Movies -- A Recap -- Part XXVII -- The Slow and Sad Edition

Some movies are slow.  Not bad, just slow.  Here are a few I've enjoyed:

Our Souls at Night is based on the Kent Haruf book of the same name.  As a book, it was one of E's picks for our Postal Book Club some time ago.  I really liked the bittersweet ending of the book.  The movie, which follows the book very closely, doesn't quite measure up, but it's darn good, if similarly sad and slow.

Katherine Masterson stars in The World to Come.  Despite going through her IMDB profile, I can't figure out where I know her from, but she has the real-life name of someone who definitely belongs in a Western, which this is.  At least the setting is a Western.  The story is really about two women whose husbands are off doing their own thing find themselves drawn to one another.  It's slow and plodding, without much plot, but that's something I can get behind in the right movie.  What frustrated me about this one was the inconsistency of the dialogue.  It was generally pretty academic and stilted; not what I would have expected from farmers.  But occasionally it would shift into very casual tones, at times which just didn't make sense to me.  Hopefully you can look past that.

While we're in this category, there's also The Power of the Dog.  It was nominated in about 1,000 Oscar categories, and won for Best Director.  My favorite Brit Benedict Cumberbatch plays the lead, a tough and closed-off rancher named Phil Burbank.  Phil's brother brings home a new wife and her (but not his) son, and relationships in the family get tense and confusing.  It's all very dark and depressing, but with a glimmer of hope and even a touch of love.

On the subject of forbidden loves, let's not forget A Minute's Silence.  It's a German film about a relationship between a new-to-town teacher and one of her pupils.  I don't think it's a spoiler to say that things don't quite go as planned.  Cinematography and lighting were beautiful.

Youth in Oregon is not a movie about kids; it's about euthanasia, except it's set in Oregon (get it?).  Frank Langella plays the cranky old man, being driven to Oregon for the stated purpose by his son-in-law (Billy Crudup).  His daughter (Christina Applegate) and son (Josh Lucas) have their own opinions about what the old man should (or should not) be doing, and they sort it out (or don't) along the way.  It's thoughtful.  I like the whole cast, and I'm surprised at what a good actress Kelly Bundy turned out to be.

S and I have a RV.  We don't live in it, but no matter.  We were of course going to see Nomadland.  It made for interesting viewing.  Though we don't live in our RV, we know some people who do (or at least have for periods of time).  This movie made me think about things, and the issues they have to deal with, a little differently.  How do you get healthcare, especially if you're moving around a lot?  Even if you have a medical plan, often the "benefits" you get are specific to a certain location.  Without an address, how can you do basic things like vote, get a driver's license, and get mail?  There are solutions (maybe not good ones) to all of these problems, and the live-in RV'ers have elected to trade some of the stresses associated with home ownership/rental for the stresses of life on the road.  Nevertheless, it's always good to see the world from someone else's perspective occasionally.  Oh, and the movie was pretty decent.  It alternated between idealistic and sad, and overall was a little more of a downer than I anticipated.

Seven Pounds was the longer and not-as-good version of a short film I saw at SLIFF several years ago.  In the short (the name of which I cannot remember), a woman loses her husband, but donates his eyes to a child she meets at the end of the film. In Seven Pounds, Will Smith's character killed seven people in an accident.  He decides he needs to make amends, and he will do so by changing the lives of seven strangers.  How he goes about doing that for each of his seven chosen people I will leave for you to discover.  There are some problems with the plot, and Will Smith's character is basically a creepy stalker, but as redemption stories go, it's a pretty good, kind of Shakespearean one. 

Get Low was heavier than I anticipated.  It has some funny sections and characters, but if you look past those it's really a pretty heavy movie about regret, time, and forgiveness.  Robert Duvall plays Felix Bush, a Tennessee man who's been living mostly as a hermit for 40 years.  When an acquaintance dies, he decides he wants to throw himself a funeral party -- while he's still alive.  He draws a crowd to his party by announcing a raffle for ownership of his land after his death.  Come the big day, it turns out that it's Felix who has something he wants to say to everyone.  The movie is very loosely based on the true story of Felix "Bush" Breazeale.