Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent Script and Great Performances
Review: "Passion Fish" is one of those quiet, introspective movies that makes you involved without really even trying. John Sayles script is superb: he combines real situations with genuine emotion and avoids the overwrought melodrama that could have happened here. In addition, he gets top-flight performances by his cast. Mary McDonnell, who has never been better, delivers an intense, quiet performance that succeeds on all levels. Alfre Woodard, a superb Actress in anything she does, brings a subtle and real humanity to the role of a tortured nurse who finds peace with a tortured Diva. This is not a "Lifetime" movie but instead one that will stay with you for awhile
Rating:
Summary: Sayles Greatest?
Review: An almost perfect drama, by turns funny and heartbreaking. Sayles avoids his usual tendency to try and tell too many stories at once, instead keeping the action focused on the female leads (whose performances I cannot praise enough.) Sayles uses a technique of unfolding the narrative in a series of vignettes (most shorter than one minute) keeps the movie solidly on track, and maintains the interest of the viewer throughout.
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Summary: Powerful film and, yes, uplifting
Review: Another finely crafted character study from writer/director John Sayles. Soap opera actress, May-Alice Culhane (Mary McDonnell), is paralyzed as the result of an auto accident and returns from NY to the family homestead in Louisiana. There she struggles with her affliction and quickly runs through a succession of nameless personal assistants until Chantelle (Alfre Woodard) arrives, trouble in her past and hope in her heart. The bond of friendship that grows between the women transforms each of them. Thoughtful, well acted, poignant. Great Cajun soundtrack, too!
Rating:
Summary: MASTERPIECE
Review: Author-director John Sayles is one of (if not) the most important american flmmakers of the last twenty years. Furiously independent, he works with the same actors over the years and has produced, apart of PASSION FISH, such magistral movies as LONE STAR and THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH. When he doesn't direct, he writes or re-writes, credited or uncredited, such screenplays as APOLLO XIII, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD or THE HOWLING. If Hollywood doesn't completely fall apart, one has to thank men like John Sayles. The true spirit of the pioneers of cinema still live in those independent ones.PASSION FISH is a movie about women. The four or five male characters of the movie are anecdotal. They are considered as pure procreators (do you remember the exact number of Sugar and Rennie's children ?) or intruders like Chantelle's ex-husband or May-Alice's uncle. And the action takes place in Louisiana, a feminine state by excellence. May-Alice cannot walk anymore but has a lot to say while Chantelle keeps the secret of her past in the dancehall's nights. PASSION FISH explains how these two women will finally appreciate each other's presence. Their reunion on a small boat is a magistral idea of John Sayles : May-Alice still can't walk but she moves. She's back in the world. PASSION FISH is the ideal movie for multiple viewings. Each word, each image has a MEANING and is not gratuitous as the kilometers of pellicles proposed by today auto-proclamed movie geniuses. English, French and spanish soundtracks AND subtitles. Sound and image at their best. A DVD which is already in your library.
Rating:
Summary: Modern Classic
Review: Films like Passion Fish remind me that film can be art. With intelligent writing and direction by John Sayles, Passion Fish explores the friendship and bond between an unlikely and reluctant duo: a soap opera actress paralyzed in a car accident (brilliantly performed by Oscar nominated MARY McDONNELL) and her hired nurse with demons of her own (the wonderful, and shamlessly Oscar overlooked ALFRE WOODARD). This movie beautifully explores how two very independent women deal with their dependence on each other. With a strong supporting cast headed by DAVID STRAITHARN, Passion Fish is an absolute gem. The "anal probe" monologue is worth the price of admission alone!
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Summary: Louisiana captured in this brilliant, emotional film
Review: I am a native New Yorker and I have been following Sayles, who is a New Jersey boy, since Baby It's You. About 12 years ago, I moved to New Orleans. Imagine my shock when Sayles, Jersey boy, managed to capture the unique, evocative atmosphere of Western Louisiana to perfection. There has been enough said about the plot (read a few other reviews), but the true genius of Sayles is the way he observes all the subtle elements of the culture he is filming about and uses them, sparingly, to give the viewer an absolute non-cliched portrait of, in this case, Louisiana. And, of course, since Sayles approaches film like a writer approaches the short story, the film is full of tropes and visual metaphor (May Alice, bound in a wheel chair is always wearing stripes that look like jail house clothing; the deeply moving and beautiful night journey through the bayou, where May Alica takes a spiritual passage of sorts, from darkness to light...). This is a perfect little film and it grieves me terribly that the film establishment hands out awards to movie "stars" versus "actors" and more or less ignores Sayles's beautiful work. His films work on so many levels: artistically, emotionally, intellectually, that I would say he is our best American director and script writer still living. If you view this movie, or any of Sayles stuff (Limbo and Mew with Guns are two astounding films) you will enriched beyond measure.
Rating:
Summary: Great content, Superb acting - a true work of art
Review: I love this film. The acting is as good as it can be. The simultaneous journeys of the characters blend and combust on each other and enrich each other. There are many delicious moments that themselves are worth re-watching. Completely delicious - all this despite the content itself being relatively challenging. I'm just really going to have to check out all Sayles movies I guess - I keep finding out a favorite is by him. And Alfre Woodard of course never disappoints. Completely worth it!
Rating: 
Summary: As beautiful as Bagdad Café
Review: If you don't like happy endings, but hope endings, this is a movie for you. Personally, i get bored when the movie becomes predictable, and sometimes it only takes a few minutes to figure out the entire plot and to smell the happy ending. I much rather watch something like this, with troubled, tortured characters, and with a story that ends up on a positive and hopeful note. At the end of this movie you are left with the feeling that May Alice and Chantelle are both on the right track about their lives. They don't have their troubles solved, and the road in front of them is going to be quite hard, but there is hope, and to me that is far more valuable in a story than a merry happy ending.
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Summary: Not about disability, but about power
Review: In reading the various descriptions of this film, it's easy to get the idea that this is an uplifting story about a woman who overcomes her disability. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the center of this film is the struggle for control between Chantelle (Alfre Woodard) and May-Alice (Mary McDonnell). The film explores this struggle not so much through plot driven interaction between May-Alice and Chantelle, but through character development of these two. In story time, these two spend most of their time apart, revealing much about themselves and their relationship to one another in interactions with third parties. When they meet again, we understand a little bit more about their relationship; the next steps in the struggle seem almost inevitable. I agree that the ommission of Alfre Woodard for oscar consideration was shameful. I would in fact go a step farther: she is the best thing in this movie and delivers one of the best lead performances I have ever seen; Mary McDonald is in a supporting role here and does an excellent job.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Bayou.
Review: In this current era of moviemaking, it's rare than an idea as soft, as pure as Passion Fish, will be given an opportunity to be made. Thankfully John Sayles has the ability to circumvent the 'by-committee' filmmaking which would have ultimately turned this wonderful little film into God know's what. Mary McDonnell will never be better-she is brilliant, than in her portrayal of May-Alice Culhane (for which she was Oscar-nominated), the once-on-top Soap Opera star to whom tragedy has taken the use of her legs, and forced a re-evaluation of her life. Alfre Woodard, as the hired home-care worker/nurse Chantelle provides the perfect complement as both these women find more of themselves through each other, then they might ever have found otherwise. Again, Ms. Woodard has rarely disappointed. The early montage of health-care applicants is clever and funny. And John Sayles always is able to find brilliance in his supporting cast: notably Vondie Curtis-Hall, Leo Burmester, and David Strathairn, as well as a small role early in the career of Angela Bassett. Sayles' script was also nominated for an Academy Award.
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