{"id":87717,"date":"2026-01-15T18:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T18:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/87717\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T18:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T18:00:13","slug":"the-mastermind-is-a-unique-look-at-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/87717\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mastermind Is a Unique Look at America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                    \t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eriereader.com\/image\/scale\/auto\/auto\/articles\/490617_film-the-mastermind.jpg\" class=\"lightbox_img\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/490617_film-the-mastermind.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mubi<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">4\/5 stars<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I always dread the deadline for my year-end top five because I know I&#8217;ll never get to see every film I plan to watch before it arrives. This was doubly true in 2025 when I missed the newest film by my favorite working filmmaker. Although the deadline has passed, I was finally able to see Kelly Reichardt&#8217;s The Mastermind, and while it didn&#8217;t hit me as hard as her previous two films (Showing Up and First Cow), it still kept me hooked thanks to her unique view of the American outsider.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">Set in Massachusetts in 1970, the film follows James Mooney (Josh O&#8217;Connor), an unemployed carpenter who is secretly hatching a daring heist: he and his accomplices plan to steal four paintings from a local art museum. His seemingly &#8220;master&#8221; plan falls apart quickly, and now Mooney must keep the stolen paintings hidden from his wife (Alana Haim) and sons and find a way to escape the police, all while social unrest seems to follow him everywhere he goes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">As a heist film, the plot has more narrative propulsion than Reichardt&#8217;s usual fare while still maintaining her minimalist, shaggy dog storytelling. Its quirky side characters, dry humor, and pitch-perfect attention to period accuracy sometimes make it feel like her take on a Coen Brothers film. The heist may seem silly (stealing paintings for no reason other than to do it), but set against the turmoil of Vietnam-era America, Reichardt makes a grand statement. Having the privilege to tune out the unrest of the world does less to protect oneself than to turn one into an aimless loner. Reichardt&#8217;s protagonist embraces solipsism to a fault until the world crashes into him in the film&#8217;s devilishly ironic climax.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The Mastermind is currently available on Mubi. <\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Written and directed by Kelly Reichardt \/\/ Starring Josh O&#8217;Connor, Alana Haim, Hope Davis, John Magaro, Gaby Hoffmann, Jasper Thompson, Sterling Thompson, Eli Gelb, Cole Doman, Javion Allen, Matthew Maher, Rhenzy Feliz, Bill Camp, and Amanda Plummer \/\/ Mubi \/\/ 110 minutes \/\/ Rated R<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mubi 4\/5 stars I always dread the deadline for my year-end top five because I know I&#8217;ll never&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137,14359,1803,43687],"class_list":{"0":"post-87717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-erie","9":"tag-erie-headlines","10":"tag-erie-news","11":"tag-film-review","12":"tag-forest-taylor","13":"tag-the-mastermind"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}