Reviews

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  ★★★½ review by Scott Renshaw on Letterboxd

  How many things does a movie need to do wrong to screw up a killer concept, a terrific performance and an uncomfortably insightful resolution? Nikole Beckwith dodges a bullet in her story of Leia (Saoirse Ronan), a young woman returning to her birth parents (Cynthia Nixon and David Warhofsky) as a 22-year-old, more than 17 years after she was abducted and raised in isolation by a lone man (Jason Isaacs). The title is a tip-off to the idea that Leia is more than slightly conflicted about returning to parents she doesn't remember, and Ronan does a terrific job of taking what could have been mere blankness and converting it to a sense of being completely unmoored from the only things she previously understood about the world. The third-act, unfortunately, takes a detour into an angle that doesn't do Nixon's performance any favors, and the theatrical conceit of how Beckwith stages Leia's flashbacks doesn't seem to make sense relative to what we know about her life. And then it's salvaged again by a killer conclusion that frames the whole story as about a particular brand of dysfunctional parenting: always circling around to try to correct some past mistake.

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  ★★★½ review by KEH 🍑 on Letterboxd

  Ummm, i don't get the hate. i really liked this. ppl have a certain "disgust" of lifetime movies. i mean, mostly of them are not good. but, this one was really interesting, yas, pretty slow (that's was never a problem to me, i love slow passing flicks) and i know that sometimes this can be a negative thing in a movie, but i thought the narraration and the plot were very well conducted, Saoirse Ronan as always was phenomenal and i'm glad i gave this one a chance.

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  ★★★½ review by Will Lambert on Letterboxd

  What a movie to watch for your very first Sundance Film Festival!!! I love movies like this. The tone and everything. Movies where characters develop in a really good/intresting way. I would explain, but that would call for spoilers. If this movie doesn't end up in my top 20 of the year, 2015 will be an amazing year for film. The 2 main performances were outstanding.

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  ★★★★ review by Tyler Moore on Letterboxd

  I got to see this at Sundance!

  With spectacular performances from both Saorise Ronan & Cynthia Nixon, as well as a compelling story with a great twist, Stockholm, Pennsylvania is a fantastic film that will hopefully get some Oscar consideration once it gets a distributor.

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  ★★★½ review by Kate Veismane on Letterboxd

  The plot was not original (abducted girl-teenager gets rescued and is put back with her real mother and father. So they all try to manage), the script was good, directing okay and I would say very well written, realistic characters with their flaws, their execution (especially by Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Nixon) was great. Saw that other people are not liking this but I thought it was quite nice piece. Nothing physically really happened but I could see how mentally almost everything did.
  
  Dark and realistically messed up I would say. Enjoyed it.

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