masonsaul

Thunder Road is a beautiful comedy drama of tragic proportions that is pretty much a one man show in front and behind the camera. It's a moving meditation on grief where the sincere emotional heft outshines the front-loaded quirkiness and the funniest lines still have a real heft to them. It goes to dark places without being depressing and reaches a surprising yet ultimately satisfying happy ending in a short amount of time.

This is a wonderful showcase for Jim Cummings many talents since he acts as writer & director, on top of helping with the vfx and editing and he's present on screen for almost every minute. It's genuinely impressive how many emotions he goes through in the first scene alone. The demanding nature of his performance combined with the sense of empathy helps to avoid any feeling of vanity and the film has a great supporting cast in minor roles too.

Jim Cummings' direction is strong from the beginning thanks to an extended opening that draws you in and then there's ample long dialogue driven sequences afterwards that go on for longer than expected but don't overstay their welcome. The score by Jim Cummings sets the melancholy tone with ease and Lowell A. Meyer's cinematography has a gift for slowly zooming in an unobtrusive fashion, so it doesn't take too much attention away from the performances.

Reality is an unrelentingly uncomfortable, satisfyingly concise and tightly paced fact based thriller. It's the kind of film that has some genuinely effective facts and statistics in its closing moments whilst using the archive footage to reiterate its point. It's easy to see how this would have naturally worked as a stage play instead; however, the overall premise and clean execution still lends itself to a feature length film adaptation.

This is Sydney Sweeney's best performance so far in a role that gives her plenty to work with in a subtle fashion. She's in a bad position from the start and has to really try to maintain her composure as things continue to escalate with serious consequences. Every small detail of her performance says so much and the lack of anything big makes it more impactful. Josh Hamilton & Marchánt Davis are suitably off putting and hard to pin down.

Tina Satter's clinical direction brings a few creative visual flourishes to work around redacted material but mostly allows proceedings to unfold in a way that feels as realistic as possible. The smart decision to use real transcripts of the recording for dialogue only enhances the film's relevancy, making it an eye-opening experience. The blocking also puts you on edge since characters stay too close for too long.

The Long Walk is a highly investing and suitably bleak thriller. It stumbles slightly towards the end but everything before then is either deeply human or unrelentingly tense. The premise is simple yet extremely effective, explained in a concise fashion and told with an unflinching commitment to showing the dark logistics of the long walk. Once the title bluntly appears after an extended opening, it just doesn't stop and has a righteous anger.

Cooper Hoffman gives a great lead performance that brings ample empathy and determination. He also has wonderful chemistry with a phenomenal David Jonsson, who hides his pain beneath a genuine kindness that steals the whole film. When the two of them are with Ben Wang and Tut Nyuot, they form a strong core four so the emotional beats really land and their banter offers some much needed humour.

Director Francis Lawrence is a fitting choice to helm this and turns the seemingly mundane act of constantly walking into a never ending nightmare where the brutal violence arrives quickly and in disturbing detail without revelling in those shocking sequences. JT Mollner's tight screenplay keeps the characters mostly focused on the next moment and composer Jeremiah Fraites brings a sombre and emotional score.