Tag Archives: Lucas Hedges

Exit Stage Gauche

French Exit

by George Wolf

So, it seems your quick, stealthy exit migrates from Irish to French when excess alcohol is not involved.

Good to know, I had to look it up.

Francis Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) certainly enjoys a good martini, but her exit plan is a bit more serious than just ducking out of the local bar unnoticed.

After years of living high as a Manhattan socialite, Francis’s inheritance is nearly gone. So after selling off what they can, Francis and her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) head to Paris to stay in her best friend’s empty apartment. When the last dollar is finally spent, Francis plans to kill herself.

It sounds pretty dramatic, but writer Patrick DeWitt (who also penned the source novel) and director Azazel Jacobs start peppering in the absurdity and black comedy as soon as mother and son are aboard a ship to France.

Malcolm leaves his fiancee Susan (Imogen Poots) behind, and hooks up with Madeleine (Danielle Macdonald) en route. Madeleine is a medium, and she soon becomes Francis’s conduit for summoning the late Mr. Price (Tracy Letts) when his soul returns in a cat.

Pfeiffer is cold, condescending perfection. Francis’s words for nearly everyone she encounters practically drip with contempt, and Pfeiffer is always able to keep the film’s tricky tonal balance from toppling toward either maudlin or silly.

She enjoys a wonderful chemistry with Hedges, who impresses yet again as a young man who is still coming to grips with the lack of affection in his upbringing, his mother’s icy worldview, and how they’ve both affected his ability to relate to other people.

And soon, there are plenty of other people to relate to in the Paris flat. There’s the neighbor who desperately wants to make friends (a scene-stealing Valerie Mahaffey), Madeleine the medium, a detective hunting for the runaway cat (Isaach De Bankole), ex-fiancee Susan and her new man (Daniel di Tomasso), and Joan, who actually owns the apartment (Susan Coyne)!

You’d be quick to label the entire affair a Wes Anderson knockoff if Jacobs (The Lovers, Mozart in the Jungle, Doll & Em) didn’t fill the center with such unabashed heart. The affection between mother and son is never in doubt, and Pfeiffer’s delicious turn makes sure Francis never becomes a villain, just a fascinating and darkly funny mess.

With its self-conscious quirks and surface-level satisfactions, this is a French Exit more obvious than most. But thanks to Pfeiffer and a sharply drawn ensemble, it’s never less than wicked fun.

Stranger than Fiction

Honey Boy

by Hope Madden

“The only thing my father gave me that was of any value was pain, and you want to take that away?”

In other hands, that line could be the beginning and end of a movie, a maudlin attempt to summarize a life of abuse.

In other hands, Honey Boy could have gone really, really wrong.

It did not.

Ostensibly the strung together memories of a damaged movie star committed to rehab, the script tells of the insidious relationship between child star Otis (Noah Jupe as the semi-autobiographical avatar for Shia LaBeouf) and his ne’er do well father (LaBeouf, basically playing his own father).

Are we watching LaBeouf work through his own issues with this remarkable act of empathy, or is this, too, just an act? Or is Honey Boy itself a blurring of the line between sincerity and performance? To director Alma Har’el’s credit, Honey Boy does not shy away from that question. In fact, at every turn it embraces it. Just don’t expect an answer.

Har’el weaves between past and present. Modern day (2005) Otis (Lucas Hedges) stomps, blusters and bullies his way through court-appointed confinement where certain triggers send the film back to 1995. There, mainly in a dodgy motel with prostitutes for neighbors, young Otis and his dad struggle.

Hedges and Jupe make for eerily strong choices to play the two younger versions of LaBeouf, each an actor of such remarkable range and talent that super stardom seems inevitable. Hedges’s turn brims with contempt and vulnerability, while Jupe seems to recognize the limits of his own character’s understanding. His performance is heartbreaking.

The showier work comes from LaBeouf, who delivers a truly compassionate if not entirely forgiving performance. Your dad can be a hard guy to understand. If this entire film is simply LaBeouf’s attempt to do that, we’re lucky we get to participate.

LaBeouf’s work as a child actor—his turn as Stanley Yelnats in the utterly charming Holes, for instance—solidified his standing as a talent. His mainly mediocre choices and flat performances in his young adulthood made his off-screen antics more worthy of comment. And though his personal life may not have steadied much (his last arrest was just two years ago), his 2019 cinematic output (including the endlessly delightful The Peanut Butter Falcon) is easily the most impressive of his career.

The feat here is not just the performance, but the script.

In other hands, Honey Boy is another look at the ugly familial dysfunction that both propels and destroys young actors. Instead, through mundane details, we’re offered an unsettling and candid character study and a finely written family tragedy.

Beautiful Ben

Ben is Back

by Hope Madden

Family can be a nightmare during the holidays, eh? Well, if you think your Fox-News-spouting uncle is a problem, you need to meet Ben.

Yes, Ben is Back, the damaged teen at Christmas drama from writer/director Peter Hedges, is clear Oscar bait. It is, after all, a family drama starring two of the Academy’s favorite thespians, Julia Roberts and the filmmaker’s own son, Lucas Hedges.

Lucas Hedges plays Ben, the eldest son of Holly (Roberts), who surprises his family—mom, sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton), half siblings Lacey and Liam (Mia Fowler and Jakari Fraser, respectively) and stepdad Neal (Courtney B. Vance)—on Christmas Eve. Ben’s been away in rehab, and not everyone is as thrilled at the prospect of reliving Christmas Horrors Past as Holly seems to be.

Though filmmaker Hedges’s script has a few rough edges, one of its great strengths is its limits. Ben is Back chooses not to spell out every aspect of Ben’s addiction, his descent, his likely court-determined recover program. These are wise omissions as they make the slow reveals more powerful and leave you feeling less manipulated.

What unspools as a tense family drama takes a wild left turn by act three, when Ben’s shaky present and dark past come crashing into Holly’s living room only to make off with the family’s beloved mutt. The balance of the film sees mother and son drive deeper into an ugly abyss of sexual predators, junkies and criminals to have poor Ponce back for the siblings by Christmas morn.

Once the borderline thriller storyline takes flight, Hedges Senior flails a bit with pacing and tone. Hedges Junior and Roberts, however, lose nothing.

The voyage into the underbelly of Holly’s lovely suburbia offers not only some insight into the realities of drug addiction and our current opioid crisis, but allows these two talents the chance to mine their characters’ psyches.

Hedges never overstates the emotions roiling barely beneath the surface. He is almost simultaneously overjoyed, anxious, guilty, dishonest, tender, vulnerable, loyal, broken and resilient. There is nothing showy in his performance as he conveys with clarity the confusing mix of emotions and motives that surface from moment to moment.

Roberts, who has solidified her status as formidable character actor in own second act, takes command of this film and never gives an inch. She owns every scene, and equals Hedges in her own ability to swing—sometimes gently, sometimes seismically—from one emotion to the next. Again, there is nothing inauthentic or overly dramatic in this performance.

The film itself dips too often into maudlin traps. And though the third act is far from awful, the filmmaker’s insights for family dynamics and dysfunction are stronger.

He can cast the shit out of a movie, though.





Board in the U.S.A.

Mid90s

by George Wolf

More than just a time stamp, Mid90s emerges as a completely engaging verite-styled slice of place and person, a clear-eyed and visionary filmmaking debut for writer/director Jonah Hill.

While not strictly autobiographical, the film is Hill’s rewind button back to the Los Angeles skateboarding culture so omnipresent during his own coming of age.

13 year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) watches a tight knit group of skaters in his neighborhood, envious of the camaraderie missing from his life at home with an angry 18 year-old brother (Lucas Hedges – impressive yet again) and a self- absorbed 36 year-old mom (Katherine Waterson).

Stevie hangs around the skate shop until the boys slowly welcome him with a brand new name: “Sunburn.” With that, Ray (Na-kel Smith), “Fuckshit” (Olan Prenatt), “Fourth Grade” (Ryder McLaughlin) and Ruben (Gio Galicia) become Stevie’s new family, instantly giving him the sense of belonging and male role models he is craving.

Though the film does feel like a labor of love for Hill, it’s not draped in undue nostalgia, but rather a gritty sense of realism resting comfortably between 1995’s “Kids” and Bing Liu’s current skateboarding doc “Minding the Gap.”

The group of skaters moves like an animal pack, and Suljic (Killing of a Sacred Deer, House with a Clock in Its Walls) perfectly captures the attentive innocence behind a young boy grasping at masculinity.

The group of actors in Stevie’s skater family boast little screen experience but are long on authenticity. Smith and Prenatt especially impress as Ray and Fuckshit, two lifelong friends slowly moving in different directions. When Ray quickly and gently admonishes Stevie’s behavior, it is a touching moment that rings with genuine concern borne from experience.

Hill treats his characters with equal trust, presenting their lives without judgement, apology or condescension. He’s equally confident is his mechanics, crafting the film with abrupt cuts, a fluid camera and alternating blasts of sound and silence that help define the mood of longing masked by bravado.

An often funny, sometimes startling and endlessly human film, Mid90s is a blast from the past that points to a bright filmmaking future for Jonah Hill.





Birdhouse in Your Soul

Lady Bird

by Hope Madden

Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, may be the most delightfully candid and refreshingly forgiving coming-of-age film I’ve seen.

The great Saoirse Ronan—because honestly, is there now or has there ever been a more effortlessly talented 23-year-old?—plays Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson. Uniformed senior at Sacramento’s Immaculate Heart, Lady Bird is a work in progress.

Ronan is surrounded by talent. Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) shines as a sweetly gawky budding thespian while, as Lady Bird’s devoted bestie Julie, Beanie Feldstein (Neighbors 2) is heart-achingly wonderful.

Tracy Letts, playwright turned go-to character actor, proves again his natural ability in his newer profession as LB’s softie father. But it’s Laurie Metcalf who matches Ronan step for step.

As Lady Bird’s tough, even scary, mother, Metcalf is near-perfect. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Rosanne star nab her first Oscar nomination for a turn that’s brave, funny, hard to watch and painfully authentic.

Lady Bird’s greatest desire is to escape Sacramento—“the Midwest of California”—in favor of someplace, anyplace, with culture. Preferably a liberal arts college in NYC. But her grades, her mom and her family’s financial situation present some (often hilarious) obstacles.

Though the film is hardly a straight-up comedy, its irreverent humor is uproarious. I laughed louder and more often during Lady Bird than any film this year.

The plot and the comedy are less the point here than you might expect. They are really just a device Gerwig uses to explore adolescence and its characteristic stage of reinvention. She throws in the surprisingly accurate image of a family’s financial struggle to boot, just to make sure we never mistake this for a John Hughes film, or, God forbid, Perks of Being a Wallflower.

No, this is not a cheese-clothed indictment of all the ills facing adolescents. It’s Rushmore with less camp and more authenticity, and that’s got more to do with Gerwig than her formidable cast.

Though Lady Bird’s landscape is littered with coming-of-age tropes, there is wisdom and sincerity in the delivery. Gerwig offers genuine insight rather than nostalgia or, worse yet, lessons to be learned. The result ranks among the best films of the year.





All in the Family

Manchester by the Sea

by George Wolf

Manchester by the Sea will put your emotions in a vice and slowly squeeze, buffering waves of monumental sadness with moments of biting humor and brittle affection. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan crafts a film so deeply felt it can leave you physically tired. A very good kind of tired.

Casey Affleck is a sure Oscar contender as Lee Chandler, a quiet, moody soul content to live in a one room apartment and work as a janitor in suburban Boston. When the call comes about the passing of his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), Lee heads to Manchester to attend to family business.

His brother’s will specifies that Lee is to be guardian of Joe’s 16 year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges in a crackling, breakout performance), a responsibility Lee is not expecting nor seemingly interested in.

Questions on this family backstory abound, and Lonergan takes his sweet, beautiful time in answering them. After his stellar 2000 debut You Can Count on Me and the ambitious mess of Margaret a year later, with his third feature Lonergan displays a form of storytelling masterfully rooted in subtlety and realism.

Sketches of a narrative take shape without regard for any strict linear structure, and the dense fog of grief within the Chandler family becomes palpable, anchored in Affleck’s tremendous performance. More than just a moody loner, Affleck crafts Lee as a soul unsure if he seeks punishment or absolution, and seemingly content to remain undecided.

The sudden responsibility of Patrick forces Lee to face things he’s run from, and Affleck’s scenes with the young Hedges are filled with wonderfully restrained moments of tenderness and anger. Even better are the sudden bursts of piercing humor, as Lonergan is always two steps ahead of where you think a scene may be going.

The entire supporting cast is uniformly excellent, highlighted by an unforgettable Michelle Williams as Lee’s ex-wife Randi. Despite limited screen time, Williams makes Randi’s own pain visible through her facade, finally airing it in a shattering reunion with her ex husband. A masterclass in film acting from Williams and Affleck, these are moments so full of ache and humanity you’ll be devastated, yet thankful for the experience.

Williams’s small but mighty performance pierces the film’s admittedly male-centric worldview. The other female characters are more broadly drawn in negative lights, yet this reinforces the sad cycle of emotional immaturity in danger of being passed on to another Chandler man. In the end, Manchester by the Sea is a hopeful ode to breaking these barriers, and enduring in the face of the worst that life can bring.

Verdict-4-5-Stars