Josh Hamilton

For the second week in a row, I’m featuring one of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me to the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged.  Here are some notes from an interview with Sobel.

A California couple and their teenage son drive to an annual family reunion in rural Nebraska. The son is gay and out, but that’s not going to be the drama here. There’s almost immediately an unexpected development that rocks the extended family. Then we settle in for over an hour of simmering unease and tense dread until something REALLY disturbing happens.

The story may be told from the teen’s point of view, but the real story turns out to be in the highly-charged relationship between his mom (Robin Weigert) and her brother Keith (Josh Hamilton). Keith, the boy’s uncle, is not a redneck rube, but very angry and very manipulative. By the end of the movie, we understand why. It’s an excellent performance by Hamilton, and whenever he’s on-screen, we fidget and wait for him to explode.

Weigert (Calamity Jane in Deadwood, Ally in Sons of Anarchy) is also excellent – her character is a Los Angeles physician who hasn’t lost the Nebraskan gift of never referring to the elephant in the room, no matter how huge. She embraces the Nebraskan imperative of avoidance with persistent geniality, covering up any unpleasantness with with niceties. My family is from rural Nebraska, which I have visited many times, so I know of what I speak.

The child actress Ursula Parker (the youngest daughter in Louie) is also especially outstanding here. Take Me to the River contains some sexual behavior by a child which is very uncomfortable for the audience, but central to the story and non-exploitative.

Take Me to the River played at Sundance in 2015, was finally released in the Bay Area in Spring 2016. Before its release, I viewed it at the Camera Cinema Club. You can stream Take Me to the River on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play or rent the DVD from Netflix.

My DVD/Stream for the next two weeks is one of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me to the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged.

A California couple and their teenage son drive to an annual family reunion in rural Nebraska. The son is gay and out, but that’s not going to be the drama here. There’s almost immediately an unexpected development that rocks the extended family. Then we settle in for over an hour of simmering unease and tense dread until something REALLY disturbing happens.

The story may be told from the teen’s point of view, but the real story turns out to be in the highly-charged relationship between his mom (Robin Weigert) and her brother Keith (Josh Hamilton). Keith, the boy’s uncle, is not a redneck rube, but very angry and very manipulative. By the end of the movie, we understand why. It’s an excellent performance by Hamilton, and whenever he’s on-screen, we fidget and wait for him to explode.

Weigert (Calamity Jane in Deadwood, Ally in Sons of Anarchy) is also excellent – her character is a Los Angeles physician who hasn’t lost the Nebraskan gift of never referring to the elephant in the room, no matter how huge. She embraces the Nebraskan imperative of avoidance with persistent geniality, covering up any unpleasantness with with niceties. My family is from rural Nebraska, which I have visited many times, so I know of what I speak.

The child actress Ursula Parker (the youngest daughter in Louie) is also especially outstanding here. Take Me to the River contains some sexual behavior by a child which is very uncomfortable for the audience, but central to the story and non-exploitative.

Take Me to the River played at Sundance in 2015, was finally released in the Bay Area in Spring 2016.  Before its release, I viewed it at the Camera Cinema Club. You can stream Take Me to the River on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play or rent the DVD from Netflix.