Before directing Sandler to a great performance, the Safdies did the same for Robert Pattinson

Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: You don’t have to go to the theater to get your Robert Pattinson fix. We’re looking back on some of the best performances from the one-time vampire, future caped crusader.
Good Time (2017)
Filmmaking brothers Josh and Benny Safdie first made their name on low-budget movies without name actors, even crafting their addiction drama Heaven Knows What around the autobiographical details of non-actor Arielle Holmes. But it turns out that they may be even more skilled at helping established performers recontextualize themselves in career-redefining work. They famously assisted Adam Sandler to one of his best performances in last year’s Uncut Gems; two years earlier, they gave Robert Pattinson a showcase in the scuzzy caper Good Time.
Pattinson’s persona may not be as familiar or long-running as the Sandman’s, but Good Time still nods to it, intentionally or not. The actor became famous, of course, as Edward Cullen, the vampiric stalker-hero of the Twilight series, enrapturing teenage girls and older fans alike. In Good Time, his character uses a more metaphorical kind of bloodsucking charisma to seduce an actual teenage girl (Taliah Lennice Webster) and manipulate a decades-older paramour (Jennifer Jason Leigh). For anyone familiar with the Twilight fandom, this element plays like a discomfiting parody of Pattinson’s star power, with Edward’s sparkly brooding stripped away.
Pattinson’s Connie isn’t really after sex, though. He’s just willing to use any tool in his limited arsenal to distract, divert, and con his way into a reunion with his mentally disabled brother Nick (Benny Safdie). Nick has landed in New York’s Rikers Island after a botched bank robbery, planned by Connie as a desperate means of getting the brothers some seed money to set themselves up somewhere away from the city. Connie’s intentions are good but his methods are pure Safie-style chaos; Pattinson enters the movie by bursting into Nick’s counseling session with a psychiatrist (Peter Verby) who seems to want only to help. Connie berates the doctor for making Nick cry, then ushers his beloved brother straight into the hell of hold-ups, incarceration, the legal system, and vicious prison beatings.