<PERSON>
Really well-directed, <PERSON> is excellent here, and the <PERSON>-ish late-70s/early-80s Texas vibes are plentiful and delicious. I was pretty thoroughly engaged from start to finish, but it never quite got under my skin — for such an inherently emotional story, I found the film relatively cold to the touch. I also felt myself being told information rather than gleaning it; the family dynamics here are pretty obvious and apparent, but I wish a bit more was done in terms of feeling those dynamics out through conflict and conversation rather than just rushing the proceedings along to hit the beats of the real-life story. 577
This probably should’ve been 3 hours long, which is not something I say about a movie very often.
All this to say, I kept thinking “Wow, that would be really upsetting” rather than “Wow, I’m really upset” — it feels like an extremely well-photographed and acted Wikipedia summary rather than a particularly gripping motion picture experience. Compare this to the shaggier, less ‘tasteful’, seemingly-widely-loathed Maestro, and I know which one I’m including in my desert island biopic collection — it’s the one that managed to create cinematic sequences that will still be thrumming around in my brain a few weeks from now, even if it didn’t really coherently tell me anything about the life and career of <PERSON> (lol).
Nevertheless. This really is pretty good for what it is! 410