I managed to catch it at a beautiful old theatre in Allentown PA. Good food and music, too.
This film was intense, with good performances and it really made you think about why the characters did what they did. I didn’t like them, but I understood and empathized with them, which I haven’t felt for movie characters in a very long time. Amy Adams was amazing.
I loved the movie until the very end, then walked out hating it with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns, but Amy Adams should get an Academy Awards nomination for her role. I can’t imagine a more worthy Best Supporting Actress.
I read the reviews but nothing hinted (at all) at some huge twist or reveal in the end. Is there some huge twist in the film’s ending that made your opinion change so abruptly?
Not a twist or reveal, just a massive betrayal of characters. People you thought you’d come to know behaving in a completely out-of-character way just to heap more pain and suffering on a character that you had come to love and who had already had more than her share of pain and suffering.
I will never forgive the screenwriter for it. Hateful, hateful creature. I wanted to punch somebody. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw something at the screen. My blood is boiliing just thinking about it.
See, made you think, didn’t it?
I had no problem with the ending. As sad as some of the turns-of-events are for the family, you know that Ashley (the phenomenal Amy Adams) is more the type who would pull through than some of the other, more fragile characters.
But it’s not just Adams–the always reliable Scott Wilson was quite touching, Benjamin McKenzie shows he’s more than an O.C. glamourboy, Alessandro Nivola balances a very complex (and in some ways, contradictory) character deftly, and it’s nice to see Embeth Davidtz again (I know she’s kept busy, but the last real impression she made was in Schindler’s List).
The hymn, the meerkat/VCR episode, the outsider art–all memorable moments that ring true.