You Can Count on Me

Buy This Item You Can Count on Me by Paramount  Available from Amazon  $8.49  on 9-20-2008     <I>You Can Count On Me</I> starts with a terrible car crash that instantly orphans a little boy and his older sister. At film's end, that boy, now a grown-up nomad and ne'er-do-well, takes off by Greyhound after a brief reunion with his sister, who lives at permanent anchor in their unspoiled hometown. The sibling saga that unreels between wrenching collision and bittersweet separation celebrates the idiosyncratic ways wounded folk like Terry (Mark Ruffalo) and Sammy (Laura Linney) put one foot in front of the other, both energized and hamstrung by the knowledge that nothing is ever certain in the road-movie of life. During his visit, Terry roils Sammy's becalmed existence, mostly by "fathering"--for good and ill--her overprotected 8-year-old (Rory Culkin), sneaking him out to play empowering bar pool, later introducing him to the weaselly dad he's fantasized into a superhero. Sammy starts a torrid affair with her married boss at the bank (Matthew Broderick gives delicious bureaucratic smarm), and considers marrying her sometime suitor (Jon Tenney), sweetly dull yet dependable. The narrative peaks here are human-sized, elevated by gentle humor and clear-eyed faith in the existential importance of these intersecting small-town lives. Linney is simply superb as Sammy, wild girl gone good, involuntarily "mothering" every man in her life. An authentic original, newcomer Ruffalo gives his modern-day Huck Finn a drawling, James Dean delivery tuned somewhere between a screwup's whine and the twang of pothead wisdom. (Hard to think of another recent film that so deftly nails down the rich dynamics of everyday conversation--the starts and stops, circumlocutions, clichés, sudden veers into revelation and eloquence.) This is that rarity, an action movie of the heart: no explosions or epiphanies, yet everything evolves through the catalysts of character and experience. <I>--Kathleen Murphy</I> Reader Reviews An amazing gem of a film. "You Can Count On Me" is an incredible story about loss, familial love, coping with one's own failings, and being alone. The acting is so well done, I was drawn into and held in the story. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo embody their characters so completely, the actors melt away. Matthew Broderick and Jon Tenney play equally engrosing support roles. The film overall is artful and well-conceived. The soundtrack complements the sometimes whistful, sometimes brutally honest, sometimes playful tone of the whole film. The cinematography Probably one of the most striking elements of Lonergan's movie is how true-to-life the stories maintain. The characters remind us of our own flaws: our inconsistencies (despite our efforts), our floundering attempts to cope with our lot and our failings, wrestling with somehow finding ourselves alone. The remind us of our own desires: to simply be happy, to love and be loved. And in the end, follow our truest sense of direction in life. One of the best movies I've ever seen. THE best film I've ever seen about coping with being in an modern American family.

You Can Count on Me Available from Amazon Price: $8.49 Updated on 9-20-2008.

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