Movie reviews: 'The Tender Bar' is an understated winner

THE TENDER BAR: 3 ½ STARS

This image released by Amazon shows Lily Rabe and Ben Affleck in a scene from "The Tender Bar." (Claire Folger/Amazon via AP)

There are many life lessons in “The Tender Bar,” a new, easygoing drama starring Ben Affleck based on the life of journalist and author J.R. Moehringer, and now streaming on Amazon Prime. Set in and around The Dickens, a bar named after the author of "David Copperfield," barstool wisdom about the value of books, education, taking care of your mother and “not keeping money like a drunk" in the front pocket of your shirt, abounds.

The story begins in 1973 on Long Island. “Radar Love” by Golden Earring plays out of the car radio and the impressionable J.R. (played as a youngster by Daniel Ranieri) lives with his mom Dorothy (Lily Rabe) and cranky grandfather (Christopher Lloyd). His father, a radio DJ nicknamed The Voice (Max Martini), isn’t in the picture.

J.R.’s father figure is Uncle Charlie (Affleck), a charming bookworm and owner of The Dickens. He is a font of advice, all of which J.R. soaks up "the male sciences" like a sponge. Charlie’s instructions range from the pragmatic — never order bar scotch neat — to the ideological — he urges J.R. to study philosophy. "You always do well in that class,” he says, “because there’s no right answers."

Charlie’s guidance and the colourful regulars who populate the bar, like Bobo (Michael Braun) and Joey D (Matthew Delamater), help form J.R.’s young life. "When you're 11 years old,” he says, “you want an Uncle Charlie."

Cut to a decade later.

J.R., having inherited his Uncle Charlie’s love of storytelling and words, is a student at Yale, studying law, but with aspirations to be a writer. Now played by Tye Sheridan, he falls in love with Sidney (Briana Middleton), a smart, “lower upper middle class” schoolmate who gives J.R. another lesson in heartbreak.

“The Tender Bar” is a low key coming-of-age story that works best when it has a glass in front of it. That is to say, when it concentrates on The Dickens and the life lessons young J.R. absorbs at the bar, those scenes have a lovely nostalgic feel. Director George Clooney vividly recreates a time when 10 year olds were sent to the local corner bar to by a pack of cigarettes for grandpa. Clooney sets the stage, but it is the actors who bring it to life.

As Affleck settles into the character actor phase of his career, he’s doing some of his best work. His Uncle Charlie has an effortless charm, a fierce intellect and is a bit of a scoundrel. It’s a performance that feels perfectly shaped and worn in, like an old baseball glove.

The scenes Affleck shares with Ranieri provide the film’s highlights. The young actor, making his film debut, brings genuine curiosity to J.R., a kid who has been knocked around. but always has his eyes to the future. It’s a delightful performance. Sheridan nicely mirrors the character as a young adult, but it is Ranieri who makes us care about J.R.

“The Tender Bar” is a nicely crafted, circumspect look at J.R.’s life. The stakes feel low and big dramatic moments are few and far between, but this textured look at the importance of community, including the drunks at the bar, in the formative stages of J.R.’s life is an understated winner.

THE LOST DAUGHTER: 4 STARS

Dakota Johnson in a scene from 'The Lost Daughter.' (Netflix via AP)

"Children are a crushing responsibility," says Leda (Olivia Coleman) in the opening moments of “The Lost Daughter,” a new drama directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal now streaming on Netflix. She is sunny in her delivery of the line, but for Leda, the words have real weight. Based on a novel by Elena Ferrante and adapted for the screen by Gyllenhaal, this is an unsentimental tale of motherhood.

The film begins with 48-year-old literary professor Leda on a working vacation on a picturesque Greek Island. She is a self-described selfish person looking for some peace and quiet but between the attentions of caretaker Lyle (Ed Harris) and the chipper Irish student Will (Paul Mescal), she gets little of either.

Then there is Callie (Dagmara Domińczyk), a pregnant woman who demands Leda leave a spot on the beach so her family can spread out. “They’re bad people,” says a local.

Callie is annoying but Leda becomes transfixed by her sister Nina (Dakota Johnson), a mom struggling to parent her young daughter Elena (Athena Martin).

Leda becomes consumed by memories of her time raising her daughters Bianca and Martha. But they aren’t happy memories plucked from a baby book. Twenty years ago, she was an “unnatural mother” who cared more for her work and an extramarital affair with fellow academic Professor Hardy (Peter Sarsgaard) than her kids.

Flashing to-and-fro from present day to two decades past, where Leda is played by the great Jessie Buckley, the story fleshes out a portrait of a woman harboring deep regret for her past actions. “It’s like I’ve been trying not to explode,” Leda says, “and then I exploded.”

"The Lost Daughter" is a promising debut behind the camera for Gyllenhaal. She ably handles the parallel stories, past and present, bring them together to paint a full portrait of the complex character that is Leda. She is a very different person in the film's two halves and Gyllenhaal allows us to follow along by keeping it simple. The story is rich and textured, and asks more questions than it answers, but it isn’t cluttered with unnecessary details. The film's true gift is to trust the viewer with its characters, to treat them as flawed people without tarting up the story with unbelievable twists or turns. It is self-assured storytelling, buoyed by wonderful performances from Coleman, Johnson and Buckley, who bring intelligence and, most importantly, humanity to characters who are not always likeable.

JUNE AGAIN: 3 STARS

(Film Seekers/See Pictures)

“June Again,” a new dramedy starring Australian acting legend Noni Hazlehurst, is a heartfelt story that reverses the plot of the 1990 drama “Awakenings.” That movie focused on the work of Dr. Malcolm Sayer, played by Robin Williams, a neurologist who discovers a way to awaken catatonic patients who survived the 1917–1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica.

“June Again” is a different spin, but highlights some of the same questions. The new film focusses on the patient. June (Hazlehurst), is a 60-something woman with vascular dementia brought on by a stroke. Like the people in “Awakenings,” she suddenly regains her memory after a years-long lapse, and finds herself in a much different world than the one she left behind.

Her doctor tells her that “dementia isn’t a disease that just goes away. This lucidity you are experiencing will be temporary. A Few hours if we’re lucky.” They want her to stay put in the dementia ward, but she has other ideas. She escapes, flags a cab and returns to her old life, or whatever is left of it. For June, it’s as if the last five years never happened, but life has moved on.

Her high-end, handcrafted wallpaper store, is in shambles, her son Devon (Stephen Curry) dropped out of school and got divorced, daughter Ginny (Claudia Karvan) lets her husband and kids walk all over her and grandson Piers (Otis Dhanji) has been badly injured in an accident. “Is there anything that hasn’t fallen apart in this family?” June asks. “I think I came back just in time.” With the clock ticking and an unsure future, June begins a new lease on life.

“June Again” finds the balance between drama and humour in its examination of June’s rebirth. The question of her dementia is treated respectfully, but not with kid gloves. June is a gritty character, who toggles between lucidity and confusion, but Hazlehurst embodies her. She creates a vivid portrait of the person June once was and the woman she is now. It is a feisty, but sensitive performance with edge and heart.

There is a lot going on in “June Again.” A mother and daughter subplot dominates the film’s middle, while family dynamics and June’s fragile grip on current events keep the story moving forward. There are moments of emotional manipulation, but the strong cast, particularly Hazlehurst and Karvan, defy stereotypes and subvert the movie’s more predictable twists.