Fireflies in the Garden

A distinctive and sensitively conceived drama with an excellent cast that brings nothing new to the field of family or relationship studies, but is still more than a good addition to the category. A pleasant, modest, intimate first feature by Dennis Lee. (31.01.2010)

I wanted to write a really nice exhaustive review about this movie, and thoroughly analyze it, but I usually write my reviews after a few days and after three days I practically had no idea what to write about. The film completely disappeared from my head. There was only an unpleasant memory of boredom and a feeling of zero identification with the movie characters. It has a decent cast, but otherwise, this typical festival movie missed the mark for me. Overall impression: 25%. (16.07.2013)

I really enjoyed this glimpse into the life of an American family. As a father, Willem Dafoe was as pleasant as a pain in the ass, Emily Watson was great as usual, and Ryan Reynolds' performance was greatly improved by his full beard. I only wish the creators had developed some of the issues they had brought up instead of leaving it up to me to figure out the rest. I certainly wouldn’t mind if the film was slightly longer, I liked it a lot. (11.07.2019)