Irritable at the slightest Lee Chandler never thought his teenage nephew would be handed to him for care until the boys father passes on and he has to take on parenting the child.
Affleck is magnificent, but the movie is something less than that, because it can't completely overcome some built-in challenges. Even so, Manchester by the Sea deserves honors for being so different, and for working on the mind in a particular way
Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan's MANCHESTER BY THE SEA made me leave the theater feeling empty... it could easily be filed away as just another white male angst narrative.
Some emotional wounds can't be healed. Manchester by the Sea... takes on that proposition in family drama, or rather a drama about what we do for family even when there are things we can't do for ourselves.
The movie is pulsating with urgency and feeling, not deadened by the suggestive framework of its premise. I could not take my eyes off any of these people.
Its initial enigma seems to need no explanation; yet, once deciphered, the film does not falter but moves only deeper into the emotional territory it charts.
