Pieces of April (2003)
Directed by Peter Hedges
Quirky and rebellious April Burns lives with her boyfriend in a low-rent New York City apartment miles away from her emotionally distant family. But when she discovers that her mother has a fatal form of breast cancer, she invites the clan to her place for Thanksgiving. While her father struggles to drive her family into the city, April -- an inexperienced cook -- runs into kitchen trouble and must ask a neighbor for help.
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What critics compared Pieces of April to
He’s the son of writer-director Peter Hedges, no stranger to sensitively told tales of life among the emotionally crippled (“Pieces of April,” “Dan in Real Life”).
That last one, from Pieces of April perpetrator Peter Hedges, squanders an unusual amount of currency in Steve Carell (at his melancholic zenith), pairing him with Juliette Binoche in a bittersweet romantic imbroglio that absolutely does not deserve the happy horseshit ending slathered on it to apologize for its occasional poignancy.
If the film has one problem it is that’s the end doesn’t quite feel as deserved as it thinks it does, as if it suffered from that most saddening of independent film symptoms – the ending that ran out of cash (worst of the worst: Pieces of April , which literally ends mid-scene with a polaroid montage).
The marvelous Neeson and Linney are surrounded by a who's who roster of character actor support including Oliver Platt ("Pieces of April") as University dean, Tim Curry ("Scary Movie 2") as the University's staid health teacher, Veronica Cartwright ("Scary Movie 2") as Kinsey's mother and Dylan Baker ("Spider-Man 2") as the Rockefeller Institute's purse-string holder.