This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Boring, long, and too preachy.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This film has a big problem with having too many huge conflicts in one film.Conflict #1 - Character has a horrible family and life in general Alice here has two uncontrollable hellions who, when they aren't screaming about how much they hate her, they're almost getting themselves killed. Her husband is unaware of his surroundings to the point of apparent brain damage. Dude, there is a pot boiling over inches from your head, don't you smile at her all innocently like nothing's amiss, what is wrong with you?Alice is the only responsible person in the house and drags everyone's weight, whether it be her children's abuse or her husband's uselessness, like a beast of burden. To top it off she has a terrible job as a school nurse that she hates as well.All of this is pointing to a nervous breakdown on her part, perhaps a coming-around of her husband and children. This conflict alone would make a solid narrative with a satisfying, if frustrating, structure. Does this happen? No, because...Conflict #2 - Child in Alice's care drowns herselfWow. Um, that came out of nowhere. I see that the reason the kid dies was because A. nasty bitch daughter demanded that Alice leave them alone to find a different bathing suit and Alice like a doormat does as she's told, and B. useless dad was too busy screwing around with the car to see the tiny child wander past him. That is a heap of unnecessary stress on an already stressful story. While this conflict alone would be good as it's own movie - exploring guilt and grief and a broken friendship between two moms - it's pretty spoiled by an already gasping-for-breath stressful setting. Okay, maybe this can be salvaged.Conflict #3 - Alice is wrongly accused of molesting one of the studentsWhat. The. Fudge. Wait, this has nothing to do with the previous two plot lines? Why is this here? ANY of these three conflicts would be enough to cause a nervous breakdown in a normal person and deserve to be explored individually. Lumping them on top of each other like a precarious ice cream cone does none of these serious issues justice.Alice isn't strong - she's the butt of a sick cosmic joke. She's the universe's doormat and she doesn't have the guts to demand better. Three stars for Julianne Moore.

kudos to Sigourney Weaver for yet another outstanding and sympathetic performance. David Straithairn also is effective as the husband, caught in a web of chaos; Weaver as a school nurse is accused of child abuse in a small Wisconsin town; this after a child she is babysitting accidentally drowns. (The mother of the drowned child is portrayed by Julianne Moore).Look for an excellent part with Arliss Howard as the defense attorney; it is a shocking surprise that 5 other children come forward accusing Weaver; it develops into a sort of witch hunt- and the actress playing the prosecutor is quite odious."A Map of the World" is not an easy story to take to; there are many complicated and also malicious sides of several characters; The character Weaver portrays is complex; guilty, and angry about a child accidentally dying, she accepts prison as an appropriate sentence, and even injures herself; She remains sympathetic however, throughout this film, and that is a rare talent that many actors could NEVER carry off. A must see. 9/10.

This movie could have been handled with a lot more depth. The first hour or so is well done, but then it becomes another B-movie tear-jerker, so much Hollywood fluff. A Map Of The World is the story of a married mother of two on a Wisconsin farm who suffers terribly when, while babysitting her best friend's two children, one of them wanders off and accidentally drowns in a pond on their property, after which she is charged with child abuse (in an unrelated incident) on her job as a school nurse and the confluence of events turn her quiet farm life upside down. I thought Sig Weaver gave a generally good performance as the mom in trouble, considering the script she had to work with, which is mostly banal trash. David Straithairn is reliably good as usual as the put-upon husband. I guess Julianne Moore has the best moment in the film, after playing it brave-faced at the death of her daughter, she is found by Weaver in the woods having a private breakdown. It's a great piece of acting and very touching, but it's only great compared to the rest of the movie. Straight-up, it's not all that good. The biggest problem here is the script. Some of the situations and dialogue are fraudulent, and characters aren't really developed. Chloe Sevigny plays basically a cardboard cut-out of a sleazy bimbo (she might as well have just had it stamped on her forehead for all the script gives her to do), and in one scene Julianne Moore's husband is overheard in an angry tantrum because Straithairn and his kids were in their house visiting, but then, I wondered, how did he feel about HER going over THERE. It isn't really explored. I also didn't get some of what Weaver's character was doing - the "let's let Oprah decide" speech, or one scene when Straithairn visits her in prison and she's making a lot of rambling small talk and doesn't ask about the kids - the insensitivity seems totally out of character. I didn't believe it for a second when the black women who were needling her in the cellblock "came around" at the end, the scene where Straithairn and Moore kiss I saw coming a mile away, and for the creme de la creme of tawdry Hollywood BS endings, when Moore's character turns up pregnant at the end of the movie, it is the ultimate in cheap, slapdash, feel-good garbage. Oh, well, drown one baby, make another. This is the sort of thing that screenwriters love because it provides a neat and happy resolution to everything, when, in fact, there is never a resolution to losing a child. If you remove Miss Weaver's occasional nudity, this thing could play forever on Lifetime channel. In spite of some strong efforts by the actors, A Map Of The World is junk, irredeemable junk. 2** out of 4

This is a beautiful movie, but only for people that want to see a thought-provoking, thinking persons movie. Sigourney Weaver did such a fantastic job with her role that I literally wanted to cry for her being ROBBED of an Oscar.This is one of the most realistic movies I've seen. Everything that is in this movie could actually happen, which makes it even more hearbreaking. Julianne Moore and David Strathairn were also robbed of Oscars. I literally cried every moment that Julianne Moore was onscreen; her performance was great. David Strathairn brought an elegance and subtlety to his role.The ending! Fabulous. It was so full of hope and optimism.PS: Read the fabulous novel by Jane Hamilton, its just as good!