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  • 2019 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
      • For Sama
      • Jojo Rabbit
      • Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • Alita: Battle Angel
      • Blinded by the Light
      • Booksmart
      • John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
      • Joker
      • Knives Out
      • Midnight Traveler
      • Mike Wallace Is Here
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      • Ash is the Purest White
      • Avengers: Endgame
      • Brittany Runs A Marathon
      • Captain Marvel
      • The Dead Don't Die
      • Frozen II
      • Gloria Bell
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      • The Hummingbird Project
      • The Kid Who Would Be King
      • Knock Down the House
      • Meeting Gorbachev
      • Queen & Slim
      • Ready or Not
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      • Us
      • Velvet Buzzsaw
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      • It Chapter Two
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      • Long Day's Journey Into Night
      • Non-Fiction
      • Official Secrets
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      • Where's My Roy Cohn?
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      • Yesterday
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      • The Art of Racing in the Rain
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      • Dora and the Lost City of Gold
      • Frankie
      • Glass
      • Isn't It Romantic
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      • Red Joan
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      • What Men Want
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      • Terminator: Dark Fate
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      • Men in Black: International
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      • Happy Death Day 2U
  • Cinema Clash Podcast
  • 2018 Films
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      • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
      • Burning
      • The Death of Stalin
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      • Isle of Dogs
      • The King
      • Roma
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      • Avengers: Infinity War
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      • Hostiles
      • The Insult
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      • Vox Lux
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      • The Price of Everything
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      • Support the Girls
      • Venom
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      • Mile 22
      • Operation Finale
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      • Sicario: Day of the Soldado
      • A Simple Favor
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      • Wildlife
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      • Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
      • Generation Wealth
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      • A Wrinkle in Time
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    • 3 Stars >
      • Allied
      • Arrival
      • Author: The JT LeRoy Story
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      • Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
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      • Miles Ahead
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      • A Monster with a Thousand Heads
      • The Nice Guys
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      • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
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      • War Dogs
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      • Captain America: Civil War
      • Christine
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      • Deepwater Horizon
      • Eddie the Eagle
      • Equals
      • The Girl on the Train
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      • Lion
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      • Louder Than Bombs
      • Morris from America
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      • Queen of Katwe
      • Race
      • Southside With You
      • Storks
      • Sunset Song
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      • Zootopia
    • 2 Stars >
      • Alice Through the Looking Glass
      • American Pastoral
      • Bad Moms
      • The BFG
      • Blair Witch
      • The Choice
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      • Everybody Wants Some!!
      • The Finest Hours
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    • 1.5 Stars >
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      • Allegiant
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      • Bad Santa 2
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      • Ghostbusters
      • How to Be Single
      • The Huntsman: Winter's War
      • Ip Man 3
      • Zoolander 2
    • 1 Star >
      • Gods of Egypt
      • Ice Age: Collision Course
      • My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
      • Now You See Me 2
      • Ratchet & Clank
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Ben-Hur
      • Norm of the North
      • Ride Along 2
  • 2015 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • The Big Short
      • Ex Machina
      • Jafar Panahi's Taxi
      • Steve Jobs
      • The Tribe
      • While We're Young
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    • 3.5 Stars >
      • Best of Enemies
      • Bridge of Spies
      • Brooklyn
      • Clouds of Sils Maria
      • Concussion
      • The End of the Tour
      • The Hateful Eight
      • Inside Out
      • It Follows
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    • 3 Stars >
      • The Age of Adaline
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      • Black Mass
      • Carol
      • The Cut
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      • The Good Dinosaur
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      • James White
      • Janis: Little Girl Blue
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      • Mustang
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      • The Peanuts Movie
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      • San Andreas
      • The Second Mother
      • Son of Saul
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    • 2.5 Stars >
      • American Ultra
      • Anomalisa
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      • The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
      • Boulevard
      • Crimson Peak
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      • Far from the Madding Crowd
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      • Furious 7
      • The Gunman
      • Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
      • In the Heart of the Sea
      • Jurassic World
      • Kingsman: The Secret Service
      • Listen to Me Marlon
      • Macbeth
      • The New Rijksmuseum
      • No Escape
      • Spy
      • The Visit
      • A Walk in the Woods
      • The Water Diviner
      • The Wolfpack
    • 2 Stars >
      • The 33
      • Aloft
      • Black Sea
      • Do I Sound Gay?
      • Fifty Shades of Grey
      • Focus
      • Freeheld
      • Get Hard
      • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
      • Joy
      • Minions
      • Mississippi Grind
      • The Night Before
      • The Salvation
      • The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
      • Seventh Son
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      • Tomorrowland
      • True Story
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Chappie
      • Desert Dancer
      • Hot Tub Time Machine 2
      • The Divergent Series: Insurgent
      • Jupiter Ascending
      • Maggie
      • Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
      • Run All Night
      • Ted 2
      • Vacation
    • 1 Star >
      • The Lazarus Effect
      • Magic Mike XXL
      • The Transporter Refueled
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • The Gallows
  • 2014 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Calvary
      • A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
      • Inherent Vice
      • The LEGO Movie
      • Life Itself
      • A Most Violent Year
      • Mr. Turner
      • The Theory of Everything
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • American Sniper
      • Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
      • The Boxtrolls
      • Boyhood
      • The Equalizer
      • Fury
      • Gone Girl
      • Guardians of the Galaxy
      • The Imitation Game
      • Like Father, Like Son
      • Mommy
      • Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
      • Particle Fever
      • Selma
      • Top Five
      • Whiplash
    • 3 Stars >
      • 22 Jump Street
      • Alive Inside
      • Beside Still Waters
      • The Book of Life
      • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
      • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: THEM
      • Draft Day
      • Edge of Tomorrow
      • Get on Up
      • Godzilla
      • The Grand Budapest Hotel
      • The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
      • I Am Ali
      • The Judge
      • Kill the Messenger
      • Locke
      • Love Is Strange
      • Nas: Time Is Illmatic
      • Night Moves
      • The November Man
      • The One I Love
      • The Overnighters
      • The Raid 2
      • Rosewater
      • Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
      • St. Vincent
      • Still Alice
      • Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
      • Two Days, One Night
      • Unbroken
      • Under the Skin
      • Wild
      • X-Men: Days of Future Past
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • 3 Days to Kill
      • About Last Night
      • Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
      • Art and Craft
      • As Above, So Below
      • Begin Again
      • Blood Ties
      • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
      • Divergent
      • The Expendables 3
      • Fading Gigolo
      • Foxcatcher
      • The Giver
      • The Grand Seduction
      • Horns
      • Horrible Bosses 2
      • The Hundred-Foot Journey
      • Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
      • Jersey Boys
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      • Men, Women & Children
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      • Need for Speed
      • Non-Stop
      • Point and Shoot
      • RoboCop
      • Tracks
      • Transcendence
      • Veronica Mars
      • Winter's Tale
    • 2 Stars >
      • 300: Rise of an Empire
      • Alan Partridge
      • The Amazing Spider-Man 2
      • The Art of the Steal
      • Big Hero 6
      • Blended
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      • Toast
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  • Misc...
    • 2019 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2019 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2018 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2017 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2016 Middleburg Film Festival
  • Review Index
  • About Me

James White

Picture

Directed by: Josh Mond
Written by: Josh Mond
Starring: Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi, Makenzie Leigh, Ron Livingston
Drama - 85 min          Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Nov 2015

Picture
Paraphrasing Cynthia Nixon, James White’s mom, she tells him “We feel the highs way up here and we feel the lows way, way down here. There is a lot of space in the middle we can live in as well.”  This is some sage advice James should latch on to.  We don’t see too many highs, but James’s circumstances and his reaction to them provide plenty of lows for him to wallow in and kick off some more self-destructive behavior.  James is not a guy I would want to count as a friend, he seems to require too much care and feeding, but watching him arrive at realizations and perhaps glimpse a ray of enlightenment every now and again is worth the ride.  Director Josh Mond’s first feature film is a close-up view of stressed out, directionless arrested development; it leaves the audience aching for one of those character transformations all too common on screen yet few and far between in real life.

James (Christopher Abbott, A Most Violent Year) is perpetually “ready for life”.  He is the guy you know who swears he can and will tackle all of his problems once he gets back from an extended vacation from his days full of couch-surfing and unemployment.  In an amusing misdirection, Mond introduces us to James in a crowded, sweaty dance club pulsing with techno beats and sneaky recreational drug use.  He’s wearing a hoody we’ll often see him in and even has ear buds playing some softer pop/jazz tunes in his ears; although, how he can hear the songs with the pulsing club speakers vibrating his body is anybody’s guess.  Suddenly, James steps outside and it’s the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night that we were led to believe.

James is late for his father’s shiva.  We learn almost nothing about James’s relationship to the recently deceased other than they were not close.  However, we learn a lot about James’s character from the way the guests react to him including shock he’s not in jail and knowing acceptance that of course he is late; the shock would be if he showed up on time clad in appropriate attire.  Lacking either awareness of proper social graces or acting out on his habitual drugged-up and numb feelings, James kicks everybody out to give his frail mother a break. 

James’s most admirable quality is his loyalty to family and friends, even if it is misguided at times.  His mom is in remission from cancer and he likes to remind her how much he helped out when she was sick when she gets on his case for lack of job and prospects.  Decamping to Mexico for his final vacation before that whole ‘real life’ stuff, the audience can also lay back and breathe freer because we realize how up close in James’s personal space we’ve been.  Cinematographer Matyas Erdely fills at least 75% of every frame with James’s head.  His furrowed brow and alcohol sweats become good friends.

In Mexico, James’s troubles abate and we finally get some wide screen shots we didn’t realize we were screaming for.  All to soon though, James gets a phone call mom is sick again and no sooner does James put one foot back in New York City then we’re up front in his face again.  His mom opts for hospice, a fact she didn’t share with James.  Cynthia Nixon delivers the film’s most powerful performance as a very sick woman dealing with bouts of dementia and balancing feelings of irritation, anxiety, and thankfulness for her son.

A key late scene between James and his mom is the film’s best and its savior.  Nixon lays her head on Abbott’s chest, exhausted from being carried to the bathroom, and in just one extended, stationary, medium-shot, I believe the audience briefly sees James figure it out.  The only weapons James has on hand to combat his mother’s fever, which seems about to kill her, are extra strength Tylenol and a lukewarm washcloth.  James is so used to yelling and swinging his fists at his problems, this scene of frustration, worry, and finally resignation is tremendously effective. 

Josh Mond is a member of Borderline Films, a company where three partners take it in turn to produce and direct their products.  Mond produced 2011’s Martha Marcy Mae Marlene and now takes advantage of his spot in the rotation to transform his semi-autobiographical screenplay into his first film.  James White isn’t the most likeable fellow in the world and appears to cause more problems for himself than even his father’s death and mother’s cancer create.  Yet, Abbott and Nixon create characters we want to watch and Mond brings to life an intense, gut-wrenching wakeup call with a stingy slice of catharsis.  We don’t have to revel in the highs and drown in the lows, take advantage of the in between.      
   

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