Ben Is Back (2018)

They played the trailer to Ben Is Back all the time here. It was on TV and in cinemas before any movie started and yet when the release date came, screenings of it were nowhere to be found and so I had to wait for the home release to have a chance to watch it. 

The story follows Ben Burns (Lucas Hedges), a young drug addict who suddenly returns home from his treatment facility on Christmas Eve. While Ben's step-father, Neal (Courtney B. Vance), and his sister, Ivy (Kathryn Newton), start worrying about the chaos that Ben's arrival will eventually bring, his mother, Holly (Julia Roberts), is filled with joy. Things complicate real quick when Ben's old gang discovers he's back in town.

Like with most movies I see nowadays —I guess I have to pick my movies more carefully—, the biggest issue with Ben Is Back is the story which doesn't really bring anything new to the drug addiction/substance abuse genre. A story that starts out quite strongly but unfortunately, as it develops, turns into a dragged sequence of ridiculous scenarios, and plot holes the side of a lunar crater. And quite frankly, it's all over the place —at first, it's a story about drug addiction, then it's your average crime drama, and then it goes back at being about drugs. Overall, the story is just not compelling, and it's definitely not the reason you keep watching the film until the end.

The characters aren't particularly striking either as Ben is the typical drug addict and Holly is the typical lion-like mother who tries to protect her son at all costs. Furthermore, while Peter Hedges tries to turn the film into some sort of thriller, the focus on the dynamics between the character is completely lost.

The performances, on the other hand, are incredibly compelling, arguably too good for a mediocre film like Ben Is Back. Lucas Hedges gives an intense, astonishing, believable performance as Ben; Julia Roberts is a force to be reckoned with her sensitive, heartbreaking performance filled with the anguish, pain and anger of having a drug-addicted son. It's them that gives the mother-and-son relationship some dimension and tension.

LD Entertainment, Roadside Attractions, Lionsgate

Ultimately, Ben Is Back feels like a wasted opportunity. The film is unfocused —or focused on the wrong things if you prefer—, the relationship between Ben and his mother lacks complexity —I was never really invested in it and if it wasn't for Hedges and Roberts, I wouldn't have given a damn— and the underlying theme that although an addict cannot be saved, his/her family and loved ones will do everything in their power to help him/her, to get him/her out of the hole, feels somewhat forced.

Boy Erased (2018)

I was very looking forward to seeing Boy Erased as it deals with a very difficult and important subject and has many good actors —Nicole Kidman, Lucas Hedges, Joel Edgerton, who is also directing, and Russell Crowe. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a disappointment.

Based on Garrard Conley's memoir of the same name, the story follows Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), the son of a Baptist preacher (Russell Crowe) and a religious woman (Nicole Kidman) in Arkansas. When he comes out as gay, his parents send him to a church-supported gay conversion camp to cure him of his homosexuality.

This is arguably an important story that needed to be told as people need to be aware of the existence of these camps and what people had to go through because of them —sadly, some people still firmly believe you can cure homosexuality with therapy. The problem with Boy Erased is that the storytelling, although non-linear which should make things more interesting, is dull and not so compelling. In addition, Edgerton doesn't do an excellent job at capturing the horrors of those places —they don't look that bad at times— and the over-dramatization gives you the impression of an Oscar-bait movie.

The characters are a hit and miss too. While Lucas Hedges gives a nice performance as Jared, capturing to perfection the young man's bewilderment but struggling a lot when it comes to delivering the sexual conflict within him —the performance falls a bit flat because of this—, the character of Jared isn't particularly interesting. Actually, he couldn't be any more uninteresting. The father, although he doesn't have a lot of depth nor development and Crowe's performance is forgettable to say the least, is by far a more interesting character. The mother, on the other hand, is compelling as she is the only character that shows some growth —while at the beginning, she hardly does anything to protect her son from her husband, at the end she finally fights for her son and shows how much she loves him, no matter what— and Nicole Kidman's performance is quite extraordinary, especially when it comes to delivering the inner struggle of a woman torn between her husband and her son.

Focus Features

As I mentioned above, Joel Edgerton's direction fails to deliver the horrors of conversion camps, but at least he handles the heavy topic with sensitivity, in a respectful manner. And yet, he failed at making me feel anything, which left me speechless considering the subject. The cinematography is also quite dull and mute, and the score often feels inappropriate and manipulative.