Blue-collar beauties

When Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt told Men's Fitness there were no films out there about "guys like him", a section of cine-goers around the world rolled their eyes back inside their heads in disbelief. Rest assured, there are plenty of films about moderately privileged white guys out there - even some tolerable ones.

In his first film in four years, indie auteur Jim Jarmusch gives us Adam Driver (The Force Awakens' Kylo Ren) as the titular poetry-writing New Jersey bus driver in Paterson. Not much happens in the film. It's aggressively undramatic, and that's the point: Jarmusch revels in the mundane, daring us as viewers to not see art in every prosaic corner of our lives and those of the world. As he's done since his mid-1980s breakout Stranger than Paradise and all the way to 2013's Only Lovers Left Alive, Jarmusch finds his ironic, observational comedy in the blas and the repetitive - the quotidian is something to be admired. By blurring the line between man, location and movie, Jarmusch makes a strong case that everyone has the spark of creativity in them. Whether it is the root of a career or simply a pastime is up to us. But Paterson's poetry is for himself, for his own joy and Driver, in what is easily a career-best performance so far, makes a decent man's daily grind admirable, and the man himself likeable, empathetic and not the least bit pitiable.

Set over roughly a week, Paterson goes to work, walks his dog, grabs a beer, and indulges his black-and-white fixated wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) who likes applying the color scheme to everything. She's an aspiring country singer, though clearly not as comfortable with her personal art as Paterson is with his. In between all this, Paterson takes a few minutes to scribble down his poetic ramblings (Good? Bad? Who cares?), which we hear in a voice-over, and Jarmusch builds a quietly moving and, yes, poetic portrait of the everyday and the art hidden in it.

By contrast, lots happen in Gifted, which is every bit as emotionally manipulative and sentimental as it appears to be. Chris Evans (Marvel's most interesting Chris) plays Frank Adler, a selfless, sensitive blue-collar type who has put his own career as a philosophy professor on the backburner in order to raise his dead sister's extremely bright daughter Mary (Mckenna Grace, and that sound you heard was a million ovaries exploding at the image).

Frank and Mary's lives are relatively smooth, happy ones. She's a math prodigy - like her mother was. Frank wants to give her a normal childhood. They live low-key lives in a Florida trailer park and get regular support from neighbor Roberta (Octavia Spencer, in yet another saintly, tough earth mother role). When a teacher realizes just how brilliant Mary is, it brings Frank's estranged, driven and driving mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan, imperious, British, evil) back into their sphere. Cue custody battle, deep dark family secrets and some righteous comeuppance for the wicked grandmother.

Fortunately, Evans and Grace make for an intensely watchable pair; it helps that Evans has a painfully appealing, inherent good guy vibe, and Grace avoids the obnoxiousness of the precocious Hollywood child trap (her reaction to catching Frank and her teacher in a budding romance is pitch perfect).

Director Webb proves he's more comfortable with small scale, personal drama (500 Days of Summer) than big-budget, revenue-generating tentpoles (The Amazing Spider-Man, the best thing about which were the little scenes involving Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy). Gifted is intimate and engaging despite its TV movie predictability. You won't want to like it, but you just might.

(HK Edition 05/05/2017 page1)