Daddy Longlegs

Some dads are real characters, which doesn't mean they don't try to be good fathers—just that they may struggle more. In Josh and Bennie Safdie's Daddy Longlegs, Ronald Bronstein perfectly portrays Lenny, a jittery, loud-mouthed perpetual-motion machine, filled with crippling insecurity and unbridled bravado—a man funny from a distance but less so close up. A film projectionist by trade, Lenny is a divorced New Yorker with two boys, Sage and Frey (Sage and Frey Ranaldo)—grudgingly handed over to him for two weeks by his ex-wife (Leah Singer). Lenny loves his kids—and vice versa—so what could go wrong? Well, Lenny spends the night with a stranger and then brings Sage and Frey along with the woman on a funny, surprising, and rather lovely upstate adventure in which disaster seems to lurk around every corner. Although it features humorous moments, Daddy Longlegs is not a domestic comedy; in fact, a sense of unease permeates the proceedings, building to a feeling of nightmarish dread before the film ends in a flourish of transcendent surrealism. The opposite of escapist entertainment—even if it never fails to entertain (and viewers with a similarly eccentric parent might even find it comforting)—this is highly recommended. (K. Fennessy)