Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Cinema and its free International Lens series have really stepped up this semester to help fill the void left by The Belcourt’s temporary closure — would cookies help speed up the remodeling process? — and Tuesday night's offering may be the most exciting American movie that never played local theaters last year: John Magary's raw comedy-drama The Mend.
Once seemingly doomed to a career as a kind of downmarket Kevin Costner, Josh Lucas sinks his teeth to the gums in the role of a wolf-eyed loner and opportunist whose mean streak has burned almost every bridge he has. His latest flare-up lands him on the doorstep of his estranged brother (Stephen Plunkett) for an extended crash that becomes a bender of bellicose drunken machismo.
Writer-director Magary, making his feature debut, uses a jarring cutting style that keeps you edgy and off-balance, as if someone were tossing lit firecrackers with fuses of varied lengths; we can’t wait to see what this guy does next. With terrific support from Lucy Owen, Mickey Sumner and veteran character actor Austin Pendleton, it shows one time only at 7:30 p.m., free and open to the public, hosted by Vanderbilt cinema & media arts director Scott Juengel and senior Nick Kline. Below, the trailer.
