O’Sullivan’s Wendy is equally credible as a full person who’s also representative of a type. The character is offscreen for most of the movie—the focu...
If the characters, including the eccentrics Walt meets and interacts with while Wendy is out of town, weren’t so fully dimensional and human, both in ...
Walt is so self-involved and riddled with neuroses and makes such consistently awful decisions that it takes a lot of convincing by the movie to make ...
Its lead character — unemployed wannabe-artist Walt, played by Desmin Borges of TV’s “You’re the Worst” — impulsively makes decisions that are shortsi...
“Hangdog” is about a man who loses his girlfriend’s dog while she’s out of town on a job interview and spends the next few days in a panic trying to g...
There are many scenes that balance beauty with melancholy: a meeting between an adult Elwood and a former inmate from Nickel at a bar; soothing hugs f...
Likewise, the use of archival footage, such as black and white stills of incarcerated Black kids, Black children celebrating holidays, and visions of ...
The politics of the film go under similar upheaval. Elwood believes that any obstacle can be overcome with resoluteness, the kind practiced by non-vio...
Their relationship mirrors that of Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in “The Defiant Ones,” a film “Nickel Boys” makes reference to several times. “The D...
It says that racism might well be solved through mutual respect, and some self-sacrifice on the Black man’s part. “Nickel Boys,” on the other hand, is...