Manchester by the Sea

Unforced acting couples with a nuanced, insightful script to tell a story that, although seemingly simple, is achingly complex.

"Manchester By the Sea" is heartbreaking yet somehow heartening, a film that just wallops you with its honesty, its authenticity and its access to...

There’s a funny sequence when Lonergan surprise-reveals that Lee fathered one, then two, then three children, who tumble out from the co...

Lonergan’s film reveals itself as a wellspring of urgently needed compassion and grace.

It’s painful and tragic, yet it’s cut with elements of humor and laughter. Just like life.

The sadness of "Manchester by the Sea" is the kind of sadness that makes you feel more alive, rather than less, to the preciousness of things.

Perhaps the most emotionally intelligent film you will see this year.

Manchester by the Sea is a film that knocks politely on the door of the mind, and the heart. The advice here is to let it in immediately.

Manchester-by-the-Sea is a study of family dysfunction and the worse loss imaginable, but one held back by the fact it’s all filtered th...

Because Lonergan is so true to the intricacies and rhythms of family strife, we trust his vision. When it comes time for the fade-out, he doesn&rsq...

No film this year has moved me more with its humor, heart and humanity. Engrave the name Casey Affleck on the Oscar for Best Actor right now, so ex...

A drama of rare power-a tale of human suffering that succeeds because of its love for its characters, rather than for their misfortunes.

"Manchester by the Sea" is a masterpiece in a minor key, an exploration of grief that never lets its characters – or its audience ...

Manchester stands out for doing an old routine just right. It’s not the next best thing, but it does justice to a familiar playbook.

Affleck proves he can convey suffering as well as any actor alive. His trebly voice is cracked with pain. He comes with his own chill fog.

That Manchester By The Sea is so absorbing is down to Lonergan’s painstaking directorial style and to a superb Method-style performance...

Full of loss and grief and the grey skies of a wintry Massachusetts, "Manchester by the Sea" can sound like a pretty dreary two hours at...

Masterfully told and beautifully acted, Manchester By The Sea is a shattering yet graceful elegy of loss and grief.

One of the year’s best pictures.

It’s wonderful to see Lonergan back at work, illuminating small and unremarkable lives with grace, wisdom, and humanity. He’s made what...

[A] beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama about how a death in the family forces a small-town New Englander to confront a past tragedy...

For all its moments of discord, Manchester By the Sea sings its lonely song with tremendous heart and soul.

Manchester by the Sea is formula-free and one of a kind, with only as much resolution as the steely grip of the past will allow.

It’s less a movie of aesthetics than of synesthesia, transmitting an unbearable burden of inner coldness and emptiness by means of warmh...

Leaves you with the feeling you’ve just lived a whole separate lifetime and are re-entering, dazed, into your own.

Lonergan found the right man in Affleck, standing stony-faced while others weep, his performance a master class in submerged feeling… But it&r...

With an outstandingly icy Casey Affleck as a mournful loner drawn back into his old fold, Kenneth Lonergan’s New England community study...

As pleasurable a viewing experience as a film about death could hope to be.

Its initial enigma seems to need no explanation; yet, once deciphered, the film does not falter but moves only deeper into the emotional territory...

Lonergan is so precise with his actors, the sense of place, and the level control of tone that you feel him methodically striving here to avoid fal...

In Manchester by the Sea, Kenneth Lonergan again explores the depth of grief.

Manchester by the Sea is a stunner, delivering in ways that defy easy description.

The film gradually comes to its sense of exquisitely calibrated, hardened intimacy.

Casey Affleck’s visceral performance as the story’s lead character, Lee Chandler, is essential to the film’s excellence. All the...

Each scene brims with self-contained humour and drama, regardless of whether it moves the story along or simply fills in background colour.

The result is a movie that, if never exactly a cathartic experience, carries you along in its clenched grip with an undeniable power. It...

This is a staggering American drama, almost operatic in the heartbreak it chronicles, that’s also attuned to everyday headaches, like fo...

A drama of rage and grief that stands on the brink of the inexpressible.

This is about life as it is lived in the real world, with unassuageable pain, loose ends untied, life lessons unlearned. Life with no narrative clo...

Manchester by the Sea is a deeply affecting and wickedly funny masterpiece showcasing the maturation of men, from the broken man and his nephe...

Complex, layered, and respectful of the audience’s intelligence and attention span.

"Manchester by the Sea" is a finely shaded portrait, a study in individual misery set in a place that is observed with care and affection.

"Manchester by the Sea" is precise in its vision, universal in its application. It’s one of this year’s few great films.

I’ve found it really hard to write about Manchester by the Sea, because it sunk into my bones so deeply it’s hard to extract. Yet just...

Featuring Casey Affleck in an Oscar-caliber performance, it’s a deeply affecting little gem of a film, which should gently sweep filmgoe...

An exemplary film of such exceptional wisdom, beauty, clarity, sensitivity and emotional depth that I had to rub my eyes to believe it.

It’s Affleck’s movie to quietly own as layer upon layer of Irish impassivity is stripped away from his visage until the unspeakable can...

The funniest movie about grief ever made – but that’s far from the only remarkable thing about it.

Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By the Sea is the best film I’ve seen in 2016. But I’m honestly not sure I can watch it again.

Lonergan has given us a masterpiece.

There’s a modesty here that’s too often absent in fall prestige pictures, a sense that the director is protecting his characters...

Affleck is magnificent, but the movie is something less than that, because it can’t completely overcome some built-in challenges. Even so, Ma...

A wrenching family tragedy is dramatized with the depth of a high-quality American stage piece in Manchester by the Sea.

A commanding, absorbing work in which the sum of its impact may be greater than any individual scenes.

A heart-wrenching drama anchored by Affleck, who notches up yet another subtle, stunning performance.

With an outstandingly icy Casey Affleck as a mournful loner drawn back into his old fold, Kenneth Lonergan’s New England community study...

Manchester by the Sea may be a potent examination of grief, family and self-imposed solitude, but it’s also oddly life-affirming and upl...

An achingly graceful, heartfelt, working-class story about loss, grief, and family obligations.

In Manchester by the Sea, men are soulful and women are shallow, a gender gap that wounds this otherwise compelling drama.

If you open yourself to the experience, Lonergan’s movies allow you to live with characters until they feel like people you know. Sometimes t...

This is without question my favorite film of the year