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disturbance when he tackles a homeless man who assaulted him. The captain angrily sends him home where he spends his time off repairing a dance academy his mother used to run in an attempt to make money for him and his siblings and to preserve his mother's legacy. A few days later, Jim goes back to work, helping to catch a thief. One night, he drives a girl home after he finds her in a parking lot with two teenage boys.
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girls". After dropping her off, Jim notices
Crystal hold hands with a boy, and sees the girl he drove home. Jim receives divorce papers while at work, with Rosalind seeking full custody of Crystal and planning to move away so that Jim will not be able to see her. Jim's friend at work, Nate, refers him to his former divorce lawyer, Donna. Jim confronts Crystal about the boy as he drops her off at Rosalind's house.
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Rosalind’s corpse, Jim tells her he has never hated her more than he has in this moment. He gently kisses her hand, stands up, and slaps her corpse in the face. Jim then comforts his daughter in the ambulance and tears up as he recalls
Thunder Road once more as he asks her if she wants to move away and live with him.
526:, Cummings creates an indelible character who is all tangled up in that disaster, but with a stubbornness that turns into something like valor, he wriggles free of it. He saves himself by becoming a human being. It's a relief to stop laughing at him, only to realize that you may want to cry for him." Alex Godfrey of
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wrote, "Occasionally the film itself suffers from a similar solipsism, although perhaps that’s to be expected from a movie that is “written, directed and performed by” its one-man-show-maker...Yet there are times when comes perilously close to embracing aggrieved worldview, particularly in relation
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Jim leaves and speaks to his mother at her gravestone. On his way home, he is pulled over by a police officer and escorted to
Rosalind's house, where he finds that she has died from a drug overdose and her boyfriend Chris has gone missing, Crystal being the one who had to call the police. Speaking to
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sounds like a hard sell — so we're supposed to sympathize with some God's Lonely Man type with unresolved anger issues, much less a possibly violent one with a badge? But
Cummings lets you see how this fractured guy, someone who's trying to untangle a legacy of wrong turns and emotional instability,
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Jim attempts to bond with
Crystal, redecorating her room and learning a game she learned at school after struggling with it and becoming frustrated. Jim takes Crystal to school, but becomes upset when he discovers makeup applied to her face, telling her she does not need it to be one of the "pretty
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Nate visits Jim and finds him smoking in
Crystal's old bedroom. The two of them drink and play baseball in Jim's yard, and Jim passes out in the yard after Nate leaves. The next morning, Jim packs his things and goes to his sister's house. The two talk about their families, and their mother, with
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stated "The vast majority of the people around me genuinely liked the movie, and I just didn't get why they were so enthusiastic...it lent itself to me checking my watch regularly" and found the main character "way more annoying that touching" although she added she knew people who compared him
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Jim and Nate go to stop an armed confrontation at a restaurant, and Jim becomes distraught after the man commits suicide. Later, Jim goes to see
Crystal's teacher, Dustin Zahn. Zahn tells Jim that Crystal is disruptive and frequently uses expletives towards her classmates. Jim becomes extremely
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Aside from his mother's death, Jim is going through a rough divorce with his unfaithful wife
Rosalind, as they are in a custody battle for their young daughter Crystal, though Jim is willing to pursue joint custody. Jim ignores orders from his captain to take time off work and causes a public
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upset, and Zahn is forced to calm him down. During Jim's custody hearing, the judge accuses Jim of reckless behavior after a video of him dancing at the funeral is recovered and given to court. Despite Nate previously telling him he destroyed the person's phone, Jim loses the case.
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is a tour de force turn from its creator, who delivers an unpredictable performance we've never quite seen before. Sat in the cinema, too close for comfort, you can't escape him, and, amazingly, you don't really want to. It is cringingly, rewardingly intimate."
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wrote "This is one of the first dramas to dig deep into
America's heartland crisis — the crush of the spirit that has emerged from a collapsing job market and drug addiction and the underlying loss of faith. In
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deftly balances emotionally affecting drama against bruising comedy - and serves as an outstanding calling card for writer-director-star Jim
Cummings." According to
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1222:"2019 Spirit Award Nominations: 'We The Animals' Tops With Five, A24 Leads All Distributors, Studio Classic Labels Come Up Short"
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reports an approval rating of 96%, with an average rating of 7.7/10, based on 84 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "
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is trying to achieve some sort of peace and clarity through all of his clouded, fucked-up feelings as well."
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Jim's sister revealing that, while working on a production of
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by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise.
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called the film "an instant classic," saying "On paper,
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Some time later, Jim and Crystal go to a performance of
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1119:"SXSW Film Review: 'Thunder Road'"
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829:Best Film by an Emerging Director
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1150:Fear, David (October 11, 2018).
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442:Kendal Farr as Crystal Arnaud
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1427:Beast Beast
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757:Grand Prix
563:Jerry Lewis
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310:Kickstarter
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103:Kendal Farr
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71:Produced by
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1450:2018 films
1444:Categories
1419:13 Cameras
1311:Metacritic
1097:Metacritic
1047:2018-09-30
1023:2018-09-14
984:2018-09-14
909:References
900:Nominated
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466:as Captain
267:Box office
238:92 minutes
221:2018-09-12
202:2018-03-12
167:Production
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602:does not
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493:Reception
464:Bill Wise
424:Swan Lake
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403:the cloud
299:Bill Wise
270:$ 448,184
262:$ 200,000
169:companies
141:Edited by
124:Bill Wise
1278:AllMovie
1072:Fandango
1018:Deadline
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