Overwiew :In YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, an adult brother and sister who were orphaned in their childhood reunite in the house that their parents left for them in upstate New York. Sammy (Laura Linney) is an organized, straitlaced woman working in a bank and raising her 8-year-old son as a single mother. Her brother, Terry (Mark Ruffalo), is exactly the opposite. He is self-destructive, disorganized, and wild. When they come together in this serious and realistic drama, they learn that they must reconcile their differences in order to preserve a sense of family.
Producers :
Larry Meistrich, Barbara De Fina, Martin Scorsese
Critic Reviews
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www.geocities.com - : Most critics, who are so tired of movies in which everything blows up and everyone is killing each other, will be hard pressed to admit that the protagonists of “You Can Count on Me” are archetypes and the story through which they travel is a formula. The archetypes are the promiscuous single mother, trying to raise her child as best she can while leading a fulfilling life, and the self-destructive loner, who functions with a self-centered, flawed logic that never blames himself and continually lets others down. We’ve seen them both before, we just rarely see them in the same film. What makes “You Can Count on Me” different is that they are brother and sister, and not lovers as we might expect. more...
www.boxoffice.com - : Orphans at a young age, Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry (Mark Ruffalo) only had each other growing up. Now adults, they've drifted apart. A single mom, Sammy still lives in their small New England hometown with her prodigious son Rudy (Rory Culkin). After a long absence during which he worked in Alaska and served a stint in a Florida jail, Terry comes to visit (read: borrow money) and ends up staying for a while. more...
movie-reviews.colossus.net - : Kenneth Lonergan's directorial debut, You Can Count On Me, is one of those movies that straddles a number of fences. It functions well as either a comedy or a drama. It tells a straightforward story, but does so in a slightly off-kilter manner. It's bold enough to appeal to aficionados of independent cinema, but conventional enough not to drive away mainstream audiences. Actually, although the film has officially been classified as a drama by whatever powers make that distinction, the movie is more noteworthy for its comic sensibilities than for its dramatic structure. Lonergan is no stranger to comedy - he wrote the screenplay for 2000's The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and co-wrote 1999's Analyze This. Along with Girlfight, You Can Count On Me took top honors in the 2000 Sundance dramatic competition, and Lonergan walked off with the Best Screenwriting award. Considering the film's sharp character development, compelling storyline, and smart dialogue, it's not hard to understand why. Girlfight is the better film, but, during a weak year in Park City, You Can Count On Me deserved some sort of recognition. (It parlayed the Sundance win into a distribution deal with Paramount Classics and a ''Special Presentation'' slot at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.) more...
Critic Reviews
