Good movie but grossly overrated

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Martin Landau gives a gem of a performance which is enhanced by Ellen Burstyn.The story seems to center around an elderly man who finds love with a next door neighbor. The two become so attached that being away from one another for a brief time is earth shattering to them both.Go know that Landau is in the throws of Alzheimer's and Mary (Burstyn) is his wife along with the son, who he thinks is the boss and her daughter supposedly from her marriage which is really his.The disease is as devastating as ever; we don't need constant reminders of the havoc it can wreak.Wasn't the background music of Sunrise, Sunset unusual at the Christman surroundings party? I think they ably made the point by sunset.

I am both a Martin Landau and an Ellen Burstyn fan, so I was especially looking forward to seeing them act. I expected formidable acting muscle, sparks, confrontations: things befitting their Actor's Studio origins. What instead greeted me was a Landau so frail and docile...and frightened. His character, Robert Malone, is a man who treads warily and uneasily through life. He is a single man, and we assume he has simply been unlucky in love. Burstyn is the loving, open-hearted, yet lonely, woman who sweeps into his life one Christmas and changes it forever. One thing about Landau in this film: the actor looks shockingly aged, and I'm sure this has been deliberately used by both the filmmaker and Landau himself as a sort of effect to win us over to sympathy for Malone. Yet I had no doubt that this is a consummate performance. Landau, in life, is likely vital and engaged whereas Robert Malone, as I have said, seems on the brink of terror nearly every moment of his day. (The "wakeup" sequences are especially effective conveying this.) The love story plays out in an even-handed way. Underneath this blossoming love, of course, is the shadow of mortality. There occurs--over two-thirds into the film--a dramatic event that I won't reveal or spoil, but it causes the viewer to look back over events that occurred and reflect on them...in a rewarding way. The drama is never cheap nor unjustified. I come away with satisfaction and admiration for the unexpected performances, for the tender core of the film, and for a fresh perspective on the elderly that is anything but cloying or cliché. This movie is in fact--particularly with the presence of Death hanging over events (as another character in the film)--as gripping and occasionally breathless as any thriller.

I rarely do this, recommend a bad film. But I will ask if you start this, that you see it through.The film takes advantage of the fact that we have a profoundly well developed notion of a movie romance. We have that here: older woman moves in and that same day asks the old man across the street for a date. They hit it off and have a wonderful Christmas a couple days later. He is a lonely bagger at the local grocery store, and apparently has never had a Christmas with another soul. In the first scene, we see him wrapping a present to himself.For the first very long section, we are dipped in movie love, as we not only see the romance but we see it with an excess of cinematic sugar: when she says she likes him, the entire street lights up with Christmas lights behind her, for instance. There is lots of snow and gauzy happiness. In the filmmaker's defense, we are given some hints that things are not quite right. Our fellow has nightmares of unformed nature. Our love interest across the street is panicked when a prescription goes awry. Our fellow seems to occasionally get confused and borderline violent.And then after an immersion in the sickly romance as perceived by our guy, we have a big reveal. He has advanced dementia. The woman and her daughter across the street is his family and has been for decades, but he has forgotten. He fell in love with his wife all over again. The store where he works is a business he built, now managed by a quirky guy we discover is his son. His wife has been sneaking in every day and preparing meals, drugs (the problem prescription was his) and reminder post-its. This is a pretty disturbing shift, in part because it is so unexpected. Any filmmaker who would stoop as low as we had experienced for an hour, milking the cheapest of tricks would be expected to coast home on those alone. But it does recast what we have seen (and been somewhat affected by) as the last kind of story that a disappearing mind can hold on to. And that is something even the most talent filmmakers fail with much of the time.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I came across this gem of a film on cable by accident and was taken by its beauty, sensitivity, and honesty. It is a realistic portrait of a loving family coping with "the long good-bye" of Alzheimers, of a wife trying keep the connection between her and her husband alive even if the wiring is faulty, of a man among people who care yet is still traveling alone down the road to oblivion. Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn are fantastic. I knew from the beginning that something was off in the storyline, but the end revelation caught me by surprise anyway. A "must-see" for anyone caring for a loved one with this devastating disease. My mother had Alzheimers and our only consolation was that she passed away before she stopped recognizing my father.