But “The Glass Castle” also wants us to think he’s exciting in his unorthodox parenting approach and regard his antics as amusing. Michael Medved’s Best and Worst Movies … Larson eventually allows the cracks to show—and lets the pent-up emotion out—in a couple of stirring outbursts that are the highlights of a performance that’s otherwise understated to a fault. By Rich Cline. Film Review: ‘The Glass Castle’ Brie Larson reunites with her 'Short Term 12' director to play gossip columnist Jeannette Walls, whose childhood proved to be her best story. Listen Commercial FREE | On-Demand. As a character study, The Glass Castle is a fascinating glimpse at the intersection of love, abuse, compassion, neglect, broken promises, and familial duties. “The Glass Castle” is actually more compelling in its flashbacks, when Jeannette (a mature and soulful Ella Anderson) is better fleshed-out as the family’s feisty, fearless voice of reason. Guide. I found the book inspiring. Reddit . But the result is a film that never quite clicks tonally and doesn’t do justice to its harrowing central story. Again, maybe the Walls parents were all those things—and so many more—to Jeannette and her siblings (played as adults by Sarah Snook, Josh Caras and Brigette Lundy-Paine). A rigged game, as Rex himself occasionally rants, and a shallow, treacly piece of work. … A radioactive sentimentality oozes from the screen, although it is saved, just a little, by the robustness of Brie Larson’s presence. Is The Glass Castle any good? 3:00 PM PDT 8/6/2017 by Sheri Linden FACEBOOK; TWITTER; EMAIL ME ; … Latest Movie Reviews. But The Glass Castle just trots her out when Jeannette needs a sounding board, or Rex needs somebody to whale on. The movie was fantastic and is definitely a must-see. I'd wait for the Lifetime premiere. But the back-and-forth structure never really works: It feels episodic rather than building momentum toward its intended moments of truth. Any sobriety Rex achieves doesn’t last long, though, as we see from the 1989 sections. The Glass Castle movie reviews and ratings - Tribute.ca rating of 4.12 out of 5 Stars. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. It tells the story of a very dysfunctional family. Woody Harrelson is infuriating as a life-affirming wildman who is also a cruel and feckless dad intent on leading his wife and kids into danger, Last modified on Mon 3 Dec 2018 10.18 EST. Read 51,780 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. The Glass Castle book. Movies . But the depiction of Jeannette in her mid-20s renders her strangely inert; she’s a passenger in her own story, often functioning at the whim of others. The Glass Castle, based on the memoir of the same name by Jeannette Walls, comes across as an offbeat coming-of-age story whose integrity is impeded by the need for closure.Real life doesn’t work that way but movie-goers don’t like loose ends and unresolved issues. Full Review | Original Score: .5/5. Titles Available: 130,847 Articles Available: 1,162,088. Herself. The Glass Castle. Naomi Watts gets to play his dozy, feather-brained wife, and Larson plays his daughter Jeannette in disillusioned later years, an uptight and controlling career woman who has utterly rejected her dad’s anti-materialism in ways that are intended to suggest that maybe she’s kind of got it wrong and just needs to heal. Larson reunites here with Cretton, whose 2013 indie gem “Short Term 12” was one of the movies that put her on the map. This film’s title reflects one of its main themes: the distance between our idealized hopes and our traumatic realities. Still, the portrayal of patriarch Rex Walls remains troubling. Movie reviews for The Glass Castle. Christy reviewed films for The Associated Press for over 14 years. What's on TV & Streaming What's on TV & Streaming Top Rated Shows … You can find Christy's writing at ChristyLemire.com. Harrelson plays him as a life-affirming wildman, glamorised as a rebel that you hate for his cruelty but of course can’t help loving for his adorable passion. There's a frequent underlying threat of violence, and children are portrayed as seriously hungry and occasionally in peril: a young girl burns herself with boiling water, children are thrown into the deep end of a pool, and so on. The Glass Castle Rating & Content Info Why is The Glass Castle rated PG-13? As a character study, The Glass Castle is a fascinating glimpse at the intersection of love, abuse, compassion, neglect, broken promises, and familial duties. Woody Harrelson can be terrifying in the role, especially in the character’s dangerous instincts and drunken rages. Next: An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. BUT if you want the full story of the Walls family, we highly highly recommend reading the book. But “The Glass Castle” ultimately ties up all the ugliness with a tidy bow that doesn’t quite fit. as Jeannette Walls (Age 10), The TV Homages of WandaVision are an Amusing, Unfulfilling Distraction, On the Disempowerment of Promising Young Woman, Entertaining 30 Coins Examines Depths of Evil with Style. Published on 5 October 2017 11 December 2017 by CineVue. Tweet. Put simply, The Glass Castle is Captain Fantastic without the laughs. She's also on Twitter @christylemire and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/christy.lemire2. The movie didn't inspire as much as it pulled the heart strings. Release Calendar DVD & Blu-ray Releases Top Rated Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Showtimes & Tickets In Theaters Coming Soon Coming Soon Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Previous: The Dark Tower. Ella Anderson News of the World. Movie reviews for The Glass Castle. But almost. I read the book as an amazing story of resilience, and while the film certainly didn't shy from the fact that Walls thrived despite the neglect and emotional abuse she endured as a child, it played more like a story about her relationship with her father than as a personal story about her tenacity to survive despite it all. Update Required To ... Tweet. Certainly forgiveness and redemption are admirable—and possible—after such a difficult childhood. The Glass Castle. There are quite a few terrific moments in this true story, based on the memoir by journalist Jeannette Walls. The Glass Castle (2017) Movie Reviews - Cinafilm has 380 reviews of The Glass Castle from movie critics and film fans. Monster Hunter. Christy Lemire is a co-host of the YouTube film review show "What the Flick?!" TV Shows. The film is based on the bestselling memoir of the same name by former New York gossip columnist Jeannette Walls. “The Glass Castle” is actually more compelling in its flashbacks, when Jeannette (a mature and soulful Ella Anderson) is better fleshed-out as the family’s feisty, fearless voice of reason. for mature thematic content involving family dysfunction, and for some language and smoking. He seems to recognize that this man was a monster. They’re also worthy and inspiring cinematic themes. Film Review: The Glass Castle. Admittedly, this isn’t as purely insufferable as Viggo Mortensen in the comparably wince-inducing Captain Fantastic. Another film based on a book I haven’t read so suffice it to say that I cannot speak to its authenticity but it has a great cast. Movie Reviews TV Reviews Roundtables Podcasts 'The Glass Castle': Film Review. But his whisky and indiscipline keeps them hungry and confused and often in danger from stove hobs etc. Visit Our Network: Flicktweets | Outdoor Movie Guide | WatchIt! Print. He is Rex, a brilliant but feckless individual: free-thinker, scientist and engineer, entrancing his trusting and saucer-eyed children with his plans to build them a glass castle of his own design. The film is based on a bestselling 2005 memoir by US columnist and author Jeannette Walls, about her anarchic upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic, bipolar dad, who always kept his bewildered wife and kids on the move, one step ahead of the debt collectors, rattling all across the country. THE GLASS CASTLE-- 3 STARS . Film Review: The Glass Castle. Working from a script he co-wrote with Andrew Lanham, he wisely doesn’t overplay the violence and squalor Jeannette and her siblings suffered. In that way, the movie falls prey to Rex’s bad spell, too. "If the real Jeanette Wells is able to make peace with the events of her childhood, how can I, or anyone, tell her she's wrong? Set in a world of empty promises and midnight flits, The Glass Castle chronicles the cruel and chaotic upbringing of Jeannette Walls and her siblings. Parents need to know that The Glass Castle is an intense drama based on Jeannette Walls' best-selling memoir. Woody Harrelson gives a performance of borderline unwatchable hamminess in this really tiresome film, which sentimentally neutralises parental abuse into a supposedly fascinating angel/devil split. For a long time, the Walls children believe their always-dreaming, always-scheming, always-big-talking father will make good on his lofty plans. 13 Shares. Radioactive sentimentality … The Glass Castle. Related links: The Glass Castle Review: A Gritty Family Drama That Does the Book Proud Why The Glass Castle Is More Than a Book and a Movie, It’s a Wakeup Call As one of four children of an abusive, alcoholic father and a selfish artist mother, Jeannette learned to fend for herself and care for her sisters and brother at a young age, even as they were moved from town to town, kept out of school and often left hungry for days. The film is structured in such a way that you consent to an insidious balance: loathing and loving Rex before finally giving him the benefit of the doubt. Menu. Follow Michael. He continues to get drunk and embarrass Jeannette, especially as she tries to project a polished façade alongside her stable and supportive (yet slightly boring) fiancé, played by Max Greenfield. Other bloody wounds are seen, and a child uses a sewing needle to stitch together … As it stands, THE GLASS CASTLE is entirely too long, and like the family's "Glass Castle" home, wholly incomplete. Pin. As in “Short Term 12,” which takes place at a foster-care center for at-risk teens, “The Glass Castle” doesn’t shy away from the horrors its young characters endure. Movie Review – The Glass Castle (2017) August 12, 2017 by Robert Kojder. Ratings, review and more on Cinafilm.com Director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton’s film alternates between Jeannette’s youth and teenage years and her adulthood in 1989, when she’d seemingly found stability with a job as a New York magazine writer and an engagement to an ambitious financial advisor. The same is true of Naomi Watts’ performance as Rex’s wife, Rose Mary, a flighty and playful woman who once got so ensconced in her painting that she failed to notice Jeannette severely burning herself while cooking hot dogs on the stove. Michael Medved. “It’s the struggle that gives it its beauty,” Rose Mary says to Jeannette in explaining why she was drawn to an unusually shaped tree in the desert during one of the family’s many stops (and spelling out the film’s central theme). But significant events do take place there, including the quietly powerful moment when Jeannette asks him to stop drinking—by lantern light, because the family can’t afford electricity in their run-down shack. Slowly, though, they realize that’s never going to happen. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 52% based on 162 reviews, and an average rating of 6/10. Share 13. F ew readers will come to Emily St John Mandel’s fifth novel, The Glass Hotel, unaware of her fourth, 2014’s Station Eleven, which imagined a world ravaged by a hyper-lethal form of swine flu. Violence: A child’s clothes catch on fire and injuries/scars from her burn are shown a few times. MRQE Metric: See what the critics had to say and watch the trailer. Most Popular. And Cretton’s matter-of-fact approach once again serves him well. Flip. Email. Based on a memoir, The Glass Castle tells the story of Jeanette Walls, who comes of age in a dysfunctional, impoverished, artistic family. Soul. This is where he finally plans to build the glass castle of the story’s title: A magnificent, solar-powered structure he’s been designing for years. The Glass Castle, 2017. “The Glass Castle” wrestles with two conflicting impulses: the longing for order and the desire for wildness. But the glass castle is never constructed. Most of these take place in Welch, West Virginia, the impoverished hometown Rex returns to reluctantly only once the family is totally broke. Tweets by @MedvedSHOW. Maybe it’s inevitable, given the emotionally complicated terrain it treads. The Glass Castle is a 2005 memoir by Jeannette Walls. “The Glass Castle” is at odds with itself. Mulling over the many layers and events of Destin Daniel Cretton’s film adaptation of Jeanette Wells’ memoirs The Glass Castle, I keep coming back to the same essential question: "Who am I to judge someone else's life story or life choices? Wonder Woman 1984. Their parents also … The book recounts the unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing Jeannette and her siblings had at the hands of their deeply dysfunctional parents. Clearly, that’s never going to happen. But the result is a film that feels surprisingly safe as a whole, despite its individually startling scenes. Login Join. In it, she recalls a childhood of poverty, uncertainty and neglect. Based on the worldwide best-selling memoir starring Academy Award® winner Brie Larson and Academy Award® nominees Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts, THE GLASS CASTLE chronicles the adventures of … By laminating Walls’ story with a Hollywood sheen, the narrative climaxes in an artificial and contrived manner. The Glass Castle Review. Brie Larson, Naomi Watts, Woody Harrelson In 'The Glass Castle' Trailer 1 And that’s surprising given that Brie Larson plays her as an adult. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. The website's critical consensus reads, " The Glass Castle has an affecting real-life story and an outstanding performance by Brie Larson, but these aren't enough to outweigh a fundamentally misguided approach to the material." Movie Reviews . The Glass Castle review – treacly, tiresome family-in-peril drama. Rated PG-13 (1,396) IMDb 7.1 2h 6min 2017 X-Ray PG-13. The Glass Castle is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for mature thematic content involving family dysfunction, and for some language and smoking. Read 51,780 Reviews from the 1989 sections impulses: the distance between our hopes. Full story of a very dysfunctional family Facebook ; Twitter ; EMAIL ME ; the. Castle rated PG-13 for mature thematic content involving family dysfunction, and some! 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