She's no stay-at-home wife

   Never timid, always willing to push toward extremes, and unflinching in her boldness, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay remains an unabashed risk taker. 

   In Die My Love, Ramsay adapts a 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz, an Argentine writer who set her story in rural France. Working from a screenplay she wrote with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, Ramsay moves the story to Montana and leaves it to Jennifer Lawrence to convey the complex inner life of new mom Grace, a bored, libidinous wife mired in postpartum depression.

    But don't mistake Die My Love for a disease-related TV movie. Lawrence and Ramsey stretch the story's metaphoric possibilities to the breaking point. Grace seems to embody a near-primal spirit that can't accommodate the life of a stay-at-home mom. Like a cat stalking prey, Grace crawls on all fours through the grass surrounding her house.

    As the movie progresses, Grace becomes both more volatile. At one point, she crashes through a plate glass window in the ramshackle home that she and her husband (Robert Pattinson) occupy, a shocking, rebellious eruption.

    Jackson's mother (Sissy Spacek) and his addled father (Nick Nolte) live nearby. As a wife who submitted to  convention, Spacek's Pam recognizes Grace's "craziness" as a powerful expression that deserves respect.

    Graphic sex scenes and nudity are on full display early on. Grace is a sexual being, but Jackson can't keep pace with his ravenous wife. Predictably, she winds up having sex with a biker (LaKeith Stanfield) who enters the movie as if he's casing the house where Grace and Jackson live.

     Did the movie need such a digression? Probably not.

     Ramsay fragments time, destroying chronological order. Frequently, we must recalibrate where in the story we might be. Ramsay allows parts of the movie to burst onto the screen, throwing scenes at us with an abandon that can mirror Grace's volatility.

     Grace's condition grows progressively more outlandish. At a social gathering, she takes off her clothes and jumps into a swimming pool where kids are playing. If you haven't already, you'll begin to wonder why no one has tried to deal with what seems like an obvious case of mental illness. 

      Ramsey tests us in the same way that she tests her characters. The baby's crying grates on our nerves. Ditto for the incessant barking of dog that Jackson brings home.

      I'll include a spoiler for those who'd rather not witness Grace taking a rifle from her mother-in-law's house, walking back to her home, and shooting the unfortunate dog, a creature that's evidently ill and neglected.

    Lawrence's purposefully erratic performance seems in sync with the movie's intentions. The world in which Grace finds herself can't accommodate her essential self. OK, that's vague, but it's as close as I can get.

    Pattinson's character makes less sense. With a multi-directional haircut and a sheepish demeanor, Jackson looks like a lost traveler in need of directions.

    The movie builds toward a finale that can be taken literally or metaphorically, but it's preceded by a kind of gentle detente between Jackson and Grace. Maybe he finally understands the woman he married.

     I had my reservations about Die My Love, but I can't finish without an addendum.

     I respect Ramsay's courage, something she displayed when she brought her 1999 movie Ratcatcher to the screen and continued in 2002 with Morvern Callar, which relied heavily on the work of Samantha Morton as another difficult character.

      Die My Love is Ramsay's first movie since 2018's You Were Never Really Here, which starred Joaquin Phoenix. I hope we don't have to wait another seven years for the next film.

      Whatever you think of Die My Love, you should know that Ramsay has a powerful voice, and isn't  afraid to raise it. Sometimes, I wondered why I was watching Grace unleash her furies, often in cruel ways. But if Ramsay and Lawrence set out to create a character too combustible for "normal'' life, they've succeeded. Like Grace, Ramsay refuses to be pigeonholed. That's a quality worthy of respect.

    

Robert Redford plays an aging thief

The Old Man & the Gun creaks along in predictable fashion, but Redford displays wary charm.

There's one compelling reason to see The Old Man & the Gun. The movie stars Robert Redford who says that his performance as real-life bank robber Forrest Tucker is his last. Now 82, Redford has told interviewers that he plans to devote his time to directing and environmental causes. He's also still the driving force behind The Sundance Film Festival.

When I say that Redford provides the only reason to see The Old Man & the Gun, it's because he creates a reliably agreeable portrait of a thief who devotes his life either to holding up banks or escaping from prison, a feat he accomplished 16 times.

Full of wary charm, Redford's portrayal of Tucker arrives sans all traces of malice or evil.

I don't know if that makes sense for the subject matter, but Redford's fans should be able to regard this performance as a pleasing valedictory to great career.

Director David Lowery (Ghost Story), who wrote the screenplay based on a New Yorker article by David Grann, builds Redford's character around a single, disarming trait: Tucker is ultra polite and friendly during his robberies. The people he holds up (bank managers and tellers) all seem to take away positive impressions of this grand larcenist.

The rest of the cast includes Danny Glover and Tom Waits as a couple of Tucker's accomplices.
Sissy Spacek plays a widow who is charmed by Tucker, although she's not ready to abandon her life for him.

I suppose every robber needs a nemesis. In this case, the job goes to Casey Affleck, who appeared in Ghost Story. Affleck portrays Texas detective John Hunt, a man who made it his business to track Tucker.

Despite some nice scenes between Spacek and Redford, The Old Man & the Gun feels like a slightly creaky version of a movie we've seen before. And if this is Redford's last movie, I wish he had been chosen something a bit more challenging.

I feel guilty saying that because Redford certainly has earned the right to do whatever he wants; for me, he's been an exciting screen presence since I first saw him in movies such as Inside Daisy Glover (1964) and The Chase (1966).

I hope, at a minimum, that Redford doesn't give up on directing because a movie world without Robert Redford in it seems like a very bad idea.

Get high on 'Get Low'

Most reviewers have spent ample time praising Robert Duvall's work in Get Low, a satisfying drama about Felix Bush, a backwoods hermit who makes a public appearance in order to plan his own funeral. The catch: Felix wants to stage the funeral before he dies so that he can attend. Rather than providing a platform for encomiums, the funeral is supposed to allow folks to say what they really think of the bearded old codger. Duvall plays these kinds of taciturn loners with ease, never feeling a need to peek out from behind the character; he's predictably good. But for me, Bill Murray -- as the undertaker who agrees to stage Felix's funeral -- steals the show. Like Duvall, although in an entirely different way, Murray refuses to ingratiate himself with an audience. He's wry, smart and perfect as Frank Quinn, a man with slightly checkered past. Sissy Spacek offers able support as Mattie Darrow, a woman who seems to know Felix's secrets. Lucas Black excels as Quinn's assistant, and Bill Cobbs has a nice turn as a preacher and one-time friend to Felix. Director Aaron Schneider does an able job with a small movie built around one man's severe expression of guilt. Set during bleak 1930s, Get Low stands as a lovely little drama, even if it seems to have been designed mostly to accommodate Duvall. Thankfully, it does right by just about everyone else in the cast, too.