Scrolling through "customers also watched" on Amazon Fire. Hey, this one's got a pretty good IMDB rating, what the heck, let's give it a shot.Am I ever glad I did. This is the best film I have seen in a very long time. Excellent story and absolutely superb acting across the board, and especially Kathy Bates.

This line, introducing the final act of "Dolores Claiborne", resonates like an epiphany. Everything that happens in this cold and depressed movie centers around this line, and one cannot understand what went in the tormented mind of the titular anti-heroine without the hellish journey she went through with her daughter Selena. And the performances of Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh powerfully convey the effects of a traumatic past, and how much of toughness a woman must build to look upon the future without frightened eyes.And this Dolores Claiborne is one tough cookie, that's a woman who must be in her mid-fifties but the coldness and the desperately gray sky of Maine Islands, a place where "it's cold even when it's warm" and twenty years of a job as a servant for Vera Donovan, a rich socialite, have prematurely aged her, tracing lines of severe maturity that pass as toughness, while she only built a self-defensive armor to prevent herself from sinking into depression. And as the plot moves forward, we see the corners she was drove into to have become the town's 'bitch'. And Taylor Hackford's film is all flashbacks and memories, taking time to get us to these moments of truth we're all looking forward to.And once we get that the flashbacks are integral to the film's comprehension, our cinematic instinct tells us that the opening sequence with old Vera falling down the stairs after a fight and Dolores being caught in the act as she was about to hit her agonizing boss with a rolling pin, might be a little bit misleading. But this is the question the film asks from the start: did Dolores kill her boss? When learning about her arrest from an anonymous fax, Selena comes to Maine to cover the story, and she doesn't look like she believes in her mother's innocence, and neither does Mackey (Christopher Plummer) an aging detective with an old record to settle with Dolores. Over the course of his career, Mackey solved 85 cases out of 86, a record that escaped from perfection because of the death of Dolores' husband 18 years earlier during that memorable twilight. The question is now: did she kill her husband? Again, Mackey and Selena are in tacit agreement.Obliviously, the two cases will overlap, and the past will answer for the present. But the merit of the film isn't to provide answers, but to show simple people whose lives have been shattered by painful memories, and paying a bigger price for having tried to overcome the adversity. And indeed, sometimes, being a bitch is the only thing a woman can hold in to. Having seen the film some twenty years ago, I didn't quite remember what made the husband deserve to be killed. Actually, it's a gradual process, from teasing and verbal abuse to some nasty hits. He crosses the next line by taking money from Selena's saving accounts, until he signs his own death warrant by touching the one thing that could be more precious than Selena's money, Selena herself, in fact the only thing that gave Dolores' life a meaning. The movie doesn't legitimize the murder, but shows it as a rather inevitable survival move.The script written by Tony Gilroy is adapted from Stephen King's novel of the same name. The film opens with the 'Castlerock Entertainment' logo, unforgettable since "The Shawshank Redemption", another King's story. And there are other similarities: the two films are set in Maine, in remote and depressing places and the passing of time has a way to deepen the most complex relationships leading to emotionally rewarding climaxes ("The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile"). "Dolores Claiborne" spans at least two decades of conflicts and troubled family relationships but also a weird complicity between two women of different background who discover they have a lot more in common. Maybe it takes a bitch to spot a potential one. Indeed, Dolores, had the misfortune to marry an abusive alcoholic husband named Joe (David Strathaim) and can hang herself on the hope of leaving the house with her daughter Selena, her reason to live… and to leave. Hope, wasn't that Andy Dufresne's driver? Dolores gets a job as a servant for Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt), a woman so unsympathetic she didn't even care about becoming a widow. But Vera is impressed by Dolores' toughness and dedication. She doesn't know the plans that build Dolores' motivation, but when she learns from a tearful Dolores that the husband took all the money, that the banker didn't even dare to ask for her agreement, and that she intended to leave the house because the husband physically abused Selena, Vera gratifies us with the extraordinary 'bitch' line. And what follows is a harrowing and exciting family drama with a climax fittingly set during twilight. Indeed, the present was set in cold and grayish colors, while the past was always sunnier and the contrast showed very well, and the present and the past finally converge during the twilight, and the past answers for the present. For all its dramatic undertones, this is no horror or Gothic but plain dramatic Stephen King, yet the imagery is no less crucial to the film's enjoyment. Another masterstroke is the casting of Ellen Muth as young Jennifer Jason Leigh and the resemblance is so uncanny that it made the story-line progress fluidly without any sidetracking effect.Kathy Bates said Dolores was her favorite performance and I can believe that, this is a far more complex and multi-layered character than Annie Wilkes, and she deserved the Oscar for "Misery", so I can't explain the snubbing here (was Sharon Stone for "Casino" really better?!) or maybe its made-for-TV look made it likely to be overlooked, because this is certainly one of the most underrated movies of 1995.

This story is one of the best but least appreciated films based on a Stephen King story. I am not sure why it wasn't more widely acclaimed...perhaps Kathy Bates' prior performance in "Misery" overshadowed this one. All I know is that thought the story was terrific...with some nice twists.The story is, naturally, about a woman by the same name (Bates). She lives alone in a house...and is widely thought to be a murderess following the death of her friend, an old woman. Dolores' daughter lives in the big city and when she returns home due to the sensational story, she slowly learned what really happened through flashbacks. And, naturally, what the audience and her daughter THINK happened actually didn't.The film has terrific acting, a great story and keeps you guessing. Don't believe me, give it a try...you'll be glad you did.

Dolores is accused of murder, therefore Selena visits her mother for the first time after 15 years. So the film reveals the underlying family problems and the murder process step by step, which merge into a great story. The movie is strong the whole time and hasn't got any noteworthy flaws, unfortunately it doesn't serve any extremely outstanding facets either, so it's „just" very good.Enjoyable for everyone, so go watch it if you're OK with older films.================================my IMDb-rating scale 10 over the top / 9 perfect / 8 must see / 7 extremely good / 6 very good / 5 good / 4 OK / 3 so-so / 2 bad / 1 don't watch it