Falling Review: Viggo Mortensen & Lance Henriksen Deliver Career-Bests
William Healy as 15-year-old John Peterson
Etienne Kellici as 10-year-old John Peterson
Grady McKenzie as 5-year-old John Peterson
Lance Henriksen as Willis Peterson
Sverrir Gudnason as Young Willis Peterson
Laura Linney as Sarah Peterson
Ava Kozelj as 10-year-old Sarah Peterson
Carina Battrick as 5-year-old Sarah Peterson
Hannah Gross as Gwen Peterson
Terry Chen as Eric Peterson
Piers Bijvoet as Will
Written & Directed by Viggo Mortensen
Falling Review:
The subject of dementia is one so fraught with sadness and unknowingness that it’s often tackled on screen in one of two ways: Humor or Tragedy. While the former path is certainly a feasible one, as humor is a coping mechanism for sadness, it often leads to unfair or disingenuous portrayals of the very real mental issue many face as they get older, whereas the latter approach generally bashes a viewer over the head with the message to sympath
What’s new to VOD and streaming this weekend
Including reviews of A Glitch In The Matrix, Falling, Malcolm & Marie, Rams and Greenland By Norman Wilner
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OW critics pick what’s new to streaming and VOD for the weekend of February 5. Plus: Everything new to VOD and streaming platforms.
Falling
(Viggo Mortensen)
Mortensen’s first feature as a writer/director finds the actor shaping a simple father-son story into a powerful meditation on compassion at any cost. It’s not perfect, but it’s powerful. Mortensen plays John, a gay man who’s taken a week off to bring his ailing father Willis (Lance Henriksen) out west from his rural New York farm. Willis is suffering from dementia and rapidly deteriorating, and John is looking to make things easier on the old man – but Willis’s illness has only amplified the fury, misogyny and homophobia that drove his family away decades earlier. Falling is rough in the way that first films can be, but even when something doesn