Wes Bentley is an interesting (and dreamy) guy. Breaking out of nowhere as Ricky, the stoner-cum-video-artist next door in “American Beauty”, Bentley was suddenly a big part of an absolutely huge movie. The resultant pressure led to a 10-year addiction to heroin, a consequently cratering career and a series of rock bottoms, chronicled in Tony Zierra‘s utterly fascinating documentary “My Big Break.” Bentley has been crawling out of hell for a while now, via various dreadful staging posts (“Ghost Rider,” “Jonah Hex,” “Gone”), and last year finally caught a break as Gamesmaker Seneca Crane in “The Hunger Games,” twirling his goatee in Machiavellian style.
2013 will likely be an even better year for Bentley, with a part in the much-hyped “Lovelace” and another in Terrence Malick‘s “Knight of Cups” (though who knows if he’ll end up in the final cut, or if the movie is coming this year, Malick being Malick): but before those two comes “The Time Being,” from first-time director Nenad Cicin-Sain, and also starring everyone’s favourite weird grandpa, Frank Langella, as a recluse who hires Bentley’s character, a painter by trade, to start filming things for him. Strange things. Cue creepiness, angst, and meditations on the meaning of art. A movie about a guy who gets paid to make movies when he wants to be a guy who gets paid to make art? We don’t know much about Nened Cicin-Sain, but we think he probably went to film school.
“The Time Being” is released on VOD July 23, and theatrically on July 26. Check out the trailer below along with a clip from the film.
