Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

TinsHeadline Touches You

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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

merelyaninnuendo Birds Of AmericaIt starts off breezy and light and gives us high hopes but somewhere before the climax it goes down and struggles before it dips too low to even bare it.

sesht Other than not 'getting' the reference to the book the movie' gets its title from, this one's a pretty decent watch, of a family not quite together, and who does't quite keep it together, trying to deal with life as its dished out to them.Perry plays the patriarch, and seems a misfit in the role (in this movie), since those under his care, his brother (Ben Foster), and his sister (Ginnifer Goodwin), turn out, not so normal, or, depending on one's viewpoint, as messed up as the rest of us, but weird in their acknowledgment of that without hypocrisy, in their adult lives.Perry and his suburban challenges have already reached a head, when these 3 lives criss-cross once again, definitely heading toward a (portentously) dark denouement. Lauren Graham has nothing much to do, except towards the end, and though her character doesn't have much of an arc, she acquits herself well. Swank has a bit of a thankless job in this one, and like other reviewers have mentioned, anyone could have performed in this role. She might have taken it up since this did not require her to do any heavy lifting, and that would have meant a welcome change from all the other heavy stuff she's been know to do. Seeing her in this supporting role sometime took me out of the movie, since its quite a distraction.Perry the leading man can quite carry things off, and its strange that he hasn't done more roles, either in Indies or in the mainstream. Hopefully, that will change, since this is an example of him taking chances with the material he does, and could be known for. Foster's good as always, but needs to play characters who can lighten up a little bit - all the intensity might just be putting him in a typical mould, and that's not good for any actor who's capable of range.Having said all that, this is a pretty decent watch for once, and is quite similar to various other movies having been made about dysfunctional families in the recent past, in a good way.

gradyharp BIRDS OF America is not a cinematic version of Lorrie Moore's best selling collection of short stories by the same name. This little tale of a dysfunctional family was written by Elyse Friedman, a Canadian novelist and screenwriter (Then Again, Long Short Story, Waking Beauty) whose works are summed up by the author: "If I had to sum up my characters in one word, I'd say 'outsiders.' There's not one particular source from where I get my inspiration. It comes from different places. I get it from life, and ideas pop into my head. I file them away and sooner or later it's time to deal with them, whether in screenplay, book, or poem or whatever it happens to be." Craig Lucas (Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss, The Dying Gaul) joins Friedman in bringing this strange little story about outsiders and insiders, all living together under one bizarre roof. Morrie (Matthew Perry) is the older brother who raised his free-spirited siblings Jay (Ben Foster) and Ida (Ginnifer Goodwin) after the death of their parents. Their lives have gone in different directions: Morrie is a professor in line for tenure that happens to be at the mercy of his fellow academician Paul (Gary Wilmes) who lives next door to Morrie and his sturdy but 'it's time to start a family' wife Betty (Lauren Graham). Paul and his obsessive compulsive gardening wife-new-mother Laura (Hilary Swank) do all the right things, a trait Morrie and Betty try to emulate to assure Morrie's getting tenured, a move that will assure Betty that motherhood can be approached. Into this strained atmosphere drops Jay recovering from an accident (he lay on the freeway and was hit but not killed). Alone (he is married to a young girl Gillian (Zoë Kravitz) but does not share this information at first) Jay moves into Morrie's attic and continues his strange life pattern, imposing his Vegan style on the family and eventually inviting his equally looney sister Ida to move in, too: Ida takes the basement. The two siblings proceed to cause minor crises and dilemmas for Morrie, more or less resulting in Morrie's being alienated from his 'important' neighbors. How Morrie and Betty adjust to their new found way of life and its consequences provides an ending to the story. The film is slight and begs indulgence in some of the sidebars that are less than contributing to the film as a whole, but the cast is very good: Ben Foster and Ginnifer Goodwin continue to impress as they polish their acting skills. The story is a little on the crazy side, but it does provide another way of viewing a dysfunctional family. Grady Harp

snottail Great movie. It addresses to a great number of heavy subjects, such as mental illness, suicide, spouse-trouble without making it a serious depressing movie. It does not achieve this by putting lots of humor in it and so it didn't lose it's serious touch.Maybe the plot, or 'lesson-to-be-learned' is that you should fight given rules of society or bourgeoisie or what have you, BUT it's rather subtle. By this I mean that it doesn't put eccentric behavior on a pedestal (as in movies like Falling Down or American Beauty or Fightclub (just to mention some big names)).So this adds up in a good vibe and not hard-to-watch movie, acting and directing in this movie is great also.The only thing that could have bother me is the chasing-scene in the end, where they all meet up by 'accident', it's a bit too unrealistic to fit into the rest of the movie, but it does give it sort of an artistic twist.All in all in very much recommend this movie.