Margaret (2011)
Storyline
A young woman witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Olivia Thirlby, Matthew Broderick, Matt Damon, Michael Ealy, Allison Janney, Josh Hamilton, Kieran Culkin, Jean Reno, Mark Ruffalo, John Gallagher Jr., Kenneth Lonergan, J. Smith-Cameron, Anna Paquin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Enid Graham, Krysten Ritter, Jeannie Berlin, Sarah Steele, Hina Abdullah, Brittany Underwood, Kelly Wolf, Liza Colón-Zayas
Trailer
Reviews
100
And though not all of Lonergan's conceits work on a scene-by-scene basis (an upper-crust womanizer played by Jean Reno skews a bit too close to caricature), the film has a cumulative power-solidified by a devastating opera-house finale-that's staggering. This is frayed-edges filmmaking at its finest.
80
Movieline
It's not a film that's easy to love, but like a song you at first can't stand but then end up humming all day, it works its way past your defenses and curls in close.
70
Village Voice
It's less successful as a human drama than as a near-Brechtian exercise in what human drama looks and sounds like - a distanced but often car-crash compelling portrait of a teen as an unfinished being.
70
Lonergan didn't bite off more than he could chew with Margaret - this is his personal moral gymnasium - but he did bite off more than others might want to chew.
67
Lonergan's dialogue can sweep you up in a whoosh of personality and ideas, but it's hard to see what, apart from ego, convinced him that this story was so epic.
