The Peanut Butter Falcon

Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz's touching road movie The Peanut Butter Falcon stars Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson, imperfect strangers helping an abandoned man with Down Syndrome (Zack Gottsagen) find family while searching for his hero, a minor wrestler in the North Carolina Tidewater. Nilson and Schwartz, who also wrote the screenplay, keep the tone light throughout but do not dull the picture's messages about acceptance and affirmation. An especially wonderful set piece midway through involves a blind backwater preacher and baptizer offering the travelers the chance to wash away the past and start new, a clear foreshadowing of the film's second act.