Liked this quite a bit. It’s a little formulaic and predictable, and I detect that it might think it’s deeper than it is, but it’s really engrossing at all points anyway. It’s paced along kind of perfectly so that a movie that consists almost entirely of watching dudes trudge along a road never feels slow or dull at any point.
I still can’t tell exactly what I think of Cooper Hoffman, but at minimum he’s quite capable. I mean, the camera is on him for almost every minute of this movie, and he holds it successfully, so mission accomplished from that standpoint. David Jonsson I’m 100% in on; even boring-ass Alien: Romulus had me going “but David Jonsson was really good.” He hasn’t missed for me yet.
I haven’t read the book, so I won’t venture a guess at what this story’s book-readers will think. The two King adaptations from this year are both really solid, but are wildly different and don’t compare easily. The Life of Chuck is, I think, a bit more to my tastes, but I recommend taking the time with both of them.
Dead Mail (2024): One of the best indie horror movies I’ve seen in quite a while, fantastic, obsessive attention to period detail, strong performances from the entire cast, big recommendation from me. on Shudder now.
Redford anecdote from when he wanted the role that eventually went to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.
“I interviewed hundreds, maybe thousands, of men,” Nichols admitted of the casting process per Vanity Fair, before his conversation with Redford turned out to be a short one. “I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser’. And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser’. And I said, ‘OK, have you ever struck out with a girl’. And he said, ‘What do you mean?’. And he wasn’t joking.”
William Goldman had some good stories about him along those lines, including a movie where he was supposed to play a loser. He unfortunately got famous in the meantime and killed the movie after a lot of work on the script.
My favorite Redford movie was All is Lost. An old man drives his boat out to sea to get some peace and quiet. But he wakes up and discovers his ship has run into a floating shipping container. There’s now a big hole in his boat and it is flooding with water. Electricity is gone. Communications are shot. Supplies are limited. He spends the rest of the movie trying one thing after another to save himself. A great solo performance.
