Manglehorn

About halfway through this film, the titular character of A.J. Manglehorn utters the sentence "She was like a great ball of fire, and I was so very small in comparison". It's a beautiful line that evokes a specific and poignant image of this man. The problem comes in that this character is played by Al Pacino, who, even when he is desperately trying to be very small, as he is for most of this film, is, in fact, a great ball of fire himself. And because he burns so very brightly no matter how small he tries to be, his inability to sink into this lush and well-written role takes a wrecking ball to the central themes of this film. I spent most of the movie wondering how Dustin Hoffman would have played this character. I also thought a lot about how another actor, Nicolas Cage, who is also known for being very large, managed to pull off a role of extreme subtlety very recently in a little film called "Joe", which, as it turns out, was directed by the same man as "Manglehorn", David Gordon Green.  I never thought I would see the day when Cage could play small better than Pacino, but that day is here it seems. A beautiful script, but I could never sink into it. 3/5

Manglehorn on Netflix