The Greatest

First and foremost, Susan Sarandon has played this part before; many times and she never ceases to bore me. Pierce Brosnan is wonderful. He's the best thing in the movie. Carrie Mulligan's character is easy and not something that required much effort. The younger son's character is vapid and so is the character of the chick who befriends him in grief counseling. And finally, one never totally given real proof of the relationship between the character of Jennifer Ehle and Brosnan. It's vagueness is so boring...one just wants to say: "Oh for crying out loud...stop the sentimental innuendo and just lay it out there." The story is so mundane and throw-away, one almost wonders why they bothered to make this gushy and schmaltzy film anyhow. The whole thing is as if no one has ever lost kids before and no set of parents have EVER grieved the death of their child.

Except for the baby ,the movie will remind Italian cinema buffs of "La Stanza DeL Figlio" and the part of Ryan is close to Conrad the young brother of "ordinary people" ;like in the contemporary "rabbit hole" each of the parents desperately searches for solace:the mother tries to talk to the other injured driver to know the last words of her son (whereas Nicole Kidman,fascinated by a comic ,wants to believe that in parallel universes ,her son is happy);the father tries to live again,goes to the movie theater with the pregnant girlfriend,attends the echography whereas his wife quickly leaves the room "if you lose your dog,we're not given a puppy!" The cast is excellent ,particularly Pierce Brosnan,cast against type :he and his younger son seem to have overcome the pain,but when they finally break down,their despair and their tears are deeply moving.The flashbacks are short and effective ,particularly the last one which is also the end of the movie and which is not a goodbye but a hello.

The Greatest (2009) A crisis of youth becomes a crisis for a whole family, and it's serious stuff. There's an attempt, very conspicuous in gesture and angst filled expressions, to be gritty and real, and it's a believable scenario. It's a tearjerker, surely, an intimate psychodrama dripping in sentiment. However, the movie depends almost purely on this terrible crisis to succeed, and that's actually slightly backwards, in movie terms. That is, it should be the writing and acting that sweeps us in and makes us share the grief of the main characters. You end up wanting to empathize, but it's sometimes despite the movie, which pushes very hard, like a friend who wants to make you feel bad about something. It has such touching moments it's hard to quite accept that a lot of it is clumsily written, almost like a high budget beginner's film, which sounds worse than I mean it. But you'll see, I think, even if you love it thoroughly, that it works modestly. So accept its flaws, ignore the obvious flashbacks to the good times, skip the dining room table where people are sitting all on one side so we can see them all from the camera, ignore the patter that is meant to make life ordinary and doesn't, and so on. Be forgiving or give it a pass. What saves the movie (somewhat) from its excesses is the performance of the lead girl, Rose (Carey Mulligan), and the father, Mr. Brewer, played by Pierce Brosnan, who is a nuanced dad, whatever his James Bond pedigree, though neither one is given decent lines to work with. (Brosnan was also a producer, go figure.) The mother is meant to be disturbed in her grief, and she sure is. The sexy grad assistant is too too obvious even for the movies. And the brother, well, what is his role, actually, just to add a second improbable plot? And there is surveillance video of the crash, which is beyond even reasonable open-mindedness, given the isolation implied by the first several minutes of the movie. The sensationalism of that, alone, will warn you of what's to come. Okay, one last confession. It gets so emotionally atomic at times, with the throbbing cellos coming in the background, I had to laugh out loud. I swear. And yet, I see how it deals with some truly, believably gorgeous stuff.

A 6.6 out of 10 is disgusting, this movie was amazing and is definitely one of my favorites. I just finished it and I am still crying. I cried from start to finish, even laughed a little. Its heart warming in a kind of dark way. I will recommend this movie to everyone I know and will most definitely watch it again, and will more than likely cry just as much. Anyone debating on whether or not to watch this movie....WATCH IT! Its wonderful. Kept me interested from start to finish, awesome casting. This movie makes you feel like you knew Bennet and that you were grieving with the family. You feel their pain even though you may not have gone through something as tragic.

Despite the excellent cast and an interesting idea, this movie was difficult to sit through. Many have mentioned the problem of a camera on a remote road that provided a security tape for the mother to watch, but that was just one problem in a movie full of them. One small problem was the button-down father as a math professor. While there may be someone out there who teaches math and pays so much attention to his grooming, I certainly never met them while I was in school. This professor is also somehow able to afford not just a 4500 sf house in NY, with a maid, but also a beach house, right on the beach. Maybe he made some good investments and maybe he had some huge inheritance, but most professors just aren't that well-to-do. Ryan, the brother, and his drug problem seemed a little too easy. He was addicted, suddenly decided to get clean with no help except his mother's drug tests. This while his mother is so out of it that she can't even shop without having a meltdown. And he keeps a stash hidden under his bed while getting clean on his own. Just a little unlikely. Where I really had trouble was the seasonality. The movie was set in New York, with a baby due in February. Yet 119 days before the baby is due, which would be October, the family is at the beach house on a weekend and they swim. In bikinis and swim trunks. When the baby is born, in February, in New York, the heaviest outerwear worn is a trench coat. No hats, scarves, mittens, sweaters. Just a trench coat. With very brilliant green leaves on all the trees. We are also expected to believe that two teens who make it to 18 without sex, have sex with each other the first day they talk to one another. They were both in love with each other for 4 years before talking, and fell right into bed. All the great acting in the world isn't good enough to overcome the discrepancies that kept popping up in this movie.

Pierce Brosnan was at his best. Carey Mulligan and Johnny Simmons are revelations. Susan Sarandon was raw and real. The film is about parents, played by Brosnan and Sarandon, that lose their son in a car accident. Three months later a girl shows up on their doorstep and announces that she is pregnant with their sons baby. The audience literally gasped aloud! But not as loud as the heartbreaking car accident which happens a few minutes into the film. I loved this film. Heartbreaking, with moments of levity, I was incredibly moved at the end - as were my family members. One of my favorites at Sundance.

This film is what film-making is all about...... I cried through a lot of it, and found myself laughing through some of my tears. As in real life. The human condition is so fragile and Ms. Feste captured it in so many rare and beautiful moments. It is a sad film, but it is not heavy; it leaves you with a feeling of hope. Death, esp death of a young person, is a tough subject to tackle. Death of a child, a near impossible subject to tackle b/c in life it is a near impossible subject to deal with. There is no precedent. How she was able to capture the feelings and emotions of this horrible situation so tenderly and genuinely is a true work of art. I thought the casting was perfect. The lead girl lights up the screen every time she appeared. Pierce Brosnan appears in a way we have never seen him, his role as father rang so true in my heart as I watched that I had a hard time remembering it was a film., All in all, this was my favorite film at Sundance. It moved me. It surprised me. It made me laugh. The choice for music was on point. I am impressed and inspired by this first time director. What a lovely gorgeous film.

The Greatest, starring Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon, and Carey Mulligan (An Education), is a relatively unknown movie by a first time director (Shana Feste) that is nevertheless quite good. Brosnan and Sarandon are married and play the grief stricken parents of two teenage boys, one of whom dies suddenly in a horrific traffic accident at the very beginning of the film. Sarandon is excellent and demonstrates she is a superior actress in her portrayal of a mother grieving I would almost say to the extreme. She is haunted by what happened to her son, by the fact that he stayed alive for 17 minutes and that she was not there to help him. She simply cannot get over the loss and resents her husband for moving on so quickly. A very poignant scene occurs when he offers her a bell, a sort of tool to help her with her grief, and tells her to ring it each time she thinks of their deceased son. She takes the bell from him and starts ringing it- non-stop. This and many other moments were extremely sad, showing how people cope with loss in very different ways. Things get even more complicated with the early appearance of Carey Mulligan's character, the girlfriend of the late young man, and her surprise announcement. This leads to even more sadness and hurtful reminders for the mother, but also a certain easing of the pain for the father, which inevitably results in great tension between the couple. Sarandon gets especially furious, distressed and jealous when, trying to reach her husband during a break down, she finds his phone turned off and learns subsequently that he had gone to the movies with the young girl. The scene escalates so much with an almost silent force that Brosnan picks her up and throws her fully clothed into the ocean, to awaken her and make her see that her anguish is unreasonable and causing pain to the rest of the living members of their family. The younger brother, appearing almost indifferent at first, succumbs to his emotions in the second half of the movie. The father, who keeps a cool demeanor and tries to hold the family together through his strength also finally collapses and interestingly, Sarandon picks up where he left off and comforts him, telling him that their son did not suffer. The whole family and their links are very credible and Brosnan astonished me by being particularly realistic. Even if this movie is almost painful to watch due to the difficult subject matter, it is very well acted and written, making it extremely emotional and powerful. It ends well so do not be too afraid, but if you are a crier, a tear or two will definitely be shed. My rating: 7.5 For more reviews please check out http://paulinasmovies.blogspot.com!!!

Shana Feste, after a screening, said one of her fave films is "Terms Of Endearment." So I suppose if that is one of your fave films, you might like "The Greatest." I don't think "Terms Of Endearment" is a great film. It's an okay film that you take your grandma too. And not your cool grandma, your lame grandma. P.Brosnan does some of his finest work ever and his scenes with C.Mulligan are sweet and effecting. Sundance It Girl Carey Mulligan is solid here, although I felt like with her pixie haircut and bland character she could have been interchanged with Jena Malone or a lot of other actresses and no one would have noticed. "Juno" is a movie that hovers over the movie, mixed with some "Ordinary People." Sounds good, right? But both those movies worked so well because of the directing. Here, the directing is not surprising, and so the clichés are just clichés. At a certain point I felt so manipulated that I stopped caring what happened. It didn't matter, because it just felt like strings being pulled to tug tears out. It felt fake. Like a fake movie, working too hard to sell itself. Johnny Simmons is the real reason to see this movie. He gives a star turn. Zoe Kravitz and everyone else disappear when he's on screen. There is a truly ridiculously written scene with Michael Shannon and Susan Sarandon. The two fine actors are talented enough to ring some beauty out of it-- but my goodness was it a stretch of the imagination to believe the scene itself. I wont say anything more, don't want to spoil plot, but I just didn't buy it for a second. There's a lot of that in this movie. You have to turn off your common sense if you want to cry here. I didn't cry. But Johnny Simmons truly gave me chills and maybe a tear in the eye.

I thought this movie was fantastic. The performances were honest and inspired. The music was perfect - so tired of all the overdone "adorable" scoring that's happening in these independent movies lately. Pierce Brosnan should win an award for his portrayal of the broken father. Karey Mulligan deserves all the It Girl praise she is getting. And the young boy was amazing! A part that could have been two-dimensional had so much soul. The writing was the best part. It was heartbreaking without ever feeling cheesy. First time writer-director Shana Feste should be walking out of Park City with honors simply for being brave enough to be simple.