A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.3/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.93/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 95%
Metacritic: 85
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Kenneth Lonergan
Production
Crush Entertainment, Hart-Sharp Entertainment, Cappa Productions, The Shooting Gallery
Cast
Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Jon Tenney, Rory Culkin, J. Smith-Cameron, Josh Lucas, Gaby Hoffmann, Adam LeFevre, Amy Ryan, Michael Countryman, Kenneth Lonergan, Halley Feiffer, Whitney Vance, Peter Kerwin, Betsy Aidem, Lisa Altomare, Nina Garbiras, Richard Hummer, Kim Parker
Curator Review
Verdict
A deeply humane sibling drama with sharp writing, lived-in performances, and a rare balance of humor, grief, and moral messiness. It’s especially rewarding if you like intimate character studies that feel observational rather than engineered for tears.
Best for
viewers who love adult sibling dynamics
fans of naturalistic indie dramas
people drawn to emotionally honest, performance-driven films
audiences who appreciate small-town realism and moral ambiguity
Skip if
you want a plot-heavy movie with big twists
you prefer emotionally tidy or uplifting dramas
you dislike low-key, conversational storytelling
you need constant momentum or high-stakes external conflict
Overview
Kenneth Lonergan’s debut feature is one of the great American character dramas of its era, built on behavior, silence, and the awkward obligations of family. It understands that love between siblings can be protective, resentful, funny, and exhausting all at once, and it never simplifies any of those feelings into a neat lesson.
Worth noting
Laura Linney gives the film its steady center, while Mark Ruffalo brings a wounded, unpredictable tenderness that makes every scene with him feel alive. The movie’s power comes from how ordinary moments accumulate into something devastating: a conversation on a porch, a church exchange, a look that lands too late.
Bottom line
What lingers most is the film’s refusal to overstate itself. It finds comedy in embarrassment, pain in routine, and grace in people who are trying, imperfectly, to show up for one another. That restraint is exactly why it hits so hard.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Josh Lewis (4★) · 732 likes
Lonergan's always been especially good at finding emotional truth/clarity in the smallest of moments but there's a brief moment here where Ruffalo's character Terry, finally returning home after years of estrangement from his hometown, observes the local cemetery (where his parents are buried) just before the local town sign on his bus ride in that so simplistically yet vividly captures the fear of dying in a small town (also see: insignificance, laced with pity & regret) that I had to pause right there and take a break... Too real.
Brendan Michaels · 469 likes
This film looks and sounds like a stereotypical, sappy film that will try and pull your heartstrings. But only one man can make this film a heartfelt, genuine piece of cinema. That man is Kenneth Lonergan. Kenny is a filmmaker that tells the truth. He knows this life, he knows these people, he knows how to be genuine with his films. He makes films to tell the stories of people with baggage. Real people. People you would meet in real life. Ordinary people.
KYK (4★) · 392 likes
you can count on kenneth lonergan to never be too heavy-handed with emotionally weighty material. even at the end i was like "ok here we go, someone is about to say 'you can count on me'" and no one does lol. i'm so moved by everyone's performances (linney/ruffalo/culkin specifically, and culkin more than i expected), but i especially cannot stop thinking about the scene where mark ruffalo's face suddenly crumples into a sob. mine did too.
eely (4★) · 362 likes
there is a scene where laura linney and mark ruffalo smoke a joint on their porch in the middle of the night and this moth flies into the shot and lingers around mark for a second and then gingerly rests itself on his hand and he looks down like ‘hey lil moth’ and then the moth flies away and I would be lying to you if I said it didn’t make me irrationally emotional
reibureibu · 318 likes
Irreconcilability of split paths but damn if the pain of it isn't worth trying anyways. The complexities of the sibling relationship deepen when they're all that they have and form a tight forever-ness even when they depart. Living together or living cross-country, having accord or having a feud, there's always a sense that they'll be there for each other when it really matters regardless of history. That's family. Nobody yells at my sibling but me.
2003 · Comedy, Drama · 1h 21m · PG-13 · Curator 6.0/10 (51K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A compact domestic drama that turns family tension into something funny, painful, and unexpectedly tender.