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Winter Solstice (2005)
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Reviews Counted: 78
Fresh: 48
Rotten:30
Average Rating: 6.4/10
Consensus: A deliberately paced, realistic portrait of a family's grief and healing.
Theatrical Release:Apr 8, 2005 Limited
Box Office: $245,785
Synopsis: In this solemn family film about three men sharing a broken household, Jim (Anthony LaPaglia) stars as a father just trying to keep it all together. His sons Pete and Gabe (Mark Webber and Aaron... In this solemn family film about three men sharing a broken household, Jim (Anthony LaPaglia) stars as a father just trying to keep it all together. His sons Pete and Gabe (Mark Webber and Aaron Stanford) resent him, unable to escape the memory of their late mother. Change comes in the form of a sunny housesitter (Allison Janney) who romances Jim, making it okay for Gabe to set out on his own and for Pete to rely on his dad as he struggles with some deep-seated rebellion issues. This film screened in New York City's Tribeca Film Festival in 2004. [More]
Starring: Anthony LaPaglia, Aaron Stanford, Mark Webber, Allison Janney
Starring: Anthony LaPaglia, Aaron Stanford, Mark Webber, Allison Janney
Director: Josh Sternfeld
Director: Josh Sternfeld
Screenwriter: Josh Sternfeld
Producer: John M. Limotte, Doug Bernheim
Studio: Paramount Classics
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Reviews for Winter Solstice
Audiences may not get too excited about devastated people who conduct their social lives at the local Dairy Queen.
Winter Solstice is an intense drama and all the action is internal. LaPaglia is such a fine actor and every nuance of his bottled up Jim comes through, as he struggles to not only be a good father, but to find a direction in his own life.
Winter Solstice thrives solely on how much understatement you can actually handle in a movie.
Something that's increasingly rare: a stringently subtextual drama....when they finally arrive, the epiphanies are small ones.
Solstice offers solace. It is quiet, understated and powerful as a single chapter in several changing lives.
Sternfeld started with well-conceived characters and simply didn't succeed in making them flesh. These people have traits instead of personalities; goals instead of dreams.
Ultimately undercut by its fictional elements and its flat characters.
To read between the lines in Winter Solstice, you better bring a magnifying glass.
Such a low-key drama that I'm not sure anything happens in it at all.
This movie deserves to be seen -- and learned from. It captures the moments in which each of us stares out across an emptiness, searching for a connection that will keep us from falling.
Scene after scene of halting conversations, meaningful glances and awkward pauses that will leave you as cold as the ominous title implies.
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