Watch Higher Ground For Free

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Corinne Walker was 'saved' at her church as a child. As a teenager (Taissa Farmiga), she dates musician Ethan Miller while her parents split apart. Corinne marries Ethan and have daughter Abigail. They travel with the band on a bus which crashed. Ethan barely saves Abigail reviving the family's religious beliefs. As adults, Corinne (Vera Farmiga) and Ethan with their children Abigail and Lilly live in a religious community. Corinne's sister Wendy arrives to stay but she's holding a package of cocaine. Later, Corinne gets pregnant, has sex dreams about her best friend Annika, and struggles with her religious faith.Vera Farmiga is an amazing actress. This is her directing debut. She is unable to strip this life-long story down into a tighter and more concentrated drama. It saunters from one life event to another. I would probably skip the childhood story and start with the bus crash. That way, the movie can start right at the community. I simply have a tough time staying with Corinne as her life skips by. I wonder if this material would work better as a TV series.

Sort of unaware of this movie & glad I watched it. I will highly recommend others from my old Church family check it out. Personally found the story very interesting, having grown up in the 60-70s, attending a smaller suburban Presbyterian church. I think we were lucky our youth group visited various other denominations & the LDS, too. Once, at an Evangelical church we listened while members stood up & gave "Testimonials" of their faith. One thing I learned is not all churches had great stained glass windows, pipe organs, choir directors & some sort of so-called "Order of Worship". Anyway, have always thought the work of Vera F. was very good even in that terrible Boston cop flick w/ Matt Damon, Martin Sheen & old Jack Nic. Now, after viewing Higher Ground, even more impressed with her talent & acting range. Then reading the credits & learning this film was her directorial debut - WOW, great job!

A lot of folks are posting to point out that HG is just plain boring. I say it's not.What it is, is mundane. Farmiga set herself a difficult hurdle. She decided that she wanted to set this odyssey in the context of the life of, really, an ordinary woman. And so there's a notable wash of the quotidian over the whole movie; lots of pastels and a paucity of striking drama and color. Who buys a ticket to eat oatmeal? Well, there are a couple of redemptive factors, esthetically speaking.One thing she does is place flashpoint moments of pretty intense drama, such as when the personality conflict with her husband culminates in violence; a real white-knuckler! And, that being merely a notable punctuation point in the action, a careful tracking shows the flick to be a kind of moderated exposition, ranging from the truly mundane to some pretty challenging stuff; and everything in between and every which way.HG is an invitation to lovingly and thoughtfully consider those of our brethren who have addressed their existential crises by buying into this particular "out"; socializing themselves into fundamentalism.Interestingly, the eye of the camera viewing this epic could be the fairly dispassionate eye of a deistic god: For example, I found the scene where our heroine meets with a "prophetic" councilor particularly challenging. It requires that we get off our duffs, roll up our sleeves, and personally address the issue: From whence do persons who promote themselves as social arbiters derive their credentials? Does his firm, unblinking claim to divine calling overrule the intuitions of women who simply feel unfulfilled? HG is, I think, carefully directed to leave you to answer this, and other questions, in the tabernacle of your own heart. This will naturally put off some moviegoers who never really felt that this was the purpose of film.I'm not kidding: I'm fully aware that this style of filmmaking puts off plenty of people. Farmiga didn't make this film to be popular: She made it to be honest with herself.And perhaps that's the foundation point of the best recommendation for this flick: How often do you get to see films like that?

I can understand why many people will fail to see Farmiga's genius in creating this gem. It is a slow, thoughtful movie. The fact that Corinne sometimes seems to lack emotion is part of the point. She is repressed in every way, yet at times the true woman's spirit shines through - when laughing with her children, for example - and this contrast shows the depth of Farmiga's acting ability as well as her admirable restraint and daring as a director. To honestly portray a repression that is as much internally as it is externally driven - this is a fine line, and one that Farmiga walks with delicacy.Watching Higher Ground was a deeply personal experience for me. Corinne's story could be mine in so many ways. From the music (which I knew word-for-word), to the nearly word-perfect alter calls for children (while every head is bowed and every eye is closed), to Corinne's moments of recognition (inside with you, or outside with the dogs), everything felt intensely real and honest. People who see this movie as attacking Christianity are probably not able to see their own worlds with any spirit of truth, as - for me, anyway - everything about Corinne's experiences in her church was painted accurately and with a painful degree of realism.I watched this movie with my husband, who was raised without any religion and has a hard time understanding what it was like for me to walk away from my whole life, my whole world. This movie helped me express to him that pain, and that freedom. Like Corinne, I simply couldn't pretend anymore.