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173 reviews in total

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89 out of 106 people found the following review useful:
An excellent study of characters with a strong sense of place., 9 August 2005

Author: williamwolfe from Los Angeles

A very intelligent script, with direction that does it justice. Rather than spelling out exactly what we're supposed to be thinking and feeling at every moment, the filmmakers respect the audience's ability to infer meaning from the mood and tone, from the light in a frame or the ambient noise of a scene (or, for that matter, from the complete silence in which we occasionally are allowed to contemplate the house and small town where the story is set). As for the actors, they must have been thrilled to have the chance to play such complex, well-rounded characters, each of them at times being fine and even something like noble, at other times frustrating and perhaps even cruel. Just like real people, in other words. Amy Adams deserves the praise she's received for a role that could have easily been a caricature, but I'd like to also mention Embeth Davidtz for her precise and empathetic work in another part that might have easily been done in a hackneyed way.

All through this film, there are moments where we fear that its makers are going to settle for the cliché, but they never do. By the end, we feel that we've learned a great deal about the characters and the community which produced them, and we also sense that we'll never fully grasp all of their mysteries and contradictions. Very fine work from everyone involved.

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100 out of 136 people found the following review useful:
Poetic and charming little film about culture cross and family ties, 27 January 2005

Author: willden21 from Utah

Some films do not need to tie in every little plot detail in order to make for a more true to life form. Not all families discuss their problems or their angst openly. Most of the time you have to decipher them through little nuanced non-verbal symbols. Junebug does it perfectly.

At the base the plot follows newlyweds on their trek to NC from Chicago as the wife, Madeline, goes to close a deal with an eccentric southern painter. While there they decide to stop in and see her husband, George's family, who comes form NC originally. He has tried to separate himself from that culture and his family altogether. He has been married for six months and his family were not invited to the wedding, and his brother holds strong feelings of jealousy against him. It seems ho-hum form the plot synopsis, but then comes Amy Adams as the brother, Johnathan's wife and very pregnant Ashley.

Amy Adams is absolutely amazing. She brings a charm and wit to this picture when it seems like it is a bit dreary. Her heartwarming turn as an optimistic and young mother to be with a heart of southern gold is achingly warm and sincere. She alone makes the film a must see as she can force the audience from laughter to tears with the flip of a dime.

The direction is poetic and the cinematography allows for an unbelievably laid back southern tone. Nothing about this film is rushed and that makes it so wonderful to behold. Seeing how a family can generally and truly love each other inside, and because of cultural and societal norms strive to find ways to show love and respect for each other is achingly sincere. Sometimes you as the audience scream for them to communicate, especially the brothers as their strife is never discussed or resolved just tolerated.

Overall this film is a great cultural study that goes beyond stereotype to show the love and respect the writer and director have for the material and the people of North Carolina. This is a truly warm and comforting piece of southern pleasure that shines in a pool of darkness that is Sundance 2005.

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77 out of 106 people found the following review useful:
Brilliant, 2 May 2005
Author: acsntn from United States

Phil Morrison has created a film that is among the best I've seen so far in 2005. He has taken a simple country mouse-city mouse tale and given it cosmic implications. It is the story of everyone who grew up in the boonies and then gone on to make it big in the big city. It beautifully portrays the embarrassment you feel about taking a worldly spouse back to your small hometown and its pettiness; the small-mindedness and envy of the siblings who never left town or made good; the reinvention of one's self when one moves to a big metropolis like Chicago. I did NOT feel the Bible Belt North Carolinians were stereotyped, as some viewers have remarked; I felt they were all portrayed as real people who simply had a tough time articulating their feelings, and who were just SIMPLE people...church-goers, family people who have no complexity of emotions or doubts, like city people are wont to have. The actress who played the sister-in-law was brilliant, funny and totally believable; the mother was the next Gena Rowlands; Alessandro Nivola and the girlfriend were extremely appealing ciphers (which they were supposed to be); and the unrestrained horror of their having to return to this small Southern town was so palpable, that it made watching the film very uncomfortable at times (especially if a viewer's own life resembles that of the main characters'). Deliberately underwritten, beautifully paced, it is one to remember, savor, and wind up at the Festivals. Bravo!

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76 out of 112 people found the following review useful:
Astoundingly free from clichés and types, 13 August 2005

Author: samsajk1 (samsajk1@yahoo.com) from United States

What struck me most about this (amazing)movie was the characters' well-roundedness. George's family and residents of NC are completely believable, fleshed-out, and never just types. Having lived in the piedmont of NC for 11 years (and now living in Chicago) I felt like I was transplanted back with George and Madeleine. The Southern characters' rural way of life was balanced with complexity and the capacity for reflection.

As for the urban characters, they were just as whole and did not fall into urban stereotypes of being hard or snooty. More importantly, Madeleine was not condescending, but as a very well-traveled person would, she understood that they were real people despite their differences.

The humanity of all the characters does not seem careful or imposed (which could have resulted in a bland, politically-correct love-fest); the characters have a great deal of energy between them as they encounter differences and deal with them.

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58 out of 79 people found the following review useful:
There's a magic to Junebug that's nearly impossible to describe, 7 September 2005

Author: samseescinema from United States

Junebug Reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com

Rating: 3.5 out of 4

There's a magic to Junebug that's nearly impossible to describe with words. To explain it literally would be to describe a slow, mundane, and worthless story. But, of course, there's much more to Junebug than a story that's slow, mundane and worthless. Iconic independent director Phil Morrison's film takes a patient and immersive look at small town life. There's a profound harmony at work between the characters that, from my experience with small town family in relatives' homes, seems to be true to reality. All at once each character is happy and unhappy with their situation and with everyone surrounding them. There's pain, but within the pain is deep-rooted happiness and content. And when a foreigner enters the home as new family, we the audience are meant to take the foreigner's perspective.

After meeting George (Alessandro Nivola) at her art gallery's auction, Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) finds herself married to the man after little over a week. Months later she travels into a rural suburbia of South Carolina to meet with the peculiar and absurdly profound artist David Wark (Frank Hoyt Taylor), and also to meet for the first time her new family. Unfamiliar with the family's southern lifestyle, she enters the house with the open mind unique only to artists. Immediately embraced by the lonely Ashley (Amy Adams), whose relationship to Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie) has yielded a seemingly unhappy pregnancy and lonely marriage, Madeleine is equally repelled by the mother and leader of the household, Peg (Celia Weston). Each couple (the parents, Ashley and Johnny, and Madeleine and George) sleeps in a separate room, divided only by paper thin walls that do little to contain sound, making nights into festivals of eavesdropping. The unborn baby, Junebug, has a room all to herself, seeming to hold all hope that is left for happiness in the family.

In most films where a foreigner enters a deep-rooted household, the story usually loses itself with the dramatic changes the foreigner brings. But Phil Morrison thankfully avoids this cliché and instead lets our foreigner simply observe. There's actually a sequence dedicated entirely to the observation of each room in the home, where we, like the foreigner, are meant to find all the charming nuances of the house's decoration. Meticulous details are fully realized, with the placement of the cigarettes, the oddly shaped and colored lampshades, the material of the couches, and every tiny element of this lifestyle that may be new to all us "city folk." The foreigner actually has as little power over the family as the audience does. Instead of her acting as the catalyst for the family's change, the title character, Junebug, who's kicking and growing within Ashley's stomach holds this power. It's an affective storytelling method that allows us to connect with the foreigner, Madeleine, and consequently, find ourselves immersed further into Junebug's intimate tale.

In a story as quiet and intimate as Junebug, it's imperative that body language plays as much a role as dialogue. The cast must exude emotions past words and extend their skills to inhabit their characters completely. Each actor achieves this rare performance, particularly Amy Adams and Benjamin McKenzie, playing Ashley and Johnny. Their marriage has a unique understanding to it that's difficult for the audience to grasp until the end. But when we realize their situation, the nuances of their performances are blissfully revealed.

Conventional laws of cinema rarely allow small town life to be realistically portrayed. The calm, resonating harmony that resides in the lifestyle doesn't offer much in the way of excitement. I suppose it requires the confidence of an independent distributor and the eye and pen of a wonderful director and screenwriter. Phil Morrison and Angus MacLachlan's collaboration here with Junebug offers up this unique portrait with nothing but extreme and satisfying clarity.

-Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com

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60 out of 84 people found the following review useful:
A Prodigal Son Has More Baggage At Home Than He Brings With Him, 13 August 2005

Author: noralee from Queens, NY

"Junebug" is a ruefully sweet, clear-eyed take on the going home genre that usually takes the form of prodigal child returning due to a funeral or serious illness with guilt hanging in the air until it ignites an explosion.

Instead, debut writer Angus MacLachlan has brought "George" home to North Carolina as a coincidence of his new wife's job and life has gone on without him and will continue when he's gone again.

Debut director Phil Morrison does a lovely job of visually establishing how each person in the family has staked out their physical space and roles within the family, even as sounds and light uncomfortably carry through the walls and beyond the rooms. I haven't seen every inch of a normal house used as a movie setting so intensively since "The Brothers McMullen," complete with blowing up an air mattress in the nursery.

Those scenes contrast with how different the family members are outside that house, such as the sullen, angry brother (Benjamin McKenzie) perking up comfortably with his fellow warehouse workers and "George" easily fitting back into a church service.

While the usual is to have the spouse's estranged family be colorfully ethnic or straight-laced WASP as a comic contrast, a la the "Meet the Fockers" mode, here they are complicated rural folk and are not condescended to, even as no good deed goes unpunished. Both sides receive their share of mockery and sympathy from the story; everyone's hypocrisy and humanity are revealed and at least two scenes bring tears to the eyes, one touching and the other sad.

While everyone is speaking English, the miscommunications abound, though it is a bit heavy-handed to have the English-bred wife coach the brother on "Huckleberry Finn," let alone her bizarre negotiations with a probably crazy local artist. Each either takes a comment too literally or misinterprets passive aggressive silences; what people don't say comes to be more important than what they do say, as even Amy Adams' wonderfully chatty character is warm-heartedly mature and caring.

The big, annoying weakness of the film, and keeps it from being a satisfying film, is the vague character of the prodigal son. While it seems that his older, folk art collecting wife probably lusted after him at first sight because he was the first cute straight guy who walked into her gallery (and I assume there is some significance that he buys the painting that doesn't make him happy), their quickie marriage seem to be based only on newlywed randiness, as everything seems to turn them on. Taking after his father busy woodworking away in the basement, he pretty much sloths out in the house or car, so it is confusing hypocrisy when he suddenly steps up to the plate in an emergency, accuses his wife of not putting family first and then bails on the follow up.

Alessandro Nivola well portrays a literal golden boy who is, of course, his mother's heart's delight and in her eyes can do no wrong (even he acknowledges that his new wife is bound to discover his faults), though people who have different positions in their families may interpret the sibling behaviors in different ways. But the film only shows us how people react to him and very little about him other than his casual sense of entitlement, though the mostly silent guy to guy communication is realistic.

Other than one superbly beautiful hymn sung by Nivola (he also sang well as rock star in "Laurel Canyon"), the soundtrack does not take the T. Bone Burnett traditional songs approach, but instead has a score by Hoboken, NJ's own Yo La Tengo that doesn't take sides between the country or the big city.

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41 out of 59 people found the following review useful:
Coming home, 17 September 2005

Author: jotix100 from New York

"Junebug" is one of the best independent movies that has been released recently. Phil Morrison, the director, is clearly a new voice in the cinema to be reckoned with. His immensely satisfying "Junebug" has the power to make the viewer gets absorbed into the drama he presents to his audience. Based on a screen play by Angus MacLachlan, the film is a pleasant surprise.

If you haven't seen the film, perhaps you should stop reading here.

At the start of the film, we are taken to Madeleine's gallery in Chicago where an art auction is taking place. The lovely Madeleine is seen behind the scenes, when she suddenly happens to catch sight of George, who happens to be at the event. We are aware of Madeleine's lust for the handsome George, and as fate would have it, they get married.

When Madeleine decides to go to visit one eccentric painter in North Carolina, a visit to George's family is in order. The contrast between the worldly Madeleine and her new in-laws is something we realize right away. The mother, Peg, is a controlling woman who presides over the big household. She is weary of strangers, as she perceives Madeleine to be. The father, Eugene, is a taciturn man who clearly wants to stay away from his wife, hiding in the basement, where he carves animal figures that we never get to see. Johnny, the other son, seems to be resentful of his brother for having left home. His wife Ashley, is the only person who seems to be happy, or at least, adjusted to her situation and surroundings.

The basic trouble with this family is that they don't communicate. Nothing is ever heard about what has made them grow apart. There is no warmth whatsoever from Peg toward anyone at all. In fact, for being this a Christian family, they exhibit no kindness toward Madeleine, who tries to connect with them, to no avail. Johnny misreads his new sister-in-law's kindness with sexuality, which is clearly not the case. It's only Ashley, the simple girl with a heart of gold who seems to be having some semblance being well adjusted in spite of the coldness of her new home.

Amy Adams and Embeth Davidtz, who play Amy and Madeleine, respectively, give amazing portrayals of these two opposite women. Ms. Adams is one of the best things in the film because she hasn't been touched by whatever is making the rest of the family so miserable. Embeth Davidtz, one of the best young actresses working in film and in the theater these days gives a graceful account of Madeleine, a woman of a different background who is accepting and wants to be accepted by her new family.

The rest of the cast is well balanced. Benjamin McKenzie is seen as the frustrated Johnny, who is clearly an unhappy man living with his family. Alessandro Nivola has a great moment when he is asked to sing a hymn at a church gathering. Celia Weston makes Peg, into a mystery, as we can't conceive her reaction toward the woman who married George and can't accept her. Scott Wilson is the father.

"Junebug" is a film that will stay with the viewer for quite a long time after it's finished. Mr. Morrison makes us get involved in the situation he is presenting for us. Clearly, not a film for the great masses, but it will gratify fans of this type of indie that shows a director who clearly has things under control and is not afraid to get the viewer involved in the story.

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34 out of 49 people found the following review useful:
A Spirit Filled Union, 30 August 2005

Author: David Ferguson (fergusontx@gmail.com) from Dallas, Texas

Greetings again from the darkness. Director Phil Morrison and Writer Angus MacLachlan collaborated on "Tater Tomater", which was featured at 1990's Sundance Festival. Together again, they have created a nice home-spun tapestry of family relationships. Despite its seemingly bizarre group of characters, we find ourselves easily relating to the difficulties in understanding and communicating with those in our family - those who should be most like us.

The filmmakers have assembled a cast of mostly veteran actors, but no Hollywood "stars". The most recognizable is Benjamin McKenzie ("The O.C.") who plays the simmering quiet little brother whose wife, played brilliantly by Amy Adams, is with child. Others include Embeth Davidtz as the wife of prodigal son George (Alessandro Nivola, who played Pollux Troy in the underrated "Face/Off"); an electric Frank Hoyt Taylor as the off-center civil war artist David Wark; and veterans Celia Weston and Scott Wilson as the parents of the feuding boys. As a point of interest look for Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jackson as one of the nurses.

Although the film's heart and soul is the theme of family and the stress it creates, while somehow producing the draw that cannot be ignored, it also does a really wonderful job of capturing the spirit of southern small time living. At the center of all of this is Amy Adams, who literally steals the film as the eternally optimistic and determined "firecracker" Ashley. Her performance is outstanding, multi-layered, thought-provoking and genuine. Kind of doubt that this film will receive the necessary attention to have her nominated for an Academy Award, but she deserves one.

This is a necessarily slow-moving film that can be uncomfortable to watch, while at the same time causing you to smile, laugh and even tear up.

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33 out of 52 people found the following review useful:
good films are like good poetry, 10 October 2005

Author: kreim

Like good poetry, in Junebug I believe the viewers are invited to bring their own lives and experience to the back story, the subtext. The ambiguity of family and the intricacies of relationships in this film encourage the movie goer to rethink the confused and sometimes absurd moments we experience while finding ways to fit in- or not. I thought the film was very funny at times-not cheap funny- but the goofy, oops, hoof-in-mouth moments when we try too hard or miss the cues. (The look on Madeline's face in the screwdriver conversation!) This movie left so much to think about. That is film as art- when the conversation with it continues in our heads.

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16 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Amy Adams stands out in a low-key, insightful character piece., 17 April 2006

Author: PizzicatoFishCrouch from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

When Art dealer Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz, never better) travels to the South meet an Artist about his weird drawings, she decides to visit her husband's family whilst she's at it. He hasn't been in correspondence with them for over three years, and why that is is left unrevealed. She meets them – her mother in law (Celia Weston), father in law (Scott Wilson), brother in law (Benjamin Mckenzie), and his perky, pregnant wife Ashley (Amy Adams). Only Ashley extends a warm welcome, as everyone else pronounces Madeleine too clever, too pretty and too successful to be considered family. Her visit brings some home truths that the family had been putting off. Or, waiting for someone to blame on.

There is something about Junebug that will surprise everyone. It's not the weird opening sequence, where some men randomly shout into space. It's not the surprise of seeing Schindler's List's Embeth Davitz finally get a film role that she deserves. No, it is that you are actually impressed by the acting from The O.C.'s Benjamin Mckenzie (shortened to "Ben" here). As Johnny, he is a definite sourpuss, rude, inattentive to his loving wife, but perhaps, as the film hints, just using his rude exterior to hide a feeling of failure inside. Ben Mackenzie makes his character surprisingly well layered, revelling in the quietly sad scenes – he tries to tape a show about meercats for his wife but can't, and ends up taking it out on her. As his very different brother, Alessandro Nivola is as good, in his unaffected, cheerfulness. Embeth Davidtz shines too, in a different role as Madeleine, a woman trying constantly to make a good impression, but always failing. Her character is given extra depth during her many scenes during Amy Adams, especially in their snug little session over her nails. But the film belongs to Amy Adams, the actress that brought the film out of obscurity with her Oscar nomination. In Ashley, we find liveliness, humour and a soul not to be put out easily. Her love for her under-achieving husband is touching and each time he knocks her back, she fights back playfully, covering up her own insecurities, which are all revealed in her tragic hospital scene. It was a performance that could have easily been annoying or repetitive, but Ashley's spirit is so free, Adams' performance perfectly heartfelt.

Not much happens plot-wise, but Junebug is one of those films that are all the better for it. Director Phil Morrison has expertly created a story, with real characters, out of the petty everyday things. Although scenes with the Artist feel a little underdone, though they also play a part in showing the importance of family. Madeleine's visit proves to be unsuccessful not only because she is disliked by her husband's family, but because her actions clumsily reveal things about them, things that they'd rather not admit to. That Junebug never properly reaches a conclusion merely adds to the film's sophistication, but on my part, I probably would have liked to see what happens if Madeline and George went back a year later. Because though Ashley had big dreams, the sad fact is that they probably all would have gone unfulfilled. Everyone has aspirations, and some people can stand in the way of others.

B+

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