Not the most compelling or immediately satisfying storytelling, but it's intriguingly real.
Comment
04/19/05
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Winter Solstice (2005)
62
%
Tomatometer
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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... [More]
Starring: Anthony LaPaglia, Aaron Stanford, Mark Webber, Allison Janney
Director: Josh Sternfeld
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Reviews for Winter Solstice
Anthony LaPaglia does understated wonders...He could beat David Duchovny in an underacting contest. Few movies score so many true moments. And few add up to less.
04/28/05
Winter Solstice thrives solely on how much understatement you can actually handle in a movie.
10/20/05
A lovely, quiet drama that slowly unravels layers of pain and frustration.
04/19/05
The texture of naturalism in "Winter Solstice" is impressive... but the lulling rhythms seem to exist for their own sake.
04/28/05
The chill in the air is deadening for the viewer.
05/01/05
The filmmaker understands that quiet desperation is often more moving than noisy suffering.
05/04/05
Writer/director Josh Sternfeld has a feel for life's little interactions -- the moments before or after Big Things Happen, otherwise known as: most of the time.
04/14/05
Top CriticWinter Solstice is a small, intimate, film that is going to stay with you for a long time.
04/08/05
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.
05/06/05
Top CriticSet in New Jersey and it plays like a minor Springsteen song -- work, yearning, misunderstanding, a crummy car, moving on.
04/15/05
An engrossing film about the renewal that comes to a family that has been mourning a loved one for a long time.
04/07/05
Director Sternfeld's sense of drama is so underdeveloped that he pretends swirling characters in inert tornadoes of grief is enough for a coherent plot.
04/18/05
It may take viewers awhile to recognize just how good Winter Solstice is.
04/22/05
It is satisfying to see fine actors express emotions in a completely relatable way, but the dimensions of the sorrows and understanding depicted don't really make for much dramatic excitement.
04/23/05
Something that's increasingly rare: a stringently subtextual drama....when they finally arrive, the epiphanies are small ones.
09/12/05
Brickbat.
04/26/05
such a sure handed, well-paced and believable film drama that it belies Josh Sternfeld’s novice filmmaking status
04/11/05
This mature, assured piece of work relays as much information by what isn't said as by what is.
04/07/05
We’ve seen the same material in umpteen other films, and we’ve learned everything about the characters during the first third of the movie.
04/30/05
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