RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

tomsview This is a powerful film with many scenes that stir the emotions.Edna McCauley (Ellen Burstyn) receives seemingly supernatural or maybe even divine powers after an accident. Unlike the powers that Sissy Spacek received in "Carrie", and that many others have received – mainly in horror movies – Edna uses them to heal. In fact, the only person her unique gift hurts is herself; her life is overwhelmed by the effect her power has on others.The film hasn't really dated, I remember seeing it on TV in the early 80's and I have never really forgotten it. It is gripping from start to finish and has more than one scene that will leave a lump in your throat.This brilliantly original story explores Edna's relationship with her father and those closest to her. However, all her relationships become influenced by her mysterious and unasked for power. In fact, it seems as though the only person who keeps their balance as the story unfolds is Edna herself.Set in a farming community in Kansas, her family, friends and neighbours are fairly religious by nature, but Edna attracts just as many sceptics as believers. Eventually, after things spiral out of control, she is forced to make a difficult decision about her future.The production values of the film are functional more than inspired, however Maurice Jarre contributed a very good score; a return to form really, which along with "The Man Who Would Be King", "Witness" and "Moon Over Parador", is a step above his typical by-the-numbers scores of the 70's and 80's.But the performances make this film. Ellyn Burstyn is brilliant – her performance allows Edna to be a woman first, a fact which is lost on nearly everyone who only see her great power as she lays her hands upon the afflicted to heal them. The other standout in the cast is Eva Le Gallienne as the wise and loving Grandma Pearl – the first to realise Edna's special gift. Sam Shepard adds an edgy element as Edna's unlikely lover, Cal, who can't come to terms with her power.This film stays with you, and has an ending that is a choke-back-the-emotions moment if ever there was one, capping a unique movie experience.

jjnxn-1 Amazingly well acted film with Ellen Burstyn giving what could be a career best performance. Part of the power of her performance and the film is that she portrays a very normal woman thrust by circumstance into an extraordinary situation. Her Edna is presented in small touches with a few chances to dazzle us thrown in. Usually when one performer is so strong the rest of the cast tends to be overshadowed, such is not the case here. Lois Smith, Roberts Blossom, Richard Farnsworth and Sam Shepard all create wonderfully realized characters but the absolute scene stealer is Eva Le Galliene as the grandmother. A legend of the Broadway stage it is a pity she did not start working in film regularly until old age. Her rendering of an old farm woman is a thing of beauty in the realness and truth she brings to her. Her interactions with Ellen Burstyn are lovely and heartbreaking. The story of being touched with special powers after a brush with death is intriguing but would be unmemorable without this cast who make it so compelling. The ending is perfect. Highly recommended.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Surviving a deadly car crash where her husband Joe, Jeffrey DeMunn, was killed Mae McCaule,Ellen Burstyn, momentarily was declared dead in the hospital emergency room when all her vital functions flat-lined but then almost miraculously came back to life! It was later in the movie that Mae began to realize that not only was she given a second chance to live but was also a gift that in the end would almost cause her to die again at the hands of her crazed and bible thumping lover who's life she saved with that very gift that she received from beyond.It took a while for Mae to get her life back together again in her recuperation from the car crash that not only took the life of her husband Joe but also left her an invalid not able to walk. An incident earlier in the movie, after she came back to life in the hospital emergency room, in Mae's encounter with old man Esco Brown, Richard Farnsworth, on her way to Kansas to live with her father John, Robert Blossom, and Grandma Pearl, Eve Le Gallienne, may have had a far more greater impact on her life, besides Esco filling her gas tank with gaoling, then she at first thought. Esco a strange but friendly and personable sort of guy put Mae at ease in the stress that she at that time was going through. Later in the movie, when you had almost forgot about the old guy, we see that Mae in fact realized what he did for her in Mae herself doing somewhat the same thing, for a very sick and terminally ill little boy, that was completely overlooked in her initial encounter with Esco.I took a while for Mae to realize what the gift that she received from the result of her car accident was. It wasn't until she was able to cure herself of her paralysis that things started to really get a bit edgy with the people in and around town whom she lived with. You would think that curing the incurable would have made those who knew her as well as those like her boyfriend Carl Carpenter,Sam Shaperd, that Mae cured appreciate what she did for them. Instead a number of people that included Carl and his fire and brimstone bible thumping father Earl, Richard Hamilton, took Mae's kind unselfish and God-given abilities as being that of the Devil himself who was using Mae for his own evil purposes.The more proof, including controlled laboratory tests with ill and crippled persons, confirming Mae's miraculous powers being genuine came out the more both Earl and his by now very unstable son Carl began to suspect, with Mae not reciting any passages from the bible in her curing sessions, that the Devil had a hand in them. Which finally lead to Carl, now completely out of his cotton-picking skull, crashing a healing seminar headed by Mae where she almost got killed by the wild and crazy motorcycle riding and gun toting religious lunatic.Mae coming to the realization that whatever powers that she has are to be kept as much under the radar screen, or away from the public, as possible is now as the film ends, what seems like ten years later, running the same gas station/general store that the late Esco Brown did. Mae in effect is doing ,besides pumping gas and selling cold drinks and hard candies, what he was doing earlier in the movie in helping those who desperately needed his help without them really knowing about it. Mea is preforming miracles in that out of the way outpost in the middle of the vast and empty Arizona/Nevada Desert that may well be, to those who visit it, in the deepest recesses of one's mind as well as at the same time on the outer most fringes of what we conceive to be human reality. In that in between dimension of what's real and whats imaginary known to all of us as the "Twilight Zone".

Randy Sus (Shakey) It's been years since I saw this movie, but it still reverberates in my memory like it was yesterday. I had videotaped it when it was shown on Cinemax or HBO years ago and I had many friends view it. All of them claimed to be as enthralled with it as I was. I lent the tape out to friends from time to time and---the last time---I forgot who had borrowed it last. I asked any I thought I might have lent it to and nobody claimed to have it. SO---for the past several years I have looked to find another copy of it somewhere. I have not found a video store which had a copy of it anywhere. I wish I still owned it, since I would like to view it again and SHARE it again with my friends. For some unknown reason it is not shown on classic television channels like TNT or AMC.. What a shame! If you EVER get a chance to see it, DON'T miss it. Folks who are devoutly religious MIGHT get excited about the theme of the movie, but---you'll be moved positively by it I'm sure.