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Manchester by the Sea, directed by Kenneth Lonergan
Manchester by the Sea, directed by Kenneth Lonergan

Manchester by the Sea, directed by Kenneth Lonergan

(R, 2 hours 17 minutes)

Movies often treat grief as a stage to be gotten through on the way to a happy ending. But time doesn't really heal anything, it just moves us farther from the cause of grief and provides distractions. Maybe that's enough.

In superbly realized Manchester by the Sea, Lee (Casey Affleck) is a surly a Boston janitor of few words and an air of combative quiet. He's the sort of guy you learn to leave alone.

Flashbacks show him enjoying time on a boat with his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) and Joe's son, Patrick (Ben O'Brien). Something changed Lee.

But what happens now is Lee learns that Joe, who had health problems, has dropped dead of a heart attack. Lee's the only one around to handle things. So he immediately heads to the fishing village of the title to see to his brother's affairs. And he discovers that Joe has named him as (now 16-year-old) Patrick's (Lucas Hedges) legal guardian.

Lee is in no shape to care for a high school kid. But the boy's alcoholic mother Elise (Gretchen Mol) is long gone. So Lee is stuck with Patrick. And Patrick has absolutely no desire to move to the city with Lee. Manchester is where his friends are, where he goes to school, where the soon-to-be-problematic boat his father has left him is docked.

But for reasons we sense before we understand, Manchester is toxic to Lee. He's a stray, luckless and glum and burdened.

To say much more would tamper with the slow revelation which explains the desperation at the bottom of Lee's life. But it's not too much to let you know that Lee had a prior existence. It all comes together eventually. We're in for the duration. In the end, it gets us anyway. With Michelle Williams, Matthew Broderick.

Hacksaw Ridge (R, 2 hours 19 minutes) Mel Gibson returns to the director's chair with Hacksaw Ridge, based on the true story of Desmond T. Doss, a conscientious objector who saved many lives in a brutal World War II battle.

The film opens with scenes of war carnage, over which is heard a young man's voice calmly recite from Isaiah 40:31: "Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary."

The voice belongs to Doss (Andrew Garfield), a kid from Virginia whose religious beliefs as a Seventh-day Adventist do not prevent him from enlisting in the Army to perform his patriotic duty, even as he refuses to pick up a firearm. A noncombat medic, he is sent by mistake to a rifle infantry unit, where his ethical beliefs clash with those of Sgt. Howell (Vince Vaughn) and Capt. Glover (Sam Worthington), who try to drum him out, only to be legally outmaneuvered and forced to accept him into their fold.

The film's core is the horrific battle of the Ridge, where infantrymen climb up a cargo net draped some 100 feet up a cliff face, in order to do battle against the Japanese on an Okinawa ridge. This is where Desmond saves numerous lives without killing anyone. It is truly an act of heroism worthy of this exposure, especially as it comes in celebration of an advocate of nonviolence and a vegetarian whose convictions were so strong he continually risked his life to live by them.

Similar in pace and style to the opening battle sequences in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, Gibson's treatment also reveals his limitation as a filmmaker. Spielberg utilized the battle sequences to give the audience a taste of what storming the beaches at Normandy was like. Gibson's focus on the blood-soaked effect of close combat doesn't advance the narrative as much as it announces the obsessions of the director.

Nocturnal Animals (R, 1 hour 55 minutes) A bloody revenge thriller, a wrenching relationship drama, a nervy Texas crime narrative, a character study of a coldhearted woman, and a condemnation of dehumanization, Nocturnal Animals concerns brittle art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), who receives a galley proof of a novel her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) is about to publish.

He wants her to read it, he writes, because she was the inspiration for it. With her husband (Armie Hammer) off to New York to sleep with his mistress, Susan spends the weekend reading the novel, about a husband whose wife and daughter are abducted one brutal night as the family drives through west Texas. The graphic tale is interspersed with flashbacks to the couple's flawed relationship. It's visually stunning, if not all that emotionally deep. With Isla Fisher, Michael Shannon; directed by Tom Ford.

Bleed for This (R, 1 hour 56 minutes) Miles Teller stars in this inspiring but generic bio-pic as Vinny "Pazmanian Devil" Pazienza, a scrappy Providence boxer full of promise until a near-fatal car wreck leaves him with a broken neck. Against all odds, trainer Kevin Rooney (Aaron Eckhart) agrees to help Vinny return to the ring for what could be the last fight of his life. With Katey Sagal, Ciaran Hinds; directed by Ben Younger.

Bad Santa 2 (R, 1 hour 32 minutes) Billy Bob Thornton returns to the depraved role of Willie, still drunken and wretched, who encounters old friend Thurman (Brett Kelly), now a grown man but still naive and enamored of worthless Willie. They reunite with Marcus (Tony Cox), Willie's little-person partner, who has a new heist scheme involving a massive charity in Chicago. The film works best as a study in just how irredeemable a character can be before the audience simply turns on him. It's an idea that can't quite fill 90 minutes. But fans of Thornton can always find something to like when he's on-screen. With Kathy Bates, Christina Hendricks; directed by Mark Waters.

Seasons (PG, 1 hour 35 minutes) A gorgeous, thought-provoking nature documentary in which filmmakers Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud visit the lush green forests that emerged across Europe following the last Ice Age. When the ice retreated, the landscape metamorphosed, a cycle of seasons was established, and animals lay claim to their new kingdom. It's the third installment in a series that began with 2001's Winged Migration and continued with 2009's Oceans.

MovieStyle on 02/24/2017

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