Paris, Texas

(Sample review — replace me.)

Travis walks out of the desert in a red baseball cap and doesn’t speak for half an hour, and somehow that’s the most confident opening I’ve seen in a theater this year. The movie knows exactly where it’s going — a one-way mirror in a Houston peep show, the longest phone call in American film — and it refuses to hurry there.

I went in knowing the reputation and still wasn’t ready for how gentle it is. Harry Dean Stanton plays a man assembling himself from parts: first walking, then drinking from a hose, then brushing his kid’s hair while watching a Super 8 reel of a life he burned down. By the time he finally talks, into a telephone, facing away, the movie has earned a monologue most films would never dare attempt.

The Cinematheque crowd sat through the entire credits. Nobody wanted to be the first one to stand up and turn it back into a Tuesday.