A triumph of casting: the magnificently gaunt and haggard John Hawkes as talented, horse-addicted jazz pianist Joe Albany, and the touchingly vulnerable and longing Elle Fanning as his daughter Amy Jo. (Glenn Close also gets in some fine licks as Joe’s long-suffering, tough-but-tender Mama.) A triumph also of visual mood: the film is mainly a slog through the grimier, grottier sections of ’70s Los Angeles, and it’s hard to tell if the palette is autumnal or just smoggy. But while scene after scene plays out with note-perfect internal rhythm, the overall composition doesn’t really go anywhere — except maybe down, down, down. How exactly Amy Jo avoids being soiled by the dirty world she inhabits is never quite explained, which makes the final crisis and its resolution both puzzling and unaffecting. Perhaps the real trouble is this: the chief relationship here is between a man and his needle; everybody else is just a problem to be forgotten while high. (2014) — Matthew Lickona
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