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Movies & TV News & Features

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME

Rating: NNNNN


YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (Kenneth Lonergan, 2000) is an actor’s movie, a writer’s movie, a thinking person’s movie. No wonder it didn’t get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. With no swords, drugs, cleavage or chocolate to bolster its mainstream appeal, it relies on its preternatural insight into family dynamics. The fact that it’s also enormously entertaining proves that families are still the best source of drama around. Laura Linney, best-actress Oscar nominee, plays Sammy Prescott, a single mother in a quaint mountain town trying to juggle her solemn son (Rory Culkin), irritating yet oddly desirable boss (Matthew Broderick) and crisis of faith (Lonergan’s cameo as her unflappable priest is one of the film’s highlights). Then in walks her slacker brother, played without a whiff of cliche by Mark Ruffalo. They were orphaned as children, and the film is at its best when it shows them struggling to treat each other like adults but reverting to “You suck!” strategies when things go bad. With Lonergan’s Oscar-nominated script, it’s worth seeing more than once. NNNNN (March 23-27, Music Hall March 28, Paradise)

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