Ellen-Burstyn Movie Reviews

It's hard to like a film adaptation of a novel. They just so rarely hit their mark. It is difficult to take a novel and transform it visually. But, I was not pleased. I felt like so many of the important elements were left out and some things were tucked in that weren't important.

This is a film about mother/daughter relationships and about unconditional love. Despite being marked by fine performances, the film never really grabs the viewer, at least, not this viewer. While moderately enjoyable, I found the film to fall a little flat, as the whole Ya-Ya thing left me cold, finding it all a bit silly.

Not having read the book of the same name upon which the film is based, I had no frame of reference. Judging strictly on the merits of the film, I found that it has its ups and downs. The name of the film is apparently derived from a childhood club to which a group of lifelong friends belonged as children in which they were all Ya-Ya priestesses. These friends, of which Vivi (Ellyn Burstyn) is at the center of this story, are all trying to reconcile Vivi to her daughter Sidda (Sandra Bullock). The friends, as well as Vivi, are all aging southern belles from Louisiana. Sidda, however, has moved North, where she is a budding, successful playwright.

Sidda had a traumatic childhood, as her mother is a mercurial woman with a drinking problem. It seems that Vivi never got over losing her childhood sweetheart during the war. She married another man, Shep Walker (James Garner), Sidda's father and a man who has loved Vivi unconditionally throughout their entire married life, and proceeded to put her husband and their children through a living hell. Still, Vivi and Sidda manage to plod along as so many mothers and daughters do, until Vivi goes too far and Sidda decides that enough is enough.

The story of Vivi, Sidda, and Shep is told in flashbacks, which provide the most interesting parts of the movie. Ashley Judd is simply sensational as the young Vivi, and she outshines all the film and stage veterans in this film, infusing the role with a gritty reality. David Lee Smith is very good as the hunky young Shep, the husband who tries to understand a mercurial wife who has become unbalanced by her longing for what could never be.

Ellen Burstyn as the senior Vivi is not as compelling as the younger one portrayed by Ashley Judd. The senior Vivi comes across as a silly, petulant, spoiled, self-absorbed woman who needs a good swift kick in the butt. Consequently, the viewer cares very little for what happens to her, even though she is eventually reconciled to her daughter and comes to appreciate her patient, selfless husband.

Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan, and Shirley Knight are all very good as Vivi's lifelong friends, though Ms. Smith occasionally seems to have a bit of difficulty suppressing her British accent. They inject a touch of humor into their attempts to reconcile the estranged Vivi and Sidda, which is a good counterpoint to the underlying pathos of the film. Sandra Bullock is also excellent as the fed up Sidda, who has said that enough is enough. As in all her film, she charms the viewer. James Garner is wonderful as Vivi's long suffering husband, who comes to be appreciated by Vivi only at the end.

Unfortunately, the director appears to have striven for mawkishness. Consequently, the ending of this film is enough to make one gag, as Sidda is inducted into the Ya-Ya sisterhood. This alone is enough for me to counsel viewers to rent, and not buy, this film.

You always know that a great book is going to be largely compromised when it comes to film. I often avoid seeing the film just because I don't want it to compromise my own vision of the story. This film doesn't bring the depth of the novel to the big screen, but it does seem to contain the essence of the novel. The tone is right; the roles are well cast; the overall sense of novel pervades the movie. But I was a little sad to see some of my favorite parts changed or missing. And people who have read the book understand the film at a level that others don't.

Ya-Yas has some first rate performances. James Garner does so much with his responsive, largely non-verbal role. And the casting of the Ya-Yas themselves is fantastic. Each actress is so well chosen. Fionnula Flanagan really brought a whole other dimension to the role of Teensy. Ellen Burstyn captured Vivi. Ashley Judd gives a real and gritty performance. I think if we put Sandra Bullock and Rebecca Wells in a blender, we'd get the perfect Sidda. When I see these actors now, I think of them as their role in Ya-Yas. That tells you something.

For these reasons, I'd recommend watching the film. But most of all, I'd read the book.

The reason why I am disappointed in this movie is no closed captioning on it. I barely understand it without CC or English subtitle. I can speak for deaf and hard of hearing people, it is extremely frustrating for me when a studio doesn't produce it with CC or English subtitle. I know the movie is good but no CC.

I am a 35 year old male, and although I don't have any of my own kids, I can say this film did a great job of making a soulful journey for a man that is wanting to keep his family in tact, while the wife is feeling that the relationship has ended. There are two kids involved, but the poetic nature of the film treats these matters with great delicacy and love in the midst of adversity. The pleasantness of this film is the simplicity of what is real an important. The relationship between him and his daughter is precious. One previous film done by this director: Simple Life of Noah Dearborn. I have not seen that one, but I am looking forward to it now after seeing this film.

After spending time in prison for auto theft, Leo (Mark Wahlberg), decides it's time to go the straight and narrow.

Returning home from prison, Leo, takes a job at his uncle Frank's (James Caan) company working on contracts with the New York City subway system.

Once on the job, Leo, meets his uncle's top guy (Joaquin Phoenix), and before long, he realizes his uncle is involved with corruption, and payoffs.

"The Yards" is a gritty drama that sports an excellent cast;Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, and Faye Dunaway. Although, slowly paced, the film puts a smart, and interesting spin on big city corruption. Very much a character driven film, "The Yards" will disappoint those looking for fast action. But anyone looking for an intelligent, well acted movie will be pleased with this one.

Nick Gonnella

this is a good movie about Mark Wahlberg who comes back after some period and starts working for his friend Joaquin Pheonix and his dad James Caan. anyway while at The Yards someone gets killed by Pheonix and things start to heat up. good performances all around, especially Wahlberg and the psycho Pheonix. Pheonix finds out that Wahlberg was in love one time with I think Charlize Theron's his cousin, yeah his cousin and then Pheonix tries to pin the murder on Wahlberg and it just bellys into a series of emotions and chaos when Pheonix accidently kills Theron. James Caan, Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway also star

I loved this movie, and it is one of my favorite dramas.
Mark Wahlberg plays the role of Leo, who comes home from prison and consequently can't get into any trouble. This means, of course, that sometime in the next hour and a half or so, something bad is going to hit the fan and it's going to involve him in a big way.
Leo needs money to support his mother and himself, so he takes a job with his uncle (James Caan). His uncle wants him to take a course before he actually gets involved in the business, but Leo wants to start making money himself right now, and he sees his friend Willie (Joaquin Phoenix) who never went to school, and how he has a job making deals. Willie convinces him, and it doesn't take much convincing, to do what he does, and almost immediately things begin going down.
Ellen Burstyn plays Leo's mother, Faye Dunaway is his aunt Kitty and his cousin Erica's mother, and Charlize Theron is Erica, who is dating Willie.

I felt that the director, and actors, did well making a movie that revolved around these complex characters. Then again, of course you have to care about them, and not everyone will, but I did. The character of Willie was specifically fascinating to me and Phoenix did a great job. I usually like secondary characters better than the leads. I find they most often have more depth, especially if you don't know as much about them as others. So this movie deserves a rating somewhere between a four and a five for me.

Okay, there might be one more boring than this, but not one that comes to mind as quickly. This is like watching paint dry, or worse. There are plenty of fine actors in this film, and they all act well, but the pacing is horrible--you will dread every time one actor enters the room and starts to converse with the other, because it takes about 10 minutes every flipping time, with long pauses between every meaningless word. The story could have been excitingly portrayed--a family crime history, big city politics and corruption, etc.--but the way it is done here is truly coma-inducing. Avoid this movie like the plague.

Well made family crime drama. Nothing new but has its heart in the right place. Excellent performances and stylish direction and cinematography. Don't expect a great deal of action in the literal sense. This is a movie more about people and a family surviving in crime.

this is a good movie about Mark Wahlberg who comes back after some period and starts working for his friend Joaquin Pheonix and his dad James Caan. anyway while at The Yards someone gets killed by Pheonix and things start to heat up. good performances all around, especially Wahlberg and the psycho Pheonix. Pheonix finds out that Wahlberg was in love one time with I think Charlize Theron's his cousin, yeah his cousin and then Pheonix tries to pin the murder on Wahlberg and it just bellys into a series of emotions and chaos when Pheonix accidently kills Theron. James Caan, Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway also star

I can't believe most of the reviews here!!! A good movie??? Please, read the novel by James A. Thom!!! This made for TV movie is nothing but a soap opera set in the 18th century!!!

In 1985, when I was 14 years old, my mother came into my room and handed me a paperback book called FOLLOW THE RIVER. "This is the most INSPIRING story I've read in a long long time." I, not being much of a reader at that age, took this book, and COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN!!!

It is, to this day, my all time favorite novel. That they made this little TV movie based on this wonderful work was bad enough. They should have made an epic feature film about the unforgettable protag and her true story. But to make a TV movie that squishes 5 months in a woman's life into 2 commercial ridden hours, and sanitizes the facts too??? Foul!!!

Mary Draper Ingles was a young mother of three. Her third baby was actually due to be born any day. On July 8, 1755, Shawnee Native Americans raided her settlement in Virginia, killed many of her neighbors, and even killed her mother. Then they abducted her, her two little boys, her sister in law Bettie, and a neighbor named Lenard, and took them from Virginia, up into W. Virginia thru the New River Gorge, on to the mighty Ohio River, and into Southern Ohio (present site of Portsmouth). Mrs. Ingles' life is scattered, devastated and all but destroyed. Eventually, in a few weeks as a captive, she loses her family. Her sons are adopted and taken to still another faraway Shawnee settlement. Bettie is given as a wife to a Shawnee man, and Mary herself is sold to French traders, along with a new friend, Ghetel, an elderly Dutch widow. Her life further ruined and disrupted, she makes a fateful decision: either return home to Virginia and to her husband William, or life is not worth living. Will is all she has left to remind her of who she truly is. She must return to him.

The movie devotes a mere 20 mins. to Mary's 1000 mile walk home. The book is so much more fun to experience, so rich in detail, and author James A. Thom constantly lets you inside Mary's head to know her thoughts, fears, regrets. She decides she must abandon the baby girl she had en route to her slavery. A Shawnee woman has pretty much taken over the baby anyway.

In September 1755, Mary and the elderly Dutch woman Ghetel escape while on a salt making assignment at the Big Bone Lick in western Kentucky, even father from home than the town in Southern Ohio, and from western Kentucky, through Southern Ohio, through W. Va and the formidable New River Gorge, formed through the centuries into tall, dark, rocky palisades that Mary, who has been weakened, starved and fatigued by her travels already, is forced to CLIMB in order to reach her husband. On top of this, it is already wintertime.

None of these wonderous facts are in the movie. Instead, we are given a completely fictitious segment at the end. It just seems all watered-down, sanitized, politically correct. The ending of the movie is NOTHING AT ALL like the one in the book. Mary's two sons were taken from her. Her younger boy died right after he was taken from his mother. Thirteen years passed before Mary laid eyes on the older son again. The baby daughter was NOT BROUGHT BACK TO MARY BY CAPT. WILDCAT. The baby daughter was adopted by a Shawnee woman and never seen by her natural mother again. The ending of the TV movie was like a politically correct fairy tale.

Because of the depression, the emotional toll the events took on Mary Ingles' life, her hair turned prematurely white at the age of 23. But thankfully, she did return to her husband William, she did recover from her malnutrition, and she had four more children. In 1768, she and her oldest son, Thomas, who was 5 when she saw him last, were reunited after he was ransomed. Bettie Draper, who was given to be the wife/concubine of a Shawnee man, was also ransomed, but died at the young age of 42, doubtlessly having never fully recovered from her ordeal.

Fact: Life isn't fair. Bad things happen to good people. Things don't always end up well and fine. The history of this country is not a fairy tale.

If you're afraid to tell the truth in a movie because everyone will start in on being PC, don't make the movie!!!

Although it does stir up memories of being forced to watch Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman & flicks like The Last of the Mochicans, this true story turned out to be just a good old fashion tale of survival and ultimate triumpth. I purchased this movie solely to see my favorite actress Renee O'Connor ("Gabrielle" from the TV show Xena: Warrior Princess) play the wounded shaky sister of pregnant, focused and utterly BRAVE Mary Ingles, both women victims of an new America Indian raid, forced to travel some 800 miles uphill with their devoted male counterparts searching for them not far behind. Eric Schweig plays a toned & interesting Indian who pursues and admires the strong minded Mary Ingles; Renee O'Connor shines as her younger and not so certain sister, Betty, who, in my opinion, totally MAKES this movie by bringing her usual unsurpassed charmisa and emotional charm to tie in any loose ends.

My only complaints: the 800 mile travel was sort of uneventful and slow and some of the survival tactics they used were like "yeah right..."

I saw this movie and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have also read the book which I could not put down. Even though the movie did not follow the book as closely as it could have it was still worth watching just to see hottie Eric Schweig!! This movie (and book) are even more impacting if you have been to the New River Gorge and have seen what she traveled through. I highly recommend that everyone see this enchanting true story of Mary Ingles' plight as she returned home.

There isn't a moment of truth in this hokey Hallmark TVM directed by Ed Kaplan. The teleplay takes bits from Rebecca and Vertigo with Ellen Burstyn as a Long Island millionairess who commissions Meg Tilly to paint a mural in her tomb-like ballroom. With Burstyn's 16 year old daugher having died mysteriously on the night of her debutante ball and Tilly's mother estranged to her and also dead, it isn't long before Tilly is wearing the daughter's clothes and sleeping in her bed. The treatment's Barbara Cartland/Harlequin level of reality is underlined by the awful music score by Allyn Ferguson, the discovery of a portrait that reveals Tilly to be identical to the daughter ("we're kindred spirits"), Tilly's body double for the drawing and painting long shots, the English butler who stands to attention in the room at meal times, and the dead daughter's boyfriend out of D H Lawrence who describes the daughter (named Cassandra!) as "like the air after a thunderstorm". All this reads as if it could be played as a parody of something like Reversal of Fortune where the rarified existence of the rich allows for a world of artiface, though clearly that is not the intention. The teleplay by John Gay and Jim & Ken Wheat, based on the novel by Jane Stanton Hitchcock, has such pearls as Burstyn's "Bringing this room back to life is bringing me back to life too", Burstyn as described by the butler "She doesn't know the boundaries of her own strength", and Barnard Hughes as a friend of Tilly's advising her to stay on when she has doubts - "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater". The last one makes a valid point by saying that the artist in history has had to endure the agenda of their patrons, but Tilly's objection to the loss of her own identity is ironic as Tilly is such a reticent performer. You can also guess that, based on Burstyn's controlling tendencies - she sees Tilly as her "creation" and hovers - Cassandra had her problems too. If Tilly's friendship with Hughes isn't believable, Burstyn is the bigger problem. Given that she entered Long Island society from marrying a wealthy man accounting for her obvious lack of rich lady manners, the two monologues she has about the death of Cassandra reveal her limited dramatic range. Since neither Burstyn or Tilly are the kind of actors who bring a wealth of personality to their roles - Burstyn is stuck in Actors Studio technique via TV acting - their casting comes across as second choice compromises, though perhaps no actor could redeem this kind of stale material to begin with. At one point Burstyn tells Tilly there are no photos of Cassandra, because Burstyn's husband has burned them all before shooting himself. Sunny von Bulow didn't even die and she made the newspapers. This household had 2 deaths presumably in quick succession, so you would think Tilly could easily find a picture of Cassandra in the archives of the local newspapers. Funny how that never occurs to her, but then that's a different TVM.