A Ghost Story (2017)

All we see of their relationship is that he shares a pair of headphones with her once and, in bed, adopts a sleeping position that suggests love - not facing away from each other on opposite sides of the bed - so it hardly seems warranted that when he dies in a car crash he returns as a bedsheeted ghost and experiences, in a dreamy, dialogue-free extended indie videoclip, a mawkish Tree of Life history of the land upon which his and his partner's house stands; he watches tenants and buildings come and go over time until it starts to seem like we are watching his love affair with real estate, not with the woman played by Rooney Mara, whose relationship with Casey Affleck's ghost ends up feeling like a mere blip.

★★☆☆☆

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The Old Man and the Gun (2018)

In simpler times, when police work involved rifling through file boxes, having leads faxed through and using a rewind button to review grainy black and white surveillance footage, an old man, real-life San Quentin prison escapee Forrest Tucker, indulges in his greatest pleasure: robbing banks and going on the run, and like the wind rustling Robert Redford's impossible blonde tresses through the window of his Chevrolet getaway vehicle, this based-on-a-true-story crime drama is a gentle, refreshing breeze, like Heat meets geriatric Catch Me If You Can with a laidback soundtrack.

★★★★☆

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To Die For (1995)

Gus Van Sant's crime drama parody received critical acclaim despite its being little more than a glorified episode of a real-life tv crime drama like 48 Hours, only with A-list stars Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix alternately hamming things up and expecting us to care less about a grubby, inconsequential suburban crime story, Clueless meets Amy Fisher and Note On A Scandal.

★★★☆☆

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Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Casey Affleck is Kenneth Lonergan's latest emotionally stunted, middle-aged, blue-collar white guy dealing with trauma - this time the death of a brother - and while he grapples with his responsibilities to his orphaned nephew, his own heartbreaking backstory is revealed, punctuated by moments of Lonergan's trademark bittersweet poignancy and laugh-out-loud comedy.

★★★★☆

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