David Gordon Green is, to my mind, the best up-and-coming director we have working in the general realm of realism. This film, based on a Stewart O'Nan novel I've just begun reading, explores the interests, concerns, relationships (family and romantic), and local dramas of believable well-drawn characters. Among movies I've been aware of coming out this season, this was my most-anticipated one; and I felt my trust was very well rewarded.
Not to be pushing realism as against script self-reflexiveness, trickiness, irrealism, surrealism, and so on -- I can get into any of those, too, when well done. But looking within the traditional alternative of character-based stories, convincingly and movingly told, who is more exciting than Green in his first four features?
Only Nicky Katt was a biot disappointing among the players in sizeable roles. Amy Sedaris, a little to my surprise, was really spot-on as friend/co-worker Barb, admittedly a somewhat comic part, but with dimensions of outrage and sympathy well beyond what I had thought Sedaris capable of.
I've just begun the novel, but can note already that the screenplay (and realized film) completely solves what looks like a narrative problem in the novel -- Artie is a first-person narrator, but allowed to dramatize scenes he did not witness. The screenplay does put him in the center of the narrative, but without any sense of magic or violation when we are shown scenes outside his ken. The young romance between Artie and Lila is handled perfectly in the screenwriting, direction, and acting, and is essential to the movie's feeling of full-spectrum life in this small town. (A preliminary scan through the novel suggests that the adaptation has somewhat sexed-up this relationship, but it's all good!)
==Mitch