Boundaries
Writer/director Shana Feste’s films (Country Strong, The Greatest) tend to look like easily skippable mainstream studio fare, but that casing masks an artistic fascination with the way families can be both fragile and durable, depending on how willing their members are to invest in them. Her latest features a fantastic cast—Vera Farmiga, Christopher Plummer, Peter Fonda, Christopher Lloyd, and the hugely underrated Bobby Cannavale—in a story about a middle-aged woman forced to drive her estranged, pot-dealing reprobate of a father across the country after he gets ejected from a nursing home. It might not be the kind of film you can rally a big group of your friends into seeing en masse, but rather the kind you steal away to see at a solo matinee and find yourself wiping away tears as you emerge into the afternoon sunlight.
by Sean Nelson