Aisling Walsh’s Maudie features two of 2017’s best performances by two of the most woefully unheralded performers of their generations (with weirdly-similar last names): Ethan Hawke and Sally Hawkins.

Ethan Hawke is willing to try any sort of role (in front of and behind the camera) just for the experience of trying. In that way, he’s like a better version of James Franco.

And Sally Hawkins doesn’t work nearly enough for her talent. Random theatre-nerd question: could she still play Laura in The Glass Menagerie?

In Maudie, their work shines through the tad-too Oscar-baity material that surrounds-without-suffocating them.