I hope screenwriter Angus MacLachlan and director Phil Morrison make more movies together. WOW! ... yeah... wow... just wow... (cough).

Heartfelt, charming, and deeply moving. Amy Adams is superb.

Don't miss it!

Not perfect, but excellent. A complex ensemble piece built around great acting and writing, each character being given the chance to show who they are through finely observed action (or inaction) and dialogue. Top-notch American indie filmmaking.

A lovely and thoughtful film. It demonstrates the complex nature of familial relationships in wonderfully subtle story-telling. It is not a perfect film--the first hour or so contains scenes awkwardly directed and acted (particularly by Davidtz and McKenzie), but the second half is full of quiet revelations. Adams has garnered much praise and all is deserved. Her performance is so natural and effortless she threatens to steal the whole thing. I look forwad to seeing her career take-off from here. All in all, an excellent movie, full of wonderful moments and much to say about how family histories are permanent and deep-rooted and ongoing. Not even romantic love can knock the house off its foundation.… Expand

I loved this movie. It challenges the viewer to see the characters from the inside out, and it takes compassion and empathy to understand and respect them and their choices. Some viewers will get it, some won't. I suspect it will be those who have a hard time walking in someone else's shoes that won't. The performances were right on. Although this takes place in the South, it is really about people with small vision forced to expand their minds, and the pain that causes.… Expand

I thought it was great film, very true when it dealt with family problems, I saw a little of my own family in there.

Excellent film. Each character has many dimensions. There have been other films where a spouse meets their partners parents who are from a "different world." These are generally pretty cheesy. Junebug is sensitive and gentle with all its characters. The lightness of the film takes a heavy turn at the end.

I was profoundly and personally touched by this film; as my family talked about it over dinner, the ideas and feelings in the movie I thought only I could relate to started to tumble out of them. It's a funny, smart, complicated, artful, heartfelt gem.... Phil Morrison and everyone involved have built a tiny prism that lets you look at your life from a few new sparkling little angles.

I'm originally from the South and I've lived there on and off for about 25 years (out of 35). I'm also a fan of independent film. This would be a logical film for me to love, but I didn't love it. Amy Adams and the guy that plays her husband are quite good and their characters are very well-written. The rest is sketch and charicature, or worse. It blows my mind that the main guy, the character of Davidtz's husband, is such a non-person. Ty Burr's review sums it up for me.… Expand

Don't believe the people who say there's no story to this film. This is about how surprised we can be by the hidden baggageand/or histories that the people we love carry around with them. The fact that a classy New-York gallery owner can be completely clueless about the extended family of her husband is just the beginning - I challenge anyone to sit through the scene where her husband sings an old-fashioned hymn at a church potluck and not be as amazed as his she is. We are all of us strange and unknowable and many-faced, and people still love us. What a miracle. And the movie reminds us of that. Amy Adams is fantastic and gets most of the attention, but watch the people in smaller roles, too - the mother-in-law, played by the great character actress Celia Weston, deserved an Oscar nomination, too. And Scott Wilson as the dad is a model of self-negation. Great performances all around. If we were more comfortable with quiet, reflective movies, this would have made the Oscar list for Best Picture.… Expand

Great acting. unfortunately, there was no story.

the entire cast worked so well together,it seemed like any disfunctional family. Ashley was so full of energy, she keeps your attention and you wish you could be that positive,she lights up the room.

Yes, its not the best film in history. But no, its not the worst. The performance by Amy Adams is perfect,and there has never been an actress like her. Other than that, its still a great film about family, and features great performances.

One of the best fiilms in a long time-superb acting, cinematography outstanding.

This a fine movie that respects all of its characters, when it could have easily turned all of them into cliches.

A deft protrayal of the gap, let us say GULF between sophisticated, successful urbanites and the not-well-to-do rural American families they may have come from. We are offered an intelligent, life-like and often dramatic portrayal of the many disconnects among "closely related" folks as the filmmakers cannily skewer disjunctions in the family relationships in view. On the other hand the film is morally one-sided. It fails to show any of the positive forces that bring and maintain people together. It's not only southern-fried conventionalism that makes those people do what they do; small town life is more than just a dance of fools. Understanding and kindness have a role even there. So the film lacks balance. The source of the unkindness inherent in the film is the filmmakers' "sophistication", which contains a strong bais against the rural locals. We miss dramatic tension because there is no counter-balancing kindly force that is being frustrated by the animosities and avoidances delineated so well in the film. Entertaining drama for many, but you won't find a wise or complete portrait of the human animal here.… Expand

Whatever happened to the concept of Southern hospitality? Judging from this rancorous drama from writer Angus Maclachlan and director Phil morrison, both North Carolina expatriates, it's either in very short supply or was never there to begin with. Sophisticated, urbane art dealer Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) travels to her new husband's hometown for the first time both to meet his family and to close a deal with a local folk artist (although not necessarily in that order of priority). Said painter (Frank Hoyt Taylor) is your first tip-off that not everything is moonlight and magnolias in Dixie: he's a racist, bottom-feeding evolutionary throwback with the I.Q. of a mildewed throw rug, and his "art" (which Madeleine fawns over) is a series of blood-and-phallus horrors allegedly depicting the Civil war but far more accurately opening the door way too wide on his dangerously demented psychological state...and I wouldn't decorate my worst enemy's outhouse with them much less a museum. (The character's name, by the way, is David Wark...is that a not-so-subtle in-joke reference to the director of the Ku Klux Klan-loving silent classic Birth of a Nation?) Things don't get much better for Madeleine; although she's a kind, well-intentioned soul, she's no match for husband George's catty, manipulative mother Peg, addlebrained, screwdriver-fixated dad Eugene, or resentful, embittered slug of a brother Johnny; these family encounters, which poor Madeleine constantly gets the short end of, are filmed by Morrison in a pretentious, coffee-table style that seems to care more about the characters' furniture than the characters themselves; living rooms and hime workshops are dwelt upon in loving (and boring) detail, and at one point the camera fades to black for so long that a couple of my fellow patrons started to get up to inform the usher that something was wrong with the projector! In their treatment of most of George's family, there's no shot too cheap or blow too low for Mclachlan and Harrison; they can't show us Peg being moved to tears at a church service without having her act in a highly hypocritical, nonChristian manner a few scenes later, and they're equally unable to give us a shot of Johnny asleep on the couch without having him drool on the cushion. The one exception to all this Southern-fried venom--and a glorious one it is, and the only reason this film rates a 6--is Amy Adams (Catch Me If You Can) as Johnny's very pregnant wife, Ashley: a woman who's naive but deeply wise in her own way, and who, unlike the rest of the household, possesses no prejudices, preconceived notions or hidden agendas...she's just thrilled beyond belief to meet Madeleine because now she has a new best friend, whose nails she can paint and everything! Adams in this role is nothing short of completely breathtaking: she's hilarious, pathetic, endearing and heartbreaking in equal and simultaneous quantities, and triumphantly counters the long-held (and often true, but not in this case) dramatic postulate that bad characters are more inherently fascinating than good ones. Watch Adams handle a bedroom scene with a high school photo of Ashley and Johnny during happier times--a sequence that by its nature could've gone wrong in a dozen different ways--and you'll see miracles happen. Adams, and to a lesser but still significant degree Davidtz, whose utter generosity and good sportsmanship in allowing Adams to dominate all their scenes adds genuine class to her already formidable trademark loveliness and delicacy, are the ONLY things Junebug has going for it; I can only assume that the amount of love that critics nationwide unanimously (and understandably) have bestowed upon Adams' character and performance has misled them into thinking that this is some kind of balanced, fairminded portrait of the South. New York Times critic Stephen Holden has been quoted prominently in the ads praising Junebug as a perceptive distillation of red state/blue state hostility; on the contrary, it's so harsh on most of the folks below the Mason-Dixon line that it temporarily turns the currently popular Ann Coulter/ Bernard Goldberg/ Michael Medved/ Fox News-promulgated myth of a patronizing, condescending liberal elitist media into a 107-minute reality.… Expand

I have to say I expected more from this movie, more than another About Schmidt, Broken Flowers, Ingmar Bergman-lite mood piece about how human beings can't ever seem to connect. Not that I think emotional connections are easy, I just never understood how most of the characters in Junebug had ever been, or could ever be, connected, and I never got the feeling the filmmakers cared enough about any of them to really develop the connections. Sure, the sweet pregnant lady who won't shut up is appealing, but when did she find time to get so close to her brother-in-law that she relies on him in her darkest hour? He hasnt been home in 3 years, he didnt invite his family to his wedding, and when he finally does gets home, he mostly (except for a meal-eating montage) avoids everyone. His family is unbelievably inhospitable to his new wife, and barely talks to each other. In fact, (except for pregnant lady, gallery gal and crazyass artist guy) no one in this movie talks enough to reveal who they are or why they're behaving as they do. Yeah, I know, there really are lots of families who really dont talk to each other, but my problem with this particular movie family's failure to communicate is that its neither dramatic or artistically useful. There are hints of good story-telling in the father-to-be's poignant attempt to share the tv meerkats with his wife, or the older brothers's hymn-singing moment, but mostly we get way too many long silences and overly lingering images. "Profound", like some existentialist's idea of a Hallmark card. See a bleak and barren vista, read the caption, "Not thinking of you." Call it "Sentimental Cynicism", and its a lazy kind of story-telling. In the bizarro world of the sentimentally cynical, there are still predictabley melodramatic plot twists, but a crisis doesnt bring out the best in anyone. People dont rise to the occasion, they just slink away. The critical consensus on Junebug seems to be that its something new, an insider's guide to the new South, tinged with an Altmanesque satire on how ironic Northeners behave badly when confronted unexpectedly with unfamiliar concepts like true religion and close family ties. I was just disappointed by its lack of imagination.… Expand

So till, that it almost stops on several occassions. No dialogue when you want there to be, I just didnt know what the hell I was watching it for, and didnt feel like it affected me, or had anything to say, wasted my time! Well acted though by all, and well, that it.

This movie understands the complexity of family ties--how we are all products of our upbringing, and that we have unbreakable ties to our parents and siblings, no matter how much time and space separates us from one another. [***SPOILERS***] When George returns to his North Carolina roots accompanied by his new wife, we see him utterly relax (note how often he sleeps in the movie, one time even drooling on the living room couch) and, during key moments, fit right back into his initial mileu. Yet Madeleine's presence reveals the complex interactions and ferocious tensions that permeate this family. When Ashley loses her baby, we see the film maker's dominant metaphor: When families grow, sometimes the process is painful, awkward, and even aborted. But the families endure and the individuals go off in their own directions while never quite losing touch with their origins. These people simultaneously know each other better than anyone else while still remaining isolated and incomprehensible to each other. The mother cries alone in her bedroom, the father isolates himself in his workshop, and the younger brother as built a protective shell of sullen silence and hostility. At the heart of the family is the wide-eyed, innocent daughter-ink-law, Ashley. Her uninhibited generosity of spirit shines hopefully in the face of the dark emotional complexities of this family (symbolized by the tangled woods that surround this middle-class ranch house). By the end of the film, we come to see the huge distances--even outright dislike--that divide the individual family members, but when Madeleine finds her father-in-law's missing screw driver, we see that each family member has a role to play in establishing order and form in a family. Each addition to the family changes the shape and definition of the unit. These family members love and hate, share and withhold, praise and criticize; they build up and destroy. But their ties are unbreakable. As George drives away, we can understand why he says he is glad to be getting out of there, but we can feel pretty sure that inevitably he will be returning to these people with whom he is more intimately connected than anyone else he nows. This is an excellent and perceptive movie that never patronizes the Southern family it spotlights, nor mocks the city-dweller Madeleine who reconfigures the family nucleus into which she marries.… Expand

It takes a lot of patience to sit through this film.It is very low key but the presentation of some of the customs of the region and also some of the acting specially that of Amy adams makes the movie somewhat interesting.

I give it a based on what it was trying to achieve IF..AND ONLY IF..you KNOW you are going to sit through a "film" and an attempt at art. It's like emotionless vignettes all strung together to give you some sense of ..(what that is and why you are asking "what that is.." is the point entirely) If you get my meaning, this film has no meaning. No sense of purpose, GREAT ACTORS and absolute wasted talent Davidtz is just stellar but the lack of dialogue passed off as artisitic drama is just ridiculous. I go this movie based on the Metacritic rating alone (which is the ONLY way I manage to see good films BTW) and I was dissappointed!On it's own merit the film is a weak 4. I suggest all the top heavy critiques be reordered and weighted by .8 so that the real score is more like 53-57 Honestly, I appreciated DOMINO more since i went into that at least knowing it was crap.… Expand

Thought I'd like it a lot more. My kind of movie, in theory - small, character-driven, slightly off-center. But I found the husband to be a non-entity, and the wife to be a bit of a blank slate as well. Not only weren't the conflicts resolved, they were utterly suppressed - past the point of basic believability. I expected a better film. Amy Adams is wonderful, but everyone else seems to be asleep at the wheel.… Expand

A second viewing has made me even more appreciative than the first. There is more detail to see and hear than I could absorb in the first sitting. My wife and I have been talking about it for two days, noticing new things and appreciating new thoughts. The women are all strong but in different ways. Family does matter, and we've all got one. What we do is more important than what we say. Love is action more than feeling. This is a special and memorable movie.… Expand

I'm from the South, know many people who share these types of values, and found this film horribly condenscending and full of sterotypes. I think poor Scott Glenn had few lines than Boo Radley in TKAM. Why do all the "good" country people look like a Jerry Springer show? Country people can't look sophisticated (and thin)? I almost thought the family would say, "Y'all come back, y' hear?" at the end. Bigoted and prejudice in the worse way: for our own good.… Expand

To me, this film was one big construct. The characters were excruciatingly unbelievable, with the possible exception of Amy Adams's Ashley, and the storyline felt devised by someone who thinks in cliche. Very hard to watch.

Sinister "Deliverance" meets simpering Melanie Wilkes by way of the lobotomized dysfunction of "The Royal Tennenbaums". A feast of sterotypes and short cuts. C'mon, put a littie effort into it next time. This movie was an insult, I don't care where the director was born.

spot-on, with terrific casting and a wonderful script.

Phil Morrison announces himself as a name to watch with this one. This is no Sweet Home Alabama romp set in a cardboard South, everybody is suffering seriously from the human condition. Nobody gets the upper hand, neither the posh English art dealer nor the North Carolina homebodies she visits with her new husband. The husband

Perfect casting. Funny and bittersweet. As an added wonder, the portrait of a genuinely primitive artist.

The best thing about Junebug are the dead-on renditions of a particular set of hideously awkward moments. Believe me, I've lived through the situation in which a brunette city girl with an international background meets her small-town Southern inlaws, and they nailed it. The critics who didn't see this movie's perfect emotional pitch are just clueless. I especially liked Johnny: he is in such obvious pain, ducking every interaction, wanting to impress his wife and only succeeding in messing up her baby shower. Only a couple of missteps kept me from giving this a 10. First, while Embeth Davidtz did a brilliant job of acting a thankless part, she isn't devastatingly pretty enough, especially by Southern standards, especially compared with Amy Adams, to justify the family's reaction to her. Second, although I loved the still shots of empty rooms, which to me were affectionate and very telling, I did get a whiff of the patronizing in the way the small town is portrayed: just how extraordinary is it that workers in a warehouse should be obsessed with football to the point of talking about it all day? I found that much less grotesque than I think the filmmakers wanted me to.… Expand

Great acting, especially from Amy Adams.

To anyone who reads the reviews for this movie: go and yell at all the managers of the local 18-screen movie theaters who can't make the space for movies like Junebug. I live in San Diego and had to drive about 40 minutes just to go see this movie. It is just upsetting that Transporter 2 can play on three screens but they won't make room for movies like junebug. I remember feeling the same thing when I saw the Station Agent. Anyways, this movie was great. It's the kind of movie that most people would really enjoy if they just sat down and watched it. I know I've read plenty about how brilliant Amy Adams's performance is in this movie, but I have to say that her presence in the movie is worth the trip alone. This film is full of enough comedy as well as a great presentation of the fact that (as trite as it may sounds) families do not always, if ever, get along. The film deals with love, loss, anger, and forgiveness. This really is a great movie.… Expand

while everyone will complement Amy Adams (and she's completely deserving of the praise she gets), this ensamble cast was amazing. Have you ever heard someone describe jazz as being beautiful for the notes that are NOT played? I never understood that line until watching Junebug. This movie is great for the lines that are NOT said - meaning you have to gague the character's true feelings towards each other through limited interaction, and many times actions rather than words. I can understand that not everyone will enjoy this movie, but I was engrossed throughout, and will watch it many more times.… Expand

Ashley(Amy Adams) has so much life in her, and Johnny(Ben McKenzie) is such a putz, you sort of wish the filmmaker didn't invest the latter with a sympathetic side. If Johnny was irredeemable, "Junebug" would be criticized for turning rural folks into hicks. One day in the not-too-distant future, Ashley is going to turn into her mother-in-law(Celia Weston). Johnny, as in Johnny-can't-read(he struggles with "Huckleberry Finn", and the Cliff Notes), doesn't deserve her. The film sort of obscures this fact. Amy Adams is great. She's sort of like a live-action Luanne(from "King of the Hill"). Madeleine(Embeth Davidtz), a purveyor of "outsider art", views Ashley more as a beguilling character than a person, like her litany of non-sequitirs were a brand of innocuous performance art. What Madeliene doesn't do at the end of the film is absolutely heartless. Ashley, at the very least, needs to enroll at a community college.… Expand

What kind of husband drags hs new wife to meet a family like that and then disappears for a few hours while she has to make conversation with his freaky mom? Too many people doing things real people don't do.

And the award for most inexplicably praised film of 2005 goes to "Junebug." The pacing is deliberate pace (translate "suck your eyeballs out of your face slow") and the cinematography has that strained look that capture small town America nicely. The problem with "Junebug" is that after close to two hours have passed, I'm not sure exactly what I am supposed to take from it. Films that move this sluggishly are often overpraised for the beauty and depth, but if you really pay attention this is a stew of moments that confuse silence for depth and characters that are hardly fleshed out. Well, some of them. The women in the film are nicely fleshed out, we as viewers get some sense of what's ticking in their heads. But the men, especially George, the son of the family that he and new wife Embeth Davidtz visit, is a skeleton of a character. Who is he? The most he get's asked in the entire film is in the opening sequence when Madeline (Davidtz) inquires before love making, "Where did you come from?" Beyond that, he enters the scene when he is scheduled, leaves the scene when he is supposed to, smiles a lot and gives us very little insight as to why relations are so strained with his brother. That brother would be none other than Ben McKenzie of 'The OC' fame who plays Johnny. We are only provided glimpses into his life and his own dissatisfaction. One scene reveals that despite all his glowering, he does really like his job. But beyond that he is the film's most contrived character. He broods around for the most of the film. The women have depth. Amy Adams plays Johnny's vivacious pregnant wife Ashley. Although she received the Oscar nod, Embeth Davidtz hits all the right notes. She plays the most complete character and she in turn gives the most complete performance. Ultimately "Junebug" is watchable despite all its absurd attempts at indie artiness. Amy Adams and Embeth Davidtz are worth a viewing, but at the end of the day, "Junebug" is little more than that: a glimpse. It never becomes a complete experience.… Expand

Junebug attempts to explore the enormous cultural and social gulf between red and blue state America by honing in on the disconnects between individuals, particularly family members and spouses. It's all handled with intelligence and care, but carries no dramatic weight. Much of the animosity amongst these characters is revealed by what isn't said, and in Junebug that's a lot. So much so that it's difficult to care what the reasons actually are.… Expand