by A. Freedman, Contributor

SR. (dir. Chris Smith)

SR. is a fly on the wall documentary about Robert Downey Sr., father of Jr., as he contends with his life and legacy in his last few years before his passing in 2021. Made by Chris Smith (American Movie), it is anything but a conventional doc. An extraordinarily eccentric and boundary pushing director in his own day, could a doc about Robert Downey Sr. be anything but?

Though it is directed by Chris Smith, SR. feels primarily like a collaborative effort between father and son. A film crew captures parts of Sr. and Jr.'s everyday lives, but Sr. wants to make his own version too. It recalls Dick Johnson Is Dead — a story about using art to help process the end of life.

What drew me to the film was the chance to peer inside the life of Hollywood's highest paid actor, and one of its most historically notorious near-tragedies. How does a man with such a murky past contend with his ailing father, who must have had something to do with it? I loved the complex way that Jr. navigates the man his father was and the man he wasn't with compassion for his father's own life struggles. It seems pretty clear that Jr. has already done a lot of the deep work he's needed to do in order to be at peace with himself. All that's left to do is make something special with his dear father, taking advantage of the time that they have left.

Causeway (dir. Lila Neugebauer)

Much of the narrative around Causeway is about Jennifer Lawrence's return to form. Once again we get to spend time with the Jennifer Lawrence that wowed audiences in 2010's Winter's Bone. Lawrence never gives big performances as much as she gives perfectly observed performances — of whatever the film requires of her. After years of seeing her occupied by franchises and awards season films from big name directors, it's something of a miracle to see her back in this place.

Causeway is the debut feature from Lila Neugebauer, a seasoned Broadway veteran. Her gift with actors is made clear with Lawrence and her co-star, Bryan Tyree Henry. Lawrence plays a veteran facing a long road of recovery from a Traumatic Brain Injury, and Henry is the car mechanic whose shop she pulls into when her car breaks down. Each of them has a past, and neither of them wants to totally face up to where they're at in life. Causeway is 90 minutes, and it's not much more than watching these two strangers form an unlikely friendship.

I was reminded of The Station Agent, a formative film for me. That was also a quiet independent film about lonely people with pasts trying to do things differently. Causeway occasionally undoes itself through self applied pressure. The film never needs to go big, but perhaps the filmmakers felt that some conflict was essential for moving the story along. We get some backstory when perhaps we don't need any. So while Causeway has its flaws, it is still a nice reminder of how far two great actors can take a script that needed a few more edits.

A Woman On The Outside (dir. Lisa Riordan Seville & Zara Katz)

As A Woman On The Outside begins, Kristal Bush is getting in a van at the crack of dawn to drive Philadelphia women hundreds of miles to see their incarcerated husbands. Kristal is always in motion, never still — always with her eyes on the road or her face in her phone. You might think she is Superwoman, running a van business (Bridging The Gaps is the name) while raising her nephew and dealing with multiple family members who themselves are incarcerated. What A Woman On The Outside does best is show that, while a person who has done extraordinary things, Kristal is still an ordinary person with ordinary needs.

This is a film that knows it has a great story and a great set of narrators to tell it. What the filmmakers do so well is let the story speak for itself. Eschewing talking heads, factoids or any real agenda of any kind, it is just a tenderly observed portrait of humans suffering under the weight of oppressive systems. It is their resilience and love for one another that keeps them afloat.

I first heard about Kristal when my then girlfriend/now wife shadowed her for a story in 2018 . Seeing this documentary and the Q&A that followed was revelatory. Kristal might be heroic but she is not Superwoman. A Woman On The Outside bravely captures the feeling of intense burnout without taking away from the importance of the work, a burnout she was in the midst of in 2018. In the beginning of the film, Kristal is attempting to find peace through always pushing beyond her limits. As the film reaches its conclusion, we start to see Kristal finding her peace by honoring where those limits are, and maybe learning how to receive some help.