he’s robbing banks – and when he is in jail, he is trying to come up with ways to break out – which he has done 16 times over the decades. Tucker is likable and charming – even the people he robs describe him as nice – but he just cannot stop himself. Early in the film, we see him come home from his latest robbery, pry up the floor boards and throw his latest stack of cash down – on tops of many other stacks of cash. He probably doesn’t need to keep robbing banks – at least not as many as he does – but if he didn’t, what would he do with himself?

 

The Old Man & the Gun is the latest film from David Lowery, who has quickly built up a very solid – and eclectic – resume from the understated crime drama Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, to the Disney kid’s movie remake Pete’s Dragon, to his exploration of time and space of A Ghost Story. The Old Man & the Gun is perhaps his least ambitious film to date – it’s a simple character study of this guy who cannot stop himself, built upon the abundance of charm of Robert Redford – but perhaps that’s why it works so well. It doesn’t try to be anything it isn’t.

 

There are other characters in the film other than Redford – most notably there is Jewel (Sissy Spacek), a widow Tucker meets while driving away from one of his robberies, as her truck is broken down on the side of the road. Theirs is a low-key relationship of a kind – a romance, yes, but one built on the two taking pleasure in each other’s company more than anything else. Both are too old to be fooling with anything else. Then there is Lowery favorite Casey Affleck as John Hunt, a Texas robbery detective who makes it his personal mission to find Tucker – and his gang – after they pull off a robbery while Hunt himself is in the bank with his son, and doesn’t notice a thing. The other members of Tucker’s gang are Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits) – and while neither becomes much of a character, Waits does deliver a great story that ends with the line “and that’s why I hate Christmas” in a way that only Waits could.

 

The film takes place in the early 1980s, and Lowery seems to delight in recreating the era – not necessarily as it was, but how it looked in movies from that era. The film has a leisurely pace – it never rushes anything, which had the film run longer than 93 minutes could have dragged, but Lowery knew the right length for this story to go.

 

But really, the whole show here is Redford – and this is one of his best performances. Unlike, say, All is Lost which is another film that relied on Redford’s cinematic history for its effect, I don’t think The Old Man & the Gun really stretches Redford’s chops very much – this role is very much in his wheelhouse. But it certainly reminds you of how great Redford can be in that wheelhouse. Redford is still capable of that boyish gleam in his eye that made him a star more than 50 years ago – and he still looks better than most actors half his age (or less). In short, The Old Man & the Gun is basically pure pleasure – like sinking into a comfortable chair for 93 minutes with an old friend.

Movie Review: A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story **** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Lowery.

Written by: David Lowery.

Starring: Casey Affleck (C), Rooney Mara (M), Will Oldham (Prognosticator), Sonia Acevedo (Maria), Carlos Bermudez (Carlos), Yasmina Gutierrez (Yasmina).  

 

A Ghost Story is a movie that has been stripped to the barest of essentials. The plot is minimal, the dialogue even

more so – the main character spends the majority of the movie under a sheet, with a couple of eye holes cut into it – quite literally looking like a child’s idea of a ghost. It is a film made up of long, unbroken shots – lasting a minute or two, or even more, that will test the patience of a lot of viewers. At the end of the screening I attended, there was laughter – and it wasn’t kind – towards the movie, from viewers who clearly expected, and wanted something, else. They won’t be the only ones with that reaction – yet I do think, that you write this film off as too precious, too sentimental, to pretentious at your peril. The most profound movies are often the simplest.

 

In the film, C (Casey Affleck) is a musician who lives in a house with his wife, M (Rooney Mara), somewhere in what appears to be rural Texas. He wants to stay, she wants to move – they argue – but then he dies in a car accident. In a truly haunting moment, she identifies the body, and then a sheet is pulled up over his head. The camera holds on that still tableau, second after second ticking by, until he sits bolt upright, and walks away. This is a ghost story after all. He returns to the home, and he watches as his wife grieves him – in a moment that has already become famous, she sits on the floor and eats a whole pie. She listens to a song he wrote her – and the film cuts back and forth between when she first heard it, and was angry, to her listening to it now, as she’s sad. Eventually, M will move out – and C stays behind. Other tenants arrive, and C doesn’t much care for them. There is first a young family, and later a group of hipsters throwing a party, at which – in the films single longest dialogue scene, Will Oldham delivers a long monologue about the mankind’s fruitless efforts to leave anything behind, because eventually, everything will be destroyed. You may think, since this scene goes on so long, that it is the films thesis, stated directly at the audience – but I don’t think so.

 

The movie plays games with time, as we watch similar scenes play out, one after another, again and again – C watching M leave for work in the morning for instance, and also contains huge leaps in time, done with jump cuts, not the more traditional fade out, fade in. C clearly wants something at the house. As time passes, the house changes – he’s stuck in a future world he doesn’t much understand – that is until he plunges back to the past.

 

This is the type of movie a director gets to make when he’s basically willing to fund it himself, and get his friends on board. David Lowery shot the film after completing Pete’s Dragon for Disney, and he got Affleck and Mara – who starred in his previous film Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – to star. For Mara, this adds another fascinating performance to her resume – that this year already contains great work in Terrence Malick’s Song to Song. Like Malick – a clear influence on Lowery – this film uses her for her physical presence – she says little, but conveys a lot. For Affleck, it must have taken trust on his end to do the role – apparently, it really is him under that sheet most of the time – and the risk of him looking foolish was great. Both performances are good – in their way – but both are clearly archetypes more than anything else. Lowery purposes leaves these characters blank – likely to make it easier for the audience to project themselves onto the characters.

 

A Ghost Story is an odd movie to be sure – you can call it haunting, and you’d be right, because it really it. But the film isn’t a horror movie, or even trying to be – it contains no real scares, no real intensity. It’s something deeper than that. If I’m being honest, most audiences are likely to be frustrated by the film. They’ll be looking for something that this film isn’t trying to deliver. That’s there loss though, because this is a fascinating, quietly profound film – one that sneaks up on you as you watch it, then doesn’t leave you alone for days after.

Movie Review: Pete's Dragon

Pete’s Dragon

Directed by: David Lowery.

Written by: David Lowery & Toby Halbrooks based on the screenplay by Malcolm Marmorstein and story by Seton I. Miller and S.S. Field.

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard (Grace), Robert Redford (Meacham), Oakes Fegley (Pete), Oona Laurence (Natalie), Wes Bentley (Jack), Karl Urban (Gavin), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Sheriff Gene Dentler).

 

The list of indie directors who have got the chance to helm a major film for a movie studio is long, and frankly more than a little depressing. Many of these filmmakers got the chance to helm those big movies by making a few indie films – smaller in scale, maybe not perfect, but show potential that those filmmakers may grow into something truly special. And then, Hollywood comes calling, and these indie directors get lost up there – and never do find that level they were reaching for. I think of someone like Boaz Yakin, whose Fresh (1994) was one of the best debut films of the 1990s, and whose follow-up, A Price above Rubies (1998), wasn’t as good, but was quite daring. I wanted to see where this guy was going. Apparently where that was is Hollywood, with films like Remember the Titans, Uptown Girls and the Jason Statham starring Safe. You can list any number of other directors as well – Duncan Jones, who seems to get further away from the promise of Moon with each film, Colin Trevorrow, who made the quirky and funny Safety Not Guaranteed, before helming the behemoth Jurassic World, etc. You get the idea. When Indiewire did a survey of female indie directors and asked them if they wanted to direct big, studio movies – the complaint having been (rightly) made for years that they don’t get the chance to, most of them said yes, but only if they could make the type of big studio film that they wanted to – only if they had some sort of control over the final product. Which is probably at least one reason why those filmmakers haven’t made the jump yet – studios don’t want to give their big movies to directors with a vision, and who want to control the final product. They want filmmakers who will execute how they’re told – probably one reason why Marvel keeps hiring TV directors to make their films – those filmmakers, as talented as they are, are used to it. The list of indie filmmakers who get to go to Hollywood, and make bigger movies that are still undeniable their films is short. The last one was probably Gareth Edwards, who Godzilla remake from 2014, was undeniably the work of the same filmmaker who made the very low budget Monsters (2010) – and that’s one of the reasons why it’s one of my favorite recent blockbusters (many disagree, and I’ll tell you what I tell my wife, who adamantly disagrees with me on this one – “You’re wrong”).

 

So, after that longwinded opening paragraph, it gives me great pleasure to report that David Lowery’s Pete’s Dragon is one of those increasingly rare examples of an indie filmmaker who goes to Hollywood – Disney, no less – and makes a terrific major, special effects laden film, and retains his own identity. His terrific breakout film was 2013’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a Malick-esque love story of sorts, about a convict, who escapes prison and comes back to the wife he loves (Rooney Mara) – but has perhaps moved on, and the child he never met. That was a sad, truly touching film – it’s also a quiet film, that doesn’t have much of a plot, and doesn’t suffer for that. There, Lowery was more interested in mood and tone that plot. Remarkably, the same thing is true about Pete’s Dragon – a live action remake of the all but forgotten 1970s Disney film (which if I did see as a kid, I’ve completely forgotten).

 

The story in Pete’s Dragon is a simple – a little boy, around 4 or 5, is travelling in the middle of nowhere Pacific Northwest, when there is a car wreck that kills his parents, and strands him in the middle of the forest. Luckily for him, he almost immediately meets a dragon – who he names Elliot, who is basically a big, friendly, green, flying dog – who basically becomes Pete’s whole family – parents, sibling, pet, etc. Flash forward six years, and their idyllic life in the forest comes to an end, as they all must, when loggers invade their forest. Pete is discovered, and brought into town by a kindly forest ranger, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), who ends up taking her into home with fiancé Jack (Wes Bentley) and his daughter, Natalie (Oona Lawrence). Grace’s father, Meachum (Robert Redford), has been telling the story of how he met a dragon in those woods for years – more as a story to frighten kids (in a kindly way), than is a crazed mountain man way though, Gavin (Karl Urban), Jack’s brothers, will eventually discover Elliot – and want to capture him.

 

That doesn’t seem like much plot, and it isn’t, but like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, I think the film is actually at its weakest when it has to go through the motions of that plot – and at its best, when it dispenses with, and focuses on the mood and the characters. There are fairly lengthy stretches (especially for a kids movie), near the beginning that almost play like a silent film – with Pete and Elliot rollicking in the forest, which deepens their connection, and the sense, when it eventually does come, that they are really losing something. Lowery isn’t afraid of those quiet moments – he actually uses them to his advantage. He also is not afraid of subtlety when it comes to performances either. Karl Urban gives probably the films weakest performance as Gavin – it’s not really his fault, he has to be the antagonist, and drive the plot, which is the weakest part of the film – and even he never even comes close to the type of mustache twirling overacting you would expect a bad guy in a kids movie to do. Bryce Dallas Howard gives a beautiful, understated performance as a woman who longs for the type of life she didn’t get growing up (her mother died young) – who genuine connection with Pete is beautiful. There probably isn’t another actor alive I would rather see play Meachum than Robert Redford – who takes what, in lesser hands, could have turned a saccharine performance, and turns it into a genuine one. I’m not sure there is anyone else who wood carve in a flannel shirt and spin tales about dragons with as much real warmth and humor as Redford. It even extends to young Oakes Fegley as Pete, who doesn’t rely on normal cute kid tricks in the film – not even when he’s howling.  More experienced, adult actors have been undone by the task of acting opposite a CGI creation – but the kid handles it like a pro.

 

I mentioned Malick earlier in the review, and you can see some of that still present in Pete’s Dragon. Lowery doesn’t go as far as Malick does with his poetic reverie (or as far as Lowery did in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) – it’s still very much there though. The other major influence on Pete’s Dragon is undeniably Steven Spielberg – as the film, at times, resembles E.T. with a large dragon instead of an alien. Spielberg may have the (largely unwarranted) reputation of being sickly sentimental, but he mostly knows just how far to push things. Lowery does to – like in that is perhaps the best in the movie, when Elliot goes looking for Pete, and eventually finds him. They scene starts off exciting, moves to the comic, and ends up in heartbreak (yes, I cried at a movie involving a dragon) – all with a word being uttered, and without making you feel overly manipulated in the end.

 

The finale of the movie is, as expected, action based – there is a chase, there is fire (you cannot have a movie with a dragon and not have him breathe fire), there is a moment where we are led to believe tragedy has struck, when ultimately it hasn’t, etc. It isn’t my favorite part of the movie, but it is part that we all knew had to be there eventually – and it is handled quite well.

 

This summer has not been a particularly good one for big movies. There have been a lot of bad or at least mediocre and instantly forgettable movies to come out so far. Pete’s Dragon will not be the huge hit that some of the others have been – but it is easily the best big budget movie we’ve seen this summer. That David Lowery came to Disney, and made a film that is both a wonderful kid’s film, and one that is undeniably his as well, is the best news for the future of big budget movies I’ve seen all summer.

Movie Review: Ain't Them Bodies Saints

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
Directed by: David Lowery.
Written by: David Lowery.
Starring: Rooney Mara (Ruth Guthrie), Casey Affleck (Bob Muldoon), Ben Foster (Patrick Wheeler), Keith Carradine (Skerritt), Kennadie Smith (Sylvie Guthrie), Jacklynn Smith (Sylvie Guthrie), Nate Parker (Sweetie), Robert Longstreet (Cowboy Hat), Charles Baker (Bear), Augustine Frizzell (Sissy), Kentucker Audley (Freddy), David Zellner (Zellner), Turner Ross (T.C.), Rami Malek (Will).

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints begins where most movies of its ilk end. The film has been compared to Terrence Malick’s Badlands – with good reason – but that film concentrated on its young lovers on the run from the law. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints has barely begun when the robbery committed the young lovers at its core, Ruth (Rooney Mara) and Bob (Casey Affleck), and their cohort, has gone awry and ends in a shootout with the police. Ruth ends up shooting one of the cops, but because she has told Bob she is pregnant, and he is head over heels in love with her, he tells her to blame the whole thing on him. It works – he’s hauled off to jail, and the sends love letters to her, telling her that he will come to her and their daughter, and she has raise their child on their own. This is where most movies would end – but the majority of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints takes place a few years later – when Bob has broken out of jail, and is slowly making his way back home. The two lovers spend most of the movie apart – although we still feel their connection.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is more about mood than about plot – the movie would perhaps be even better had it jettisoned even more of its plot than it already has. The film has a dreamy romantic feel to it – especially when the film is concentrated on Bob – he has a one track mind to get home to Ruth and his daughter, and his letters (spoken in Malick-like voiceover) express an almost delusional level of romantic love towards his family. In some ways, he’s more akin to the Sissy Spacek character in Badlands – she narrated that movie, and one of the more striking things about Badlands is the difference between how she describes what is happening, and what we actually see (she glosses over just how violent things become). In many ways, Bob is like that as well – despite the fact he is now an escaped convict, hunted by police over all Texas, not to mention three paid assassins out to get his money and/or kill him, he still recklessly heads towards Ruth with determination. He’s not so bold as to go straight to her house – but he does have a plan that struck me as something a lovesick teenager would come up with – because in many ways, that’s just what he is.

Mara’s Ruth has been forced to live in the real world since Bob went to jail. She has to work to support their daughter, and even that wouldn’t be enough to keep them afloat if Skerritt (Keith Carradine), the father of their killed accomplice, didn’t supply them with a house to live in. While Bob has only gotten through prison by thinking about Ruth, she has not had that option. In those short, early scenes, both Affleck and Mara appear to be wildly, passionately in love – and while that love never fades for Bob, the movie, Mara’s impressive performance, makes us question whether the same is true for her. Having a child has forced her to grow up – and Bob represents the kind of life she has left behind. Meanwhile, Patrick (Ben Foster), the cop who was shot, makes it clear that he also likes Ruth – and her daughter. He’s a responsible, down-to-earth, dependable man – and even if he suspects that Ruth may have been the one who actually shot him that somehow only strengthens the attraction. This is a remarkably subtle turn by Foster – an actor known for going over the top, and it’s the film’s best performance. It also adds a mounting dread to the movie – what is Bob going to do if he shows up, especially if Ruth decides she would prefer Patrick to him?

The film justly won the cinematography award at Sundance this year – much of the movie seems to set during the twilight hours, which is perfect for this movie, because it can make for dreamy, romantic moments, but also hints at the impending darkness in the story. Yes, it does feel like something Malick would have made in the 1970s – but Malick is not the film’s only inspiration. The early 1970s work of Robert Altman can also be glimpsed here – in particular Thieves Like Us (1974) – and not just for the presence of Keith Carradine (although his presence makes the connection impossible to ignore), and in its depiction of violence, McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

It’s too bad that writer-director David Lowery included the three assassins in the movie at all – there presence of course brings on the climax of the movie, but they don’t really fit in with the rest of the film, and to me, robs the ending of the power it otherwise could have had.

But that’s a small complaint about an otherwise stellar movie – with four excellent performances, gorgeous cinematography and a romantic sensibility that we do not often see in movies anymore.