Tye Sheridan is having a fine year in a very successful career. He is also in Paul Schrader’s very fine drama about the trauma of war;The Card Counter.
In this one he is the main character in a young man’s coming of age story set roughly in the last 30 years of the 20th Century. The 70s and 80s in the movie feel remote, long ago. Was it really that long ago? Part of that could be the Long Island setting. Perhaps there, in comparison to NYC, the suburban lifestyle is very concerned with a type of traditional notions about what a man is and what a woman is and what they can expect from one another. Part of this view of life is that all a young man needs to get through it all is to have another older male mentor to tell him what is what. In this JR is fortunate that he has a middle-aged uncle interested in his well being after JR and his abandoned mother, dad being mostly his DJ voice on the radio, moves into the crowded Manhasset home of the patriarch grandfather and extended family.
Fortunately the uncle is more than a suburban bar owner and bartender. His mentoring is spot on for the lucky boy. The guy is a bookish autodidact with a closet (!) full of books, “Wanna be a writer? Read all these!”
He eventually meets daddy with very disappointing results.
Will grow and blossom in spite of his alcohol saturated roots.
George Clooney directed this adaptation of J.R. Moehringer’s memoir.
See it on Amazon Prime.
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