Heartbreak and resentment fill nearly every frame of Kenneth Lonergan’s emotionally charged drama that delves into redemption and atonement in ways that are so bleakly real and to the bone, it lingers with you days later — something few movies have done so far this year with the notable exceptions of Moonlight, Loving, and The Handmaiden.
Manchester by the Sea begins with the tedious anguish of unclogging a stopped up toilet. It’s immediately apparent that the handler of the plunger, Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), suffers from more than just the stench of the task at hand. Lee’s a quiet inward man who toils as a handyman/janitor in Boston until his brother’s weak heart beckons him back to the town of the film’s title — a 40 minute scoot north —where we learn that Lee had existed before in happier and more prosperous times. The gorgeous seaside town itself becomes a story of two sides, the well-to-do living in stately green-lawned manses while the working class fishermen nestle up in cozy, but cramped cottages along pot-hole marred lanes. Lee’s past there is a ghost he doesn’t want to confront and the cold chalky grey of winter descending poetically underscores his aching dread. Continue reading
The story of how Bulger undermined the North End Mafia and rose up to became the city’s criminal kingpin, then vanished for almost 15 years, all while being the brother of Massachusetts’ most powerful politician, always seemed bigger than the papers it was printed on (or for the broad screens of the first generation of flat-screen TVs sold at Lechmere). Here, in the hands of director Scott Cooper, who did well with “Crazy Heart” (2008) and “Out of the Furnace” (2013), the narrative become a bit too broad to settle in and gel. It’s choked with details and not enough nuance. That’s understandable in part because it is based on the book “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob” by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (since retitled “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal”), but still, screenwriters Jez Butterworth (“Edge of Tomorrow”) and Mark Mallouk never free themselves and take chances. The framework of FBI interrogations, whether in the now or in flashbacks, doesn’t add much; it only cuts into Depp’s screen time as his steely-eyed Whitey and his posse off gruesomely anyone who looks at them the wrong way. There’s also the late development in which O’Neill and Lehr drop in as Bernstein and Woodward on the case. 
For What it's Worth 