Train Dreams, Clint Bentley’s impressionistic adaptation of Denis Johnson’s much-loved 2011 novella, takes us on a woodsy trek through an ordinary working man’s life. Strewn with revelatory moments, it’s a sincere and enthralling effort to mine the grit, gravity and mystery of life for nuggets of profundity.

As the low-key saga of everyman Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a logger in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the 20th Century, Train Dreams (released Friday, Nov. 7 in theaters and Nov. 21 on Netflix) invites us to set aside our cynicism about both the movies and the real world. The payoff is a rush of unexpected emotions rarely experienced in movie theaters, and one of the most rewarding films you will see this year.

Train Dreams is less a chronological narrative than a p

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