The Week USA - 28.03.2020

A new name has joined the list

of top 10 basketball movies of

all time, said Brian Truitt in

USA Today. Ben Affleck’s lat-

est comeback project, a small-

scale drama about an alcoholic

who steps in to coach the high

school team he once starred for,

didn’t light up the box office

last weekend. But it “upends

expectations in satisfying ways.”

Wisely, it avoids easy triumph, instead stressing how

gradual its protagonist’s recovery will be, said David

Sims in TheAtlantic.com. Still, “the biggest reason

the film works is Affleck himself,” which is “not

something I’m sure I would say about any other

film he’s been in.” Affleck, hav-

ing weathered a demoralizing

divorce, stepped out of alcohol

rehab just before filming started,

and he knows this character,

finding the subtlest ways to

communicate the story’s emo-

tional pivot points. “As a bas-

ketball movie, The Way Back is

extremely fun stuff,” said Adam

Nayman in TheRinger .com.

Affleck’s Coach Cunningham knows his X’s and

O’s and carries his ragtag team a long way. Even

so, what’s most interesting about the movie is how

it pushes back against a routine sports-drama arc

“without fully sacrificing the genre’s pleasures.”

In the three quietly powerful

films Eliza Hittman has made so

far, “sex and danger are inextri-

cably intertwined,” said Alison

Willmore in NYMag.com. The

director’s latest festival award

winner chronicles the trials of a

pregnant Pennsylvania 17-year-

old who can’t get an abortion in

her home state without parental

permission and so boards a bus

to New York City. She’s accompanied by her cousin,

Skyler, who bought the tickets with money pilfered

from the grocery where the pair work. But the two

girls are alone on their wrenching journey, and it’s

an indictment of today’s abortion restrictions that

the drama built around them “often feels like a

thriller.” Autumn and Skyler,

who are played by newcomers

Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder,

learn quickly that they will

have to spend two nights in the

city despite having no money

for a room, said Mary Sollosi

in Entertainment Weekly. The

actresses make “a compelling

pair”: Both are highly natural

performers, and Flanigan’s work

in the devastating clinic scene that gives this movie

its title proves “worth the admission price alone.”

Yes, this is a political film, said Kate Erbland in

IndieWire.com. “But it’s also a singular look at

what it means to be a teenage girl today, and all the

joy and pain that comes with it.”

Review of reviews: Film ARTS^25

The return of The Hunt

“No, The Hunt isn’t going to insti-

gate a second Civil War,” said Scott

Mendelson in Forbes.com. The movie

that was yanked from September’s

release schedule because President

Trump tweeted about it is finally hit-

ting theaters this weekend, and it’s

“entirely harmless.” Yes, the premise is incen-

diary: A group of red-state Americans wake

up tied and gagged

in a forest clearing,

and they learn they’re

being pursued by

rich liberals who hunt

“deplorables” for

sport. But it’s a black

comedy, nothing more sinister, and even

though the producer has not yet freed critics

to publish reviews, I can tell you no viewer

will come away thinking it advocates the vio-

lence it depicts, even when star Betty Gilpin

turns the tables. The marketing now bills The

Hunt as “the most talked-about movie of the

year that no one’s actually seen,” said Ellen

Gamerman in The Wall Street Journal. It’s

also satire, not horror, and “attempts to make

fun of everyone, left and right.”

The Way Back

A former hoops star

chases redemption.

++++

Directed by

Gavin O’Connor

(R)

Never Rarely

Sometimes

Always

A rural teen seeks an

abortion in a distant city.

++++

Directed by Eliza Hittman

(PG-13)

Kelly Reichardt’s latest is “a

film too lovely for words,” said

Joe Morgenstern in The Wall

Street Journal. “Mainly but

not only about friendship,” this

small-scale Western chronicles

an unlikely business venture

launched in 1820s Oregon by

a soft-spoken cook and the

runaway Chinese sailor he’d

encountered one day while

foraging in the woods. Orion Lee proves “quietly

charismatic” as the sailor, while John Magaro’s

“Cookie” Figowitz emerges as “one of the most

touching characters to have graced the screen in

a very long time.” The pair decides to take a risk

by selling baked goods made using pilfered milk

from the first cow shipped into

the territory, said A.A. Dowd

in AVClub.com. And honestly,

“there isn’t much more to the

plot.” But Reichardt, who made

the masterful Meek’s Cutoff, set

on the Oregon Trail, has created

“a minimalist buddy comedy”

that also functions as a portrait

of American enterprise at its

birth. But don’t overlook the

way the filmmaker builds “trembling ambiguities”

into certain scenes between the two friends, said

K. Austin Collins in VanityFair.com. Before it’s any-

thing else, First Cow “is a movie about two men—

two bodies—and the masculine, economic codes of

the West.” It’s telling us the codes were never static.

First Cow

Two friends launch a

startup in 1820s Oregon.

++++

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

(PG-13)

Magaro’s soulful biscuit maker

Affleck learns by teaching.

Flanigan: A quiet distress

A24, Warner Bros., Focus Features, Universal

Gilpin