Mentoring, southern style: Nicolas Cage & Tye Sheridan star in David Gordon Green's JOE

It would appear to be all here: Nicolas Cage in what looks like a role that might put him back in form, after so many mediocre movies; Tye Sheridan, one of those two kids who was so very good in Mud, a little older now, this time in a near-starring role; and director David Gordon Green, going back to his roots (Undertow) to bring us another piece of Southern Gothic pie. The film starts off well, too. Everything seems in place for one hell of a ride: two heroes (one young, the other growing old), villains (two again: the fucked-up father of all time and a scarface creep with anger management problems), and the despoiled countryside where our boys make their living destroying the environment. What a world!

And yet, by the time that JOE, the new film from Mr. Green (shown at left), reaches its obvious and predestined conclu-sion, it has become an unmitigated disaster: bloated, bilious, depen-dent upon cliche and coincidence, full of heavy-handed southern miserablism and violence for violence's sake, and then -- say it ain't so, Joe -- a sentimental end. Worst of all, it gives free-rein to Green's least ability as a director: to form his narrative into a satisfying whole and guide it to conclusion. As solid as everything seems at the beginning of this film, by mid-point, it has hopped the track. From there, things only grow worse.

The silliest portions of the film are devoted to that scarface character, played by Ronnie Gene Blevins (shown above, left). who certainly gives it his all and who keeps appearing from out of nowhere, time and again, just long enough to do something loud and nasty before disappearing again for a spell.  It's all so convenient -- and annoying. (The screenplay is by Gary Hawkins, adapted from the novel by Larry Brown.)

The film begins as Gary (young Mr. Sheridan, above) tells off his father, then cuts to Joe (Mr. Cage, below, center), as he begins his workday, leading a band of black men as they place poison into healthy trees so that the trees will die and the lumber company paying Joe and his crew can then chop them down and clear the land. Neat.

Once Joe and Gary connect, it's clear that a ton of mentoring is about to go down. Which it does. Along the way we meet the barely-there women: a brothel of whores, a bad mother, a sad sister and the young woman who comes to Joe for protection. None of them register strongly at all. This is a man's movie, doncha know.

Gary's nasty and drunken dad is played by first-time actor Gary Poulter, below, whom the filmmaker, known for his casting of locals, found homeless on the street. Poulter is dynamite; his performance is the single strongest thing in the film, and it will be his only one, as the fellow died on the Texas streets only weeks after filming had concluded.

Otherwise, the movie belongs to Cage and Sheridan, and both are very good: Cage looking buffed and beefy, with a mat of gray hair on his chest, and Sheridan having now grown into young manhood from his Mud boyhood, while holding onto his innocence nicely. The two work together very well and provide the bond the movie finally makes central. If only Green and Hawkins had been able to create something more original for these character to act out. A little melodramatic Southern miserablism goes a long way.

Joe, from Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions and running a lengthy 117 minutes, will open this Friday, April 11, here in New York City at the AMC Empure 25, the Angelika Film Center, the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, and on VOD and iTunes. To learn if the film is playing anywhere near you, click here, enter your zip code and click on GET TICKETS AND SHOWTIMES.

BOOKER'S PLACE: The new Raymond De Felitta documentary about his dad's 1965 doc -- and a little-known man who gave his life for the cause

With any film from Raymond De Felitta (shown below) you always get more than you expect. Whether the man is making a documentary ('Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris) or a narrative film (Two Family House and City Island), you can count on something richer and deeper than first glance might suggest. BOOKER'S PLACE: A Mississippi Story -- his new documentary about the titular Booker and the little restaurant he owned back in the 1960s in Greenwood, Mississippi (shown two photos below) -- is another stealth missile that takes us into a time and place we'd forgotten (or hardly knew in the first place) and lays bare the attitudes and actions that made the struggle for civil rights in the south so daunting and often so deadly.

From what we see in this fine documentary, although the actions in the south have changed (some), the attitudes unfortunately remain much the same. Too many southern whites. as we see in this film, are still making excuses for their actions. ("We were caught in a system that was flawed," notes one woman. OK: But who created that system and very happily kept it going for a century or two?) Yet the beating heart of this thrilling documentary also hits one of the most important questions documentarians (good ones, anyway) always ask themselves: "OK: I've filmed this. But what might happen if it is shown to the public?" According to the filmmaker's own father, Frank De Felitta, who made the landmark documentary for NBC News back in 1965, around which the present film is based, "When you film living people, you take on a huge responsibility." At the end of his life, and in this particular case, the senior De Felitta was not sure he had done the right thing.

After you've finished the watching this film, along with most other viewers, you will probably disagree with the original filmmaker -- as do, I think, his son and the living relatives of Booker Wright (below), the man at the center of it all. Mr. Wright and his early history of seeming abandonment make up a portion of the film, and that story alone would be enough to fill up most movies.

Yet it is Booker's personality (he was a man very well-liked by his black peers, and even, for most of his life, by his white overseers) that takes on even greater importance in the film. The unusual character of the man leads to the remarkably honest speech shown on network television throughout the USA that arguably was one of the major incidents in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The film begins with this speech but then circles around to make us fully understand what it meant to the world -- and to the man who made it.

You have to hear and see this amazing speech, as we do several times during the film, for it to sink in fully. What it says and what effect it had on Booker, his family, the white community in which he worked, and now down two generations of the Black community is telling in so many ways.

The movie also has a lot to say about the documentary film-making process, and about Frank De Felitta (shown above, and below, with his son) and why he was so intent on making this documentary newscast from Mississippi in the first place. We learn Frank's history in World War II and what the Holocaust meant to him and to his sense of justice, and how he began to equate what has happened to the Jews with what had and was continuing to happen to American Blacks.

As Raymond weaves all this together -- his father's history and that of the original film; his own situation as the son of the filmmaker; Booker's story and that of his family, particularly his granddaughter, Yvette Johnson (below, with one of Booker's contemporaries) who becomes one of the driving forces in making this movie -- he creates an indelible portrait of everything from black life on the plantation (and after) to the particular and peculiar affect blacks had to take with their white "betters."

All this is shown in a way that puts even further to shame a piece of "movie-movie" action crap like Django Unchained. Here is reality offered up quietly, shockingly, artfully, with humor, discipline and grace. What a legacy Booker has left us. What a legacy Frank and Raymond De Felitta have also given us via their films. What a movie this is!

Available now on Netflix streaming, Booker's Place -- via Tribeca Film and running 92 minutes -- is, all by itself, worth an entire year of the Netflix digital service. Certainly among the best of last year's documentaries, its subjects, together with the events it covers, place it in a class all its own.

The photo of Raymond De Felitta, second from top, 

is by Larry Busacca and comes courtesy of Getty Images.

Lucas & Hamm star in Anders Anderson's moving missing-child movie, STOLEN

Threat and danger hover over STOLEN like a curse. Then the deaths start piling up: one, two... The third takes longer to appear, which makes waiting for it all the more difficult to endure (not to worry: there is practically no blood or gore here). Anders Anderson's sorrowful and moving film about parental responsibility, love, sexual need, grief and guilt travels back and forth in time to tell a tale of loss and odd connections that dispenses with much of the "thriller" aspects that might have given it more standard pizzazz and chills -- probably at the expense of the deeper-than-usual feelings that surface from time to time.

Directed by Anderson (shown at left, whose first film this is) and written by Glenn Taranto, Stolen is a quieter movie than most in this genre, and fortunately it has two leading men who can handle the emotional aspects well. Jon Hamm plays the small-town policeman in the present-day plot, and it's good to see this actor in something other than Mad Men (or the uselessly standard role he had in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still). Even better is Josh Lucas, who has been proving his mettle over the past decade in film after interesting film: The Deep End to Undertow, Poseidon to Death in Love.

Lucas (above) has by far the most layered role, and as usual, he gives it his all, making us feel his loss and guilt, his need for both sex and religion, and his insistence on doing what he imagines is the right thing. Hamm (below) is saddled with the lesser role, in which his grief and guilt overshadow all else, and this does begin to grow tiresome, which is less the actor's fault that that of the director and writer.

Yet the graceful weaving of past and present, with its occasional surprise (not the villain's identity, which is given away midstream) plus the romantic interludes provided by several women (who later appear as their older selves) make this story memorable in unex-
pected ways, leaving the viewer freighted with a deeper under-
standing and appreciation of all that has transpired than is usually achieved in films about kidnapping and murder. (In fact, Stolen manages this better than does a much higher-profile movie The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, about which I'll have more to say soon.)

Also in the cast is James Van Der Beek (at right, above, whose very square head and sturdy body is put to good use in the past portion and made to age relatively well for the present-day) and Jessica Chastain, Rhona Mitra and Morena Baccarin (the latter shown below) as some of the women in the lives of these two men.

Stolen (formerly known as Stolen Lives), from IFC FIlms, opens Friday, March 12, at the Clearview Chelsea in New York City and at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in L.A. on March 19.  Already available from IFC On-Demand, you can click the previous link to learn if your TV-reception-provider offers it, and if so, how to get it.