Box of Moonlight

Al Fountain is an electrical engineer: punctual, rule bound, and living the same life he has lived for years. When a job finishes early he does not go home but decides to drive to a lake he visited as a child. On the way he meets a man calling himself Kid, who lives in a trailer, gets by on stolen goods and takes nothing seriously. Tom DiCillo writes and directs. John Turturro plays Al and Sam Rockwell plays Kid, with Catherine Keener in the cast. It followed DiCillo's Living in Oblivion, which had mocked independent filmmaking itself. This attempts something else entirely and stays on the relationship between two men. Rockwell's character is the engine. Kid is not written as a lovable drifter. He is a thief, a liar and alone, and the film does not hide it. That is exactly why Al's attachment to him becomes comprehensible. The question goes past midlife crisis: does a life count as lived if the man living it has never broken a single rule. It played Sundance and is cited as a characteristic piece of nineties American independent cinema. Who it is for: viewers who like nineties American independents and character driven road films. Who it is not for: the plot is very thin and the resolution in the last section comes too easily.