Console best movie i've ever seen.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Martin Bradley At the heart of Scott Elliot's drab, soapy screen version of Jane Hamilton's novel is a terrific performance by Sigourney Weaver as a woman accused of child abuse. She is a school nurse who hates her job, is unhappy in her marriage and in whose care her best friend's daughter drowns. Jail is a kind of redemption. The film ought to shake you up, but Elliot imbues it with a kind of cold, clinical detachment. It's like a blueprint for emotion and, while Weaver is very powerful, the material never touches you. As the friend whose daughter dies, Julianne Moore touches a few nerves and David Strathairn is very fine as Weaver's dull, uncomprehending, caring husband. But they are all acting in a vacuum. You don't care what happens to anybody.

rcraig62 This movie could have been handled with a lot more depth. The first hour or so is well done, but then it becomes another B-movie tear-jerker, so much Hollywood fluff. A Map Of The World is the story of a married mother of two on a Wisconsin farm who suffers terribly when, while babysitting her best friend's two children, one of them wanders off and accidentally drowns in a pond on their property, after which she is charged with child abuse (in an unrelated incident) on her job as a school nurse and the confluence of events turn her quiet farm life upside down. I thought Sig Weaver gave a generally good performance as the mom in trouble, considering the script she had to work with, which is mostly banal trash. David Straithairn is reliably good as usual as the put-upon husband. I guess Julianne Moore has the best moment in the film, after playing it brave-faced at the death of her daughter, she is found by Weaver in the woods having a private breakdown. It's a great piece of acting and very touching, but it's only great compared to the rest of the movie. Straight-up, it's not all that good. The biggest problem here is the script. Some of the situations and dialogue are fraudulent, and characters aren't really developed. Chloe Sevigny plays basically a cardboard cut-out of a sleazy bimbo (she might as well have just had it stamped on her forehead for all the script gives her to do), and in one scene Julianne Moore's husband is overheard in an angry tantrum because Straithairn and his kids were in their house visiting, but then, I wondered, how did he feel about HER going over THERE. It isn't really explored. I also didn't get some of what Weaver's character was doing - the "let's let Oprah decide" speech, or one scene when Straithairn visits her in prison and she's making a lot of rambling small talk and doesn't ask about the kids - the insensitivity seems totally out of character. I didn't believe it for a second when the black women who were needling her in the cellblock "came around" at the end, the scene where Straithairn and Moore kiss I saw coming a mile away, and for the creme de la creme of tawdry Hollywood BS endings, when Moore's character turns up pregnant at the end of the movie, it is the ultimate in cheap, slapdash, feel-good garbage. Oh, well, drown one baby, make another. This is the sort of thing that screenwriters love because it provides a neat and happy resolution to everything, when, in fact, there is never a resolution to losing a child. If you remove Miss Weaver's occasional nudity, this thing could play forever on Lifetime channel. In spite of some strong efforts by the actors, A Map Of The World is junk, irredeemable junk. 2** out of 4

Spamlet How incredibly disappointing this movie is! It starts out as a fascinating exploration of the effect an unforseen circumstance has on two friends who are as close as sisters. Julianne Moore gives an absolutely stunning performance (her scene in the woods is one of the most surprising yet truthfully acted scenes you'll ever see) and her character's complexity is the best thing about the film. Unfortunately, about halfway through the focus shifts from this relationship and turns into predictable melodrama filled with every Oscar baiting trick in the book. Sigourney Weaver has always been a good actress but this role is just shameless pandering. She has several memorable scenes but they are all before the plot takes that swan dive into the abyss of paint by numbers Hollywood crap. The whole cast is good but they deserved a better story to tell.

tedg Spoilers herein.The book played with narrative: the narrator accepted bad things happening to her because she wanted them. It was an experience that is missed here.Weaver isn't quite up to this. She tries valiantly, but the director gives her no help. he doesn't understand what made the book work. Straithorn does well in spite of it all. But the real gem here is Julianne Moore. I'll follow her into any theater. She makes a great film here in the background when the director isn't watching.