2018 Sleepers
                                                          Part 2

Here’s another handful of really good 2018 movies that didn’t get a lot of play. You might give one or two a shot.
Shoplifters is a good-natured Japanese film featuring unknowns. A very dysfunctional family hangs together and survives by shoplifting. The adults explain this is not a sin because the unsold goods don’t yet belong to anyone! The group continues to grow as most any kid who needs a family stays with them. The old lady (no relation) who owns their house and receives a pension dies. They bury her in the basement so the pension keeps coming. Then it gets strange, but good!
Okay, right up front: Ben Is Back is a heartbreaker about a really nice teen getting caught up in the drug culture. Ben is played with agonizing conviction by our own Lucas Hedges (Manchester By The Sea) and NC School of the Arts grad. And his mom is played by an equally convincing Julia Roberts. This is about a good guy trapped in a very bad situations and his loving mother trying to get through it. It is very good but it will break your heart...
The Rider is stocked with unknowns in a film about a boy who loves horses too much. Brady comes from a dysfunctional Native American family. His dreams of rodeo glory are shattered by a near-fatal fall. He scratches out a living breaking horses, is nearly killed by another fall, and decides to try the rodeo once again. No more from me.
Ian McKellan (Atonement, The Children Act) is a splendid British writer who comes up with stories that place the characters on a razor thin chance to go either way. On Chesil Beach, set in 1962, seems impossibly prim and outdated until you read it or see the movie. Saorise Ronan and Billy Howle play virginal inexperienced newlyweds. Their lack of sophistication and their failure to compensate leads to a dreadful ending. Everyone who has ever approached his or her wedding night with some dread to go with the excitement will understand these doomed young people on some level. 
The 12th Man is the mostly true story of Norwegian Jan Baalsrud. A dozen Norwegian freedom fighters take an explosive-laden boat to sabotage German war facilities in World War II. They are given up by a German sympathizer, their boat is blown up, and all but Jan are killed. This is the incredible story of his escape, of the brave locals who helped him at the risk of their own lives, and his eventual escape into neutral Sweden. None of the actors are exactly household names, but are entirely competent.
All of the movies in this article are available on DVD. All are for grown-ups