Rating: 
Summary: What would you do? (almost 4 stars)
Review: "My Life Without Me" is a story of a young mother 23 years of age, Ann who has never really had much of a life outside of her raising her children and being a loving wife. They live in a small trailer that sits in her mother's backyard. Having her first child at the age of seventeen, she has never really experienced the dreams and passions that so many her age possess throughout their lives.
The essence of the movie is how Ann deals with the news that she has terminal ovarian cancer, which is spreading rapidly. With only two to three months to live, she makes a list of things to do before she dies, which includes everything from changing her hair to recording birthday messages for both of her children for every birthday until they reach eighteen. But she also chooses to keep her illness a secret from everyone around her. It is a straight forward story. And it is the acting that carries the film. The movie has you wondering what would do if it was you. A quick lesson on living life.
Rating:
Summary: touching little film
Review: ***1/2
A film from Canada, "My Life Without Me" is an understated account of a terminally ill woman's attempt to find meaning in her life before she dies. Anne is a 23-year old custodian who lives with her pool-cleaning husband and two daughters in a trailer behind her mother's house. When she receives the stunning news that she has only a few months to live, Anne decides to spend her remaining time doing all the things she never had a chance to do after she married and had her first child at seventeen. One of those goals involves having sex with someone besides her husband and getting a man to fall in love with her.
"My Life Without Me" approaches a tricky subject with sensitivity and a minimum of sentimentality, helping the movie to steer away from the soap opera trappings of its story. The film avoids overstating the unhappiness of Anne's life, making it clear that, while she may not exactly be living in the lap of luxury, she does have a loving husband who cares deeply about her, as well as two young girls who are obviously the apple of their mother's eye. This makes Anne's desire to break away and find something better both more perplexing and more poignant than if her domestic life were harrowing and dismal. With the new perspective that dying affords her, Anne begins to see how we spend our days in a futile effort to divert our attention from the reality that we will all one day die. Anne makes recordings for all the people who have meant something to her in her life, helping them to not only cope with her death but to find some meaning and happiness in the lives they are still living.
Sarah Polley gives a beautiful, heartbreaking performance as Anne, never allowing her character to become an object of pity despite the fact that she is a person being stricken down in the prime of her life. Her restrained style is matched by that of Deborah Harry as her bitter, eternally disappointed mother, Scott Speedman as her understanding husband, Mark Ruffalo as the man with whom she falls in love, and a whole host of other superb actors.
Although it veers a little too close to slick Harlequin romance at times (the too-good-to-be-true husband, the conveniently available one-true-love paramour), "My Life Without Me" is a subtle, heartfelt film that touches the emotions even as it gives the mind something to think about. The lovely closing scene is as thought provoking as it is moving, a fitting finale to a quiet little gem of a film.
Rating: 
Summary: Holy cow...
Review: ...was this a good movie on multiple levels. I forget why I had it in my Netflix queue, one of those movies you hear about, or it comes up when you're searching through Amazon/Netflix by director/actor/producer/etc...and you just add it to the end of your list. A month later you've forgotten why you've ordered it, even what it's about, then you watch it without any expectations/preconceptions. A beautiful surprise.D
Rating: 
Summary: worth it till the end
Review: a stirring, moving and highly endearing film about a young girl exploring herself before she is gone. I'm skipping a point for the times when the film ventured into what I consider a music video visual format; but any weaknesses are compensated for. This is a unique, intriguing account of a modest life that shudders but holds on during a major time of crisis. It is thought-provoking and held my interest to the eventual end.
Rating:
Summary: "Things to do before I die"
Review: After being diagnosed with a rapidly-growing tumor 23-year-old Anne sits down to make a list of all the things she wants to accomplish before her death. She vows to keep her illness a secret from her family while traveling down a road of self-discovery. Besides taping several messages for her children and husband, Anne wants to fall in love and have sex with a man other than her husband who was her first love. She simply wants to live a full life from this point forward. MY LIFE WITHOUT ME is filled with heart-warming scenes of the tragedy of this one particular family. Also included are some very peculiar and nuanced characters including the hair stylist who is a devout fan of the late 1980's infamous band, Milli Vanilli, the withdrawn and lonely lover who has no furniture in his apartment, and the neurotic co-worker who is obsessed with diets and calories. Each of these characters combine to create a much more enlivened atmosphere. But despite the strengths of this film, I couldn't help being mad at Anne for not telling her family the truth. Even though she admitted in her tapes that others might find her decision to be selfish, I just couldn't accept her rationality that she didn't want to burden others with trips to the hospital, etc. If I had a family member who kept a secret like this I would be very angry and hurt (and I do have personal experience since I had a sibling who died of a terminal illness). I felt sorry for her two daughters who were never able to say goodbye. I would rather know the truth then be left in the dark and never given the opportunity to bring closure. Then, of course, Anne's decision to not seek out a second opinion or seek treatment is also worrying. Being so young she surely shouldn't have given up so fast. Who knows if a different doctor could have given her an alternative prognosis?? Although I wanted to thoroughly enjpy this film I couldn't get these feelings out of my head. MY LIFE WITHOUT ME is a good film, I just didn't like the choices the protagonist made.
Rating:
Summary: The remain of her days.
Review: Before Sarah Polley made the gorey horror film Dawn Of The Dead, she gave a very powerful performance as a woman dying of an incurable disease in the heartfelt Canadian film named My Life Without Me which could also be called The Remain of My Life more appropriately. This movie will definitely jerk some tears out of the viewers if they had been moved by Terms of Endearment.
Sarah Polley plays a young mother with two months left to live and none of her freinds and family knows that she's terminally ill. She came up with a plan to do all the things that she had never done before she goes away. On her list: it includes finding a woman to be her husband's new wife, record birthday tapes for her children until they are 18, go out and party, find a new boyfriend(Mark Ruffallo)....
Ultimately, she wanted to be happy again and that it wouldn't have to be a sad ending to her life. It was wonderful that she was able to fullfill her wishes before she dies.
Rating:
Summary: A strange way to find yourself
Review: Here's a strange thing: a film about dying young that isn't mawkish, a tearjerker that doesn't jerk.
The female- dominated story follows 23-year-old Ann (Sarah Polley), who works as a school cleaner and lives in a trailer in the back garden of her embittered mother (Deborah Harry). She lives with husband, Don (Scott Speedman), who was her childhood sweetheart, and their two young daughters in overcrowded, vivid warmth. In spite of the family's commitments and near penury, they remain in the first flush of romance.
Thinking that she may be pregnant again, Ann visits hospital for a check-up and is told that she has ovarian cancer. Had she been 20 years older the tumour might not have spread so fast and would have been operable. Her very youthfulness will kill her within two months.
Ann tells no one and starts making lists of things to do before she dies; these include the usual laughgrabbers, such as smoke, drink, make love to another man (just to see what it is like), and some heart-wrenchers such as "find another wife for my husband".
Through a series of quietly expressed and telling scenes, director Isabel Coixet steers a sure path between sentimentality and mawkishness: imminent death in the movies has rarely generated such humanity, such humour or such strength.
Coixet, who shot the picture in the rarely filmed suburbs of Vancouver, never once lets the material escape from her. Her cast is unusually integrated: among the many extraordinary performances are the doctor (Julian Richings) who cannot bear to tell his patients they are dying, Mark Ruffalo as the lover, and Ann's new neighbour (Leonor Watling), who, in a virtuoso scene, delivers one of the most moving speeches I have witnessed.
Rating:
Summary: "My Life Without Me" Vs. "In America"
Review: I don't really like weepie/tearjerker movies, but I don't particularly dislike them either. I went to see the following two within the last week.
"In America" was dire. It might as well have been set anywhere as, apart from a few shots of New York, most of the scenes are all set indoors, like a sitcom. It manages to make the Irish (the parents don't know what Trick or Treating on Halloween is!) and the Americans look stupid. America is apparently full of transvestites, drug addicts, black people, and AIDs victims ... as if we don't have them all in Ireland too. Too little plot and style, a movie that is as irritating as its child protagonists. Some sweet moments and some good acting (particularly from Samantha Morton, who was also excellent in her small but pivtol role in "Minority Report") doesn't hold this tripe together. It doesn't even manage to be an effective weepie. Avoid.
On the other hand, "My Life Without Me", isn't great either. It's certainly much better than "In America" (but that wouldn't be hard), it's more stylish, and the whole thing is carried by Sarah Polley's (she was excellent in "Go") central performance, and a rather good and very un-glam performance from Deborah Harry, of Blondie fame. But it's too boring and long and ultimately you're just waiting for her to die and get it over with.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for the idea, 4 stars for the execution
Review: I enjoyed this movie, simply because it made me think. The idea is fabulous and it could've bombed. You understand that Ann is - in her own, selfish way - trying to love her family the best way she can in spite of a crazy situation. However, this love is one-sided, and I hope that most people will choose to be honest and sincere with their loved ones if placed in the same position. The thing is: unless you're there (with the knowledge that you'll die in two or three months), it's hard to judge. The movie worked in that it was highly charged emotionally. The acting was top-notch; Mark Ruffalo is a great young actor. The movie is well worth watching. The "making of" featurette wasn't that great. I would rate it, at best, at 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Still with me
Review: I just saw this film today, and I know that it'll be with me for a long while. I agree with the previous review - there's a lot that in other films you'd take as manipulative or obvious - but here it works wonderfully and powerfully. I feel like I know the characters and I was drawn into their world and where they are in life. I feel heartbroken that Ann won't grow to see her daughters flourish, won't be able to share her life and love with the people around her. It's a film about life, about feeling, and about dreaming. The first 30 seconds alone blew me away - Anne standing in the rain, feeling it, sensing it, hearing it. Thinking to herself, 'So here I am, standing in the rain' and soaking up every single tiny, magical moment of it. I feel human from watching it. I'm 'one of the people who like to look up at the moon' - and I'm buying this DVD when the shops open tomorrow.
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