I absolutely loved this and it's a shame that it's been all but shut out of the awards race because it's easily one of the year's best films and a sensational coming of age story. It's so compelling, polished and well-made. Jason Reitman's direction is perfect as this film walks a very fine line between romantic drama and thriller (parts of the movie are incredibly intense) with ease. I loved how almost the entire film was seen through the eyes of the younger characters as well. Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin are both sensational here as is Gattlin Griffith. I really cared about all of the characters and the dynamic between them was fascinating - especially given the unpredictability of Brolin's character. The movie has beautiful cinematography that often brings to mind Terrence Malick and is also, IMO, incredibly thought-provoking. This is certain to be one of the year's most underrated gems. A

ridiculously bad

although josh brolin is the most charming murderous piemaker this side of sweeney todd

I'm still not convinced this is a real movie.

it's arguable

I dug it. It's not Oscar worthy so the release date change was a good idea but I found it pretty entertaining with good acting. Definitely doesn't feel like a Jason Reitman film at all but I guess it's cool he got to do something tonally different.

There are a few really weird scenes and the character of Henry is just strange.

Jesus @ the 30% RT score. Oop

Labor Day represents a major and unexpected stylistic change of pace for its writer and director, Jason Reitman. Known best for the pop charm of Juno and the sad, yet also biting and focused economic drama Up in the Air, here he abandons ironic distance and social engagement in favor of earnest, vibrant, and borderline absurd romance. The switch has strongly divided critics and may do so with audiences as well, but I believe it suits him, and I found this to be an entertaining and moving film.

The story unfolds in New England in late August in the 1980s, and though production-design choices reflect the decade, including a small-town movie palace showing D.A.R.Y.L., it is not too hard to imagine a 1950s version of this film with, say, Dorothy Malone and William Holden in the lead roles. As it is, it stars Kate Winslet as Adele, an agoraphobic divorced woman largely raising her teenage son by herself. Their tender, yet fragile domestic existence is upended when Frank, a wounded escaped convict played by Josh Brolin, enters their lives out of the blue. An at first tense situation (he demands to be fed, cleaned, and given a place to lay low until nightfall) becomes more complicated as Adele and her son realize the mysterious man does not intend to harm them and, in fact, may fill an empty space in their lives.

The scenario, predicated as it is on traumatized people healing through a form of traumatic bonding, requires a not insignificant suspension of disbelief, but it convinced me due to the sexy and soulful energy generated by the adult stars, both in fantastic form, and the beautiful photography, overflowing with summer-giving-way-to-autumn melancholy and nostalgia. The film is, as far as I can tell, conscious of its colorful and overheated nature and plays with it, almost functioning as an (I admit, more conservative) continuation of the storytelling and stylistic gambits of the retro Far from Heaven. One lengthy sequence which may come to define the overall production's legacy finds the trio easting into a domestic routine by preparing a peach pie, and it is shot and cut with more tactile intensity and general seductive verve than many modern sex scenes. It put an enormous smile on my face.

However, there is one vein I believe the director and editor should have cut loose during post-production. The film is laced throughout with abstract memory montages teasing and then revealing the haunting crime which put the Brolin character behind bars in the first place. Outside of their visual splendor, there is a burdened quality to these images and moments as the film strains to answer a question it need not have posed in the first place: leaving the exact nature of the crime a mystery would only intensify the power of his thousand-yard-stare masculine presence, and there is, to be blunt, an uncomfortable dimension of slut shaming to the way the ultimate revelation is positioned as an absolution.

B+

Labor Day

It had many convenient eye-rolling moments like how he grew up to do great things that he learned in those 5 days (be great at baseball, own a pie shop), and it also had some strange things (Winslet is apparently so depressed that she couldn't give birth to a child despite already having a child), but I just really liked the story, atmosphere and performances. It is a low-key romantic thriller, the type of story that all lonely spinsters dream of (with great dot-to-dot memory montages throughout). I connected to the film through the boy/dad/boyfriend angle. I could relate to that, and it was well done, touching on the main themes in a young boy's life when his mother is shared with other males. It had a nice score and melancholic cinematography that was almost sleep-inducing but somehow just fitted the film so well. The romantic ending was also, however cliché, very nice. Winslet did enough, and Brolin was good (in fact he's becoming a favourite of mine in recent years). I very much enjoyed seeing J.K. Simmons and James van der Beek, which to my surprise had gotten very manly and cowboy-ish in his latter years (a far cry from Dawson's Creek).

It could have done with a few more close-calls or moments of nearly being caught by the authorities, and I would have liked the teenagers' side story with the young girl to have been fleshed out. But regardless, Labor Day is a hidden gem of 2013.

B+