Guess I'll set a course and row

Taking Woodstock

Crit

OK, first things first: can somebody tell me who plays the male half of the couple in the hippie van who give Elliot acid? It's an extremely familiar face, which I was that close to figuring out, but before I got there, I tripped and fell, as it were. Young, callow boy--I'm thinking he played a really engaging but devious and maybe ultimately evil character in something, but what? Credits are no help, but I think it must be "Hippie Guy," credited via the obvious pseudonym Spadaque Volcimus, whose only other credit is in the upcoming Misunderstood--oh, unless that's the guy trying to score tickets early. Anyway, can anyone help? Oh! Duh! Was looking too far down in the credits: Paul Dano, of course! (See how honest I am? I'm leaving in my dumb frustration even having overcome it!)

Now to the "did I like it?" part that I've been scolded recently for omitting: yeah, but not as much as I expect to like an Ang Lee flick. He seems a little unsure where he wants to take the pic, which is at heart a coming-out and coming-loose-from-repressive-family story. I don't have any problem with not hearing more of the festival's music; what I object to is that the festival essentially functions as a distraction from Elliot's: the familiar images (and the familiar camera tricks from Woodstock, which when in hell is Netflix gonna send it to me?) and so many winks (all the talk about tickets to the famously accidentally free event, Max Yasgur's insistence that his fields be cleaned up afterward ["Of course!"], "It's August! It's not gonna rain!" and so on) welcome us into a certain mindset that we really don't to want to be in if we're supposed to be paying attention to one young man's story.

Still, a good look and fine performances by everyone, particularly Demetri Martin as Elliot, Henry Goodman as his beleaguered father, and Liev Schreiber as Vilma, just Vilma.

Trailer

• Der Baader Meinhof Komplex--Not sure why the trailer was a red-band: no naughty words heard, no naughty bits seen. Anyway, I'm in, if it really comes here.