TRAIN DREAMS (Netflix – TBD): Train Dreams was one of only two films acquired for wide distribution during Sundance, and while Netflix clearly regards it as an awards contender, barring overwhelming critical support 9 months from now, it’s hard to see Clint Bentley’s quiet historical saga achieving a major impact among the mountains of the streamer’s content. Bentley (writing with Greg Kwedar–they also wrote Sing Sing and Jockey together–and adapting a novella by Denis Johnson) covers the first half of America’s 20th Century through the life of one man. Despite the title, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) only briefly works on trains. He’s a logger, who has a small farm where he spends a few months each year during the off-season with his wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and young daughter, but then goes out on the road to fell trees throughout the Pacific Northwest. He doesn’t have a fixed employer, but goes wherever the work is, although he runs into some fellow loggers more or less regularly (a colorful old munitions expert is played by William H. Macy). He comes into passing contact with war, racism, and the consequences of industrialism. Much sooner than he could have expected, he suffers a terrible tragedy, and although he goes on living and working, he never really comes back from that. As the decades pass, people drop into and out of his life, and the country around him changes, partly through the railroads and new technologies. He comes to see cities and televisions, while pondering his place in the developing history around him. Train Dreams is beautifully made, with gorgeous photography by Adolpho Veloso, and an always-convincing production design by Alexandra Schaller. Edgerton, who can push too hard in some roles, is intense but controlled here, and Kerry Condon contributes a few welcome scenes towards the end. Train Dreams seems to be exactly the film its makers intended; the question is whether others will be enthused by its focus on one ordinary man and his existential place in the world.
LURKER (no distrib): There was very little good to be said for Sam Levinson’s flop HBO series The Idol, but once in a while it would fix upon the power plays among a rock star’s entourage, and become momentarily interesting. Alex Russell’s Lurker centers on that dynamic, and particularly what happens when a bomb is thrown into it. The bomb in this case is Matthew (Theodore Pellerin), an employee at a moderately tony LA clothing store where rising star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) drops in. Matthew is passive-adoring, with a sense for what remark will most appeal to Oliver’s vanity, and he ingratiates himself enough to get invited to Oliver’s house. Oliver already has an assortment of hangers-on, most of whom have known him since childhood, and they’re not at all happy to see a new arrival. They try in ways petty and nasty to get rid of Matthew, but they underestimate his ingenuity and hidden ferocity. Soon enough he’s designated to work on Oliver’s video team, and it becomes evident that Matthew’s facility for scheming and climbing the ranks edges toward the sociopathic. Lurker isn’t a thriller, exactly, and it’s not a social comedy like All About Eve (Matthew doesn’t want to be Oliver as much as he wants to manipulate him). Russell has a knowledge about the rancid interplay between celebrity, social media and power, and he keeps us off-balance visually by switching film and video stocks. His plotting is less secure–the entire last act rests upon something Matthew has that seems like the kind of problem a music label takes care of on a regular basis. Nevertheless, Pellerin gives Matthew a weirdly disarming mix of insecurity and ruthlessness, and Russell is careful to make clear that no one, including Oliver, is innocent in their interplay. Lurker is a provocative and sometimes gripping poison pellet.
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