A Hermit In The Woods- – Train Dreams (2025, USA, Color, 102 min) – – 10 December 2025

Strongly recommended. In a follow-up to their splendid Sing Sing, director/writer Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, co-writer, have made a near-perfect film in Train Dreams. The story is as simple as its emotional weight is complex. It follows Robert Grainier, a logger who basically walks the same forest from the 1890s until John Glenn circles the Earth, reflecting on the simple joys and brutal pain American life offers him and his small world. This works only because of the wonderful acting of Joel Edgerton (The Boys in the Boat) as Grainier. He perfectly signifies the film’s core of tenacious optimism in the face of unrelieved suffering. Help is given by William Macy (Fargo) as a fellow logger and the Oscar-worthy support of Felicity Jones (The Brutalist) as Granier’s wife. The film is lovingly shot by Adolpho Veloso (Jockey) . . . with a small, significant part for Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin).