David Gordon Green’s latest, Joe, debuted to generally positive reviews at TIFF and Venice early last fall, with critics hailing it as another return-to-form for the director, along a similar path as Prince Avalanche. In the film, Nicolas Cage plays the titular, bearded logger, who harbors oceans of pent-up rage just below the surface. (“I know what keeps me alive is restraint,” he says.) The precociously brooding Tye Sheridan (The Tree Of Life, Mud) plays Gary Jones, a young kid looking for a job to support his abusive relatives. It all recalls the tone of Green’s films a decade ago—most closely resembling Undertow, another suspenseful and violent drama set in the rural South. For now, it appears that Green’s major-studio comedy phase—which began brightly with Pineapple Express, but quickly devolved into Your Highness and The Sitter—has given way to a resurgence of narrower, darker projects. Joe has a U.S, distributor, but as of yet no official release date has been set.
