Please note: The screening of The Mastermind on Sunday, October 26 at 12:30 pm will be presented with on-screen captions.
“The self-absorbed J.B. Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is an occasional carpenter and former art student in a sleepy Massachusetts town; his wife (Alana Haim) is the family’s dependable parent and breadwinner. In a stroke of hubris, he decides to recruit a pair of unreliable partners to rob the local museum. But he doesn’t plan for after the heist—and it’s the aftermath of the bungled scheme that’s the focus of Reichardt’s quietly subversive, often incisively funny and masterfully observed film. O’Connor is stellar as the inscrutable Mooney, cinema’s most unhurried man-on-the-lam. As he drifts unsteadily west, the country is shaking on its tilt: in the background, students galvanize in anti-war protests and the streets buzz with civil unrest. The tumult of the ‘70s permeates the airwaves and seeps through Reichardt’s careful compositions, and Rob Mazurek’s percussive jazzy score perfectly modulates the film’s darkly comic beats and richly textured moods.” –Mara Fortes, Telluride Film Festival
