A film that will fascinate inquisitive viewers on multiple levels.

| Sep 16, 2013

While Reed's own self-exposure shows insight, her presentation of her brother's suffering comes across as an unprocessed spectacle of misery that hasn't been adequately thought out.

| Jul 1, 2013

A multilayered portrait of immense physical, emotional and psychological change.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 19, 2010

At the heart of Prodigal Sons, a family drama in the form of a succinct, eloquent personal journal, is a sibling rivalry whose reverberations touch upon the very essence of human identity...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 18, 2010

A consistently generous film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2010

Kimberly Reed started out to make a movie about starting over, but then life got in the way. It didn't make her job harder. It made the movie better.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2010

The problem with family-diary documentaries is that some families have too much drama for just one movie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2010

Sometimes we forget that when documentary filmmakers begin a project, they don't always know what they'll be filming because, to state the obvious, real life doesn't work from a script.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 4, 2010

This is fascinating.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2010

I love the set up of this one.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2010

Anybody who has ever doubted that truth is stranger than fiction should see Prodigal Sons.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 26, 2010

Well-crafted and intense.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 25, 2010

Instead of pushing deeper into any psychological dilemmas, this dirty-laundry doc gets lost in a sensationalistic flurry driven by a serious emotional unraveling.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 24, 2010

Despite a fascinating midpoint revelation, Reed spends too much time capturing her sibling's terrifying outbursts, devoting the film's final act almost exclusively to his increasingly abject circumstances.

| Feb 23, 2010

A testament to film's documentary function to record moments of queasy immediacy as well as to Reed's thoughtful self-analysis.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 22, 2010