Watch Margaret For Free

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

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.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There is no one named Margaret in the movie. It comes from a poem that is read. But that's okay I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo who is nether a captain nor a kangaroo. In fact there may have been a lot of stuff I didn't grasp in this film, but here goes.The film opens in slow motion to illustrate how life moves slowly along until one moment suddenly changes and defines it. Lisa (Anna Paquin) distracts a bus driver who runs a red light and kills a women. She wants to do the right thing, but what is it? The grief and moral dilemma disrupts her life and her relationships.The film is well made. The acting was excellent as was the writing...I think. I just didn't enjoy the film, but I didn't dislike it either. The main problem I have with the overall theme is that Lisa wants justice for the dead woman. She has grief which we see, but we don't see her publicly confess her role in the death. She doesn't seem to have any guilt...or perhaps that is the point of the film is that we quickly forgive our own guilt...except we don't. I kept waiting for Lisa to take blame for what had happened.This is a film about grief, but it is not really sad. Matt Damon plays a geometry teacher who is a love interest of Lisa. Matthew Broderick plays a literature teacher whose classes provide the film with multiple confusing deeper themes for you to pick from in case you don't like the aspect of simply dealing with grief. After watching the film, I felt like I needed a hug.PARENTAL GUIDE: F-bomb, sex, nudity (J. Smith-Cameron, Ann Paquin silhouette)

This film is just a mess, possibly the worst directed film I've ever seen. The camera work doesn't match the music or the scene, the dialogue is all over the place and the actors that should have led this film are given just a few lines, Matt Damon is hardly in the movie at all, Mark Matthew Brodrick even less. The plot has no real direction and different little sub plots cross over all the way through. It's almost as if it was filmed over a real life time scale and there is no cut in time, the film could have been half the running time and have the same effect. You don't actually find out the aim of the plot until about 2 hours in. If you want to waste 3 hours of your life I suppose it's marginally better than watching paint dry.

Beautifully written and imaginatively filmed by Kenneth Lonergan, "Margaret" is filled with solipsistic characters obsessed with their hostilities and need to hurt. An impressive Anna Paquin plays Lisa, a New York high school student whose involvement in a fatal bus accident torments her but also allows it to be incorporated into her skewed worldview. It would be easy to condemn Lisa as a privileged, self-righteous teenager except that her world is also being shaped by the people she interacts with who refuse to meet her needs, most notably Emily (Jeannie Berlin), the deceased's best friend, in denial of her own responses; and her mother (J. Smith-Cameron, excellent in a very complex role), an actress starved for attention onstage and off. The cast of supporting characters who exhibit their own self-serving behavior include Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Mark Ruffalo, Kieran Culkin and a very fine Matt Damon. Lonergan brings a playwright's precision in both ideas and dialogue to film and, aided by director of photography Ryszard Lenczewski, captures a group of city dwellers so confined in their closed environment that they refuse to believe anything other that what it tells them. (He also plays Lisa's father, removed to the beaches of southern California but still a product of city self-absorption.) Highly recommended.

I caught this on HBO. I thought it would be a great study in handling grief. Whoa, was I mistaken!* Spoilers*1st. To the Reviewer who said he'd "rather be run over by a bus"—No you don't. I have been & _Nothing_ warrants that reprehensible idiomatic phrase.2nd. Re: The Film. While the Lisa Cohen character is usually hysterical for most of the movie (can't imagine how Ms. Paquin kept that up), the gist of the movie is: —In seeing a bus driver's cowboy hat (which she's in the market to buy), she catches the driver's attention while he's going through a Red Light. Because of this, a woman named Margaret is killed & dies in Lisa Cohen's arms. Lisa then gives a false police report so as to not incriminate either herself, or the bus driver. Lisa spends the rest of the film trying to settle her guilty conscience with all the involved characters; as well as mature in her broken world (child of divorce & mother is a self-absorbed actress-so Lisa thinks-but her mother is also finding love again with Jean Reno.What does Lisa really accomplish? Alienating or Antagonising the audience.(In all my years of reading/using IMDb, I have never seen so many User Reviews. Amazing!)Lisa's guilt (& class w/Broderick) re: Shakespeare—the screenwriter falls for the Lady MacBeth—can't wash the blood off my hands cliché (in a nightmare).Lisa thinks she can call or just show up w/out notice into the lives of Margaret's relatives, the Police (Hey Kids, Lisa thinks she can pull rank by being a bigot & insulting the officer who thinks it's fine to release next-of-kin telephone #s to her. Lets try that at home—Not!); & she tracks down the bus driver—again "reasoning while hysterical" & tries to get him to admit he ran a Red Light directly Into Margaret to the police.—Yes, Lisa's the definition of naive until she becomes belligerent—then she becomes Litigious. At least one moment of reality arises when Ruffalo says who's going to pay for my family's needs if I'm found guilty? But no way in real life would Cohen be allowed to visit him, or would a bus driver agree to talk with her.To Summarize: 1. This film is a giant waste of time. 2. There is no form of actual healing; although she's surrounded by people who could provide counseling. 3. Completely unrealistic police procedural. 4. It's actually emotionally frustrating to watch. 5. Just b/c her parents are divorced doesn't mean they don't love her, or don't have time for her. 6. This film needs either a major re-write; a vast edit; or I wouldn't have released it anyway.& finally …7. I think the discrepancy b/n very low ratings & high ratings is based on thestar quality packed into this film vs. the final edit that I saw where there was no way to suspend disbelief. Frankly, it felt like a very bad Law & Order knock-off.