Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Maziun This is definitely an unconventional narrative about group of people in small town in Alaska. The writer/director John Sayles wanted to make an unconventional movie that plays with audience expectations . When there is a shotgun hanging on the wall the audience should expect that it will be used in the movie – that's how most movies work. The writers write movies as a mathematical calculation where 2 plus 2 gives 4 . They want to capture life in their movies , but often the shape their own reality based on logic with moral in the end. After watching many movies audience can have certain expectations about where the story is going, what will happen , what could happen and what will be the message.Styles here tries to imitate life as much as it's possible. In the first half of movie we are introduced to characters that don't really play any important part in the second half – the lesbian couple , frustrated fisherman , jolly bartender. In fact "Limbo" is basically two movies in one , similar to "Full metal jacket". The first hour is a movie about people of small town , while the second hour pretends to be a thriller about three people. Calling this movie a "thriller" is a bit misleading , it's certainly no "Deliverance". The acting is fine . Vanessa Martinez is believable as angry teenager , David Strathairn is effectively playing troubled, but good hearted handy-man . Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is lovely as singer who can't settle with her life. There is some nice fun dialogue here and the movie is quite beautifully photographed."Limbo" doesn't work either as thriller or drama . The thriller elements are few and badly done . There is a lot of potential drama here : troubled past of Joe , the love triangle , the mother-daughter relationship. The problem is that everything is done with sensibility of soap opera . I'm sorry , but I wasn't move by anything here. The movie is too slow in some places. There is also an irritating amount of small talk that leads nowhere. And why waste your time of showing characters in the first half of the movie when they don't play any part in the second half . Kris Kristofferson is supposed to be an important character , yet his completely bland.The biggest problem however is the ending . I don't mind open endings that allow the audience to use imagination and decide what happened in the end – "Mechanic" , "Inception", "The Killing of Chinese bookie" and few others. The fans of Sayles say that it was the only way to end the movie and there is some merit in their arguments . However , Sayles himself admitted that he didn't knew how to end the movie and the ending is the result of that . It feels like the movie misses a reel. In my opinion it's awful ending."Limbo" is kinda interesting experiment , but after two viewings I still think it's an ambitious failure. I give it 3/10.

snoopdavidniven God love and protect John Sayles. Not because he hits every ball out of the park, because he clearly doesn't; but because he never lets his few strikeouts compel him to try to hit a five-run homer the next time out. In an era marked by increasingly degraded and degrading notions of "entertainment" and "storytelling" - for pity's sake, as I write this, grown adults are waxing rhapsodic over a movie about a costumed billionaire-vigilante (!!) - Sayles understands that great drama is about the people we meet every day; the places we live in and how they shape us; the things that change, and the things that remain; and above all, about the human heart in conflict with itself. In LIMBO, he takes risks with his zig-zagging narrative most filmmakers simply aren't capable of, and reaps rewards of such profundity, and richness of feeling, that most audiences are too conditioned by junk-culture to recognize, let alone appreciate them. Some viewers have felt betrayed by LIMBO's seismic shifts in tone and direction, and the elliptical ending, but even that sense of betrayal speaks to how utterly absorbing and moving his handling of his Alaska-set story is, and how unblinking his observations of his characters. (You can only feel "betrayed" if you're deeply invested in the story that's been presented, after all.) Sayles' screenplay, like his direction, is so completely free of artifice as to seem transparent - his "heroes" and "villains" are separated only by their degrees of vulnerability and weakness under pressure - and his small cast of actors are working at the height of their gifts. David Straithairn, always underrated, has never been better, and young Vanessa Martinez is a quiet revelation. You won't forget these characters, or this movie, regardless of how the ending affects you. And though you hate to jinx his thus-far phenomenal career with red-carpet hullabaloo, maybe it's time to make it official and coronate John Sayles as the greatest moviemaker of our time. He may not need or want the crown, but Hollywood certainly needs to made to cry uncle and acknowledge it.

you_stink-1 I was going to finish my summary thought but I thought I'd be more like this movie.Why were we introduced so so many characters only to have them left as incomplete parts? I'm no stranger to bleak story lines, and a little imagination is good for a movie, but why the hell are we watching a movie if we have to imagine more than 50% of the plot? The characters were interesting but the second half of the movie never needed to happen. They could have continued with the characters that were starting to show development, instead, someone felt that developing characters, and giving them actual story arcs was a bad idea. They decided to do the right thing and sacrifice any hopes of a decent drama for some misguided artistic vision.I'm only giving this movie 3 stars because the partially developed characters held my interest while they existed.

isisherbs2000 I enjoyed this movie tremendously, and although I agree with previous posters that the 'mother' is a monster, I thought that helped the film, particularly since she was portrayed sensitively-ish (she's definitely the least sympathetic of the 3 main characters). The self-absorption and the amazingly flamboyant failed attempts at good parenting are all part of the title: Limbo. Mastroantonio's character is in perpetual limbo, and as a result, so is her daughter. Straithairn is simply trying to live, in limbo due to an accident for which he feels responsible (but isn't). The community is in limbo, as well, as industries close and local officials try to find a way to keep the economy afloat (and their own pockets full). Although one could argue that the crisis - Straithairn's brother's 'situation' - is a little manipulative, I didn't mind it, and I loved the fact that the crisis led the trio to a 'time-out' - limbo within a limbo. It was filmed so beautifully, acted so amazingly well and was so nice and slow that I almost felt envious of the characters for their situation - who, in real life, gets to put their life into a perspective while bonding with other truly caring souls? Of course, being hunted by killers, starving to death and worrying about dying in the Alaskan winter are no picnic...but, there was a strong sense of togetherness and of honesty, even painful and inappropriate honesty. As for the ending --- well, I, too, shouted 'NO!' at the screen, but only because I ended up loving these characters so much I wanted to see them do well - to get out of limbo, as they all so ardently wish for (the final scene itself was so expressive, both in the staging and the acting, that it tore me up). Of course, I didn't want them to die, either! A perfectly formed movie. I will watch it again, for sure.