Curtis Hanson
Wonder Boys

When life becomes like a point where too many lines intersect, and only geometry, which is not inherent to human nature, tells us that it won't all blow up.
Grady is (was) a Wonderboy, a child prodigy, one of those who write the great American novel (like Sean Connery in "Finding Forrester," or the writer in "Field of Dreams," or more prosaically Salinger) and then get stuck in a story that is a monster only in its size (2000 pages and more); he has a wife, who has left him, a lover, pregnant, a tenant, who as a good Lolita seduces him, an editor on the brink and therefore intrusive, although he doesn't seem to care much lost as he is among impromptu parties and trans and then...

Then Neil Young, with his Old Man, comes to tell us that a boy, James Leer, is very much like Grady was, a talented writer, a genius hated and mistreated by his peers as well as a suicide fanatic, remembering the most famous in alphabetical order.
Too much, too much on his plate, it's time for Grady to change, or to explode, continue smoking weed until he crashes into a wall, seized by what he calls episodes; and so off he goes, towards a double cross-path road movie for half the film with an "all-in-one-night," where the pieces of a shattered life will find their place magically, but not too much.

What genre is the film? Boh: Hanson does not focus everything on the generational clash and the coming-of-age novel, sometimes the film takes on almost noir hues to then turn into "black comedy," in summary it falls into the "great film" category, with which to spend two hours of refined entertainment, thoughtful, well-written and acted (Douglas in the role of his career, a first-rate McDormand, kudos to casting for choosing Mrs. Cruise, Maguire and Downey Jr. in roles that fit them like a glove), with a soundtrack in which many will revel, among Young, Cohen, and Dylan.

Oh, by the way, the guy from Duluth wrote a song specifically for this film, "Things Have Changed," and it's not bad at all...