3/4  Lymelife Quick Review
A pretty decent surprise. Good performances and a well moving story. I liked it.

5/5 Great film on a good BD
  by Steve Kuehl (Ben Lomond, CA)
Not exactly a reference test for Blu, but the lower cost will hopefully help make this a nice addition to your independent collection.

This cast made for a very believable film set in an eastern suburban expansion circa Falklands time period. The story follows two Long Island families as the adults implode onto the mid-life crisis adultery kick and the teen kids wallow through their angst and hormones. Solid performances all around, but Tim Hutton was excellent playing the Lyme disease damaged dad, full with a PTSD-like personality that amazingly appears to have the most centered personality in this film. The meaningful scenes are both awkward and believable, and as the director states in the commentary, the film is filled with tons of these "organic moments".

The Blu quality is solid and the DTS sounds competent, but the few train scenes and gun sounds are all that travel to the outer channels. There is hardly any color in the film - ever, but the drab clothes and bleak landscapes still look vivid as can be in 1080. The supplements give this another star and include:
* 8 deleted scenes totaling 7:30 minutes, with an optional commentary. They all would have been fine in the film and helped show some fine acting.
* 4 minute (now infamous) alternate ending. Since they showed this film with different endings across the festival circuit, there has been a plethora of banter regarding the better of the endings. The film contains the ambiguous ending, this alternate ending (and much more believable for what was being shown) shows the graphic conclusion.
* Commentary with Rory Culkin and Derick Martini. Almost a how-to on making people turn off a commentary, but give it 10-15 minutes and they gradually get better at it. Includes some nice references to The 400 Blows - Criterion Collection and the usual interesting tidbits on making an independent film with a stellar cast.

There are several laugh out loud moments, but go into this expecting a solid angst film with the typical suburbanized dysfunctional adults. The front cover art makes you think this is a "violently funny" film, but I will be categorizing this in the drama section. The only other thing to watch for is Screen Media embedded a red band trailer prior to the film (for Death in Love) when you press play, actually shows more skin than in the movie that follows.