2018 SLEEPERS
                                                          Part 5



A Simple Favor turns out to be anything but. Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) becomes best friends with Emily Nelson (Blake Lively). The women have sons attending the same elementary school. Emily asks Stephanie to care for her son while she attends to some personal business. Two days later, there is no sign of Emily and she isn’t answering texts or phone calls. Eventually Stephanie involves the police, and from there things get really complicated. This film has more twists and turns than Chubby Checker. But it is fun.
Journey’s End was produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. And it does so wonderfully well. Concentrating on British soldiers in the trenches, it chronicles both the boredom and the terror that accompanied them on a daily basis. Okay, it is not a cheerful film but it helps you understand what it was like to be a soldier in this terrible war. 
Lean On Pete is the unlikely story of a boy and a horse. Charlie Plummer plays 15-year-old Charlie, living hand to mouth with his single father in Oregon. He goes to work for crusty horse owner Del (Steve Buscemi) and befriends the boss’ rider Bonnie (Chloe Sevigny). They enter races in the lowest rung of horse racing, with most of their mounts ending up in the glue factory. Charlie falls for Lean On Pete, a damaged horse scheduled for slaughter. He runs away with the horse, encountering many people and adventures, in a quixotic search for a caring aunt. Charlie Plummer is so real it’s almost scary. Warning: This is not Black Beauty or Seabiscuit. It is tough going, but worth it. 
Leave No Trace is the story of an Iraq veteran suffering from PTSD who is living in a national forest with his teen-age daughter. Will (Ben Foster) and Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) live way off the grid. They only encounter other people when they go to town for supplies. When a jogger discovers them and turns them in, their home in the woods is over. They try various scenarios to make it in society. She does well; he does not. He wants to return to the woods. She tells him “What’s wrong with you isn’t wrong with me.” 
Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. Most of us have heard that whimsical murder rhyme. Lizzie tells the story the way it may have happened. Parts of it are true, parts fictional. In any event it makes a dandy movie. Chole Sevigny plays Lizzie and Kristin Stewart plays Bridget, the Irish maid who disrupts the household in many ways. She and Lizzie become an item, and when Lizzie’s father discovers this, tragedy beckons. 
All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are for adults.