Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
It's the type of film that if I read a plot outline, I would think it was overly schematic with the misery pile-ups, but Lonergan is so good with the minutia and humor that everything feels earned.
It's funny thinking about the trailer (which I know by heart by now since it played before every other movie I saw in the past couple of months) in how it kinda tried to make it about something else entirely, and the real story is completely missing from it.

This is just excellent and superbly told, but it does hit a similar note and approach as Margaret, especially on the surface level of "difficult people deal with an unexpected death they're responsible for." Lonergan is deadly with his actors, though. Affleck and O'Brien are so intensely specific in how they come across externally and internally. It's ridiculous how note-perfect these performances are. Michelle Williams comes across as a complete character before and after the incident, showing years of pain and growth and stability, with like a total of what, seven minutes of screen time? Ridiculous.