Head over heels in love with this movie. It's slower paced, it's heavy, but it's brilliant. The acting is so natural and beautifully done that you forget that these people are not real. Zooey really is a superb actress and this film seriously shows her ability to pull anything off. My favorite movie of hers so far without a doubt. The best line in the movie: "I just can't believe this is the same man who told his six-year-old daughter that Christmas was a Republican capitalistic conspiracy created by the Hallmark Corporation and that, if Jesus were alive today he'd be down in Nicaragua rallying the Sandinistas. Grace away." I laughed so hard that I had to go back and play the five minutes after that line to re-watch what happens.

Ah, another tale of a lost, disaffected young person that fruitlessly tries to fill their empty life with empty sex and drugs, and the family dynamics that led them to become that way. You know how these stories go. By the end, there's always some kind of acceptance and catharsis, and the characters end up with better relationships than when they started. Since most family dramas begin and end in somewhat the same manner, it's that middle journey that makes or breaks them, for me. How and why do the characters change? Winter Passing largely skips right over the how and why. For 90% of the movie Zooey Deschanel's and Ed Harris's characters are one way, and then in the last ten minutes they are suddenly completely different. I was so confused that I went back to check and see if I had unknowingly missed some crucial plot points or character development, but I hadn't. The viewer is actually expected to believe that these characters undergo profound and drastic changes as a result of about two brief conversations and a hospital visit. It's like they took a vague idea of a plot, and then filled in the runtime with melancholy gazing out of windows and lots of slow cigarette smoking. As for the other two main characters, they never really contributed anything of substance to the story. I suppose Amelia Warner's character was included to provide some initial friction for Reese and offer her another insight into her father's personality, and she looked so beautiful doing it that I'm willing to cut her some slack. But Will Ferrell's character was completely unnecessary. All he did was add forced quirkiness to a movie that absolutely did not need it. It didn't even fit the tone, and his sub-plot was a pointless way to pad out the running time. I didn't hate Winter Passing, I just thought that its story needed a lot more thought, focus, and fleshing out. It feels incomplete. Family drama is among the most character driven genres, and they just don't work well without strong and well-defined character arcs.