Rating: 
Summary: Talk it through, watch it grow
Review: Here's what I call a great "Dinner Talk" movie. You spend your two hours in the theatre, and you think you know what's going on. But when you get to dinner, and the conversation begins to flow, the movie takes on a whole new shape. In this case, it's a much more impressive shape. What starts as an intense dissection of one family's grieving period, turns into something much more sinister.The way it begins reminds me a lot of last year's "You Can Count on Me": problematic family issues play out in an idyllic, Northeastern setting. Characters are fully formed, without being overly formed. Relationships appear easy on the surface, but are revealed ultimately to be more complex than could ever be imagined. The key difference between the two movies is that "In the Bedroom" has a bleaker worldview, and a much deeper level of family dysfunction. Director/writer Todd Field has a sure hand, presenting his audience with only the information that we need at the time, sometimes holding it back until the last possible moment. This style demands an attentive audience. Make sure to follow closely any details he gives you, and the story will fall into place eventually. Fields pulls off this delicate balancing trick with relative ease. He only falters in that at times he presents the same information several different ways, making sure that the least attentive members of his audience at least have a couple of chances to catch up. It nearly got annoying, but never really did. Fields' greatest achievement here is in the presentation of the movie's turning point. It's a moment where everything turns from blissful serenity to gut-wrenching pain, and it will hit you viscerally like other cinematic moments of its kind only wish they could. Fields shows what he has to, but not enough to make the whole endeavor tasteless. Again, solid directing. If he hadn't pulled this off, the remainder of the movie would falter; as it stands, we are left questioning whether or not the family we've been presented with is actually a stable unit, torn apart by one tragic event, or if it was fragile from the start, like a house of cards, brought down (exposed) by the tragic event. Fields never provides easy answers. In a film such as this, if the director has created a malleable canvas, it's up to the actors to bring across the human emotion of the characters. Here, everyone is top-notch solid. Tom Wilkinson has the showiest role, but he is never showy in it. He manages to give his Dr. Matt Fowler a palpable glimmer in his eye, and then lets him lose it. Wilkinson's relationship with Nick Stahl, who plays his son, is the kind of easy-going-yet-repressed, multi-layered father-son relationship that movies find so hard to pull off. Stahl, who plays Frank as a careless young man intent on not letting the weight of the world crush his slender shoulders, holds up his end quite well. Marisa Tomei, for all the hype she's gotten over this role, actually has little to do. That being said, she still must be desirable (check), youthful (check) but mature (check), strong (check) but fragile (check), and eventually just over-the-top emotional (check). In the end, though, this really is Sissy Spacek's movie. You won't understand this until the aforementioned Dinner Talk, because her Ruth Fowler comes across as a terribly cliched character: the overbearing mother. We've seen this path trod many times before, and Spacek does it well enough. But many of her actions, which at first glance appear quite benign, turn out to be viciously sinister. Pay close attention to the way Spacek brings these aspects of her character out, without hitting you over the head with them. If you can do that, then the ending, which seems out of character, becomes completely justified (well, if you use some twisted, dysfunctional family logic). It makes terribly sense. If you think it's horrible while watching it unfold, wait until the final revelation occurs. Then consider the consequences of what has just happened, and, more importantly, why. You'll be moved to the core. If I've been vague, I intended to. Hopefully you'll have the same viewing experience that I had. To help in that process, bring along someone more perceptive than you, go somewhere afterwards for sustenance and libation, and thoroughly discuss what you've just seen. I promise that what you've just seen will change before your very eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: WHAT'S ALL THE HOOPLA FOR?
Review: If I could, I would give In the Bedroom 3.5 stars, but this movie is so overhyped that I am rounding its score downward to compensate. In the Bedroom is a small movie that makes an interesting counterpoint to another recent, small movie: The Deep End. Both films are about how a teenage son's getting mixed up with a bad person leads to someone's death and about how the son's parent goes to desparate, illegal lengths to set things right. In the Bedroom has fine acting and some engaging moments, but it suffers from three defects. First, the movie can be slow in a rather "arty" way. We watch curtains blowing in the wind, etc., rather than seeing the plot advanced. Secondly, the movie ends with many unresolved issues -- not because "that's the way life is," but because the screenplay doesn't have the energy to follow the story to a more logical conclusion. Does the revenge killing bring the parents relief? Do they get away with the murder? Do they regret it later? Following the characters for a longer period of time would reveal the answers to these important questions, but for whatever reason the screenplay ends abruptly, leaving major issues unresolved. (Maybe all that time showing blowing curtains and so on took away the time needed to bring the story to a proper close.) Finally, I didn't find this movie to have as much emotional resonance as it should. There's something cold and clinical about the way the film presents its story, and I watched it with too much detachment to be as affected as I should be.
Rating: 
Summary: Not without my refund! An unimaginative movie-of-the-week...
Review: ... I've seldom been as bored as I was watching this film. It's not terrible, it's just been done a million times before. The acting is good, but the characters are cliches. The "gee-golly gosh" good kid, who gets involved with a (gasp!) older woman who has (oh no!) baggage in the form of kids and a ne-'er do-well ex-husband who (big surprise) doesn't like the above-mentioned "nice" kid sleeping with his ex. Things go badly, and alas, alack (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)beaver cleaver gets capped. His parents, understandably, are upset by this. They grieve, they are angry, they want justice. Yadda-yadda-yadda. Finding no help in our justice system (cliche #257) they take matters into their own hands with pathetically predictable results. I sat in a theatre for close to three days...uh...I mean HOURS waiting for this movie to distinguish itself, it never did. I'm completely baffled by the praises that have been heaped upon this picture and I recommend you rent it rather than spending money to see it in the theatre. At least that way, you could fast-forward, or better yet rewind and be done with it.
Rating:
Summary: OK until the made-for-TV ending
Review: It only goes to show you that even Sundance is becoming commercialized like Hollywood. How did this film ever make it into Sundance? The Amazon critic ranks this film up there with "You Can Count On Me"--that's a laugh. YCCOM is ten times better. "In the Bedroom" is a combination of "Ordinary People" and "Friday the 13th". (The "Friday the 13th" part of it is what commercialized it.) I wish this film was like "Ordinary People" and just that. Then I would halfway respect it. I totally agree with everything that Bob from New York City wrote on 1/24/02. If this film gets a Best Picture nomination for an Academy Award then it will only confirm what a truly lousy year it was. I can name 5 other films that deserve to get nominated instead of "In the Bedroom" such as: 1) "Monster's Ball", 2) "No Man's Land", 3) "Together", 4) "Ghost World", and 5) "Mulholland Drive". But the critics--including the foreign critics--control the Academy Awards which is why I don't pay much attention to the Oscars. I still think that "Crouching Tiger" got ripped off last year.
Rating: 
Summary: The Bite of Moxie
Review: Matt and Ruth Fowler are a typical couple living in Camden, Maine when their son Frank returns home from college for the summer. They are an educated, friendly, and well-liked couple who exist at the beginning of the film as the slightly overbearing but loving parents in the backdrop of Frank's blooming love for a woman, Natalie, who is in the midst of a tricky divorce and who has two children. However, after a terrible tragedy, the focus of the film swings sharply toward the Fowler couple and remains on them for the duration of the film giving a touching, accurate portrait of their grief and internal emotional wanderings. Alongside these intensely personal portraits we are given an overview of the instinct for survival in a slow, enclosed community. Director Todd Field is not afraid to let the camera linger on the characters as they force themselves to keep up appearances and find a way to continue a "normal" life. Ruth (Sissy Spacek), the most interesting and carefully drawn character, is a restrained and devastatingly resentful woman whose emotional pressure builds with enormous force over the film. You know that when she blows it will be huge. What is so moving and touchingly realistic about the film is the persistence of life in the face of others' tragedies. Poignant scenes between the characters are continuously interrupted by the small interventions of other people, a woman asking for change, a girl selling candy bars for a fundraiser, etc. And this inclusion of the trivial is what makes the devastation so biting. For the bright, hopeful beginning we are given, the movie turns into a dark and haunting affair of anger and hate. It is a beautiful and thought-provoking film that will leave you stunned.
Rating:
Summary: Power and patience
Review: The reviews here typify responses to "In the Bedroom," a heartbreaking film that leaves some praising it for all the familiar reasons -- stellar performances and a supremely quiet dignity -- or condeming its pace. Obviously I'm among the former. The film is certainly not rushed. It takes its time establishing its characters and their relationships, and indeed the pace of the film mimics that of real life with all its conversational niceties, unspoken messages and silences. Perhaps the best justification for Field's approach to the film comes by comparing it to its source material, Andre Dubus's "Killings," a short piece that basically relates events from the last third of "In the Bedroom." Dubus was a fine writer, and Field's film captures the spirit of the writer's oeuvre (and uses most of his dialogue from "Killings" verbatim). But by expanding the story and making a few selective changes, Field invests the characters and their actions with significantly more depth. Consider "In the Bedroom" a break from the shallowness and flash that tends to fill the multiplexes. And if you think the trailer misrepresents the film (how shocking!), blame the marketers, not the makers.
Rating:
Summary: Not for everybody - a profound depiction of emotional agony
Review: Murder rocks Camden, a small and sleepy Maine fishing town in "In the Bedroom". A young boy (Nick Stahl) with plans of architectural school enjoys a brief though seemingly innocent summer fling with a young (and almost divorced) mother (Marisa Tomei). When her obsessive and violent husband (William Mapother) loses control and murders the boy, the lives of his parents (Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson) are turned inside out. Compounding their grief is the hint that the killer - whose father owns a large cannery next to the school - may well beat the rap. Spacek and Wilkinson's marriage had enjoyed a veneer of youthful mischief that is stripped away by the tragedy, revealing cold and middle-aged bitterness in its wake. (In the beginning of the film they read together in bed; after the funeral, they silently chain-smoke in front of the TV into the late-night hours, the manufactured hilarity of talk-show monologues underlying their silent grief). Though unspoken, the script makes clear that somebody is going to have to take matters into their own hands if the miserable parents are to save their sanity. (The love of their best friends and he sympathy of the community, though sincere, is clearly not up to the job). "In the Bedroom" is an incredibly slow movie - one in which much dialog is spoken off screen. The narrative isn't in the dialog at all as much as in the grief of the characters. Many scenes have no dialog at all (like Wilkinson's profound sadness when viewing his son's bedroom or Spacek's detached misery coming back from a friend's house after the weekend) or effective dialog (as when Wilkinson confronts an ernest but weak prosecutor who may let the killer walk). Director Todd Field isn't so concerned with rationalizing their behavior as he is marking the deep effects of the cruelties endured. I can only recommend this film for those looking for an uncompromising study of emotional pain.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time.
Review: HORRIBLE! This is the most boring movie I've been to in years. Not only is it long (and lame) but it is completely predictable from the beginning. Many people walked out, as I should have instead of hoping for the movie to miraculously turn around.
Rating: 
Summary: WHAT?
Review: I have always loved Sissy spacek, since she both broke my heart and scared the hell out of me in CARRIE. She earns her two stars, above, simply for being in a film. She remains powerfully watchable in an interesting role. However -- this film, which begins suspensefully, if not surprisingly, eventually crashes and burns with a made-for-TV movie ending. It really does not deserve the accolades it has been bestowed these past few weeks. The quiet, introspective quality of the film has nothing over ORDINARY PEOPLE, which is infinitely more moving and explosive. The performances are good, and the narrative is solid, until the final 20 minutes, at which point I wanted to leave the theatre -- not because I was disturbed, quite the opposite -- because I wasn't. Most of all, it has nothing to do with redemption, as the glossy TV ads suggest.
Rating:
Summary: If Ingmar Bergman had directed "Fargo"...
Review: Director Todd Field's "In The Bedroom" contains all the essential elements of a classic Coen Brothers film...except for the sense of irony. It's all here: Lust, Envy, Murder, Revenge and Family Dysfunction in Small Town, U.S.A. (in this case, a sleepy little fishing hamlet in Maine). In telling its story of a couple dealing with the aftermath of thier son's tragic death, the movie opts for the quiet, dramatic approach of such fare as "The Accidental Tourist", "Ordinary People" or "The Sweet Hereafter". Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson lead a fine cast, and in fact it is the performances that ultimately hold your interest more than the storyline, which unfortunately gets a bit soap opera-ish and runs out of steam by the third act. The critical accolades for "In The Bedroom" reflect more of a hunger for substantial "adult" fare at the local Multiplex than anything else. That being said, this is still a respectable effort and well worth your time if you appreciate good acting.
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