I saw this movie shortly after it came out back in '97 I think, and loved it! I just got out my DVD and watched again last night. You probably have seen this already, but if not, it's a real gem! Robert DeNiro produced this, and has a supporting role, but the two principle leads in this are the ladies- Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep. Streep plays the blue-collar mom to a pyromaniac son (Leonardo DiCaprio), who takes the family from their home in Ohio down to see their cancer-inflicted sister/aunt (Keaton), who needs a bone-marrow transplant, and one of her two sons may be a match. The late (I think- ??) Hume Cronyn plays her dying father- the titular character, who doesn't have much in the way of dialogue in the film due to him being pretty out of it. And that kid actor from "The Indian in the Cupboard" is the younger brother.What I remember about this movie most are so many little scenes here and there that just grab you and make you take a second look at life's little moments, and also continue to prove that Meryl Streep is the best there is- wow! The scene with the hair brush (if you've seen it already, you know what I'm talking about). On a side-note- you may recall this movie before it's release as the Disney World movie Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton and Leo DiCaprio were all filming, maybe due to it being a small film still within the Miramax division of the overall Disney conglomerate-??

There is a movie channel at the cable in here, Turkey. They usually air boring movies. Today I was blue and had nothing to do. Opened this channel and realized this movie is starting in 5 minutes. I thought "ehh another silly old TV movie" but when saw Merly Streep and Di Caprio's name, thought that, how come I heart nothing about this movie. Started very good and I started to feel better. This is a warm movie and you can watch with your family. It's really hard to find this kind of sincere American movies nowadays. I loved and thought it ended very early, wish they made it a little longer but cool anyways. Director and everything is very good. Recommended.

Small cast, intimate dramas like MARVIN'S ROOM, NIGHT MOTHER or STEEL MAGNOLIAS are among the hardest to adapt from the confines of the stage where the imagination can open the plays ideas up and make what might seem maudlin, real and life affirming to the more realistic form of film where it is harder to see beyond the mundane "bed pan" realities of life. In order to reinvent the best of these - like the plays mentioned above - to the new genre, every break is needed starting with bravura casts who, one hopes, an audience will want to see even "reading the phone book." When a play turns around the characters dealing literally with confrontations with death at the core of the plot as in these three great plays, what HAD been on stage a single set intense evening is frequently "opened up" with all sorts of other locations and events almost as if to distract us from the very issues which we are supposed to be attending to.On stage and screen MARVIN'S ROOM may well be the best of these three "death plays," all of which started and thrived Off-Broadway (only NIGHT MOTHER made the leap to a Broadway house in its initial production). While, somewhat amazingly (considering that one of the standards of the award is "depiction of American life"), MARVIN'S ROOM was not even a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992, it did win a number of other accolades which virtually demanded that Hollywood attempt to bring it to the rest of the nation - and they certainly gave it their all starting with the genuinely all star cast which is both the movie's blessing and its curse. It enraptures with the bouquet of bravura performances even while moving focus away from the central "earth-mother" of the family forced to face her own mortality while trying to care for and hold her collapsing family together around her (Diane Keaton's Oscar nomination - the film's only - notwithstanding).Ultimately, the film gets where the play was going (as well it ought to have, since Scott McPherson had the luxury of adapting his own play - he may have written his screenplay simultaneously with, if not before the tighter stage version, since he died in 1992, the year MARVIN'S ROOM received its Off-Broadway production at Playwrights' Horizons, winning the Outer Critics' Circle and Drama Desk Awards as best Play of the Year), but the power seems to have shifted from the play's revelations themselves to the dazzling performances. It's still well worth taking the trip, but more to appreciate a monument to more than a dozen brilliant stage and screen careers than a revelatory experience on the meaning of humanity in the face of life and death that the play had been.Do, by all means see the movie. It works. ...but if you ever get a chance to see the play which either suggested it or grew from it, by all means do - it's smaller but even better.

Bessie is a middle-aged woman who has been caring for her father Marvin since he had a stroke some twenty years earlier. Marvin is on his back in bed and cannot speak, but he does have a limited understanding when spoken to. Marvin's sister Ruth is also in the household and, while still in possession of her faculties and ambulatory, her life seems to center around what is happening on her favorite soap operas. Bessie finds out that she has leukemia. What to do? Bessie's only hope is for a bone marrow transplant and the only possible donors are her sister Lee, estranged since Marvin's stroke, and Lee's two sons.Rather than concentrating on the grim details, the focus is on the changes in the family dynamics precipitated by Bessie's illness. Bessie calls Lee and tells her the story and Lee packs up her two sons and takes out from Ohio to Florida. All those years ago Lee and Bessie split over Marvin's illness and care - Bessie took it over and Lee got away as fast as she could. So, a good part of the movie has the sisters dealing with old wounds. A subplot concerns the relationship that develops between Bessie and Lee's rebellious seventeen year old son Hank. What raises this film above the ordinary is the great cast and some well written scenes. Streep and Keaton are in good form and play well off of each other. There are a lot of awkward and intense moments between them - I particularly liked the scene where they meet each other for the first time in twenty years. Hume Cronyn, as Marvin, never says a word, but his presence is felt throughout the film. Leonard DiCaprio, as Hank, is so good that you wonder if he is playing Hank or just being himself. Playing against type Robert De Niro puts in an appearance as Bessie's somewhat maladroit doctor.What didn't work for me was the attempted comic relief. Ruth seemed just a bit too ditsy and her pain relief device operating the garage door was forced humor. De Niro's brother's role was solely to interject some dim-witted comments.Bessie's comment about how privileged she had been to have loved so deeply stuck with me. I had never stopped to think of the delight in loving as something to be valued in itself, requited or not.