Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Linney and Hoffman are both terrific, and Jenkins's script is pointed and perceptive, but the film's arc is a little flat.

| Sep 22, 2008

While writer-director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) lets things get a little mushy towards the end, the film brilliantly portrays a difficult family moment made even more complicated by her characters' overweening narcissism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2008

It's billed as a comedy. You may or may not find much to laugh at.

| Feb 7, 2008

Jenkins' superlative work proves her first film was no fluke; let's hope it doesn't take another nine years to hear from her again.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 1, 2008

Jenkins' brushstrokes of her characters are too exacting to move us more than a lifelike painting of a basket of fruit. We can be awed at the techniques, but walk away empty.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 29, 2008

Jenkins's solemn comedy may be 389 jokes short of a Woody Allen classic, but there is a tenderness about these flawed heroes that is profoundly touching.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 24, 2008

A richly nuanced American comedy, with two acting talents working at their absolute peak.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 24, 2008

It's just a shame the script doesn't push the humour further; brief, amusing put-downs aren't quite enough to make this a bonafide comedy. But if you're looking for a well-performed drama about dementia, you've got it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2008

Powerful, painful and yet unerringly funny as it points out our emotional and physical vulnerabilities, this is a film that finds the humor in tragedy while keeping both omnipresent.

| Dec 26, 2007

The Savages not only boasts Oscar-worthy performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as a self-absorbed brother and sister, its attention to detail makes it sweetly funny and genuine.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 26, 2007

The Savages isn't cheery holiday fare, ... and yet Jenkins makes her film unexpectedly uplifting, in a small-scale, real-life kind of way.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 26, 2007

The dynamic that operates throughout this film is fantasy versus reality, not just in the lives of the characters but in American life in general.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 21, 2007

Tamara Jenkins has made a movie about something that lots of people are going through but nobody wants to deal with, not even in life, much less in entertainment. And she's done it fearlessly, with the right mix of humor and horror.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 21, 2007

Smartly written and beautifully played.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 21, 2007

Both Linney and Hoffman are so specific in creating these characters that we see them as people, not elements in a plot.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 21, 2007

Its astringent humor is not funny ha-ha, it's funny-ouch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 21, 2007

Assured and sharp, The Savages is only Jenkins' second feature-length film. You'd never know it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 20, 2007

One of those genre-defying hybrids that are sometimes called dramedies, The Savages tiptoes along a particularly fraught emotional tightrope, balancing observant humor and deep sadness with uncommon grace.

| Dec 20, 2007

Although the story may sound as dismal as Buffalo's weather, it's surprisingly funny. Not gag funny, but observation funny -- the absurdities of real life, seen and presented.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 20, 2007