Lucas Hedges Archives | Deep Focus Review

Sorry, Baby

Brian Eggert — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:42:16 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. With Sorry, Baby, writer-director-star Eva Victor rethinks how cinema portrays and processes trauma, and it’s not with sensationalism or buzzy terminology, but with restraint, humor, and compassion. Victor stars as Agnes, a literature professor working at the same New England college where she once attended grad school and survived a sexual assault. The film explores what it means to feel stuck and unable to see a path forward. Victor acknowledges that it’s impossible to anticipate or shield against every terrible thing that might happen, and when something does occur, how one responds is often an unconscious reaction. Some people repress the experience, only for the feelings to return with a vengeance, while others try to confront it directly and endure the psychological collision. Regardless, trauma reframes self-image, raising introspective questions: Agnes wonders how she would have been different had this never happened to her. Should she mourn the version of her that might have been? Sorry, Baby doesn’t pretend to offer answers. Instead, it gently observes how healing can emerge out of supportive friendships, empathetic strangers, plenty of time, and perhaps also a kitten. Sorry, Baby is structured into chapters, each covering […]

The post Sorry, Baby appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Let Them All Talk

Brian Eggert — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 14:10:25 +0000

Let Them All Talk is director Steven Soderbergh’s answer to chatty French comedies. His cast members inhabit posh surroundings, eat expensive food, and discuss sophisticated topics, while their personal lives remain in shambles. At one point, someone refers to a “comedy of errors;” however, it has nothing in common with Shakespeare’s broad play of the same name nor the farcical mode of situation comedy. Though the cruise ship setting lends itself to humorous situations, as Monkey Business (1931) and The Lady Eve (1941) proved, Soderbergh’s approach is far more low-key and observational. Working from an outline and brief character descriptions supplied by short fiction writer Deborah Eisenberg, the director and his cast improvised scenes over an actual two-week crossing from New York to Southampton, England, aboard the Queen Mary 2. Enclosed in a formal, elegant setting, Soderbergh does as the title suggests, and then he shapes the result into a surprisingly cohesive, thematically rich experience. Meryl Streep stars as Alice Hughes, an intellectual fiction writer set to receive an award in England, called the Footling Prize. She refuses to fly, and so her new literary agent, Karen (Gemma Chan), arranges for passage on the Queen Mary 2. Alice insists that […]

The post Let Them All Talk appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Honey Boy

Brian Eggert — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 23:40:36 +0000

Shia LaBeouf is central to Honey Boy as both performer and screenwriter. He draws from his experiences as a young chatterbox actor whose coach and mentor was an abusive alcoholic he called “Dad.” In the film, LaBeouf plays his own father in a performance of restless energy, the sort that has defined the actor as an urgently watchable screen presence despite his public instability. After his breakout on the Disney Channel’s Even Stevens, he made the difficult transition into adult roles. He then transitioned again from commercial fare such as Michael Bay’s Transformers series to arthouse performances in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac (2013) and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016), earning himself a reputation for raw emotions and magnetism. But his talent came at a cost, from a mental toll to some very public displays of bad behavior—drunkenness, arrests for disorderly conduct, and use of racial epithets at police officers. He eventually channeled his energy into performance art, which he conceived alongside Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, further signaling the actor’s need to work through his emotional strain using his talent. By the final frames of Honey Boy, it becomes achingly apparent that the film is at once a work […]

The post Honey Boy appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Boy Erased

Brian Eggert — Sun, 25 Nov 2018 18:03:16 +0000

In the wake of the United States’ escalating culture war, Hollywood has responded by embracing a series of based-on-a-true-story films designed to portray the downfalls of racism, gender discrimination, and heteronormativity. These films respond by demonstrating that our country has been here before and, in many cases, has overcome such narrow and prejudiced arguments. Whether they’re historical dramas (Hidden Figures, 2017), crowd-pleasers (Battle of the Sexes, 2017), or documentaries (RGB, 2018), their subject matter conveys that the battle for human rights continues and, at least in the examples provided, some measure of victory is possible. Their lessons serve as reminders of crimes that seem in the distant past but weren’t so long ago. Thus, it’s important to keep opposing, protesting against, and debating with those who attempt to enforce such excluding ideologies. However, the viewer must question what good such films do in the ongoing sociopolitical discourse. Is anyone on the side of racism, patriarchal rule, and binary gender roles watching these films and changing their minds? And if not, then aren’t they just preaching to the choir? Boy Erased is the latest of this brood. It tells the story of Jared Eamons, an Arkansas college student who’s just figuring […]

The post Boy Erased appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Brian Eggert — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 01:32:42 +0000

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri refers to the trio of stark red placards with black lettering positioned on a stretch of forgotten road near the home of Mildred Hayes. Mildred, played by Frances McDormand in her most substantial role since Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo (1996), paid $5,000 for their placement, and she knew what local controversy they would cause. “Raped While Dying,” the first reads. The second follows “And Still No Arrests?” And then the third, “How Come, Chief Willoughby?” The billboards refer to Mildred’s teenage daughter Angela, who was brutally raped, murdered, and set afire seven months earlier. There’s still a patch of blackened grass where her assailant attempted to burn the body. Vilified not for the crime but for his inability to bring those responsible to justice, Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) is nonetheless an honest cop doing his best with little evidence to pursue. Even so, the mounting war between Mildred and Willoughby’s department leads to a blurring of moral boundaries, but also an aching sense that certain wrongs can never be made right again. Martin McDonagh’s third feature, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri follows the Irish playwright’s outstanding debut In Bruges (2008) and lighter follow-up Seven Psychopaths (2012)—though, unlike his first two films, his third […]

The post Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Lady Bird

Brian Eggert — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 15:21:19 +0000

From John Hughes to Kelly Fremon Craig, most coming-of-age films involve a young person emerging from the hell of teendom through a romantic or even sexual rite of passage. Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird remains unique for its emphasis on the central mother-daughter relationship of strained emotions and, later, tender honesty. Saoirse Ronan plays the 17-year-old Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, an epitome of the self-obsession, relentlessness, and reaching-in-the-dark-for-an-identity of adolescence. Her demanding mother Marion is played by Laurie Metcalf in a passive-aggressive role. An early scene sets the tone of their volatile, polarized relationship. The two finish an audio tape set of The Grapes of Wrath in the car. As they wipe away their tears to Steinbeck’s final lines, an argument builds. Lady Bird grows fed up and announces, “I wish I could live through something!” She then leaps from the moving vehicle. It’s the careless equivalent of getting the last word. She doesn’t even mind the resultant hot pink cast on her forearm, which she wears for much of the film’s remainder. And from this starting point, Gerwig bows a modest, spirited film of idiosyncratic dialogue, mannered style, and sharp insight, providing an incredible showcase for the talents of Ronan and Metcalf, as well as her own. […]

The post Lady Bird appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Manchester by the Sea

Brian Eggert — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 00:00:50 +0000

Textured by the substance of humanity, Manchester by the Sea dwells on the inelegance of real-life interactions during times of grief and disorder. Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, the heart-wrenching picture features Casey Affleck in a raw performance as a Bostonian who must return to his hometown to suffer tragedies new and old. While the core of the story may seem deceptively familiar, Lonergan’s ear for authentic and penetrating dialogue provides a number of unexpected laughs for a film covered in scars and stripped bare. Indeed, there’s nothing prototypical here, as the film’s capacity for vulnerability and naturalism bonds its audience to the material. And after the film has ended, the hold of Lonergan’s transportive effect requires time to wear off; like eyes adjusting to the light after a long spell of darkness, its lasting powers subside only after a considerable amount of time away from the film. A playwright and frequent script doctor, Lonergan made his directorial debut in 2000 with the Oscar-nominated family drama You Can Count On Me, and later released Margaret in 2011, but only after five years of production and legal troubles. Margaret co-star Matt Damon helped produce Manchester by the Sea and was […]

The post Manchester by the Sea appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

The Zero Theorem

Brian Eggert — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 00:00:55 +0000

Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem takes place in a world that looks like a potential future, conceivably where we’re headed in about twenty years. Huge skyscrapers and blimps look down from above on bustling, graffiti-lined city streets where minicars buzz along without slowing for pedestrian traffic. On the sidewalks, plastic florescent clothing styles pop with bright patterns and see-through coverings, and wispy gel hairstyles resemble Katsushika Hokusai’s ocean waves. Huge video billboards for “The Church of Batman the Redeemer” blare overhead, while a personalized ad for financial services streams alongside people as they walk. Workplaces segment employees into frantic little cubicles where they punch away on controllers and operate a videogame-like process with no discernable objective. At night, parties rage on under animal costumes and bouncy dancing to loud electronic music, everyone tuned in and isolated on their glowing tablets and smartphones. Sexual intercourse takes place online through wires in a convincing cyber reality to avoid any threat of disease. And though this oppressive world seems years ahead of where we are now, if you asked Gilliam, he’d probably say his film is set in the present day. In 1985, Gilliam released Brazil and presented a modern world of Orwellian […]

The post The Zero Theorem appeared first on Deep Focus Review.