Liars and Saints

  Richard Linklater invents brilliant characters; specifically, he invents them for Ethan Hawke. The Linklater/Hawke collaboration led to the unforgettable film "Boyhood," in which Hawke struggles to be a dad. He is--at first--young, stupid, and negligent. After a passage of years, he is "born again," and he attempts to repair what he can. My favorite scene in this movie shows Hawke asking his kids about their day. This question is irritating, and the kids throw it back at Hawke: "Why don't *you* narrate *your* day--if you're so eager for chit chat?" In the "Before" trilogy, Hawke is still Hawke. He is still flawed, searching, conflicted. He leaves his wife and family on a whim; he wants to revisit an old flame. The consequences of this choice haunt him for ten years (likely more). Hawke seems to have "aged out" of his Linklater phase, but it's a nice surprise to see that Glen Powell can do the work. In "Hitman," P...

 One reason I love Ethan Hawke is that he is the ultimate "dad"; though Hollywood sometimes forgets that families exist, Hawke plays a dad again and again and again. In "Boyhood," he has a great scene where he demands that his kids report on their day. "Why should we? Why don't YOU tell us what YOU did all morning?" In "Maggie's Plan," Hawke enrages Greta Gerwig when he forgets to do some marital heavy lifting. And in "Sinister," Hawke annoys his clan by insisting on a move to a creepy new house (and by "forgetting" to explain his reasons for the move). But my favorite Hawke role is in "The Purge," a movie that looks like a dystopic tale but also looks like a domestic comedy. Hawke has enriched his children's lives by selling faulty security systems to the neighbors; he never stops to think that his ostentatious purchases might infuriate those same neighbors. Hawke has a daughter with some bad ideas about...

 "Sinister" is a movie with a terrible title. I'm fully against affixing a lazy adjective to a movie--and calling it a day. This would be like re-christening "Anna Karenina" as "Sad." Or re-branding "Middlemarch" as--simply--"Dramatic." "Sinister" should be called "Home Movies," or "The Writer." Anyway, what is this film? It's a partial update of "The Shining." A writer, Ethan Hawke, moves his family to a new locale, because he wants to jumpstart his career. But Hawke withholds some information. The new house is actually the sight of a terrible crime: Five or six family members were once found hanging from a tree in the backyard. The sixth family member--a child, and possibly the murderer--has never been located. Odder still: The killer (or someone else?) has left a snuff film in the attic. Several snuff films. There's the hanging scene, but also footage of a drowning, footage of a car...