It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Samantha Buck's film '21 Below' tells the story of an ordinary family with extraordinary problems: a daughter who takes up with a terminally useless man, falls out with her mother (a woman who cannot let go of problems she does not own), and has a child of her own who is diagnosed with a terminal disease. Both mother and daughter also appear to be suffering from signs of depression. All of this is very tragic (albeit in a low-key, unpoetic sort of way); why the protagonists wanted to be shown on film is anybody's guess. The narrative follows the ostensibly sensible older sister as she tries to mediate between the different wings of her family. But while she does come across as sensible, she lacks any special insight and when, as the end of the film, she talks about having gone on some kind of internal journey, it's not clear what that is supposed to have been - her own tale lacks the substance to give structure to the film as a whole (which appears to have been the directors' plan). This film is not awful, but it is painful, and there's not much more I could draw from it than the familiar lesson that people are often simply bad at life.