Director: Tamara Jenkins
Year Released: 2007
Rating: 2.0
Brother (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and sister (Laura Linney) have to place their senile father (Philip Bosco) in a rest home and deal with the guilt of not being able to take care of him themselves and also find the time to straighten out their own lives. It's sadcore in full effect: Hoffman's lonely, his girlfriend is returning to Poland, he can't get his book finished, and Linney's an unsuccessful playwright without a full-time job who is unmarried but sleeping with a married man. Unlike Sarah Polley's Away from Her, however, it at least has the mercy to be humorous here and there - curiously, Bosco's inane shouting provides almost all the laughs - even though it is mostly droll and downhearted (I kept wondering if it was trying to be either a black comedy or a drama, because it really succeeds at neither). Oddly, the old man's passing is actually a blessing for them - his death is the very panacea that commitment-o-phobe Hoffman and artistically unlucky Linney need to turn their lives around. Thanks, Pop, for kicking it!
