Manchester by the Sea

Plot-

Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) finds himself returning to his hometown north of Boston after the death of his brother (Kyle Chandler) and becomes the guardian of his teenage nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges). 

Pros:

•They might as well just give Casey Affleck the Best Actor award now. Easily the best performance I've seen this year. You start off seeing his character living a very quiet existence. He doesn't show a whole lot of emotion and you can clearly tell it's hard for him interacting with people. As the movie goes on, through flashbacks, you slowly start to find out just what happened to him to make him this way. And also why he's very reluctant to assume the role of Patrick's guardian despite clearly loving his nephew very much. It's absolutely heartbreaking and a huge emotional punch in the gut. Casey just nails it. Wow!!!

•Lucas Hedges also does a really good job here. For some reason I thought going into this that he would annoy me but quite the opposite happened. You can totally understand Patrick's reaction to everything. His scenes with Casey Affleck were definitely some of my favorites and had me sobbing several times. 

•Even though Kenneth Lonergan doesn't have a whole lot of experience directing (this is only his third movie) with this you would think he'd been doing it for years. He's able to get very powerful performances out of all of his actors. He wrote the script as well I believe and it's so raw and honest. The whole story is a huge emotional punch in the gut. Also, I really like how he showed the aftermath of someone dealing with all the things that need to be taking care of after a family member dies, right down to the smallest detail. You don't usually see that in movies. 

•Michelle Williams doesn't have much screen time at all but you can see why she's getting a lot of Oscar buzz as well. 

•Beautiful locations and cinematography. 

•I walked out of the theater just in awe of the  amazing movie I just watched. I have a feeling I'm going to be thinking about it a lot over the next few days. I highly recommend it to everyone. Just bring plenty of tissues. 

Cons:

•I'm not taking points off for this nor was it something that bothered me, but some people aren't going to like the way this is paced. This is a movie that takes it's time. I was completely fine with it (not once was I bored) and think it was important to tell the story this way. 

My Rating: 10/10