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Posts Tagged ‘drug addiction’

“NO FUTURE”: Bassett eyes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 2, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Catherine Keener, Charlie Heaton

“NO FUTURE” My rating: B- (Amazon Prime)

89 minutes | No MPAA rating

A young man has a love affair with his best friend’s mom.

Sounds like not-very-original porn.

Well, “No Future” isn’t porn, at least not in the conventional sense.  Some viewers may find its singleminded obsession with dead-end lives a form of pornography.

What we’ve got in Andrew Irvine and Mark Smoot’s feature (they share both writing and directing credits) is a dour drama about a recovering addict struggling to stick to the straight and narrow and consumed with guilt about the bad stuff he did while under the influence.

Will (“Stranger Things’” Charlie Heaton, who possesses the saddest set of eyes this side of an abused Bassett Hound) lives in what appears to be a small Texas town.  He’s been going regularly to AA meetings, has an attentive and loving girlfriend (Rosa Salazar).

But he’s haunted by his past.  His widowed father (Jackie Earle Haley) can barely tolerate his son…seems that when Will’s mom was dying of cancer the kid pilfered her pain meds.

Will’s past comes back to haunt him in even more immediate fashion with the unexpected arrival of his childhood friend Chris (“Yellowstone’s” Jefferson White), fresh out of prison and falling back into his old ways.  Will was largely responsible for Chris becoming a junkie; now his old bud’s presence threatens Will’s recovery.  He tells Chris they can’t associate.

Chis resignedly accepts this fact, then goes home and overdoses. Accident or suicide? That’s the question that torments his mother Claire (Catherine Keener), who discovers the body.

Despite the 30 or more years separating them, Will and Claire find themselves in a secret physical relationship that oozes grief, guilt and loss. Maybe they somehow assume their affair will make them feel better.

Nope.  A shroud of desperation and doom envelops “No Future”…hell, the title alone should raise red flags.

To their credit, the filmmakers don’t dwell on the sexual nature of this pairing.  Their approach is utterly sincere, soberly non exploitative. 

And the performances — especially from Keener in full anti-glamour mode — are the stuff of heartbreak.

And yet “No Future” is so unrelentingly glum that it’s a struggle to sit through.  Ultimately the experience is so devoid of hope that some may leave the film feeling that recovery is an impossibility.

Surely that’s not the message we’re supposed to take away.

| Robert W. Butler

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“FOUR GOOD DAYS”: Mother love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 26, 2021| 1 Comment »

Glenn Close, Mila Kunis

“FOUR GOOD DAYS” My rating: B+

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Any more it takes something special for a drug addiction drama to ring my bell. A pall of been-there-done-that hovers over the entire genre.

“Four Good Days” has a premise I’ve never seen before. Plus it’s a prime example of mano-a-mano acting from the fierce duo of Glenn Close (whom we’ve come to expect for this sort of thing) and Mila Kunis (whom we haven’t).

And it’s the latest from writer/director Rodrigo Garcia, a genius of cinematic humanism who gets my vote as creator of the best films nobody has seen (“Nine Lives,” “Mother and Child”).

Suburban housewife Deb (Glenn Close) is angry and distressed to find her thirtysomethibng daughter Molly (Mila Kunis) on her doorstep.

Molly is a junkie. Her trips to rehab number in the double digits. On previous visits Molly has burgled Deb and her husband Chris (Stephen Root) to buy drugs. She just can’t stay sober.

Deb refuses to open the door. She’s been burned too many times. She still loves her daughter, but experience has taught her to steer clear if she values her sanity.

Trouble is, next morning Molly is still perched on the stoop. Moreover, she claims to be in line for a medication that neutralizes the effects of narcotics. With no high, what would be the point of shooting up?

But there’s a catch. The wonder drug reacts violently — possibly fatally — to any narcotics in the user’s body.

Which means that after spending three days in rehab to qualify for the program, Molly must remain clean for the next four days before getting her first dose.

Can she do it?

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“BEAUTIFUL BOY”: Fathers and sons

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Timothee Chalamet, Steve Carell

“BEAUTIFUL BOY” My rating: B

120 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Drug addiction movies are a bit like Holocaust movies.

Even if the film is well made, the subject matter is tremendously off-putting and depressing. It takes something remarkable, a new way of looking at the topic, to make the painful bearable.

“Beautiful Boy” comes close. It is based on journalist David Sheff’s memoir of dealing with his son Nic’s addiction, as well as a second memoir by Nic.  There’s little emphasis here on the usual tropes of the genre…back-alley drug buys, spoons and needles, withdrawal agonies.

Instead the film puts a parent’s horror and anxiety front and center, and by doing so it forces every viewer — or at least those with children — to question how they would deal with a similar situation.

Coddle? Criticize? Wash your hands of an uncontrollable child?

At various points in Felix Van Groeningen’s film, all those options are examined. And it helps immeasurably that the film stars Steve Carell as the elder Sheff and the ever-resourceful Timothy Chalamet as his tormented son, Nic.

The  screenplay by Van Groningen and Luke Davis cleverly juggles its time frame, opening with a conversation between the deeply concerned David and a drug counselor and then employing a series of jumbled flashbacks to tell the story of this father and son.

A narratively straightforward, step-by-step depiction of young Nic’s descent into depravity might be too much to handle; by zigging and zagging between the family’s homey past and its uncomfortable present, the film offers an emotional buffer between the audience and the film’s inescapable angst.

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“ANIMALS”: The damage done

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

David

Kim Shaw and David Dastmalchian

“ANIMALS” My rating: B+

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

Years ago I decided I’d seen just about every permutation of the drug addict movie that I cared to see.

I hadn’t reckoned on “Animals.”

This feature debut from director Collin Schiffli and screenwriter David Dastmalchian (a former Overland Park resident who also stars and based the story on his own drug history) is a revelation, not so much for what it tells us about heroin as for what it tells us about the human capacity for love.

As the film starts out Jude (Dastmalchian) and Bobbie (Kim Shaw) are living out of their car. They’re junkies, but at this stage of their shared habit it all seems, well, romantic.

He’s thin and dark and kinda Goth.  She’s girl-next-door blond. They are clearly smitten with one another and determined to share everything — from physical intimacy to their stash.

Their days are spent hanging out near Chicago’s Lincoln Park. Schiffli occasionally punctuates the human story with shots of various animals in their cages at the nearby zoo — not-so-subtle symbolism and one of the few times when the film feels forced.

When we first meet the couple they’re what you might call middle-class junkies.  They can pass for normal. They don’t seem particularly desperate.  In fact, they’re enjoying themselves immensely.

They run nonviolent scams  — like shoplifting CDs and reselling them on the street –to get their hands on money and drugs.

If they need to up their income, Jude publishes an ad offering Bobbie’s sexual services. She’ll show up for a prearranged session at some lonely guy’s home, collect half the evening’s fee, and announce she has to deliver it to her pimp out in the car before any physical business gets underway.

She and Jude laugh all the way to their dealer.

The first half of “Animals” is about drug addicts who seem to think that their love will get them through anything.

The second half puts that thesis to the test. Which is stronger, romance or heroin? When your veins are twitching, are you selfless enough to give your last fix to that special someone?

Shot and performed in a naturalistic manner, “Animals” somehow manages to turn most of the drug cliches inside out, putting a human face where nowadays most of us like to think in terms of policy.

| Robert W. Butler

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