Tatiana and I just saw Encounter with Riz Ahmed — a reasonably effective action melodrama / road movie about an unstable dad (Ahmed) kidnapping his kids, getting into gunfights and car thievery — everything is violent and anxious except for the very end.

No one’s idea of a “Telluride flick” — a lot of it feels rote, familiar…the old PTSD blues. (With insects.). I didn’t care for the over-reliance on extreme close-ups and the high-impact sound editing.

The Wikipedia page calls Encounter a “British sci-fi thriller” — it’s not sci-fi, trust me. Directed by Michael Pearce from a screenplay by Pearce and Joe Barton. It costars Octavia Spencer, Janina Gavankar, Rory Cochrane and Lucian–River Chauhan.

The actor who portrays Ahmed’s older son is especially good.

At 6:30 pm we’ll be catching Joe Wright‘s Cyrano + a Peter Dinklage tribute, and then Sean Baker‘s Red Rabbit Rooster Rocket at 9:30 pm.