‘Practice Goals’ Overview: Joel Edgerton Anchors a Haunting and Poetic Frontier Story

Acquired by Netflix out of this 12 months’s Sundance Movie Competition, Practice Goals is the movie adaptation of the beloved Denis Johnson novella of the identical identify that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012. Produced by Black Bear & Kamala Movies, the movie is the newest collaboration for author/director Clint Bentley (Jockey) and co-writer Greg Kwedar, who obtained a Finest Tailored Screenplay nomination finally 12 months’s Oscars for his or her work on the A24 jail drama Sing Sing.

Set within the Idaho panhandle through the flip of the twentieth century, the story follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a logger & railroad employee by commerce, who lives a quiet lifetime of isolation, touring to massive timber jobs everywhere in the Pacific Northwest.

In his early 30s, he meets and marries Gladys (Rogue One’s Felicity Jones), an unabashed, easy, but pleasant lady who relishes in Robert’s quiet attraction. They’ve a toddler collectively, however he’s typically pulled away on months-long initiatives many miles away a number of occasions a 12 months, sacrificing time together with his household and pulling him down into loneliness as soon as extra. Even when he tries to attach with employees on the job, lots of them fall sufferer to the circumstances of their harmful job or their life and occasions catching up with them. Feeling cursed as life takes away the issues he holds expensive one after the other over his many a long time, Robert is pressured to seek out the wonder in what stays, survive his guilt, and interact with a quickly altering world barreling in direction of industrialization.

Alongside Edgerton & Jones, the forged additionally contains: William H. Macy, Kerry Condon, Paul Schneider, Clifton Collins Jr., & Will Patton because the narrator.

Just lately nominated for Finest Characteristic Movie & Finest Tailored Screenplay by the Gotham Awards, Practice Goals aspires to be a significant participant for Netflix’s awards plans this upcoming season, and for good motive.

The movie is a fantastically haunting ode to the top of frontier life by way of the eyes of a person fighting the isolation, loneliness, & regret that the totality of his life’s choices and speedy societal industrialization have rendered him.

In an ideal casting alternative as Robert, Joel Edgerton sells all the things on his sullen, expressive, feature-laden face; the longing, the disappointment, the listlessness, & the self-condemnation of a survivor withering in a brand new daybreak. A person who comes alive within the presence of his newly fashioned household solely to go away them again and again to offer for his or her livelihood, leaving for a harmful job that doesn’t fulfill him or give him the bonds or goal he desperately seeks when he’s on his personal. Was all that point away price it for anybody concerned? Was destroying nature corrupting his soul? Was he cursed for permitting his fellow employees to conduct racist acts of violence? The movie is a end result of Robert’s endurance of the punishing change in society as he by no means fairly thrives for the development of others.

The pacing and exquisite cinematography make each little bit of the 100-minute runtime depend. Breathtaking views of the expansive forestry of the Pacific Northwest seize the wonder in addition to the remoteness & solitude. It’s a movie that thrives on environment & contemplation as a lot as its actual life fears and actions. The movie strikes in an analogous solution to numerous the work of Terrence Malick or the extra remoted scenes of Michael Sarnoski’s Pig; awash in our connections to nature however pressured there by grief.

The story additionally options such optimistic feminine characters in a time interval that didn’t worth them as a lot as they need to. Felicity Jones as Robert’s spouse Gladys & Kerry Condon (F1, The Banshees of Inisherin) as the man grief stricken widow Claire are given house to point out their talent, imaginative and prescient, & ambition with out giving in to societal stress, despair, or a necessity for cover.

Practice Goals is one in every of Netflix’s strongest movies of 2025. With an excellent begin on the Gothams and a movie that continues to impress at movie festivals all over the world, Practice Goals might make their goals come true with a visit to the Oscars stage.

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Watch Practice Goals If You Like

• Days of Heaven
• Boyhood
• Pig
• Jockey
• Sing Sing

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MVP of Practice Goals

Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier

For over 20 years, Aussie import Edgerton has impressed worldwide audiences together with his unbelievable vary, versatility, & emotionality. He will be tender as a lot as he will be explosive. He has a ache behind his eyes that makes him good as the center & soul of your movie and Practice Goals isn’t any completely different.

With Robert Grainier, Edgerton attracts you in as a gruff but susceptible frontiersman who longs for goal & stability in a punishing interval of American life. To be so quiet but so impactful speaks to how highly effective his presence & options are on the middle of your body. You possibly can’t do a lot better casting than Edgerton for this moody movie that engages on subtlety.

A methodical, haunting, & poetic examination of life, love, & grief on the finish of frontier life into the twentieth century. Edgerton, Jones, & Condon make each scene depend for Oscar-nominated writers Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar.