F-0262

Title:

You Can Count on Me

Category:

S

Produced:

2000

Country:

USA

Released:

Film: Jan (USA, Sundance Film Festival); Nov 2000
DVD: Jun 2001; Aug 2007 (2-DVD)
VHS: Jan 2002
Soundtrack: Nov 2000 (CD)

Director:

Kenneth Lonergan

Writer:

Kenneth Lonergan

Actors:

Laura Linney ( Samantha 'Sammy' Prescott); Mark Ruffalo (Terry Prescott); Matthew Broderick (Brian Everett); Rory Culkin (Rudy Prescott); Jon Tenney (Bob Steegerson); J. Smith-Cameron (Mabel); Gaby Hoffmann (Sheila); Amy Ryan (Rachel Louise Prescott); Michael Countryman (Thomas Gerard Prescott); Adam LeFevre (Sheriff Darryl); Halley Feiffer (Amy); Whitney Vance (Young Sammy Prescott); Peter Kerwin (Young Terry Prescott); Betsy Aidem (Minister); Lisa Altomare (Waitress)

Description:

A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.

A lot happens at once to Sammy, a single mom living in the Catskill town of her birth, where her parents died in a car crash when she was small. Her son Rudy, who's 8, begins imagining his unseen father as a hero; she picks up, sort of, with last year's boyfriend; she gets a new boss who imposes foolish rules; and, her wayward brother Terry arrives for a visit after months of no communication. The boyfriend proposes, the relationship with her boss takes an unexpected turn, and her brother and son bond, not always with positive consequences. When Terry asks young Rudy if he wants to meet his father, a crisis of sorts ensues, and brother and sister must re-frame their relationship. (J. Hailey & Amazon.com)

You Can Count On Me starts with a terrible car crash that instantly orphans a little boy and his older sister. At film's end, that boy, now a grown-up nomad and ne'er-do-well, takes off by Greyhound after a brief reunion with his sister, who lives at permanent anchor in their unspoiled hometown. The sibling saga that unreels between wrenching collision and bittersweet separation celebrates the idiosyncratic ways wounded folk like Terry (Mark Ruffalo) and Sammy (Laura Linney) put one foot in front of the other, both energized and hamstrung by the knowledge that nothing is ever certain in the road-movie of life. During his visit, Terry roils Sammy's becalmed existence, mostly by "fathering"--for good and ill--her overprotected 8-year-old (Rory Culkin), sneaking him out to play empowering bar pool, later introducing him to the weaselly dad he's fantasized into a superhero. Sammy starts a torrid affair with her married boss at the bank (Matthew Broderick gives delicious bureaucratic smarm), and considers marrying her sometime suitor (Jon Tenney), sweetly dull yet dependable. The narrative peaks here are human-sized, elevated by gentle humor and clear-eyed faith in the existential importance of these intersecting small-town lives. Linney is simply superb as Sammy, wild girl gone good, involuntarily "mothering" every man in her life. An authentic original, newcomer Ruffalo gives his modern-day Huck Finn a drawling, James Dean delivery tuned somewhere between a screwup's whine and the twang of pothead wisdom. (Hard to think of another recent film that so deftly nails down the rich dynamics of everyday conversation--the starts and stops, circumlocutions, clichés, sudden veers into revelation and eloquence.) This is that rarity, an action movie of the heart: no explosions or epiphanies, yet everything evolves through the catalysts of character and experience. (Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com)

The first-rate actress Laura Linney-bland on the surface but with angry impulses churning underneath-gives a detailed and involving performance as a single working mother in a small and somewhat boring upstate New York town. When her screwup of a kid brother (Mark Ruffalo) returns from Alaska, she's torn between tossing him out and letting him stay on and become a companion to her fatherless son (Rory Culkin). The movie was written and directed by the playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan, who pays close attention to the way so many of us are divided between good and bad impulses-including bad impulses we desperately need to act on if we're not going to feel half-dead. Lonergan's work is quiet but intense, and Ruffalo-dark and sensual and agonizingly confused-gives a heartbreaking performance. With Matthew Broderick and Jon Tenney as Linney's suitors. (David Denby, Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker)

Language:

English

TT:

111 min (Film) / 110 min (DVD, VHS) / 213 minutes (2-DVD)

J.S. Bach's Music:

Aria for Soprano Aus Liebe will mein heiland sterben (Mvt. 49) from Matthäus-Passion BWV 244
Hermann Max / Rheinische Kantorei & Das Kleine Konzert
From: J.S. Bach: Matthaüs Passion (Capriccio) [V-4] (?)
Courtesy of Deutsche Grammaphon Gesellschaft GmbH., Hamburg; Under License from Universal Music Special Markets
See: See: Matthäus-Passion BWV 244 - conducted by Hermann Max

Suite for solo cello No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007

Format:

Film: Color, Dolby Digital
DVD: See below.
VHS: See below.
Soundtrack: CD

Company:

Film: Hart-Sharp Entertainment; Cappa Production; Crush Entertainment; Shooting Gallery
DVD: Paramount
VHS: Paramount; Paramount Pictures
Soundtrack: Artemis Records

Comments:

2-DVD Set includes: Election (1999) / You Can Count On Me (2000) (Double Feature)

Watch selections:

Buy movie at:

DVD: Amazon.com [Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC, Region 1] | Amazon.com [PAL, Region 2] | Amazon.com [NTSC, Color, Widescreen, Region 1] | Amazon.com [PAL, Region 2] | Amazon.com [Region 1]
2-DVD: Amazon.com [Color, Widescreen, NTSC, Region 1] | Amazon.com [NTSC, Unknown Region]
VHS: Amazon.com [Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC] | Amazon.com [NTSC] | Amazon.com [Closed-captioned, Color, Subtitled, NTSC, Spanish Subtitles] | Amazon.com [PAL]
Soundtrack: Amazon.com [CD]

DVD>
2-DVD> VHS> CD>

Posters

Source/Links: IMDB
Contributor: Aryeh Oron (November 2007)