The What Did I Do Last Night trope as used in popular culture. A character wakes up in a strange locationsituationcostume, unsure of how they got there. Waking Ned titled Waking Ned Devine in North America is a 1998 comedy film by English writer and director Kirk Jones. It stars Ian Bannen, David Kelly, and Fionnula. Lucky Review Harry Dean Stanton Gives A Performance For The Ages. A wise and wistful love letter from one remarkable character actor to another, John Carroll Lynchs Lucky returns 9. Harry Dean Stanton to the dusty desert environs he shuffled through in 1. Paris, Texas, and offers the rawboned legend one of the best roles hes had since. Waking-Ned-Devine-1998-90s-films-26920802-500-375.jpg' alt='Waking Ned Full Movie' title='Waking Ned Full Movie' />Beginning as a broad comedy before blossoming into a wry meditation on death and all the things we leave behind a transition that kicks into gear when one of Stantons old friends shows up and steals the show, Lynchs directorial debut is a wisp of a movie, blowing across the screen like a tumbleweed, but its also the rare portrait of mortality thats both fun and full of life. Co written by actors Drago Sumonja and Logan Sparks who worked as Stantons assistant on Big Love, Lucky introduces us to its curmudgeonly title character with the kind of clarity that makes it feel as though weve known him for the better part of a century. In some ways, Lucky is true to his name in others, less so. On the positive side, it seems like death wants nothing to do with him. On the negative, it doesnt seem like anybody else does, either. Waking up alone in the one bedroom apartment where hes presumably lived for the last few decades, Lucky starts every morning with an exercise routine that would cause men half his age to groan with complaints. Entire_Site/201425/rs_1024x759-140305114850-1024.WAKING-NED-DEVINE.LS.34514.jpg' alt='Waking Ned Full Movie' title='Waking Ned Full Movie' />After that, he lights into his first cigarette of the day hell light his way through three packs by the time he turns in for the night. Between smokes, he ambles through his arid town which looks like an AARP catalogue come to life before stopping off for some crotchety banter with the staff at the local diner and returning home to watch his gameshows. He doesnt seem like a bad man, just a lonely old coot with a very dirty mouth and a low tolerance for bullshit. When a life insurance agent Ron Livingston tries to strike up a conversation with him, Lucky snaps back Theres only one thing worse than awkward silence small talk. READ MORE The 2. Indie. Wire SXSW Bible Every Review, Interview, And News Story From The Fest. If this all feels like a set up for some genteel geriatric shenanigans along the lines of Last Vegas or Waking Ned Devine, and the sudden fall that Lucky suffers seems to portend the obnoxious intrusion of an actual plot, Lynch offers up an early indication that this isnt going to be that kind of movie. David Lynch, that is, who plays a distraught bar regular who wont be happy until hes reunited with his missing pet tortoise, President Roosevelt There are some things in this life that are bigger than all of us, he bellows, and a tortoise is one of them. Its always a treat to see the silver streaked transcendentalist in front of the camera, but he isnt just here for shock value his presence alone is enough to shift this story from one plane of existence to another, to reorient our focus away from Luckys ever shrinking future and refocus it instead towards his ever expanding present. Paris, TexasJohn Carroll Lynch, whos worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese to Albert Brooks but will likely always be remembered for looking at Mark Ruffalo and deadpanning I am not the Zodiac. And if I were, I certainly wouldnt tell you, doesnt explicitly borrow from any of his directors, though its clear from his careful precision that he learned a little something from all of them. But theres no denying that Stanton is the movies rosetta stone, the singular wellspring for all of its laconic energy. His haggardly defiant spirit is so total and complete that everything in the film comes to feel like an expression of his well earned weariness from the tortoise that inches across the screen in the opening shot President Roosevelt to the urgent strain of Johnny Cash singing I See a Darkness, its all subsumed into Stantons shadow. Lynch steers Lucky towards enlightenment with a gentle touch, favoring subliminal moments of abstract personal growth over obvious lightbulb epiphanies even by the end of this unhurried film, its hard to say exactly what our hangdog hero has learned. After all, its hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Watch Flipped Online. A lot of these scenes could benefit from being a little more aggressively shaped and bent towards a shared purpose, even if Stanton always was always a little rough around the edges. But observing him as he hijacks a Mexican kids birthday party with an impromptu a cappella rendition of Vicente Fernndezs Volver Volver, or listens to a retired marine as he monologues about a woman he remembers from World War II, its clear that hes silently thunderstruck by how the sheer width of our world forces people to experience it together. Its a wonderful performance, artfully rearranged from the remnants of a lifetime of wonderful performances. So much of Stantons legend can be seen in these long close ups, in the way he kicks a can down the street like it wronged him, in the way that Lynch slowly ekes a smile out of the actors tired jowls. But its the echoes of Paris, Texas that reverberate the loudest, in part because Lucky is a lot like catching up with Travis Henderson a few decades down the road. Im not afraid of heights, he said in Wim Wenders classic, Im afraid of fallin. Lucky has a hard time admitting it, but hes afraid, too. Afraid that being alone might be a lot easier than dying alone afraid that knowing nothing lasts might not be a good reason to act like nothing matters. But nothing can come of nothing, and its a small pleasure to watch him recognize what something might look like. I always thought that the one thing we could agree on is what what we were looking at, Lucky mutters to someone, but thats bullshit because what I see isnt what you see. Acting is all about reconciling those two fields of vision, of forcing them to overlap, and few people have ever done it better than Harry Dean Staton, even if took some of his characters nearly 1. If this is really his last role, we couldnt ask for a more perfect view of him walking off into the sunset. Grade BLucky premiered in the Visions section of SXSW 2. It is currently seeking U. S. distribution. Get the latest Box Office news Sign up for our Box Office newsletter here.