SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

phd_travel The story is partly annoying and unsatisfying. The characters aren't really endearing and don't evoke sympathy.David Auburn has a gift for creating irritating painful scenarios and if that's the kind of drama you enjoy then this one may be perfect.Sigourney Weaver is good at acting like a damaged person. Her face really showed the pain of a person who was suffered a life changing tragedy. Kate Bosworth plays a girl of the streets well but her character was so annoying I kept feeling "kick her out". Keri Russell's as the daughter in law was even too saintly.Give this one a miss unless you want the opposite of feel good.

callanvass The Girl in the Park, was a movie that intrigued me, as I came across it in the video store. It was pretty engrossing throughout, and the sadness that Sigourney Weaver displayed through the movie, saddened me. For me a lot of times, low-budget indie drama's like this, are better than big budgeted movies, that come from Hollywood. There better produced, and made. What I liked most about Girl In The Park, was that it never kept you fully satisfied. Enough to make you hope, but just enough, to keep that lingering doubt in the back of your mind, it really left me in an uncomfortable state, when all was said and done. You will feel for all the characters, in one way or another, and will be delighted by the chemistry of Sigourneyy and Kate Boswoth, it was kooky, and cute. The opening of the movie is quite impactive. We quickly see the agony of Sigourney's face, before the camera cuts away, to go to present time, it was a well done shot. It really left me thinking after it was over, which is why I'm not spoiling as much as I usually do, it's a movie you need to watch for yourself.Performances. Sigourney Weaver gives an A worthy show here. Her performance is absolutely incredible at times. The anger she directs towards people, the vulnerability she has, and the constant fear in her eyes, absolutely astonished me. She is a broken down, aging woman, who has lost all sense of reality for the most part. It was a moving performance, that I am glad to have witnessed. Kate Bosworth is wonderful as the complexed, yet strangely likable Louise, who we can relate too. The unpredictability of her character, often frightened me, but I also felt big time for her. Alessandro Nivola is very good as Chris. He was a little cold at times, but understandably so, and gave a captivating show. Keri Russell is underused, but very solid, with what she had to do.Bottom line. The Girl in the Park, is an underrated gem of a film. It hits all the right emotional notes, and left me quite floored when all was said and done. It has it's flaws, but for the most part, this is a very good film, that I recommend highly.8/10

TxMike I am a parent but have never lost a child. I would think it would be very hard, but even harder to have lost one not to death but to kidnapping. In that case you never really know what happened, you don't know if you will ever see the child again, you have no closure.That is the theme of this movie. Sigourney Weaver is Julia Sandburg, happily married mother of two, and moonlights as a lounge singer. But one day at the park, when it was time to go, she turns her back just for a few seconds and then finds that her 3-year-old daughter Maggie is gone. She searches, frantically, everyone else has left, she cannot find her daughter.The movie resumes 16 years later, she has returned to New York after some time working in Canada for a bank. We see that her marriage did not survive the loss of the child. Julia changed, she did not cope well at all. She was no longer the healthy, happy person her family knew before the incident.In a chance meeting Julia comes upon Kate Bosworth as Louise who appears to be homeless. Louise tells her that she is from Michigan, needs money to get home, and Louise gives her $700. It all turns out to be a ruse, as Julia discovers quickly, but for some reason she takes Louise into her apartment, gives her an extra key, and tells her she can stay as long as she wants.It seems that Julia is somehow hoping this is really her long-lost daughter Maggie. Even though she never verifies that (including not seeing a leg birthmark) she projects her motherhood on this young woman, and it helps bring her out of her grief and begin to get on with life. Including establishing a relationship again with her son and his new wife.Her son is Alessandro Nivola as Chris. Her new daughter-in-law is Keri Russell as Celeste.Good movie, Weaver is superb as usual. She even does her own singing (according to the credits) in a brief lounge episode early in the movie.

dbdumonteil Another movie which owes a lot to Sigourney Weaver's talent.She excels in portraying mothers with a strong guilty feeling (see "a map of the world" ).She is sadly unsupported by the rest of the cast ,but one must write that their caricatured bourgeois straight characters (particularly the daughter-in-law and Weaver's listless husband) throw the movie off balance.All that concerns the mother ,desperately trying to recreate a dear one gone for a long time (when she was a little girl) ,is sometimes interesting.It does not renew the subject ,as old as the hills (Hitchcock's "Vertigo"(1958) ;Feyder's "Le Grand Jeu"(1934);Claude Miller's "Mortelle Randonnée" (1983) Losey's " secret Ceremony" (1968):Losey's movie depicting a "mother"/"daughter" relationship is similar to "the girl..." if we reverse the roles).Best moment:Weaver thanking her family for welcoming "Maggie" .