Before directing Sandler to a great performance, the Safdies did the same for Robert Pattinson
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Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: You don’t have to go to the theater to get your Robert Pattinson fix. We’re looking back on some of the best performances from the one-time vampire, future caped crusader.
Good Time (2017)
Filmmaking brothers Josh and Benny Safdie first made their name on low-budget movies without name actors, even crafting their addiction drama Heaven Knows What around the autobiographical details of non-actor Arielle Holmes. But it turns out that they may be even more skilled at helping established performers recontextualize themselves in career-redefining work. They famously assisted Adam Sandler to one of his best performances in last year’s Uncut Gems; two years earlier, they gave Robert Pattinson a showcase in the scuzzy caper Good Time.
Pattinson’s persona may not be as familiar or long-running as the Sandman’s, but Good Time still nods to it, intentionally or not. The actor became famous, of course, as Edward Cullen, the vampiric stalker-hero of the Twilight series, enrapturing teenage girls and older fans alike. In Good Time, his character uses a more metaphorical kind of bloodsucking charisma to seduce an actual teenage girl (Taliah Lennice Webster) and manipulate a decades-older paramour (Jennifer Jason Leigh). For anyone familiar with the Twilight fandom, this element plays like a discomfiting parody of Pattinson’s star power, with Edward’s sparkly brooding stripped away.
Pattinson’s Connie isn’t really after sex, though. He’s just willing to use any tool in his limited arsenal to distract, divert, and con his way into a reunion with his mentally disabled brother Nick (Benny Safdie). Nick has landed in New York’s Rikers Island after a botched bank robbery, planned by Connie as a desperate means of getting the brothers some seed money to set themselves up somewhere away from the city. Connie’s intentions are good but his methods are pure Safie-style chaos; Pattinson enters the movie by bursting into Nick’s counseling session with a psychiatrist (Peter Verby) who seems to want only to help. Connie berates the doctor for making Nick cry, then ushers his beloved brother straight into the hell of hold-ups, incarceration, the legal system, and vicious prison beatings.
When the latter lands Nick in a hospital, Connie sees a chance to smuggle his brother to freedom. He embarks on a long night of insane improvisation that includes the aforementioned teenage girl, a Sprite bottle full of liquid acid, mistaken identity, a feckless criminal named Ray (the appropriately named Buddy Duress), and New York’s Access-A-Ride service. Connie is the kind of New York lowlife British actors seem to love playing, maybe because it provides the opportunity to mask one distinctive accent with another. But Pattinson doesn’t overdo the Noo Yawk patter; he’s arguably more restrained than the Safdies, whose affinity for neon, agitated dialogue, and tight close-ups still feel a little like affectations here.
They’re also conditions under which Pattinson thrives. He’s especially expressive in close-ups that need to adhere to the movie’s portrayal of Connie as a scumbag and liar who’s also a quick thinker, if not exactly smart. When he’s finally forced to sit still in the movie’s second-to-last scene, he looks zonked in thought, as the Safdies slip his eyes in and out of visibility.
Though Connie and Nick’s situation is often dire, it also carries an undercurrent of farce. After all, the movie does involve its star donning a series of disguises including “Amusement Park Security Detail” and “sketchy man with bleached-blond hair.” Pattinson taps into the dark humor just enough to earn some laughs without undermining the ground-level seriousness of all the careless violence. He brings an edge of ruefulness to lines like “Don’t be confused, it’s just gonna make it worse for me,” suggesting that Connie might have some self-awareness underneath the split-second decisions and crazy gambits. He’s just utterly lost in terms of how to transfer his hustle into anything other than a hastily assembled escape plan. “I don’t know what to tell you!” he repeats at one point, frustrated with Ray’s objections to yet another seeming dead end. Connie isn’t especially articulate, but Pattinson tells us plenty.
Availability: Good Time is currently streaming on Netflix and Kanopy. It’s also available for rental or purchase from Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, Microsoft, Redbox, Fandango, DirectTV, and VUDU.
35 Comments
I liked Good Time a lot more than Uncut Gems, personally. The black comedy hits way more reliably here, in large part due to Buddy Duress’s absolutely ridiculous performance. Every dumb fucking thing that comes out of Ray’s mouth had me rolling.
It didn’t have me laughing, but the performances are each masterful. I enjoyed the downward spiral for Connie, and the overall exploration of this guy committed to a resolution that would be worse off than the inevitable conclusion. Just a great, despicable protagonist at the end of his story.
Same, this was so so much better than Uncut.
I gotta say, not to slag on this movie I like quite a bit, but to me there’s something kind of unformed and maybe even a little icky about this movie’s more emotional material with the brother. It begins and ends with him, and it’s affecting for sure, but I’m not sure how the Safdies think this stuff really connects to what Connie is up to, besides giving him an understandable motivation. The way it bookends with two therapy sequences basically seems to say “oh, here’s the good stuff that might have happened if Connie hadn’t interfered.” Which to me is not that interesting in terms of a character study. Gems is certainly not a super-emotional movie, but I think it’s in greater control of its characters and what it’s doing than this one.
There was something about the way he said “we’re going to Adventurers?” after seeing that they were going to Adventure Land was funny as hell to me. The way dopey people constantly mispronounce for no good reason never seems to make its way into scripts.
I completely forgot about this film. Gonna watch it tonight. That said, I was really surprised by Uncut Gems. It reminded me of the potential that I think Sandler still has as a non-comedic actor. Gems has its moments of comedy, but more than anything it reminded me of Punch-Drunk Love. With the right director(s) he could stop being the guy that goes on vacation with all his comedy friends to make a movie and start making -good- films.You can’t be Little Nicky forever.
My favorite part of the movie is when Ray recounts the events that led to him being in the hospital. I could watch a whole movie of him and his boy Caliph, drinking brandy, taking Xanax, banging hookers.
My favorite part of the movie is when Ray recounts the events that led to him being in the hospital. I could watch a whole movie of him and his boy Caliph, drinking brandy, taking Xanax, banging hookers.
My favorite part of the movie is when Ray recounts the events that led to him being in the hospital. I could watch a whole movie of him and his boy Caliph, drinking brandy, taking Xanax, banging hookers.
That’s good to hear since I’ve been meaning to watch this, but I found Uncut Gems boring for the most part.
Duress is hilarious, I don’t know how his story doesn’t derail the movie entirely but it’s told and shown so well. He’s a great counter to Pattinson, who is a manipulative fuck-up but can still look at Duress and rightfully think “at least I’m not this guy.”
I really liked it also, but one thing that struck me is that it could pretty much be a straight comedy with a few tweaks. The Sprite bottle of acid, the mistaken identity, hell, the brother only gets caught by the cops because he runs into a glass door. It’s like if Adventures in Babysitting smoked a bag of meth.
“It’s like if Adventures in Babysitting smoked a bag of meth.”If the article didn’t do it, I’m sold now!
i loooooooove good time but was so disappointed by gems. ive watched it twice now and i still dont know why im supposed to be rooting for howard. because hes presented as the protagonist?
I spent the movie increasingly cheering on his death. I don’t know how anyone could be on his side but I loved it a lot
It’s always nice seeing Adventureland on screen. This was much better than Uncut Gems, imo. Is it me or do the Sadies just make movies about people screaming at each other constantly?
I had heard of “Heaven Knows What” but since I was wary of something that could be really unpleasant, a screening of this was my first exposure to the Safdies and it was great. I think it was also the first time I saw Pattinson, I can’t be sure of when I rented The Lost City of Z (which I still say is overrated). It was because of this I decided I would need to see Uncut Gems in a theater because I might compulsively pause it at home.
Anyone know what the song is in the trailer? I love it!
Hospital Escape from the movie soundtrack by Oneohtrix Point Never. Amazing soundtrack.
Reminds me of Requiem for a Dream mixed with Bullet.
two of my favorite brooklyn movies
Uncut Gems was a pale imitation of Good Time.And Pattinson is a damn good actor.
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What I love about this film is that it takes a while to realise what a horrible piece of work Connie is. He’s so charming, in a down-on-his-luck scumbag sort of way, that you don’t realise that he genuinely is a monster. He’s not wantonly cruel, especially, just almost completely without empathy.
similarly, my experience of this movie went from good to great when I realised that it was never going to go back to the start and tie up all those loose ends. it just lets Connie’s night spin out and out of control and the moment you realise it’s the entire movie is just an “oh, fuck, here we go” moment
It says a lot for how much I love Uncut Gems that I consider Good Time, a film I really like, to be a bit of a sketch version of the artwork that Uncut Gems was. Between those two films, I’m excited for whatever the Safdies make next.
Caption Contest:
“Richard Manuel realizes the state store is about to close”
Good Time was better than Uncut Gems…hmm, time to re-watch Good Time on Netflix.
Lot more evidence that Robert Pattinson was already a good actor than there is for Sandler.
I mean… was there, though? I like them both a lot — just saw Pattinson in Tenet and he’s an utter delight — but I think if you look at his pre-2017 movies, you have five Twilights where he’s bad (hamstrung by bad material, but still not very good); Remember Me, which is a big yikes; Water for Elephants, where he’s kind of wan and miscast; Harry Potter 4, where he’s charming in a small role; two Cronenberg movies, in which he’s quite good; and a few smaller things I haven’t seen. This definitely wasn’t the first time he was good in something, but I’d also say there are even more solid Sandler performances in the lead-up to Gems: Meyerowitz Stories, The Week Of, Punch-Drunk Love, Wedding Singer… even not very good movies like Reign Over Me and Spanglish, he’s quite good in them. So I think they’re oddly similar, despite very different styles: Did some good work alongside some bad work and had a lot of preconceptions about their skills based on some of the bad work.
TLDR: The Sandler Defender Has Logged On.
The Safdies have some great female leads in their back pocket that they need to utilize up front. I’m sure Jennifer Jason Leigh, who was superb in this, could carry a movie making increasingly bad decisions too.
I don’t really understand the implication (and I could be imagining it, to be fair) that Pattinson doesn’t give great performances just about all the time?
I can’t speak to Twilight because, well, what can I tell ya, not my wheelhouse, but my prevailing impression based on snippets and second-hand info is that even the most game actor couldn’t wring a great performance out of the writing. But on balance, his hits cast a major shadow over his misses.
I like Pattinson a lot, but I think his best performances have largely been in the past four years or so, rather than the many years he was working before then. And not having seen Twilight is a major blind spot — not in terms of cinema, but in terms of understanding why someone would be skeptical about his considerable talents.
I think you hit the nail right on the head. If you haven’t seen Twilight it’s actually difficult to comprehend just how bad everyone is in them. And when that is your touch point for an actor, it’s easy to see how anyone could be skeptical of the talent of pretty much anyone that was involved.
Of the 43 minutes of TENET I did manage to watch, Pattinson stood out. Good Time has confirmed all my suspicion. Dude’s a future legend.