I completely dig this flick. It was emotionally exhausting but real. This is the side to life that most are lucky enough not to have to live with or see. In the days now of feel good movies and happy endings, this really cut to the chase that not every movie is given a happy ending. For the end of this movie, I wasn't real thrilled with where it ended off with either as some have so eloquently mentioned, however the meat of the story was just outstanding to me. I loved it so much I bought it. I think it's not a movie for some but for me, I found it to be exceptional.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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moving and atmospheric indie drama
Added 8/24/2009
"Sleepwalking" starts off a bit like "Frozen River," focused on a single mother struggling to make ends meet in rural America (though it was actually filmed in Saskatchewan). But the movie quickly veers off in another direction, shifting that focus onto her 13-year-old daughter, Tara, and her younger brother, James (the girl's uncle), who are suddenly forced to rely on one another for comfort and support when Joleen temporarily bows out of the picture.
When her boyfriend is arrested for growing marijuana, Jolene (Carlize Theron) and Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) are forced to move in with James (Nick Stahl), a soft-spoken, good-hearted fellow in his 20s who is two months behind in his rent and who barely scrapes by on what he makes at his low-paying construction job. Soon, Joleen has split the scene, James has lost his job, and social services has taken Tara to live in a foster-care facility. So James and Tara decide to head out onto the open highway, stopping off at roadside diners and motels, and staying one step ahead of the authorities who are in pursuit of them.
"Sleepwalking" is one of those gritty, slice-of-life dramas that sympathetically and accurately depicts what life is like for the working poor. It is rife with authentic details and rich in small town atmosphere. Director William Mahr and cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia really know how to extract the essence of a locale for mood and effect, making the bleak landscape and stark setting integral elements in the drama - an effect greatly enhanced by Christopher Young`s rich and evocative acoustic-flavored score. Superb, naturalistic performances by the three lead actors make us truly care about the people they are portraying and the things that are happening to them.
"Sleepwalking" is not without its flaws, however. For one thing, the movie undercuts some of its carefully crafted verisimilitude with its casting of "name" actors in a few of the key secondary roles - primarily, Woody Harrelson as James' friend and work buddy, and an over-reaching Dennis Hopper as Joleen and James' abusive dad. These parts would have been more effective had they been played by less-familiar actors (though I do realize that, without such star power attached to the project, a movie like "Sleepwalking" might never have gotten made in the first place). More seriously, the otherwise excellent screenplay by Zac Stanford falls apart a bit in the final third, resorting to stereotyping and hokey melodrama when it most needs to stay true to its characters and their situations.
Still, despite the patness, "Sleepwalking" is a quietly powerful, richly atmospheric tale of a group of troubled but essentially decent people struggling, despite their all-too-human weaknesses, to make their way in the world.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Touching "Sleepwalking"
Added 8/16/2009
I really enjoy this movie although the pace is slow. I like Tara and James very much. James is really good in the movies(although he is stupid when he is confront his dad!). It broke my heart when I saw Tara was beaten by her grandfather.
Overall the film is really good and I would rate 5 stars originally. But the scene that Tara smoke is not comfortable to me. How come the film director made the young actress(only 12 years old!) to smoke? And I don't think this scene is really important to the film. So I rate this film 4 stars only.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Pleasantly surprised. A quality film.
Added 8/14/2009
Perhaps the intensity of this film was easier to take on the small screen than it was in the theater. I thought it was well acted and flowed well from beginning to end. The characters moved both geographically and developmentally which helped to keep my interest. The ending was bizare, but believable given the twisted upbringing of the brother; a mixture of good and bad. The heart is a place which is large enough to house a fearful mixture of both pure love and pure hate, and who can say which will have supremisy in the end? His journey is not over by a long shot. I can see this showing up in the future on tv. It should hit a chord with almost every age group; the struggle we all have to make sense of the world, the unfortunate situations in which we all find ourselves at times, and the emotions those situations invoke in us.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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A Sad Story With A Bit of Hope In The End
Added 4/18/2009
Joleen (Charlize Theron) is a woman with a nasty mouth who seems to want to make good choices, but because she's hanging onto past hurts, she makes one bad choice after the next. It's obvious that she loves her daughter, but since she's so lost she just doesn't know how to be a good mother. Her brother James (Nick Stahl) is a sweetheart - a cool, calm, collected, good-hearted man who just can't seem to get his life together. Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) is stuck between her Mom and Uncle James. She's an unhappy little lady with no real choices.
This movie was much different than what I expected. After watching the preview, I thought James and Tara were going to escape their troubles, start over and be happy with their new lives. But what they do is go from a bad situation to one much worse. James' father (Dennis Hopper) is an evil man who cares nothing about his family. Once he was introduced I could see why Joleen was so troubled, why she was so desperate for a man's love and especially why she had that nasty mouth. I also understood why James was like a scared little boy in a man's body.
I cannot say I enjoyed this movie, but I won't say that I totally disliked it. I felt for Joleen, James and Tara, I will say that. Their story was so sad, but there was a bit of hope in the end.
Parents: There is profanity, a sexual situation(not graphic)and the violence is not extreme compared to most movies these days.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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I completely dig this flick. It was emotionally exhausting but real. This is the side to life that most are lucky enough not to have to live with or see. In the days now of feel good movies and happy endings, this really cut to the chase that not every movie is given a happy ending. For the end of this movie, I wasn't real thrilled with where it ended off with either as some have so eloquently mentioned, however the meat of the story was just outstanding to me. I loved it so much I bought it. I think it's not a movie for some but for me, I found it to be exceptional.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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moving and atmospheric indie drama
Added 8/24/2009
"Sleepwalking" starts off a bit like "Frozen River," focused on a single mother struggling to make ends meet in rural America (though it was actually filmed in Saskatchewan). But the movie quickly veers off in another direction, shifting that focus onto her 13-year-old daughter, Tara, and her younger brother, James (the girl's uncle), who are suddenly forced to rely on one another for comfort and support when Joleen temporarily bows out of the picture.
When her boyfriend is arrested for growing marijuana, Jolene (Carlize Theron) and Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) are forced to move in with James (Nick Stahl), a soft-spoken, good-hearted fellow in his 20s who is two months behind in his rent and who barely scrapes by on what he makes at his low-paying construction job. Soon, Joleen has split the scene, James has lost his job, and social services has taken Tara to live in a foster-care facility. So James and Tara decide to head out onto the open highway, stopping off at roadside diners and motels, and staying one step ahead of the authorities who are in pursuit of them.
"Sleepwalking" is one of those gritty, slice-of-life dramas that sympathetically and accurately depicts what life is like for the working poor. It is rife with authentic details and rich in small town atmosphere. Director William Mahr and cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia really know how to extract the essence of a locale for mood and effect, making the bleak landscape and stark setting integral elements in the drama - an effect greatly enhanced by Christopher Young`s rich and evocative acoustic-flavored score. Superb, naturalistic performances by the three lead actors make us truly care about the people they are portraying and the things that are happening to them.
"Sleepwalking" is not without its flaws, however. For one thing, the movie undercuts some of its carefully crafted verisimilitude with its casting of "name" actors in a few of the key secondary roles - primarily, Woody Harrelson as James' friend and work buddy, and an over-reaching Dennis Hopper as Joleen and James' abusive dad. These parts would have been more effective had they been played by less-familiar actors (though I do realize that, without such star power attached to the project, a movie like "Sleepwalking" might never have gotten made in the first place). More seriously, the otherwise excellent screenplay by Zac Stanford falls apart a bit in the final third, resorting to stereotyping and hokey melodrama when it most needs to stay true to its characters and their situations.
Still, despite the patness, "Sleepwalking" is a quietly powerful, richly atmospheric tale of a group of troubled but essentially decent people struggling, despite their all-too-human weaknesses, to make their way in the world.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Touching "Sleepwalking"
Added 8/16/2009
I really enjoy this movie although the pace is slow. I like Tara and James very much. James is really good in the movies(although he is stupid when he is confront his dad!). It broke my heart when I saw Tara was beaten by her grandfather.
Overall the film is really good and I would rate 5 stars originally. But the scene that Tara smoke is not comfortable to me. How come the film director made the young actress(only 12 years old!) to smoke? And I don't think this scene is really important to the film. So I rate this film 4 stars only.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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