Ed Saxberger is a onetime poet and a longtime postal worker, and as he tries to write a poem for the first time in decades, he can’t get past a single phrase: “seasons collide.” Those two words encapsulate the strange storm of awakening and frustration in which Ed finds himself in Late Fame, director Kent Jones’ quiet and often searingly droll feature set in Manhattan’s West Village and SoHo. For the 60-something Ed, a coulda-been who’s unexpectedly “rediscovered,” and who’s played to conflicted perfection by Willem Dafoe, the season of his youth is crashing against his orderly life. It’s unsettling for him, but also invigorating. His downtown haunts teem anew with the ghosts of a scrappier time, when the neighborhood wasn’t filled with designer boutiques and struggling writers and painters could afford to live there. In a prolific career filled with complex and striking characters, the role of Ed Saxberger is a subdued but particularly rich one for Dafoe, himself a veteran of the downtown arts scene.-The Hollywood Reporter