Such a frustrating disappointment

Best movie ever!

The acting in this movie is really good.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A believable, albeit tongue in cheek look at how a busy and somewhat estranged brother and sister have to come together to interface with the cold hard reality of their father's sudden decline. Some exquisite little bits of absurdity tucked in its pockets, which anyone who has been through such an experience will appreciate the hell out of. When you're in such a situation, everything is turned upside down and inside out. It's like emotional rape, and finding the humour in it is sweet relief indeed. The film plays with how this kind of situation plays out in the real world, with people tied up in jobs and in different places. The conflict of necessary pragmatism VS sentimentality. What care and compassion the person needs offset against how good a parent they were. The cold perfunctory chain of profiteers waiting to take their cut every step of the way. A shockingly dehumanising and disrespectful process that criminalises children and humiliates parents. It's wrong on so many levels and when you come to have to deal with it you can't help but be disturbed by it. It's the great shame of the western world, how we treat our elderly in deference to capitalist demands. So I think it's good that people are making films about this subject. It's the best thing I've seen Laura Linney in. Her character is such a delicious bag of clumsy contrasts. Sometimes strong and independent, other times regressing(as Hoffman's character puts it at one point) into the little sister/daughter. But always lovable and hilarious. Some of the gestures and looks from her and Hoffman throughout this are priceless. Superbly acted and directed and written. I wish these people made all my movies. Well these kind of movies anyway. I know it's an over-used phrase but I firmly believe this is an under- rated little gem.

Steven Trask wrote the spare musical score and has done a splendid job. Siblings Hoffman and Linney are taking their fading Dad, Bosco, for a ride through the countryside in wintry New England. Half the time Old Dad doesn't know where he is or what's going on, although the other half of the time he's with it enough to explode with rage. Bosco turns up his musical ear plug and pulls his hood around his ears so he doesn't have to listen to his kids' shouted arguments.Trask's music, mostly a slow piano and rhythm, dawdles along between a loopy childhood tune and something more melancholy. The car passes a country graveyard. Bosco only glances at it, but in those seconds some darker chords well up beneath the simple piano melody. The whole incident takes about fifteen seconds but demonstrates some of the care that went into this above-average production.The script is skillfully done as well. It avoids two traps about old age and death -- one old, one kind of nouveau. The traditional one has everybody sobbing and lacerating themselves with guilt. The new one -- see "Terms of Endearment" -- overcomes this by going in the opposite direction, treating a terminal conditions matter-of-factly, half a joke, no sad songs for me.Philip Bosco, when he has his wits about him, is an irritable old bastard. Hoffman and Linney, two "drama types," who have nothing else much in common, come together to figure out what to do with Dad, who has made himself too much of a pain to everyone, especially after that "toilet incident", in this ghastly retirement settlement in Arizona. The settlement itself is a living mausoleum. Every house is identical, right down to the lone palm tree occupying center place on the neatly trimmed front lawns. At first, I thought the houses were CGIs.The film focuses not so much on Bosco as on Hoffman and Linney as they argue or earnestly discuss the best place for Dad to be. He's too wacky for "assisted living" but not bad enough for a hospice. The need for brother and sister to cooperate in order to achieve a superordinate goal coincidentally brings them together, Dad's parting gift -- one of his few.It's not really a depressing film. There are subtle comic touches in the dialog and scattered here and there throughout the screenplay. When Linney strides determinedly down a hospital corridor, the squishing of her clumsy shoes is noticeable. And at the final home for the aged, the Thanksgiving cutout stapled to the bulletin board changes with appalling regularity to cuts outs of Santa Claus when November changes to December.It's not exactly an exciting film but it's engrossing. The performances by all are outstanding, even in the smaller parts. What a shame about Hoffman. He had an unpretentious puss and a tubby body and he gave the rest of us acting lessons.

This is a great movie, but pay no attention to the DVD packaging calling it "darkly funny", "singularly funny" and so on. While it does have a few good gags that made me laugh out loud once or twice, it's only about 25% comedy and the rest is a heavy, emotional drama about the painful subject of slow, lingering death.Two siblings (played by Laura Linney & Philip Seymour Hoffman) are burdened with the task of taking care of their estranged father who they learn is suffering from dementia. The comedy is just enough to keep it from getting too depressing but not so much that it upstages the gravity of the situation.The pacing is appropriately slow. You'll find no car chases, shootouts, contrived romances or M-Night-Shyamalanian twists; the story is not even very significant. Instead, pay attention to the relationships between the characters, their emotional disconnection from each other & the world, and their efforts to confront their lack of intimacy. What's interesting about this movie is that it begins with no details about the characters, but slowly the past emerges and is only fully explained in the final scene.If you like movies about real life, I think you'll enjoy this. And if you're interested in films about families/people dealing with illnesses & disorders, also check out "Away From Her", "Autumn Hearts", and "Phoebe in Wonderland" ...all good movies without the standard Hollywood cheese.

This is one of those ostentatiously quiet films and how much you enjoy it will depend greatly on how much you appreciate the lovely and talented Laura Linney.The crux of the story involves Wendy and John Savage (Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman), two prematurely middle-aged siblings suddenly forced to care for their somewhat decrepit and dementia-ridden father (Philip Bosco) after years and years of separation and silence. The plot is really just an excuse, though, to put Wendy and John on display as examples of early 21st century pseudo-adulthood.Wendy is a 39 year old woman with a Masters degree in Fine Arts who still works as a temp, shuttling from one cubicle to another to pay the bills while she fancies her real destiny is to be a playwright. She doesn't like the fact that her situation doesn't reflect what she hopes her talent is, so she self-medicates and lies to others and herself about how her life is going. She's also having an affair with a married man, but she loves his dog far more than she cares about him.John is a 42 year old literature professor who teaches class at a small college in Buffalo and is trying to write a book on Bertolt Brecht. He's completely alienated from his own feelings and lives like he's isolated from the rest of the world. His girlfriend of several years is having to move back to Poland because her visa has expired. She wants to marry John but he refuses, telling Wendy it's because he's afraid she wouldn't be able to get a job in Buffalo. The one thing John does have is his belief that he's smarter than his sister and he doesn't react well when Wendy tells him she got a Guggenheim grant, something he's tried repeatedly to get and failed.The movie is almost entirely focused on how these two people handle this particular situation at this particular point in their lives. It never really goes into their past and how and why Wendy and John got to be the way they are. It never details the extent or nature of their poor relationship with their father. There's only an offhand reference to their mother, and we get only the smallest glimpse of how Wendy and John actually function in the world.The Savages is a comedy but not one that's trying to make anyone laugh that hard. It's almost Seinfeldian in its focus on the humor of the uncomfortable, the awkward and the embarrassing. There's not a lot of "ha ha" funny stuff in the film. It's more like real life where God has written a few more gags into the script than normal.Linney has the biggest role and the most fully realized character and if you enjoy watching her perform, The Savages is quite pleasant. Hoffman is good, but he doesn't have much to do and while the story of grown kids having to take care of their ailing father and reconnect with him has some emotional kick, it never gives you enough about them and their relationship to make you care that much. The film admirably resists being too pretentious, but slides into being too ordinary.Linney is very good, though, and if that sounds like enough for you, The Savages won't be disappointing.