The Tender Bar

JR Moehringer grows up on Long Island without his father, a New York radio DJ who left the family when JR was small. The boy listens for that voice on the airwaves, and when the man himself proves a disappointment, JR looks for father figures among the regulars at a neighborhood bar where his uncle Charlie tends the taps. JR's mother works to give her son chances she never had and to move them out of the run-down house of her own stubborn father, while JR stumbles through school, romance and the beginnings of a writing career with one foot still planted in Charlie's bar. The film is based on the memoir of the same name.

George Clooney directed the adaptation from a screenplay by William Monahan, and produced it with Ted Hope and Grant Heslov. It was the eighth film Clooney had directed, arriving between The Midnight Sky and The Boys in the Boat. Ben Affleck plays Uncle Charlie, with Tye Sheridan as the older JR and Daniel Ranieri as the younger, alongside Lily Rabe as Dorothy, Christopher Lloyd as Grandpa Maguire and Max Martini as the Voice. The credited cast runs to 38.

Amazon Studios backed the film, which runs 104 minutes. On IMDb it holds 6.7 from roughly 37,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.6 from about 631 votes, so audiences rate it moderately. A critics' score of 5.6 from 185 reviews places it slightly below those audience ratings.