Four films make a persuasive case for booking a cinema seat and surrendering your evening to someone else’s corner of America. Their directors bring a personal investment to stories about the things people carry, cherish and sometimes struggle to release.
In Trash Mountain, Chicago filmmaker Kris Rey returns to the awkward emotional territory she explored in Unexpected and I Used to Go Here. Caleb Hearon and Zooey Deschanel play siblings confronting their father’s death and his overflowing Missouri home. Hearon began writing after losing his own father; Rey was drawn to the screenplay’s specificity, warmth and humanity. That combination gives the premise its lovely comic potential. Anyone who has cleared a family cupboard knows how quickly an object can become an emotional ambush. Rey’s intimate approach suits a story whose inheritance includes affection, resentment and an impressive quantity of stuff.
Ben Masters approaches Deep in the Heart II: Texas Rivers with the knowledge of a wildlife biologist and the instincts of an adventurer. The director of The River and the Wall wants his filmmaking to encourage conservation, making wonder an invitation to responsibility. His Texas unfolds through springs, rivers and the creatures depending upon them, with Ethan Hawke supplying the narration. Noah Sorota’s score, recorded by the Dallas Chamber Symphony, adds an enticing musical dimension. Opening in Texas on September 25, this is an attractive big screen prospect: a chance to consider how much of a place’s identity flows beneath its familiar mythology.
Andrew Morgan’s Bleeding Hearts began with an early recording that stopped him in his tracks. A former amateur musician whose youthful filmmaking borrowed from Cameron Crowe, Morgan follows Zella Day and Jesse Woods as romance and musical partnership develop within Chaparelle. His visual touchstones include Dont Look Back and Truth or Dare, informing the documentary’s black and white intimacy. The songs become part of the storytelling, carrying arguments, aspirations and the precarious excitement of building something together. Duncan Blickenstaff’s original music connects the performances. For anyone susceptible to country harmonies, the invitation is irresistible: love, ambition and the administrative inconvenience of sharing both with your bandmate.
Padraic McKinley brings a musician’s sense of rhythm to The Weight. He studied music before becoming an editor, and his feature directing debut draws upon the bruising adventure cinema of the 1970s, particularly William Friedkin’s Sorcerer. Ethan Hawke plays a father carrying gold through the Oregon wilderness in 1933, pursuing freedom from a labor camp controlled by Russell Crowe’s warden. McKinley’s own fatherhood supplies the emotional compass: he wanted his children to understand the determination to keep going for family. That personal commitment gives the peril a compelling purpose. The promise of strenuous, landscape driven adventure is deliciously old fashioned.
Together, these filmmakers offer four appealing reasons to seek out a screening: recognizable family chaos, endangered natural beauty, the electricity of musical courtship and adventure with something precious at stake. Their personal commitments give these stories a sense of purpose, and audiences excellent reasons to spend an evening in the dark.