Harry Dean Stanton’s last major movie role is a star-making one, cementing the late character actor’s on-screen legacy with a spry meditation on death and ageing. Eighty-nine years old at the time of filming, Stanton plays Lucky, a chain-smoking philosopher and curmudgeonly second world war veteran with an endearingly consistent daily routine. He wakes up and makes the rounds: diner, grocery store and gameshows on the sofa, capping the day off with a “bloody maria” in Elaine’s, the desert town’s local bar. “Realism is accepting the situation as it is, and acting accordingly,” he muses.

Directed by the actor John Carroll Lynch, the film is a goldmine of small but perfectly formed parts. Best of all is Howard, played by David Lynch (who directed Stanton in four films, five if you include his role as caravan car-park crooner Carl Rodd in Twin Peaks: The Return). A suited and booted regular at Elaine’s, Howard is bereft about his disappeared tortoise President Roosevelt, a slow, wandering thing whose plodding yet purposeful journey isn’t all that dissimilar to Lucky’s.