Latest news with #BenjaminCaron
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Night Always Comes': Vanessa Kirby, Benjamin Caron Netflix thriller unfolds in a single night of desperation
Kirby's characters races through Portland, Oregon overnight to find $25,000 in this gritty new film Following their work together on The Crown, director Benjamin Caron and actor Vanessa Kirby have collaborated again on the Netflix film Night Always Comes, a thriller based on the book by Willy Vlautin. Set in Portland, Oregon, the movie takes place over one night as Lynette (Kirby) tries to secure $25,000 to buy her family's home, alongside her brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen). "We had been looking for a project for a few years, and there were a couple that nearly happened, but for various reasons they didn't quite get over the line," Caron told Yahoo Canada. "I think [Vanessa] ... felt that the character of Lynette was something she wanted to play. ... I really wanted to make a stressful movie, and I thought this had the mechanics of that." Caron previously worked on the Apple TV+ series Sharper, a show that really utilized its New York location as a tool to tell a story that blended classic rom-com elements with a thriller. In Night Always Comes, the filmmaker tapped into the unique elements of working-class Portland. "I'm sort of well travelled in terms of the more recognizable cities in [the U.S.], and whether that's Los Angeles, whether that's Chicago or New York or Miami, and I'm also very familiar with those cities on screen. ... I was less familiar with some of the more mid-sized American cities, and Portland being one of those," Caron said. "I always think, as a filmmaker, it's great to come into somewhere and sort of look at a city through an outsider's perspective. But I don't think this story was necessarily unique just to Portland, ... the gentrification, the homelessness, it's something that I'm seeing happening all over, certainly the Pacific Northwest of America, and also not just America, but across the world." Caron added that he found Portland to be a particularly "filmic" city. "I loved all the bridges, I loved the river that ran through it," he said. "There was the fabric of this sort of old city, and then from the sort of middle of it ... you could see this urban gentrification that was starting to push out from the middle. So filmically, it felt like a really good city to put on screen." 'We believe that they exist before and after the film' A distinct element in Night Always Comes is that the film is told trough Lynette's perspective as we really take every step with her on her desperate journey to get her hands on $25,000. But with each character that Lynette meets, it feels like they have their own interesting experiences and histories they bring into this story. "I think in many ways, the entire film is not just Lynette, I think it's full of desperate people who are trying to get by, by doing desperate things," Caron said. "And I think that as a allegory for the whole film is really important." "I know it's really important to me, and also I know to actors, that I really want to take care of the characters and their journeys within the moments they are on screen. So we invited all of the actors to come in and work with us on making sure that these lives that they inhabit, ... they burn brightly. Not just in the film, but that we believe that they exist before and after the film." One of those characters is Scott, played by Randall Park, a wealthy former escort client of Lynette's who she reconnects with early in the film, hoping he would give her the money she needs to buy her family's home. "He wanted to make sure that the character wasn't just a two dimensional cheating husband, that there was a sort of an understanding about the pressures that character has in his life, ... even if it feels unfair to what we're seeing happening to Lynette," Caron said. "[Randall] relished that opportunity of bringing that character onto screen and it's a moment in the film where your heart just breaks. ... [Lynette] is so desperate in that moment where she's asking for something [that] probably isn't a huge amount of money to him. And he's sort of got the wrong end of the stick. He thinks she's come for something else. And ... when he just laughs it off, it just absolutely crushes your heart in that moment." Mother-daughter relationship 'you just don't see enough of' Another key relationship for Lynette is with her mother Doreen, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. While Lynette had been coordinating with the property's landlord about the buying the home, she needed her mother to cover the downpayment. But Doreen ends up spending that money on a new car, which is what sets Lynette off on her quest to get the funds herself. "What I love about what Jennifer brought to that part is that, even at the beginning, you sort of feel that there's a mother there that has ... a 38-year-old daughter still living at home with her. And there's that sort of unspoken tension, energy in the air," Caron said. "I love the fact that she's not even able to really say these words to Lynette, that I just don't think we can together anymore, that the only way that she can do that is as a form of self-sabotaging herself by going out and buying the car." "But those two were just brilliant to watch as dancing partners on screen together. I think they brought a really unique mother-daughter relationship to screen that you just don't see enough of." 'A unique, modern tragedy' But at its core, Night Always Comes reflects larger concerns around economic challenges that many people face, including in Canada, from housing affordability issues to other cost of living challenges. "The idea of someone that's basically doing two or three jobs and not able to afford their own home is such a unique, modern tragedy," Caron said. "And I really wanted Lynette to represent the many Lynette's out there who are one paycheque away from collapse." "We did a lot of work at the beginning to try and establish the sort of economic pressures that were on Lynette, ... but also just understanding the bigger economic, social issues that were happening in and around Portland, and also across America. ... It felt like, yes, a story of Lynette, but also a story of that American working class. ... It was a story of those single moms. It was a story of those nurses, or those caregivers that were being priced out of the cities that they were helping to run."
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Night Always Comes review: Vanessa Kirby gives it her all, but this poverty theme park isn't worth the entrance fee
Night Always Comes Director : Benjamin Caron Cert : None Genre : Drama Starring : Vanessa Kirby, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zack Gottsagen, Stephen James, Randall Park, Julia Fox, Michael Kelly, Eli Roth Running Time : 1 hr 48 mins Vanessa Kirby , who worked far too hard to save the unnecessarily glum Fantastic Four: First Steps , is yet again overexerting herself in an unworthy vehicle. Adapted from Willy Vlautin's novel , Night Always Comes opens with a lazy lesson in the failings of trickle-down economics delivered as incidental radio broadcasts on homelessness, low wages and grocery bills. Sarah Conradt's screenplay starts strongly with a punchy save-the-farm premise. Lynette (Kirby) is desperate to put down a deposit on the family home she shares with her indolent mother ( Jennifer Jason Leigh ) and older brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen). The crumbling house is not much, but ownership will keep social services away from Kenny, who has Down syndrome. Mom, alas, has other ideas. She blows the downpayment on a car, leaving her frantic daughter scrambling to raise $25,000 over one eventful – and seedy – night. At first there are welcome parallels between Benjamin Caron's film and Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's similarly themed 2014 thriller, The Lesson. Unhappily, Night Always Comes quickly abandons its real-world dilemma as it swerves into low-life criminality. Lynette juggles prostitution, bartending and cocaine dealing as she encounters safe-crackers, low-lives and Eli Roth's sleazy, ill-defined kingpin. READ MORE Despite valiant efforts from Stephen James and Michael Kelly – playing an ill-defined hoodlum and a procurer, respectively – Lynette's low-income hinterland feels strained and inauthentic. [ Film-maker Dag Johan Haugerud: From laid-off librarian to Golden Bear-winning director of the Oslo Stories trilogy Opens in new window ] The overture talks about ordinary Americans falling through the cracks due to one outsized bill or missed payment; the world onscreen groans with worn-out crime-movie tropes. The film seems unable to differentiate between penury and cop-show-brand lawlessness. Kirby, who also served as a producer, gives it socks as her embattled heroine gets robbed, swindled, glassed and sexually assaulted. Not even she can make contrived meetings with her former pimp or the theme-park poverty feel authentic. Streaming on Netflix from 8am on Friday, August 15th
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We thought with The Crown: 'Is anyone going to watch this?'' director Benjamin Caron on risk, realism
It's quite a schlep from Buckingham Palace to the mean streets of working-class Portland, Oregon, but it is one that Midlands-born film-maker Benjamin Caron and actor Vanessa Kirby have undertaken with their new thriller Night Always Comes, adapted from the taut novel by Willy Vlautin. Caron and Kirby met nearly a decade ago when he directed episodes of The Crown, in which she played the young Princess Margaret from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Now Kirby stars as a former sex worker called Lynette, toiling in multiple jobs and living with her disabled brother (Zach Gottsagen) and their wrecked, wayward mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh). They have cobbled together the funds to buy their dilapidated house at a snip, only for Lynette's mother to recklessly blow her half on a new car. Cue one manic night in which Lynette must make back the dough, by fair means or foul, or else be turfed out on to the streets. Caron cites the Safdie brothers' Uncut Gems and Good Time as an influence on his picture's breakneck momentum. But, along with films such as Late Shift, On Falling and the forthcoming Urchin, Night Always Comes surely belongs to a wave of neo-realism that reflects our ongoing cost of living crisis. 'The idea that you can work three jobs and still not be able to afford your own home is a universal modern tragedy,' says the affable 49-year-old director. 'Lynette's story represents millions of people who are just one or two pay-cheques away from collapse. Of course, the film is in the thriller genre but I also wanted to get across the idea that nurses or caregivers or whoever are being priced out of the very cities that they help to keep running.' The situation first struck him during a visit to Los Angeles. 'I remember being genuinely shocked by seeing the housing crisis there. People are like: 'Oh, they must be drug addicts.' It's very easy to throw labels like that around. But they can't all be addicts. People are not just falling into homelessness: they're being pushed.' Wealthy characters in Night Always Comes, such as the client who recoils in disgust when Lynette tells him of her straitened circumstances, are naturally insulated from economic turbulence. This is a film where it's poor versus poor all the way, and kindness is in short supply. 'It's a cliche,' says Caron, 'but desperate people do desperate things. And the film is full of desperate people. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do.' Kirby is in every scene, her vitality and desperation propelling the movie in much the same way as, say, Gena Rowlands in Gloria or Mikey Madison in Anora. As Lynette, she lies and schemes, steals a car, loots a safe, and isn't above taking the nearest blunt instrument to anyone who crosses her. 'Being back with Vanessa was like reuniting with a dance partner,' says Caron, with a smile. 'It's been a while but you still know the moves.' Actors bring baggage, however. The casting of Kirby – privately educated and so often labelled 'posh' that she has even moaned about it in interviews – as a traumatised, penniless sex worker, appears to plunge the film into the territory of Frankie and Johnny, which starred Michelle Pfeiffer as a dowdy, unremarkable waitress. 'You're absolutely right,' Caron says, 'but, as an actor, you want to avoid being pigeonholed. The more you can jump off the cliff, the wider range of offers you'll get. Vanessa has this unpredictable energy. There's no safety net with her, no filter. She makes these wild decisions in real time, in the middle of everything.' Don't forget, he says, that even The Crown looked risky to begin with. 'There was a moment before it went out where we were all like: 'Is anyone going to watch this?'' Similar jitters surrounded another streaming hit that became one of Caron's springboards into cinema: Andor, the gritty Star Wars spin-off that revived interest in the franchise just as Disney was in the final stages of flogging a dead Wookiee. One outwardly unorthodox choice by Andor's writer and show-runner Tony Gilroy was to put Caron, a self-confessed lapsed Star Wars fan, in charge of several episodes, including the first season's finale. The lack of reverence that Caron brought to George Lucas's universe might have been one of the keys to the show's excellence. 'You can get too drawn into trying to please the fans,' he says. 'That's a dangerous trap.' Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Caron became a safe pair of hands in the television world – he cut his teeth on the likes of Scott & Bailey, Skins and Wallander, and also directed the final episode of Sherlock – but he says making movies was always the endgame. His 2023 debut, Sharper, a deliciously slippery thriller starring Julianne Moore, spent just a week in US cinemas before streaming globally on Apple TV+. As a Netflix production, Night Always Comes will likewise have only the merest brush with the big screen. This can't be what he has been dreaming of all these years. 'Oh Ryan!' he cries, throwing his hands up. 'That's so sad! Don't say that. Look, I remember in the 1980s and 90s, you'd hear about a film in America and it would take six months until it reached the UK. There was this feverish anticipation: fomo, really. And it's true that doesn't exist in the same way. But I'm a romantic. I like to think the world sort of had a stroke during Covid, and everyone retreated into their rooms and drew the curtains. Slowly, they've been coming back, blinking into the daylight. Look at Barbie and Oppenheimer. Those are moments when the audience feels that connection of sitting in a cinema and having a shared experience. For those two hours, you can be sucked into this portal and taken on a journey. Whereas, at home, you're always going to be distracted.' Perhaps the message, then, is: death to Netflix? 'No, I love Netflix,' he says. 'They changed my career: I owe so much to those guys. With The Crown, I was working with the budget of a mid-sized movie, with actors who would normally be in films. And people have bigger screens now; it's not like in the 1980s. No director would say they wouldn't love viewers to sit in the cinema and watch what they've made. But you also want lots of people to see your work. And, hopefully, a few million might watch it.' In Caron's case, it seems, Netflix always comes to the rescue. Night Always Comes is on Netflix from 15 August.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: ‘Night Always Comes,' Whether You Have a Home or Not
Economic insecurity suffuses just about every frame of this intense, downbeat drama about a woman facing a 24-hour deadline to eviction. In 'Night Always Comes,' the soon-to-be-lost home is a run-down split level in a dilapidated neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest where Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) lives with her unstable and spectacularly irresponsible mother, Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her adult brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), who has Down syndrome. Directed by Benjamin Caron, this adaptation of Willy Vlautin's 2021 novel 'The Night Always Comes,' follows Lynette, a bartender with a sideline as a sex worker, in her increasingly desperate and irrational attempts to raise $25,000. She looks up a rich client, played by Randall Park, who laughs in her face when she mentions the amount she needs. They hit a hotel room anyway. 'Here's the 500, and I'm going to double it as a parting gift,' he says smarmily when the assignation is over. (The cherry on top? When we see him leaving the hotel, telling his wife on the phone, 'Say good night to the kids.') Lynette asks for a loan from Gloria (Julia Fox), a tetchy friend also in the sex business. And she enlists Stephan James while cruising the streets looking for a safecracker. A stash of stolen cocaine also comes into play. It seems that each move Lynette makes not only doesn't get her closer to her goal; it puts her in more immediate proximity to physical danger. Kirby convincingly registers a combination of determination and helplessness throughout. She also demonstrates excellent aim when throwing heavy objects at the heads of menacing miscreants as the movie resolves into a relatively deft combination of message picture and suspense thriller. Night Always ComesRated R for themes, language and drug content. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We thought with The Crown: 'Is anyone going to watch this?'' director Benjamin Caron on risk, realism
It's quite a schlep from Buckingham Palace to the mean streets of working-class Portland, Oregon, but it is one that Midlands-born film-maker Benjamin Caron and actor Vanessa Kirby have undertaken with their new thriller Night Always Comes, adapted from the taut novel by Willy Vlautin. Caron and Kirby met nearly a decade ago when he directed episodes of The Crown, in which she played the young Princess Margaret from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Now Kirby stars as a former sex worker called Lynette, toiling in multiple jobs and living with her disabled brother (Zach Gottsagen) and their wrecked, wayward mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh). They have cobbled together the funds to buy their dilapidated house at a snip, only for Lynette's mother to recklessly blow her half on a new car. Cue one manic night in which Lynette must make back the dough, by fair means or foul, or else be turfed out on to the streets. Caron cites the Safdie brothers' Uncut Gems and Good Time as an influence on his picture's breakneck momentum. But, along with films such as Late Shift, On Falling and the forthcoming Urchin, Night Always Comes surely belongs to a wave of neo-realism that reflects our ongoing cost of living crisis. 'The idea that you can work three jobs and still not be able to afford your own home is a universal modern tragedy,' says the affable 49-year-old director. 'Lynette's story represents millions of people who are just one or two pay-cheques away from collapse. Of course, the film is in the thriller genre but I also wanted to get across the idea that nurses or caregivers or whoever are being priced out of the very cities that they help to keep running.' The situation first struck him during a visit to Los Angeles. 'I remember being genuinely shocked by seeing the housing crisis there. People are like: 'Oh, they must be drug addicts.' It's very easy to throw labels like that around. But they can't all be addicts. People are not just falling into homelessness: they're being pushed.' Wealthy characters in Night Always Comes, such as the client who recoils in disgust when Lynette tells him of her straitened circumstances, are naturally insulated from economic turbulence. This is a film where it's poor versus poor all the way, and kindness is in short supply. 'It's a cliche,' says Caron, 'but desperate people do desperate things. And the film is full of desperate people. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do.' Kirby is in every scene, her vitality and desperation propelling the movie in much the same way as, say, Gena Rowlands in Gloria or Mikey Madison in Anora. As Lynette, she lies and schemes, steals a car, loots a safe, and isn't above taking the nearest blunt instrument to anyone who crosses her. 'Being back with Vanessa was like reuniting with a dance partner,' says Caron, with a smile. 'It's been a while but you still know the moves.' Actors bring baggage, however. The casting of Kirby – privately educated and so often labelled 'posh' that she has even moaned about it in interviews – as a traumatised, penniless sex worker, appears to plunge the film into the territory of Frankie and Johnny, which starred Michelle Pfeiffer as a dowdy, unremarkable waitress. 'You're absolutely right,' Caron says, 'but, as an actor, you want to avoid being pigeonholed. The more you can jump off the cliff, the wider range of offers you'll get. Vanessa has this unpredictable energy. There's no safety net with her, no filter. She makes these wild decisions in real time, in the middle of everything.' Don't forget, he says, that even The Crown looked risky to begin with. 'There was a moment before it went out where we were all like: 'Is anyone going to watch this?'' Similar jitters surrounded another streaming hit that became one of Caron's springboards into cinema: Andor, the gritty Star Wars spin-off that revived interest in the franchise just as Disney was in the final stages of flogging a dead Wookiee. One outwardly unorthodox choice by Andor's writer and show-runner Tony Gilroy was to put Caron, a self-confessed lapsed Star Wars fan, in charge of several episodes, including the first season's finale. The lack of reverence that Caron brought to George Lucas's universe might have been one of the keys to the show's excellence. 'You can get too drawn into trying to please the fans,' he says. 'That's a dangerous trap.' Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Caron became a safe pair of hands in the television world – he cut his teeth on the likes of Scott & Bailey, Skins and Wallander, and also directed the final episode of Sherlock – but he says making movies was always the endgame. His 2023 debut, Sharper, a deliciously slippery thriller starring Julianne Moore, spent just a week in US cinemas before streaming globally on Apple TV+. As a Netflix production, Night Always Comes will likewise have only the merest brush with the big screen. This can't be what he has been dreaming of all these years. 'Oh Ryan!' he cries, throwing his hands up. 'That's so sad! Don't say that. Look, I remember in the 1980s and 90s, you'd hear about a film in America and it would take six months until it reached the UK. There was this feverish anticipation: fomo, really. And it's true that doesn't exist in the same way. But I'm a romantic. I like to think the world sort of had a stroke during Covid, and everyone retreated into their rooms and drew the curtains. Slowly, they've been coming back, blinking into the daylight. Look at Barbie and Oppenheimer. Those are moments when the audience feels that connection of sitting in a cinema and having a shared experience. For those two hours, you can be sucked into this portal and taken on a journey. Whereas, at home, you're always going to be distracted.' Perhaps the message, then, is: death to Netflix? 'No, I love Netflix,' he says. 'They changed my career: I owe so much to those guys. With The Crown, I was working with the budget of a mid-sized movie, with actors who would normally be in films. And people have bigger screens now; it's not like in the 1980s. No director would say they wouldn't love viewers to sit in the cinema and watch what they've made. But you also want lots of people to see your work. And, hopefully, a few million might watch it.' In Caron's case, it seems, Netflix always comes to the rescue. Night Always Comes is on Netflix from 15 August.
