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Winter Passing Reviews
Dull, cruel nonsense with completely unsympathetic main characters. What a waste of film.
Dull, glacial, and deeply self-indulgent. Why drown a kitten? Because this movie sucks.
Animal cruelty in the first 20 minutes that's absolutely worthless and pointless. It's also BS because she could just have the vet put the cat down instead of drowning it. I definitely wasn't expecting a movie with Will Farrell and Zoe D. to start out so horrendous
Horrible character played by Zoey Deschanel. Kills a kitten by putting it in a backpack and throwing it in the river. Not even going to finish it.
It wasn't that bad. Kind of boring at times. Zooey Deschanel is very good I think. People are all upset about the cat - but it shows where she is at mentally, and that in leaving New York she is kind of giving up and accepting fate, which can be a very cruel and death-like thing that happens to a person, hence the cruelty of the scene. It bothered me, too, but I accepted it as the culmination of very hard and harmfully dissolute times for the character. Ed Harris is great but there is not much to his character. Other supporting cast is good. It is an insular and somewhat confining little film, but interesting and moody. The end flips a switch that I don't think should have been touched, but OK, not my choice.
The first third of the movie was detailed and promising. It introduced interesting characters within the NYC theater scene as well. But then it was like a different writer took over the whole script and suddenly we are in Detroit in some mash up of David Auburn's play Proof....Will Fargo is playing guitar and why?? And absolutely nothing gets resolved about anyone, but I guess the father has something to live for in the end because he is writing a novel called Golf?
It is a bit slow at times but when it gets going it is sweet and interesting. Even Will Ferrell was watchable.
Watched it through only because I wanted to finish watching all the Will Ferrel movies. Very weak writing , unimaginative directing and general waste of acting talent . I categorize some movies as good looking people walking around. This is in that category. Actors just walk around saying some things and mumbling in general. Everything is said in the exact same level of low intensity with exact same deadpan expression. It looks like a group of movie making students got together to try techniques they learnt in school. Not so big spolier alert e.g. zooey deschanel is a drug addict yet so fit and good looking and goes jogging every morning :-) Well worth watching if you are into sadistic hobby of bad movie watching just to see how terrible it is.
Great cast, but a very slow and plodding film... Truly a "Debbie Downer" flick... I adore Zooey and see Will Ferrell in a straight role is intriguing and fun, but the overall bleak vibe of "Winter Passing" makes you pray (and I mean Big Time) for Spring to arrive right now...
Can't believe I had not watched this til now... Deschanel was absolutely superb & Harris, Ferrell, and Warner were excellent... if you have not seen this film, please do... I am absolutely surprised by how truly good this film really was.
Utterly tedious. Main character is soulless and dull. Her 'journey' is of little interest. After an hour, I turned it off as I couldn't care less how it ended.
Review: I quite enjoyed this movie, although it was a bit slow in the beginning and it doesn't really pick up until Will Ferrell and Ed Harris come into the picture. It's quite a deep drama that deals with a relationship between a father and daughter. All of the characters put in good performances, but it's Will Ferrell that makes the movie. His characters is extremely funny, in a serious way, and Ed Harris also went out of his way to make his character believable. The main character, Zooey Deschanel, has a unemotional way of acting, which works in this movie and makes the movie what it is. In all the second half was an emotional journey but the first half was a bit all over the place. Watchable! Round-Up: This movie was made before Will Ferrell was known for his silly lines and phrases, which is why I was looking forward to watching the film. He isn't doing his usual shouting and cracking silly jokes throughout the movie which was why it suited the whole tone of the film. I even enjoyed the student that was living in the house with them, who also suited the weird and mysterious world that they created in the house. It's just a shame that they never concentrated on the whole family except for just the main character who was pretty dull in places. Budget: $3.5million Worldwide Gross: $114,000 (Terrible!) I recommend this movie to people who are into there comedy/drama that deals with the lose of a family and how it effects a husband and daughter. 4/10
I absolutely love discovering such hidden indie gems!
Melancholy but ok, worth a watch at least once, just for the actors performances alone.
'This is the kind of movie routinely dismissed as too slow and quiet by those who don't know it is more exciting to listen than to hear.' - Roger Ebert
I have a great affection for movies that zero in on a particular character's eccentricities. Winter Passing is a movie heads in that direction and then doesn't know what to do with it. We have the characters, they have goofy characteristics and it all just lays there flat. This is one of those slowly paced movies that always seems as if it is aiming at something deep and profound and never quite gets there. The movie stars Zooey Dachenel - an actress that I normally like - as Reese Holden, the estranged daughter of a once famous novelist who became a teacher, then dropped out of sight and climbed inside a bottle. She doesn't talk to her family anymore and moved away from Michigan to live in New York where she works as a bartender and part-time actress and fills the rest of her time with casual sex, booze, drugs and self-pity. Reese has a hateful manner with everyone that seems born out of insecurity. That might be endearing if it didn't grow irritating to the point of being insufferable. The movie opens with the information that Reese didn't attend her mother's funeral because "she treated me like a mild curiosity". Reese couldn't care less about her family until an editor named Lori Lansky (Amy Madigan) approaches her about acquiring some letters that were written back and forth between her father and her mother. Lansky will pay money for the letters and Reese, after pelting Ms. Lansky with insults and sarcasm, agrees because she needs the money. So, Reese takes a trip back home by bus where she is surprised to find her father does not live in the old house but in a broken-down shack behind it. Her father Don (Ed Harris) is your average drunken writer, a recluse with long white hair who does cute, drunk, recluse things like moving the bedroom furniture out into the back yard. Every corner of the house is littered with so many piles of books that you can't imagine that anyone has actually read all of them Also occupying the house is Corbit (Will Ferrell), Don's bodyguard who asks for I.D. when Reese answers the door and later violently confiscates the camera of a visiting fan and exposes the film before giving it back. The fourth occupant is Shelly, a sweet-natured 23 year-old British women that cooks and cleans for Don and whom - naturally - Reese assumes he is sleeping with. She becomes the butt of most of Reese's hateful comments. Winter Passing has the potential to really be a great character study, but it is too busy being odd and quirky for its own sake. It is too slow and quiet to really gather any momentum. The characters are so busy being quirky that they never have time to emerge as living, breathing souls. With a cast that includes Zooey Daschenel, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Will Ferrell, you are fired up for something great but it never really gets there. It is like a great band took the stage but wouldn't stop tuning their instruments and play already.