Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic, and this film has no audio description. Good Night and Good Luck.

I’ve been waiting to see this for nearly three years. It first premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and while it garnered praise for its actors, it didn’t materialize into a release.Finally, hiding in my for your consideration material is this little movie, hoping on a wing and a prayer that someone will love it enough to vote for it. Well, I did like this quite a bit.

It’s a complicated film to describe without showing you the full hand. David Straithairn plays Bill, a Vietnam veteran who runs a sheet metal company, and his son (Will Poullen) works with him. it appears to be a bit of a family affair, as his wife (Celia Weston) also mentions having done the accounting there in the past. Most of the time, the son appears to be working, leaving his wife (Jane Levy) pondering her loneliness. The family dynamic is disrupted somewhat when bill’s daughter (Anna Camp) breezes in, hot off fleeing her most recent relationship now without a dollar to her name.

Bill is of the generation where men were responsible, and they followed through. He probably does have some level of PTSD, but he buries it. Instead, he watches his son make life choices he doesn’t understand, and debates how to get involved. Should he directly address his son, or rather those around him? He seems like a sensible bystander, a possible mediator with best interests in mind, but never connecting perhaps how his own parenting styles could have influenced his kids, who are different levels of messes to clean up.

Everyone here is pretty solid, but Straithairn steals the show. If anything, the best supporting character is a very minor one in Dasha Polanco, who uses her one scene with Straithairn to great effect. There’s a lot said in the margins of their conversation, as if they never said anything at all, yet somehow also everything. As a film, it deals with some difficult subject matter, but it does so as a meditation on tragic circumstances, and how best to move forward from them. it is always trying to be a quiet and thoughtful film, never a truly shocking or upsetting one.

I’m not sure David Strathairn would be in my top five lead actors at the end of the year, but he’s certainly hovering close. it is a lovely, mature performance from a character actor that only keeps getting better with age.

A winning Sundance entry, featuring a patient and thoughtful approach to problem solving, while musing gently on the connections of parents to their kids. A wonderful ensemble lifts up the darker subject matter.

Fresh: Final Grade: 8.4/10