WATCH PARTY: Margaret (2011) dir. by Kenneth Lonergan @ Richard Tucker Library

This movie will take you completely by surprise. From the director of You Can Count on Me and Manchester by the Sea.

RUNTIME: 186 minutes

SYNOPSIS: From Academy Award® Nominee writer/director Kenneth Lonergan comes a stirring drama of rare beauty and shocking gravity. Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo lead a celebrated cast in the story of a Manhattan teenager whose life is profoundly altered after witnessing a terrible accident. Experience an emotional teen’s extraordinary journey to set things right as her innocent ideals come crashing against the harsh realities of the adult world.

New York high-school student Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) inadvertently causes an accident in which a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) runs over a pedestrian (Allison Janney). Guilt-stricken over her role in the woman's death, Lisa's mood swings from normal to furious, with her angry outbursts mostly directed at her mother (J. Smith-Cameron). Lisa reaches out to the dead woman's best friend (Jeannie Berlin) and the bus driver, but her failed efforts to make amends only lead to more hostility.

BLURBS:
"It has its flaws, but I defy you to find a more intelligent or impassioned American film this year." - Leonard Maltin

"Paquin creates that rarest of things: a profoundly unsympathetic character who is mysteriously, mesmerically, operatically compelling to watch." - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"Ambitious, affecting, unwieldy and haunting, it's an eccentric, densely atmospheric, morally hyper-aware masterpiece." - Anne Hornaday, Washington Post