There is no one named Margaret in the movie. It comes from a poem that is read. But that's okay I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo who is nether a captain nor a kangaroo. In fact there may have been a lot of stuff I didn't grasp in this film, but here goes.The film opens in slow motion to illustrate how life moves slowly along until one moment suddenly changes and defines it. Lisa (Anna Paquin) distracts a bus driver who runs a red light and kills a women. She wants to do the right thing, but what is it? The grief and moral dilemma disrupts her life and her relationships.The film is well made. The acting was excellent as was the writing...I think. I just didn't enjoy the film, but I didn't dislike it either. The main problem I have with the overall theme is that Lisa wants justice for the dead woman. She has grief which we see, but we don't see her publicly confess her role in the death. She doesn't seem to have any guilt...or perhaps that is the point of the film is that we quickly forgive our own guilt...except we don't. I kept waiting for Lisa to take blame for what had happened.This is a film about grief, but it is not really sad. Matt Damon plays a geometry teacher who is a love interest of Lisa. Matthew Broderick plays a literature teacher whose classes provide the film with multiple confusing deeper themes for you to pick from in case you don't like the aspect of simply dealing with grief. After watching the film, I felt like I needed a hug.PARENTAL GUIDE: F-bomb, sex, nudity (J. Smith-Cameron, Ann Paquin silhouette)

A girl who is involve in and bus accident at the middle of NY, so she get frustrated thinking is causer for the dead of the woman hitting by the bus (She is...). So the movie begin, the girl start to being childish, she turn in a slut (didnt understand why), want to ruin a man life just for her fault, its get very annoying and stressful, so so many senseless excuses and arguments to make the movie work... and well at the end she never reach her goal, nice.I really cant take seriously this movie, such a waste. The scenes, photography, screenplay, CAST, how much it last, on some point the movie loses sense. I was expecting more and i try to keep watching it hoping that gonna get better but never happen.Meaningless movie!!!

Okay, I've been through both edits of this now, after recommendations from several readers. I get what he is trying to do. I am writing as someone who prefers the Cannes edit of Brown bunny and who eagerly sat through 3 1/2 hours of The Falls.I think this is a failure, a failure is the sense that the filmmaker had ambitions that may have been unachievable. What he wanted, I think is to have two films merged. One that carried a narrative that mattered and conveyed transformation. And another that conveyed situation, and not just surroundings but an environment that collectively has agency of the same power. You have to see both edits to see this man's struggle; you can compress the first of these because we have all sorts of narrative enzymes in our digestive system. We can fill in things and often are better off with less.It is also the case that you can make an environmental movie with scant narrative. Greenaway does it all the time. Ruiz. Kar-Wai Wong. And if you are willing to have a smaller, more engaged audience, this is achievable in 150 minutes. What Lonergan wanted to do was to have both and have each drive the other. Moreover, he placed himself and his wife as the contacts, a dual fulcrum between the two.There are so many dynamics that are necessary to bind this, to make all the parts affect each other the way he designed that taking any one out ruins the structure. If you did not know his ambition, a viewer would hardly see anything wrong. The Paquin character is great, as are the surrounding actors. The city, the tone, the environment is as richly presented as the best Woody Allen Manhattan-anchored movie. But the environment does not have the coherent agency it needs to do what he clearly intended.I think we have to have a much longer version than 3 hours to accomplish what he attempted. But gosh, the ambition is admirable and all the pieces I can see are amazingly promising. It is no wonder that first rate talent was eager to participate.

This could be one of the five worst movies I have seen in the last 10 years. I could have directed a film better than this and I am not in that industry. Here me out. I have watched movies intently for 40+ years. I rarely watch sitcoms, reality TV, nature shows, talk shows, drama series, or even made for TV movies. I just about only watch theatrical movies. This movie is so poorly directed that I was angry I wasted my time. Anna Paquin must have delivered one of the worst performances of a leading lady ever. This woman simply can not act. Even my wife who is not an avid movie fan commented, "Who is this terrible actress?" How someone like this ever made it into the movies is a complete mystery. Please do not waste your life watching this. It is hard to believe that Matthew Broderick, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon and Jean Reno were in this. Did they read the script beforehand? I am very fair when I rate a movie and rarely have I seen a movie this poorly scripted. The dialog was horrid! I watched this thing, following scene after scene, expecting some great revelation and then nothing happened. At times there were bizarre sequences of filming which were totally out of place and proceeded no where. My wife and I actually cracked up at this. Did this film have an editor? I will admit there was perhaps 10 minutes of good dialog in the film. It is not like I am an old person who is everything but liberal or not in touch with modernity. I am a part-time abstract artist and very progressive in other ways as well. I have an open mind about everything but know a bad film when I see it. Kenneth Lonergan is not a director to watch in the future. Cross him off the list.