film fatales # 191: outside in (lynn shelton, 2017)
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
This is the sixteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 16 is called "Lin, Lyne, Lynn, Lynn, or Lynne Week":
This week, we pay homage to Benjamin Milot, LSC's previous host. Back in 2018, he came up with the idea of loosely grouping four or five prominent actors or directors based only on the similarity of their names. Not only did this create a clever title for a theme week, but it also tended to provide a wide range of films from which to choose, producing a creative cornucopia of cinema to sate any palate.
In that spirit, we continue his vital work. This week, you'll pick a movie directed by one of the following: Justin Lin, Adrian Lyne, Darren Lynn Bousman, Lynn Shelton, or Lynne Ramsay. Or, if you're up for a real challenge, choose one from each!
P.S. We know Adrian's last name is pronounced "line," but it looks the same, so don't fight it.
I had seen one other movie directed by Lynn Shelton, Sword of Trust, and much of what I said about that film applies to Outside In:
I wanted to like Sword of Trust ... But the best I can say is that I didn't dislike it. ... I never quit rooting for the movie ... Everyone does good work, but overall, I wanted a little more.
Once again, Shelton shows herself to be a good director of actors. But the basic plot (ex-con returns, faces problems) reminded me too much of the great, forgotten TV series Rectify, and it doesn't come close. Edie Falco does excellent work as a woman who wears her emotions on her face, and as always, I liked Kaitlin Dever. But Jay Duplass was a real problem for me. I've never been a big fan of his screen presence (this was the first movie with him that I had seen, but he turns up on my TV a lot), and his role as the ex-con seems ill-fitted to what Duplass gives us. I expected someone more hardened, and that could be on me, since he's not a typical ex-con. And I may have suffered from submerged macho syndrome, because while Falco's emotional turmoil moved me, I quickly tired of seeing Duplass performing a similar role. (Duplass also co-wrote the script with Shelton.) So now I've seen two of Lynn Shelton's features, I'd like to see more, but I haven't gone overboard on what I've seen so far.
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