Watch Stockholm, Pennsylvania For Free

the audience applauded

Just what I expected

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Correct, I turned the TV on and there was that young woman with an older one who was passing the food through a small space at the bottom of a doors like half a cat entrance! Then I followed that strange relationship between mother and daughter. To me without previous information it looked rather terrible. I could not work out why this person who'd been in a very long captivity with someone else would then be almost in the same predicament after being reunited with her own mother. I'm not sure if I am spoiling anything yet will say i did. I did like what I saw and hope I'll get a chance to see the whole drama one day.

Great movie. Cynthia Nixon was outstanding as a mother who has become unbalanced since her daughter was kidnapped from a park some 15-20 years ago. Ronan was also very good as the emotionally blank girl who has been rescued and returned to her family. The mother, who lacks insight into her daughter's problems, tries desperately to reinstall the bond between them, but ironically, only reinforces the distance between them. These agonizing attempts at therapy also parallel the professional help that the young girl receives, in the sense that both therapies fail to bring the empathy and insight required to heal. This is a compelling movie. Only watch if you love slow, but powerful, drama.

Pros: The movie was well captivated, it kept you in wanting to know what was gonna happen next. At times your feeling for all the characters and at the same time trying to find which to connect with. It's realistic and genuine thanks to the actors performances. Cons: I honestly think with time the film started being a one track plot and did not account for all the layers it was producing at the beginning. Some elements were lost when the mother ends up being worse than her captor which I believe wouldn't happen as such unless the mother was already a messed up person which could be true adding to a realistic situation. The doctor wasn't concerned as much as one would be in real life unless again to add some realism they ended up with a doctor who just wants to put in their hours and go home with that 9 to 5 attitude. In all: my cons were along the lines of critique personally... where there were nuances of dislike I easily found a way to ignore it or justify it in order to follow the story, the ending was intense and could not be truly felt by only watching that part, the whole build up to that point makes for one of the best endings I've seen in a film, a television film at that... because of that ending it was awesome.

Leanne/Leia (Saoirse Ronan) is a young woman who has had two crimes committed against her: she was stolen from her family, and she was robbed of a soul. She was kidnapped as a young child and confined to a windowless room by a kind but deranged stranger (Jason Isaacs) who raised her on lies and subtle influences to make her believe he was her only hope in life (hence the title "Stockholm" Pennsylvania). For obvious reasons, he intended to limit her understanding of the outside world and subsequently rendered her incapable of handling life beyond his walls.Then it happens that Leia is freed and returned to her biological parents. It should be a happy, joyful reunion; unfortunately, it is anything but.I'm a huge fan of Saoirse Ronan. She thrilled me in Hanna and ripped my guts out in the Lovely Bones. In this movie she has to play it down, as her character is emotionally stunted from captivity and psychically overwhelmed by the real world. She does a wonderful job as the detached escapee, conveying a wide range of emotions just with those big blue eyes and also with her control of subtle facial expressions. Cynthia Nixon is also outstanding as the mother, who not only has to accept her own daughter's alienation of affection but also the horrible reality that Leia cannot accept her new situation. She and her flummoxed husband (David Warshofsky) struggle to rekindle the warmth and congeniality of a familial bond that has never really had a chance to exist, while battling with issues that no parent would ever want to have.Strong praise for writer/director Nikole Beckwith for composing a riveting (if at times deliberately slow-paced) depiction of a true tragedy. Her scenes are at times difficult to endure, but the story is excellent.