Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

dougdoepke Though nothing much happens for 2-hours, I was still engaged with the crumbling family unit the whole way. Paradoxically, when it was over, I wasn't sure what it was all about. Quite a triumph for the crew to convert such outwardly tame material into a compelling result. Not once, I think, does the drama descend into soap opera, a temptation given the material. Still, I do think some tighter editing wouldn't have harmed the overall result.Looks to me like the film's about Mom (Moore) and Dad (Sutherland) living in their own little pretend worlds. Dad's enjoying his upper class life, protecting it by believing everything's alright at home regardless of reality. Mom's more complex. Looks like she stifles her feelings by putting on a deadpan mask. Clearly though, she favored older son Buck. So, once tragedy strikes and older boy Buck drowns, younger brother Conrad gets no help from them when he blames himself for Buck's death. In short, parenting flaws that had not been critical before Conrad's trauma, suddenly become critical afterwards, leaving the surviving son in a floundering, self-destructive state. Importantly, the family's prosperous, so the problems come partially from prosperity and not from poverty. The youthful Hutton richly deserved his Oscar. In years of movie watching, his ravaged teenage emotions are as realistic as any I've seen. And that's without overplaying. Perhaps a James Dean Award is in order. But is that really MTM. I can't believe it. Her sunshine has been traded for a lemon drop. Still, she shows her acting chops in a persuasive way. Anyway, if you like family drama, this fairly subtle entry is worth catching up with.

jacobs-greenwood I'll admit upfront that I'm predisposed to loving this film's story because I identified with Timothy Hutton's character when the movie came out - when I was approximately his character's age - and subsequently, while raising my own children through high school. But watching it again earlier today - after not seeing it for more than a decade, I realized that it's one of those few perfectly made movies.It was director Robert Redford's debut, which shows just how much he learned while on the other side of the camera in the twenty-some movies he starred in before 1980; after all, he won the Oscar. It's also superbly edited and adeptly scored (with Pachelbel's Canon). But it's the acting that likely solidified its place as the Academy's Best Picture that year over Raging Bull (1980), a much less enduring feature. Its strength was Robert De Niro's tour-de-force, Best Actor performance. But, as a biography, it contains only one man's 'truth' whereas Ordinary People (1980) explores many of the universal truths inherent in family dysfunction, especially while trying to "keep up appearances", and parenting teenagers, among other themes.Donald Sutherland is excellent as the sensitive father trying to hold it all together, and 5-time Emmy winner Mary Tyler Moore rightly earned her only Oscar nomination as his repressed wife. If you're wondering, Sissy Spacek won for Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). But its Hutton - who won the Best Supporting Oscar - and Judd Hirsch (who was also nominated in that category) that deliver the most (of many) heart-wrenching scene(s) in the film. Even though I knew what was coming, I couldn't help but shake while crying over several minutes. In fact, if you don't tear up at least once while viewing this movie, you're probably repressed yourself. I haven't read Judith Guest's novel, but Alvin Sargent adapted it to win the film's fourth Academy Award. There's also excellent support from M. Emmet Walsh, Elizabeth McGovern (her debut), Dinah Manoff, and James Sikking (among others).If somehow you've yet to see it, I won't spoil it any further because the details of what happened to the family before the film's opening scene are teased out slowly, during the aftermath of the present. If you have seen it, I urge you to watch it again because it's still powerfully impactful even if you remember it as vividly as I did.

stephaniemiller-44904 This movie is such a sad tale of losing a child and family beginning to rip apart. I can watch this film over and over and not get tired. It has a message on how we feel when we lose someone and who it's difficult to come to terms with it.Amazing well done performances by Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore playing this upper class couple and Timothy Hutton in his supporting role as the guilt strict son. The film marks Robert Redford direct-oral debut after a decade being in the face of the camera going on to win Best Picture at the 1981 Oscars and Tinothy Hutton winning for Supporting Actor in a Role.

Dunham16 The novel is a psychological drama about a family seemingly having everything yet torn apart at the seams. The Jarretts are well settled and well fixed in the Chicagoland suburbs until a boating accident leaves one son dead and the other son mentally at wits end because he is of the opinion he could have saved his brother had he tried harder. Once the younger son is hospitalized for a suicide attempt the film opens as the bitter mother brilliantly portrayed by Mary Tyler Moore deals with her anxiety toward her now mentally at wits end son brilliantly portrayed by Timothy Hutton. His well meaning father played by Donald Sutherland recruits the aid of a psychiatrist played by Judd Hirsch to complete the principal cast. Supporting the younger son in his quest to return to normalcy are M. Emmett Walsh as his school coach and Elizabeth McGovern as agirl of his age interested in his company. Driving yet another wedge between father and mother beyond how to best deal with their one surviving son is their socieoconomic background differences which slowly come to light as the film brilliantly progresses. Because more commercial films include travelogues of the city of Chicago not of suburban Chicagoland another strong point of the film is its excellent travelogue of suburban Chicagoland's gold coast northern suburbs.