A valiant performance from Sigourney Weaver, big, bold, daring, dauntless, yet always fully in control and thoroughly human. (Quite a feat, that, for an actress who can easily seem too good to be true: too beautiful, too brainy, too confident, too strong, too perfect.) But this is a complete movie, not just an actress's movie, about the ease and suddenness with which a life can be knocked off course, and about the slowness and difficulty of returning it anywhere near to what it used to be. The genius of the design is that it's not just one big thing that diverts the life, but two big things, the first one making it easier for the second one to do its damage. Throughout the distinct and well-delineated stages of the story, you can feel you truly know what it's like to be in a hospital waiting room, to be in a women's prison, to be obliged to shop at the Goodwill, to be in a Midwestern courtroom, to be, in short, in the heroine's shoes. The trick of the thing is in the details and in the tempo. And you would never guess that Scott Elliott is a stage director by trade and only a first-time film director. Based on the novel by Jane Hamilton; with Julianne Moore, David Strathairn, Arliss Howard, and Chloë Sevigny. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd