BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

grandi-99088 Last night I saw this film again on TV, the second time since its first release 32 years ago. A lot of the scenes I still remember, the most dramatic of all to me is the hurricane. I sighed a few times during the whole film as in the case of Frank's (Balding's son) narrow escape from death running home from school. On the way, he was offered to enter into the car shelter where the homeless woman acted purely out of a kind heart to try to save a little boy. In the end, she was killed by the over-turned car battered by the storm. So contrasting of human nature was depicted in this film, for that I would reserve the top rating for the vile character to the guy called Mr. Simmons, the crooked cotton gin owner, who takes advantage of a poor widow with little or no knowledge of the trade, when she first came to buy seeds from him for her start-up. Fortunately, Mose foiled Simmons' deceit he had hatched up to give Mrs. Balding the wrong seeds deliberately. Mose's alert got Simmons to tender the correct seeds later. The rascal began to bear grudges with Mose from this point onward. Mr. Simmons haggles with Mrs. Balding again when she becomes the cotton grower first to return and sell the produce to the gin. He browbeats her in the cotton price with plenty of excuses, like the big depression, her greed to exact above market price, etc. In the end, Balding wins by striking a touching note at him that Simmons' father was not like him, that his father had a heart to treat kindly and reward the first seller of the crop, when she was about to end the negotiation and leave the room. In the end, the rascal trader backs down and let her have the right price she deserves. The director of the film got Simmons stick to his bad guy character. Approaching the end of the film, Simmons gangs up a group of triple-K clan members to inflict grave bodily harm on Mose, who realized he can no longer stay on helping Mrs. Balding in the next growing season. So, he departed, with yet another touching scene of affections he shows to Mrs. Balding and her children. Mrs. Balding bids him well and let him have the credit for achieving as the first grower to sell the crop in that season. I enjoy this good film as ever.

bcheng93 robert benton wrote this great book & he also directed the movie( how often does that happen! ). i've watch clips of this movie over the years. but never the whole movie...all i can say is wow! it reminds me a lot of john steinbeck novels. what a big difference for sally field from her " flying nun & gidget" days. shows us how good and evil men csn be. great cast that work very well together. i finally saw the whole movie today and it sicken me to my stomach and i wanted literally to just scream out as loud as i could at the injustices that men do to one another( the danny glover scene close to end of movie ) how can these southern landowners be called gentlemen and be god fearing when they got fat off of other peoples backbreaking work, the richest southerners were the one s that went to church and supposedly were god fearing men. the old money from the south are still around and they are still rich today. that money is easy to track down and some crusading lawyers should get together and shame them into giving up some of that money to help poor colored people or better yet help poor africans. i mean how do people live with themselves. they are the true devils, what are they doing going to church...where is god? anyway i hate injustice and i'm glad i finally watched the whole movie and in HD no less...a timeless classic not to be missed. all of u devils hiding behind u're smiling faces, if there is a god i hope u all get yours.

james higgins A wonderfully simple film, lovingly detailed art direction and costume design. The cinematography is excellent. The performances from everyone are notable. Sally Field gives a very convincing and heartfelt performance. The supporting cast is exemplary. Ed Harris, who is memorable in just about every film he is in, Lindsay Crouse, Amy Madigan, John Malkovich, and in particular Danny Glover. Impressive production throughout. There are a couple of scenes that are a little overdone, the tornado and the endless cotton picking scene, but overall the film comes together very well and it always held my interest throughout. Sally Field won an Oscar for her fine performance.

evanston_dad A solid dust bowl soap opera that stars Sally Field as a weary widow struggling single-handedly to keep her cotton farm running.Director Robert Benton's ("Kramer vs. Kramer") strengths are his ability to get great performances out of his actors; stylistically, there's nothing distinguished about his films. The same is true here. He's assembled a good cast, and he stands back and just lets them act. The movie is a like a checklist of every bad thing that could possibly happen to people living on a cotton farm in the 1930s, so we get a big tornado that wipes out the town and a special appearance by the Ku Klux Klan. It's probably authentic but it's also rather grueling. The movie is anchored by Field's fierce performance, and it's her that keeps the potential runaway melodrama in check.The fine cast of at the time mostly unknowns includes John Malkovich as a blind drifter; Danny Glover as a slave; Lindsay Crouse and Ed Harris as Field's sister and brother-in-law. I should hate the sentimental ending, but instead I'll be damned if it doesn't work.Grade: B+