Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

Are you tired of big, artificial Hollywood productions this year?  Wouldn't it be nice to buy a ticket, sit down for two hours, and find yourself drawn into a good story, well-told, well-acted, and with something inspiring and edifying at its center? You Can Count On Me is here to cure your moviegoing ills, a small but miraculous movie about a brother and a sister who can hardly stand each other, but need each other badly. Kudos to writer/director/co-star Kenneth Lonergan. His movie won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and now stands as the best movie in theatres so far in the year 2000, a film that will be touching and inspiring audiences many years from now.

Lonergan, who also wrote the mediocre comedy Analyze This has revealed more maturity and insight than any of his previous works have suggested. This story has the ring of truth and personal experience. 

Set in Scottsville, a quaint small town in upstate New York, the film introduces us to a nervous, struggling single mother and bank worker, Sammy. Sammy lives a seemingly simple life, trying her best to raise her son Rudy and to cope with a tyrannical new boss at the bank. But she is also haunted by the long-ago tragedy of her parents' untimely death in a car accident. When Terry, her reckless and wandering brother shows up in Scottsville, a happy reunion takes an abrupt turn into a nasty argument over responsibility and money. The problems in both of their lives come violently to the surface, and Sammy and Terry's lives spiral downward into chaos until they hit bottom and learn something that just might help them back to some semblance, order, and peace.

Laura Linney plays Sammy with such confidence that it makes you wonder how much she actually identifies with the character. Sammy's just trying to set a good example for her son, even as her own loneliness causes her to stumble into foolish and potentially disastrous errors in judgment. Linney's performance is a dramatic pendulum, swinging from moral outrage to moral lapses, with amusing and understandable motivations for both.  She makes us nervous with the tightwire she walks, but we never stop caring for her all the same. Rory Culkin (fortunately starting his career out on something more admirable than a goofy Home Alone flick) gives a delicate, quiet performance as Rudy, Sammy's eight-year-old son, who is watching grownups carefully and learning from what he sees.   Newcomer Mark Ruffalo...give the man an Oscar nomination... makes a strong first impression as Terry, Sammy's brother, who has drifted around the country with a feeble grasp on order and responsibility, returning home only to occasionally borrow money from his hardworking sister. Ruffalo's halting speech reveals a man who is poorly educated, lonely, and still a frightened little boy under the unshaven good looks and the cocky Brando-like machismo. 

Writer/Director Lonergan never casts a judgmental or sarcastic light on the choices of his characters.  The script follows the slow disintegration of Sammy's hold upon order in her house, as Terry moves in for a while and begins to influence Rudy's behavior. Sammy is sexually reckless even as she throws tantrums over Terry's foolish decisions. Terry, simple-minded and consistently irresponsible, sees through Sammy's facade and confronts her on her hypocrisy, even as he struggles to do the right thing himself. 

Supporting characters are never trivialized; they're just as real, just as incomplete, and capable of good and evil.   Ron, a cleric played perfectly by Lonergan himself, is drawn into the circle when Sammy attempts to confront Terry on his own misbehavior. Ron defies all expectations by avoiding the stereotypical arrogance of a preacher and actually playing an important part in awakening the consciences of both siblings. Matthew Broderick gives an unflattering but admirable performance as Brian, Sammy's new boss, who is looking for an irresponsible escape from his unhappy marriage even as he rules his employees with an iron hand.

The camera work isn't showy; it's just what it needs to be, standing back and letting us watch, never drawing attention to itself. And the music is equally appropriate, featuring soft country flourishes by Steve Earle.  The ending strikes just the right note, a sign that this is the work of an artist, not just a moviemaker.

As Sammy gets mixed up in dangerous liaisons, as Terry determines to become young Rudy's mentor and teach him the brutal truths of life, and as Rudy tries to decide who he can trust, Lonegran beautifully choreographs all of them to failure, to rude awakenings, to admissions of responsibility and guilt, and to forgiveness and perhaps a brighter future.  In spite of the jagged edges of these relationships, the seeds of unconditional love have taken root and just might hold them together through it all. 

In a year of movies that reach desperately for significance and find only empty sentimentality, You Can Count On Me knows something of the truth, and is thus, so far, the richest most rewarding film of the year.

Jeffrey Overstreet 12/2/2000