Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Davis P In the Bedroom is a movie I had never really heard of or come across until tonight. I really don't know how I could have skipped past this one or how it just flew under my radar. Sissy Spacek, Marisa Tomie, and Nick and Tom are all great here. Especially Sissy Spacek! Gosh did she ever turn in a fabulous performance. Her portrayal of the mother/wife that has had her son suddenly taken away from him. And Tom's is great too, he is really able to channel the feelings of a father/husband who has been through a tragedy or if you're just feeling down is at his wit's end. Marisa is a great actor and she really does give it her all and she flows well in the different scenes. In the bedroom does not disappoint. It's written in a way that tells all sides to this tragic story. The "sides" are Tomei, the mother and father. I encourage everyone who loves a good drama. It definitely is a unique, very well done film. 9/10 for in the bedroom.

powermandan In The Bedroom is a film that parents need to see. I saw it with my parents and it has probably scarred them for life. But whatever, it is a film that needs to be watched and learned from. Already know how to avoid all these bumps? Watch it anyway. The movie features amazing acting, and a movie that really gets you feeling is really hard to come by. Here is one.Meet the Fowler family. Matt is a doctor, Ruth is a music teacher, and Frank is their son who isn't sure about his future and college. Frank is dating Natalie Strout, who is much older than he is. She formerly married an ex-con and she has two boys. Ruth doesn't like the idea of them dating, but Matt doesn't see a problem with it. He knows that both parties will come to and they will break up. The movie even hints at them breaking up. Richard, Natalie's husband, makes some unwelcome surprises, and the tension is very high. Matt is concerned, but he knows that his son is mature to handle his own situations, but he will stay in the backdrop just to see if his son needs a hand.Then the movie suddenly switches gears. *Spoilers* Richard shows up and Frank just wants to contain the situation. Richard then shoots Frank in the head. We don't actually see it, just the sound and the reactions from Richard and Natalie. That makes this scene all the more horrific. Is this a climax near the beginning? Some people interpret it that way. Whenever I watch this, it gets more clear why it was placed so close to the beginning.Since Natalie didn't actually see the murder, Richard can only be charged with manslaughter. But he gets out on bail. The Fowlers doing what they can to put Richard behind bars could take a year. In the meantime, their son's killer is free roaming the streets. There's a few times when he bumps into them. It really is shocking. Matt and Ruth really regret being so played back with their son. They really want to do all they can to destroy Richard once and for all.All the performances are first rate. Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek turn in their finest performances (well, Spacek's third best) as grieving parents driven to the edge. But it is ultimately Wilkinson that dominates the film. Stahl, Tomei, and Mapother are all fantastic too. This character- driven film is pitch-perfect. The fishing scenes, the revenge aspect, the thrills, all of these are perfect. These are real characters that can have a huge affect on anybody that watch it.Highly recommended!

FedRev In the Bedroom is a subtle and understated film, but it's also haunting and powerful. Though it's difficult to summarize without giving too much away, it takes place in a small town in New England and is about two murders, and central to the heart of those murders is an idealized concept of the "traditional" family unit. The first occurs because a jealous man can't stand the idea of someone else becoming involved with his ex-lover and mother of his children. The idea of a non-traditional family taking the place of a traditional one, as well as the perceived loss of property, meaning his ex and children, was too much for the murderer to bear. The second murder is revenge for the first, but it's not quite that simple. It happens because of a need for the second murderer to prove the legitimacy of their grief to a spouse after their family had been shattered. In the Bedroom is an examination of the concept of family in America, a meditation on how the garden from which fascism grows can be hidden just beneath the surface of a picturesque neighborhood. Evil can lie at the heart of everything we've been conditioned to see as normal and good and the film warns against the way the "traditional" family teaches people to see each other as property under the current system that governs the society we live in.

johnnyboyz In the Bedroom twists and turns delightfully, pulling the proverbial carpet from out under the viewer on at least two occasions and leaving us rather shaken at what plays out on screen a good few times other than this. To say it's about love and coming of age as hormonal rushes vie with a parent's want for their youngster to branch out into greater, more grandeur things in the form of studies would be true. To say it's about the grieving process would additionally be true, to say why would be a gross spoiler of an item that only hits us about a half of the way through, and to say it was about normal, everyday people whom are placed in extraordinary circumstances before opting to elevate their position into an even more extraordinarily circumstantial situation, as clashes with deeply routed morals come-about, would also be true. Todd Field takes delight in manoeuvring his characters down shady alleys of internal conflict and desire, equally so with the narrative which is wonderfully pitched and thoroughly engaging.Field's gear changes are near effortless, shifting tones and impressively taking the story down different paths; successfully dragging the story along with it as things brood. His film revolves around the Fowler family of Maine in America, their existence seeing them contribute to society in an upstanding and generally sociable manner; the father and husband of whom is Matt (Wilkinson), a local doctor, his and his sons' fondness of baseball so strong that listening to repeat broadcasts on the radio of games of old is the norm as they spend their spare time fishing for lobsters out at sea. The wife and mother is Ruth (Spacek), a key component to the film is their eldest son Frank (Stahl) whom hovers around the meaning to go off to study architecture but is distracted by his love for local girl Natalie (Tomei) who's ex-husband Richard (Mapother) remains as much a pest as he does a volatile threat.Frank lovingly spends his days with Natalie full of all things good; the ex-husband Richard looming ominously in the background as he seemingly refuses to let Natalie go. Frank's attitudes to life at this stage in his life clash with mother Ruth's ideas, his want to stay where he is and perhaps work on one of the many aforementioned lobster boats the local community run, just so as to be closer to Natalie, is winning the battle over going away to study. Frank sits alone at night in the family's house debating over the scenario he finds himself in and struggling over some architectural work linked to his education, his mother coming downstairs offering the binary opposition to what Frank is apparently leaning towards and they clash in a profile shot.After a jolting twist in the tale happens, and the resulting frustrations born out of the aftermath of this do not tie up the loose ends of pain that still flail, things shift and we head down a different direction. Field hits us effectively enough with this U-turn reveal but the true wonder of his direction is his keeping of the impact of the event seemingly fresh well into the rest of the film. Where character and decisions and the relationships numerous characters had with one another drove the film, for In the Bedroom to take on such a minimalist tone thereafter following all this activity helps resonate the impact of the event. The edits between takes are longer for the second third; we don't seem to revolve around much else except for the aftermath of the event; whatever dialogue from a flurry of characters before, has gone: replaced only by two people speaking or arguing in grim tones about what to do and there's less an emphasis on narrative, as if the proverbial spanner has been wedged into the cogs that turn the action-reaction formula resulting in the machine being stuck on 'reaction'. When tensions and emotions reach a boiling point, the film will peel off down another road and lead us onto an agonising conclusion.Sliced up into three distinct thirds, In the Bedroom delivers an intriguing love story between two young and attractive people as a son bids to move away from his parents; a somewhat harrowingly progressive and deliberately trudging segment in which the director slows everything right down to compliment the material before concluding on a pulpy revenge infused thriller tone, all the while with a constant eye on studious and refreshing attention to character. The film opens with a series of machines going through a predisposed process of canning seafood at a local plant; the film will later go onto revolve around the process of number of things all linked to human nature, jealousy; guilt; rage; grief and how they affect individual people and those around them whom they hold dear or otherwise.In what is a decidedly bleak ending, the grim reality of the new existence these people inhabit is metaphorically observed in the removing of a plaster which covered a thumb wound for most of the film; said injury now apparently healed over thus pointing out grazes, be they physical or otherwise, do heal. The new order a particular set of characters find themselves in after agreeing to do what they did suggests a newfound sense of solace with their living, an ending which suggests more-so a temporal healing of certain psychological wounds than it does an entire healing; but the use of violence and death as a means for an answer challenges the viewer in where they stand in desiring two central character winding up, not happy, but as happy as humanely possible following the tragic events that happened. The film is bold, rather daring and quite the intrinsic drama.