Blackbird

Name: Blackbird
Director: Roger Michell
Released: 2019

Synopsis

A terminally ill mother invites her family to their country house for one final gathering, but tensions quickly boil over between her two daughters.

80
The Telegraph
If Blackbird shows us anything it’s that no matter how carefully we plan, life resists perfection, right up to the end.
75
IndieWire
"Blackbird" may be a tearjerker, but it’s also a reminder that there’s more to tears than tragedy, even in the midst of personal loss.
70
Variety
Thanks to Michell and a fine cast, it works admirably well — at least to a point, at which some viewers may feel [screenwriter Christian] Torpe piles on one crisis too many.
70
Film Threat
Even though you can see the strings in the puppet act, the plight of the characters still sometimes manages to get to you.
67
The Playlist
The picture’s biggest flaw is that it’s so mellow it occasionally veers into inertia.
63
Movie Nation
Director Roger Michell (“Venus,”Notting Hill”) cast this well and earns stellar on-the-nose performances from Sarandon, Wilson, Duncan and Wasikowska.
50
The A.V. Club
With its quasi-literary tone and over-calculated concessions to the messiness of real life, the movie settles for coming across like a clumsy amalgamation of the wonderful Amy Bloom short story “Love Is Not A Pie” and the 1998 Sarandon tearjerker "Stepmom." The hollow, unsatisfying feeling the movie leaves behind may be the most authentically funereal thing about it.
40
The Guardian
It’s less of a film and more of an actors’ workshop, an exercise for everyone involved but meaningless to us.