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We are republishing this review in honor of the 10th anniversary of the passing of Roger Ebert . Read why one of our contributors chose this review here .

Sally Hyde makes an ideal wife for a Marine: She is faithful, friendly, sexy in a quiet way, and totally in agreement with her husband's loyalties. Since his basic loyalty is to the Marine Corps, that presents difficulties at times. ("You know what they tell them," a girlfriend says. "'If the Marine Corps had wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one.'") Still, she's reasonably happy in the spring of 1968, as her husband prepares to ship out for a tour of duty in Vietnam. There's every chance he'll get a promotion over there. And the war, of course, is for a just cause, isn't it? It has to be, or we wouldn't be fighting it.

That is the Sally Hyde at the beginning of Hal Ashby's "Coming Home," an extraordinarily moving film. The Sally Hyde at the end of the film -- about a year later -- is a different person, confused in her loyalties, not sure of her beliefs, awakened to new feelings within her. She hasn't turned into a political activist or a hippie or any of those other radical creatures of the late 1960s. But she is no longer going to be able to accept anything simply because her husband, or anybody else, says it's true.

"Coming Home" considers a great many subjects, but its heart lies with that fundamental change within Sally Hyde. She is played by Jane Fonda as the kind of character you somehow wouldn't expect the outspoken, intelligent Fonda to play. She's reserved, maybe a little shy, of average intelligence and tastes. She was, almost inevitably, a cheerleader in high school. She doesn't seem to have a lot of ideas or opinions. Perhaps she even doubts that it's necessary for her to have opinions -- her husband can have them for her.

When her husband ( Bruce Dern ) goes off to fight the war, though, she finds herself on her own for the first time in her life. There's no home, no high school, no marriage, no Officers' Club to monitor her behavior. And she finds herself stepping outside the role of a wife and doing ... well, not strange things, but things that are a little unusual for her. Like buying a used sports car. Like renting a house at the beach. Like volunteering to work in the local Veterans' Administration hospital. That's where she meets Luke ( Jon Voight ), so filled with his pain, anger, and frustration. She knew him vaguely before; he was the captain of the football team at her high school. He went off to fight the war, came home paralyzed from the waist down, and now, strapped on his stomach to a table with wheels, uses canes to propel himself furiously down hospital corridors. In time, he will graduate to a wheelchair. He has ideas about Vietnam that are a little different from her husband's.

"Coming Home" is uncompromising in its treatment of Luke and his fellow paraplegics, and if that weren't so the opening sequences of the film wouldn't affect us so deeply. Luke literally runs into Sally on their first meeting, and his urine bag spills on the floor between them. That's the sort of embarrassment he has to learn to live with -- and she too, if she is serious about being a volunteer.

She is, she finds. Luke in the early days is a raging troublemaker, and the hospital staff often finds it simpler just to tranquilize him with medication. Zombies are hardly any bother at all. Sally tries to talk to Luke, gets to know him, invites him for dinner. He begins to focus his anger away from himself and toward the war; he grows calmer, regains maturity. One day, softly, he tells her: "You know there's not an hour goes by that I don't think of making love with you."

They do eventually make love, confronting his handicap in a scene of great tenderness, beauty, and tact. It is the first time Sally has been unfaithful. But it isn't really an affair; she remains loyal to her husband, and both she and Luke know their relationship will have to end when her husband returns home. He does, too soon, having accidentally wounded himself, and discovers from Army Intelligence what his wife has been up to. The closing scenes show the film at its most uncertain, as if Ashby and his writers weren't sure in their minds how the Dern character should react. And so Dern is forced into scenes of unfocused, confused anger before the film's not very satisfying ending. It's too bad the last twenty minutes don't really work, though, because for most of its length "Coming Home" is great filmmaking and great acting.

And it is also greatly daring, since it confronts the relationship between Fonda and Voight with unusual frankness -- and with emotional tenderness and subtlety that is, if anything, even harder to portray.

Consider. The film has three difficulties to confront in this relationship, and it handles all three honestly. The first is Voight's paralysis: "You aren't one of these women that gets turned on by gimps?" he asks. She is not. The second is the sexual and emotional nature of their affair, an area of enormous dramatic danger, which the movie handles in such a straightforward way, and with such an obvious display of affection between the characters, that we accept and understand.

The third is the nature of the friendship between Voight and Fonda, and here "Coming Home" works on a level that doesn't depend on such plot elements as the war, the husband, the paralysis, the time and place, or anything else. Thinking about the movie, we realize that men and women have been so polarized in so many films, have been made into so many varieties of sexual antagonists or lovers or rivals or other couples, that the mutual human friendship of these two characters comes as something of a revelation.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Coming Home movie poster

Coming Home (1978)

127 minutes

Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde

Jon Voight as Luke Martin

Bruce Dern as Bob Hyde

Robert Carradine as Bill Munson

Penelope Milford as Vi Munson

Robert Ginty as Sergeant Mobley

Rita Taggart as Johnson

Directed by

Produced by.

  • Jerome Hellman

Screenplay by

  • Robert C. Jones

Cinematography by

  • Haskell Wexler

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The Cinemaholic

‘Coming Home’ (1978): An Understated Brilliant Film About After Effects of War

Gautam Anand of ‘Coming Home’ (1978): An Understated Brilliant Film About After Effects of War

In 1978, Hollywood was finally prepared to deal with the war in Vietnam on film. For years it had been more or less a taboo subject, an open wound no one wanted to discuss or see. However in 1976 director Francis Ford Coppola head to the jungle to make Apocalypse Now (1979), which most thought would be the first film to deal with the war, but no one counted on how long it would take Coppola to make and cut the film.

The first to deal openly and honestly with the war was Coming Home (1978) a superb film about the impact of the war on the men who fought it and their wives. Jane Fonda was the driving force behind the film, shepherding the project from the first script, finding a director she trusted and helping cast the film. The picture deals with a woman, portrayed by Fonda, who watches her war happy husband go off to war leaving her behind to fend for herself. Volunteering at a local veterans hospital she meets someone from her high school years, paralyzed from the waist down as a result of an injury he sustained in the war, and they fall in love. When her husband returns he is a changed man, betrayed by the war, by his country and he learns his wife now likes another man.

For the role of Luke Martin, the paralyzed veteran, Jack Nicholson was approached and wanted the part, but his agreements to do other films stood in his way. AL Pacino and Sylvester Stallone were asked, but eventually the role went to Jon Voight who had been circling the role of the husband, which went to Bruce Dern. Fonda of course would portray Sally Hyde, the woman in the middle of the men, and who grows as a person on her own.

coming-home-fonda-dern

When Bob gets liberty in Hong Kong, Sally flies to visit him and begins to see the devastation of the war on him. He is distant, distracted, sleeps with a weapon close by and walks in circles, talking about the atrocities his men have committed. Bob has been shattered by the war like the others, he will never be the same.

Sally comes home and her relationship with Luke deepens, and a few months later she learns Bob is coming home. He is worse than he was in Hong Kong, and there are questions raised about his injury being perhaps self inflicted. When the military tells him about his wife cheating on him, he goes ballistic and turns a weapon on Sally. Luke arrives and the gun is turned on him, but the men talk their way through it and out of the situation. But Bob cannot cope with what has happened to him, and as Sally shops, and Luke speaks to a group of high schoolers about the war, Bob swims into the sea never to be seen again. The performances carry Coming Home (1978) and what magnificent performances they are. Jon Voight won the Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as the LA and New York Film Critics Awards for Best Actor, for his lovely performance as Luke. His final speech to a group of high school kids is startling in its raw emotion, and powerful feeling. His voice breaks as he speaks, as he remembers, as he regrets. This is a towering performance, one of the decades very best.

Coming Home 1978

Coming Home (1978) was nominated for eight Academy Awards including nominations in all six major categories. It would win Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay, losing Best Picture and Best Director to The Deer Hunter (1978) a grave injustice that has become apparent through the years. No other film more fully explored what was happening to these men when they came home after the war, left to deal with their demons on their own. Brilliantly directed by the late, great and sadly woefully under appreciated Hal Ashby it is a quiet masterpiece that must be seen. It explores a different sort of violence that takes place during war, the violence and trauma done to the soul.

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Louder Than War

Coming Home – film review

coming home movie reviews

Coming Home (1978)

Director: Hal Ashby

Cast: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern

Run time: 126 minutes

Release Date: 15th July 2019

Format: Blu-ray

Coming Home

Jamie Havlin gives his thoughts on an award-winning portrait of American life set against the backdrop of the controversial war in Vietnam. Hal Ashby is a fascinating figure. He was born to a Mormon family in Utah just before the Depression plunged America into economic chaos. As a twelve-year-old, he discovered the body of his father who had committed suicide by shooting himself. He flunked out of high school and was married and divorced by the time he was seventeen.

Maybe not the kind of background you’d expect from one of the most successful directors in 1970s Hollywood. But from Harold and Maude (1971) through to Being There (1979), he directed a string of films that are still fondly remembered and critically lauded today. Arguably the most successful of these was Coming Home.

Coming Home - Vietnam Protest

If you think America is divided today, then just imagine an even more divided nation in 1968 as the Vietnam War raged. Hollywood tends not to want to polarise potential audiences, which is why so few dramas made about the conflict surfaced while it was ongoing, the hawkish John Wayne vehicle The Green Berets being a notable exception.

A decade or so later and with the war ended, America appeared more ready to examine events in Vietnam on the big screen. The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Coming Home all attracting cinema-goers in large numbers and gaining mainly positive reviews from critics.

Coming Home opens with a scene where a group of vets in wheelchairs shoot some pool and shoot the breeze as they do so. One claims, if he was fit enough to do so, he’d go back. Most the others disagree strongly. One man Luke Martin (Jon Voight) just listens.

Silence is unusual for Luke, most of the time he’s splenetic with rage and who could blame him? His two legs paralyzed, he’s strapped to a metal trolley, stomach down, and forced to propel himself with the use of two canes if he wants to get around the hospital, due to a severe shortage of wheelchairs. Staff sometimes find it easier to tranquillise him rather than have to endure his constant tirades, especially when he starts to lash out with one of those canes.

Coming Home - Jon Voight on trolley

Sally (Jane Fonda) is certainly not part of the feminist revolution when we first see her. Don’t expect her to wear flowers in her hair or flash peace signs either, albeit she doesn’t despise hippies the way her gung-ho marine captain husband does. Bob (Bruce Dern) is about to be sent on a tour of duty to Vietnam where he hopes to gain a promotion and become a major. ‘I feel like I’m off to the Olympic Games to represent the United States,’ he declares enthusiastically. I bet he loved The Green Berets.

Once he is gone, Sally decides to share a flat with far from straight-laced friend Vi Munson (Penelope Milford), whose brother Bill has returned from his draft duty suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. This leads Sally – against Bob’s chauvinistic wishes – to volunteer in a local Veterans’ Administration hospital, where Bill is a patient. Here she meets Luke, who she remembers from school. She was a cheerleader; he was the captain of the football team, the archetypal all-American boy.

Conditions for the vets frustrate Sally. ‘There’s not enough beds,’ she complains to her Officers’ Club acquaintances. ‘There’s not enough staff. It’s really crowded… They are just not prepared for the number of wounded guys that are being sent back.’

But none of them want to hear about problems like these.

Before Luke eventually confesses to her that: ‘I spend ninety-five per cent of the time at the hospital thinking of making love with you,’ we realise that the times are already a-changin’.

Jon Voight & Jane Fonda

Coming Home is often a genuinely moving watch, albeit it is flawed. Its political message is about as subtle as a Daily Mail election editorial, and the change in Luke from embittered hothead to inspiring anti-war campaigner came about far too quickly. While the soundtrack consists of classic acts of the era such as The Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane and Smokey Robinson, much of it is not combined imaginatively with the visuals.

Two tracks near the film’s end, though, escape this criticism. Tim Hardin’s Once I Was is wonderfully poignant but even better is an eleven-minute slice of psychedelic rock/soul Time Has Come Today by The Chambers Brothers. Ashby used all eleven minutes in a tour-de-force sequence, with the action I’m guessing, written around this increasingly trippy track. It works brilliantly.

An early report during filming by studio UA maintained that Ashby had miscast his actors, and early during the shoot, Voight reputedly quit, claiming he wasn’t talented enough to do the role justice.

Strange then that the cast’s collective performances are easily the best thing about the film. Remarkably, not only did Jon Voight and Jane Fonda both pick up Best Actor/Actresses Oscar nominations but Bruce Dern and Penelope Milford were also nominated in the corresponding Supporting Actor/Actress categories.

Voight even managed to beat Robert DeNiro’s turn in The Deerhunter to pick up the gong that year and it really is high praise to say he probably just deserved to edge it.

Extras include a brand-new and exclusive audio commentary by author Scott Harrison; a feature-length commentary with actors Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler; two archival featurettes and collectors booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Scott Harrison and critic Glenn Kenny.

For more on the film: https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/coming-home/

All words by Jamie Havlin. More writing by Jamie can be found at his Louder Than War author’s archive .

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Coming Home: New Hollywood’s Other Vietnam War Movie (Review)

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Hal Ashby’s 1978 movie Coming Home is one of the most compelling to explore the aftermath of the Vietnam war for its veterans and their loved ones. It stars Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde, a military wife who decides to volunteer at a local military hospital when her Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern) leaves for Vietnam. There she meets Jon Voight’s former sergeant Luke Martin, whose war injury has left him a paraplegic. In helping the embittered Luke on his road to recovery, a friendship blossoms which later turns to love and transforms Sally’s own feelings about life and the war itself. This love triangle comes to a head when, wounded and disillusioned by his experiences, Bob returns home and realises that the world he left behind has changed forever. The war and its fallout is also shown to affect Sally’s friend and fellow volunteer Vi (Penelope Milford) and her brother, PTSD sufferer Bill (Robert Carradine).

On paper, Coming Home  sounds like the perfect Oscar bait. Indeed, so perfect was it that it is one of only 12 films in history to be on two lists of rare Oscar accomplishments; nominations for the ‘Big Five’ categories and nominations in all the acting categories, winning a total of three (Best Actor for Voight, Best Actress for Fonda and Best Original Screenplay). Coming Home ‘s biggest competition at the Oscars that year proved to be Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter , which ultimately won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Sound and Best Supporting Actor, and incurred the wrath of Jane Fonda who famously rounded on Cimino backstage to complain that he had made a Pentagon-approved depiction of Vietnam. It was clear that, by the tail end of the 1970s, Hollywood was keen to explore its nation’s most recent conflict and that the Academy were eager to applaud such efforts. And we all know of course that the Academy love anything to do with disabilities and overcoming the odds. But it’s important to remember that Coming Home was probably one of the first films to start such a baiting trend, though admittedly it’s themes of returning to civilian life and disability calls back to William Wyler’s 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives , which famously won nine of its ten Oscar nominations.

Coming Home was star Jane Fonda’s pet project. ‘Hanoi Jane’ had formed a close friendship with paraplegic Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic after meeting him at an anti-war rally and believed rightly that his story should be told. Indeed it would be told twice; firstly with this loose biography of his life, and later with Oliver Stone’s 1989 adaptation of Kovic’s memoir, Born On The Fourth of July . But Fonda was interested in more than just Kovic’s disability and experiences and she hired feminist writer Nancy Dowd to produce a screenplay that was also to consider the conflict from the POV of military wives. The film would be the first commission for Fonda’s own IPC (IndoChina Peace Campaign) production company but it took six long years and further work from scriptwriters Waldo Salt and Robert C Jones to knock Coming Home into shape.

The film was originally slated to be directed by John Schlesinger, but when the British filmmaker ultimately passed, the baton was taken up by that unsung and somewhat offbeat hero of New Hollywood, Hal Ashby. This was the director’s second film set at the fag (or rather joint) end of the 1960s after 1975’s Warren Beatty/Julie Christie vehicle Shampoo .

Ashby was one of the first directors who incorporated the music of the day with the Vietnam war. With that in mind, you have to appreciate his role in the eclectic music mix that has shaped all other movies in this genre and our expectations of them ever since. COMING HOME 1978

Coming Home

In comparing these two movies we see Ashby come pleasingly full circle; Shampoo was about the beautiful people, the bimbos and himbos who preoccupied themselves with everything but the Vietnam war, whilst Coming Home is all about people’s growing realisation of what the conflict actually means. It’s a film that is blessed with very strong and realistic performances from Fonda and Voight; they both commence the film as people with a certain viewpoint of the military (bored Marine officer’s wife and frustrated, recently wounded soldier respectively) but, as the film progresses and as their sensitively and maturely handled romance develops, their understanding of the war not only deepens, it also adapts and changes. For Fonda’s Sally it is a satisfying wake-up call; taking her from the Barbie doll range of military wife, constantly straightening her hair, dressing like a Kennedy and hanging off her husband’s arm or hanging round a similarly Stepford circle, to a free-spirited, free-thinking woman in her own right. For Voight’s Luke, it is an equally satisfying channelling of his misplaced anger into activism within the anti-war movement.

It’s also worth mentioning Bruce Dern as Fonda’s husband, Bob. He’s a character who, if you cut him, he’d no doubt have USA written through him like a stick of Blackpool rock. In playing the role Dern nicely subverts his sadistic and tough screen persona to give us instead a depiction of a man who is tough and sadistic simply because his job expects him to be. That’s one of the things I really like about Coming Home – there are no villains of the piece; Sally doesn’t hook up with Luke because Bob’s horrible to her or even because she’s fallen out of love with him. The intimacy develops because her experiences have changed her. She still loves Bob perhaps as much as she loves Luke – it’s just the closed-minded, boxed-off little life that they previously had together which she no longer cares for. Dern delivers a taut and credible performance which equally has a journey, taking him from an assured and disciplined professional soldier who doesn’t question what his country asks of him to a weary husk of a man on the brink of psychological collapse who is plagued not only with self-doubt at how he performed in the arena of conflict but also by the ultimate question; what was it all for?

The film handles the fallout of war, its physical and mental effects upon the young men who had been sent off to fight, with a great degree of humanity and honesty that befits the fact that so many of the personnel both in front of and behind the camera (Fonda, Voight, Ashby, Salt and Jones, DoP Haskell Wexler, and producer Jerome Hellman) were outspoken opponents of the US administration’s foreign policy and were equally concerned that the veterans returning home were not being adequately supported. The fact that the film never once accidentally or intentionally step into the offensively sentimental or mawkish waters it so easily could have been submerged in is a credit to each of them.

If I have one issue with Coming Home it is with Ashby’s use of soundtrack, and even then I feel divided. Foregoing score music for an incredibly spot-on and enjoyable mix of artists from the mid to late ’60s (The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane and Buffalo Springfield etc) is not unusual for a Vietnam war movie but, in Ashby’s decision to have such tracks appear under virtually every other scene, it can feel a little intrusive and somewhat like ‘Now That’s What I Call The Tet Offensive!’.  It’s a little bit of an overload really; within the first ten minutes we have heard The Stones’ Out of Time , followed by Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel, and then The Beatles’ Hey Jude . Later, there’s scarcely a minute that goes by between The Stones tracks Ruby Tuesday and Sympathy For the Devil , and unusually, Ashby often plays these songs in full, straddling several scenes. I love these songs (I’m a massive Stones fan for a start) but it does sometimes feel invasive and distracting – almost as if you’re trying to watch a movie whilst listening to an album at the same time. I guess the thing to remember is that these tropes are viewed as cliched and stereotypical for ‘Nam movies today, but it was much more original to see them back in 1978. Indeed, Ashby was one of the first directors who incorporated the music of the day with the subject of the Vietnam war. With that in mind, you have to appreciate his role in the eclectic music mix that has shaped all other movies in this genre and our expectations of them ever since.

To my mind, whilst it has some minor flaws, Coming Home is nonetheless an important movie that addresses the after-effects of war,  something that is still all too rarely shown today. Eureka’s Masters of Cinema release does the film great justice, boasting a crisp 1080p transfer for its UK Blu-ray debut, two audio commentary tracks, an archival featurette on the film and a featurette on Ashby, and a collector’s booklet.

COMING HOME IS AVAILABLE ON EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA BLU-RAY

Coming Home

Thank you for reading our review of Coming Home

For more movie talk, check out our podcast  cinema eclectica, share this:, s16e10 - the nicholas cage of seagulls, you might like, the loneliness of a long distance runner (1962) one of the greatest endings to a film ever (review), the big chill (1983): nostalgic, reflective, snarky and full of love – a warm hug of a film (blu-ray review).

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Coming Home

Where to watch

Coming home.

1978 Directed by Hal Ashby

A man who believed in war! A man who believed in nothing! And a woman who believed in both of them!

The wife of a Marine serving in Vietnam, Sally Hyde decides to volunteer at a local veterans hospital to occupy her time. There she meets Luke Martin, a frustrated wheelchair-bound vet who has become disillusioned with the war. Sally and Luke develop a friendship that soon turns into a romance.

Jane Fonda Jon Voight Bruce Dern Penelope Milford Robert Carradine Robert Ginty Mary Gregory Kathleen Miller Beeson Carroll Willie Tyler Lou Carello Charles Cyphers Olivia Cole Tresa Hughes Bruce French Mary Jackson Tim Pelt Richard Lawson Rita Taggart Claudie Watson Sally Frei Tony Santoro Pat Corley Gwen Van Dam Jim Klein Tokyo Ernie Raul Bayardo Stacey Pickren James Kindelon Show All… Joey Faustine Arthur Rosenberg David Clennon Kimberly Binion Gary Downey Jonathan Banks Marc McClure Haskell Wexler Hugh Farrington Mark Carlton

Director Director

Producers producers.

Bruce Gilbert Jerome Hellman

Writers Writers

Waldo Salt Robert C. Jones Nancy Dowd

Casting Casting

Lynn Stalmaster

Editor Editor

Don Zimmerman

Cinematography Cinematography

Haskell Wexler

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Jim Bloom Charles Myers

Lighting Lighting

Camera operator camera operator.

Donald E. Thorin

Production Design Production Design

Michael D. Haller

Art Direction Art Direction

James L. Schoppe

Set Decoration Set Decoration

George Gaines

Title Design Title Design

Sound sound.

Frank E. Warner Robert Knudson Jeff Wexler

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Gary Liddiard

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Lynda Gurasich

United Artists Jerome Hellman Productions Jayne Productions Inc

Releases by Date

15 feb 1978, 31 may 1978, 02 jun 1978, 01 sep 1978, 09 sep 1978, 01 jan 2005, 11 jun 2003, releases by country.

  • Theatrical U
  • Theatrical 16
  • Theatrical VM14

Netherlands

  • TV 12 Nederland 2
  • Physical 12 DVD
  • Theatrical R

127 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

ele

Review by ele ★★★½ 8

how much do you think jane fonda hated having a republican lick her titty

Sean Baker

Review by Sean Baker 8

Revisited after many years. Not my fave Ashby but I love how he tackles the emotionally and physically damaged lives of veterans and their civil rights through a very human, complicated love story.

Due to lack of time, I can't add much to these logs for now. :( Maybe in the future.

Watched Kino Lorber Blu-ray

Blu-ray Extras Include: "Coming Back Home" Featurette

"Hal Ashby: A Man Out of Time" Featurette

Audio Commentary with Jon Voight, Bruce Dern and Haskel Wexler

Original Theatrical Trailer

Justin Peterson

Review by Justin Peterson ★★★

Her husband was sent off to fight in Vietnam, so she looked to occupy her time by helping those who had already returned home broken by the war. But her passion for one of these damaged men ended up becoming far greater than she ever imagined.

"What I'm saying is! I don't belong in this house, and they say I don't belong over there!"

After loving all of the quirky Hal Ashby movies I have seen so far, I would say the more serious tone he takes in Coming Home did not resonate with me nearly as much. This was nominated for Best Picture the same year as 'The Deer Hunter', an acclaimed film I consider to be highly overrated.…

Jackson

Review by Jackson ★★★★

How does Hal Ashby get these songs? Each one should cost the entire movie's budget.

Coming Home is one of those movies that sneaks up on you. I didn't think I was hooked until Hal had already pulled the rug out from under me. It's gentle, but the subtle intensity behind each word builds to a tsunami. I've never seen a movie that captures the guilt of post-Vietnam soldiers with so much vulnerability. Three great performances, Voight and Fonda both winning Oscars in a year overshadowed by The Deer Hunter. Put it on your list.

Catherine Stebbins

Review by Catherine Stebbins ★★★★★ 2

from Top Ten By Year: 1978 #5

Three years after the Fall of Saigon there were two Best Picture nominees that directly dealt with Vietnam. One was the wholly masculine collapse-of-camaraderie film The Deer Hunter. The other was the far more liberal-minded Coming Home, about tormented veterans and a woman who comes into her own politically and sexually following her husband’s departure for Vietnam. People tend to knock Coming Home for being a war film that ‘descends’ into something as ‘cliche’ as a love triangle. Is there any easier way to dismiss a film for daring to be about the female experience of wartime? These are three people (Jon Voight and Bruce Dern are the paraplegic lover and husband respectively)…

Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 3

This one is a long time coming (no pun intended). I've been hearing so much about this movie and I've been trying to watch this baby for a long time but this film is like the exterior and I am the guests in El Angel Exterminador , basically for some unexplicable reason I spent an entire year uncapable of watching this because minutes later I simply forgot. That's it. Point blank.

Luckily 2021 was the year and boy I am glad it wasn't a waste at all. I don't adore Hal Ashby's movies, but there's something about his work that somewhat becomes attractive to me and have me craving for more. Maybe is the cynicism that lies underneath any of his…

Josh Gillam

Review by Josh Gillam ★★★★

It’s 1968, and the Vietnam War rages on. Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda), a military wife, has her eyes opened when she starts volunteering at a veteran’s hospital, seeing first hand the consequences of the conflict. She forms a close relationship with paraplegic former soldier Luke (Jon Voight) while her husband Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) is away fighting, in this romantic drama war film directed by Hal Ashby.

Right from the opening scene, with real veterans part of an electric improvised discussion, the themes of disillusionment and the human cost of war are highlighted, made all the more poignant by the people discussing it. The look at how veterans are treated once they come back still feels relevant, and is…

Matthew Noble

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"I wish you could feel me."

Because I watch a lot of movies, I am increasingly aware of the artifice of cinema. How music is used, where plot beats will kick in, what emotions to expect. As I see it, my job as a filmgoer is to seek out films that make me forget about these mechanisms, and evoke genuine emotion or understanding.

Coming Home is one such film. As much as I enjoyed The Last Detail and Shampoo , this feels like the next level for Hal Ashby. His style has evolved, in that it feels more understated. While all those political concerns and eloquent interactions remain, they've deepened in their sincerity and conviction. Above all else, the performances are…

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Hal Ashby had the best run of any American filmmaker in the 1970s, in terms of quantity and quality. He made The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home and Being There. Seven brilliant films in nine years. However, one aspect of his career that remains a truism, throughout this, is that there is not a soft-rock song that he does not love. This glib attention to musical detail does not really impact most of his films, apart from Coming Home, where Ashby barely lets the drama get five minutes before cranking up The Beatles, The Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield et al. Considering how deeply felt the drama is, how confrontational…

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While Oliver Stone and other directors showed the combat side to the hostilities in Vietnam, it was left to Hal Ashby to give us a closer look at the aftermath of the damaged psyche of both the combatants and their loved ones. By 1978 when this film came out the war was officially over, but not for those who fought in it. Set in 1968,this tender and touching drama about a woman with two very different men in her life won many fans and just as many awards. Jane Fonda plays the wife of a marine captain readying himself for his tour of duty in Vietnam. While he's away she volunteers at a veterans hospital after some initial persuasion from…

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Jon Voight had a completely different voice as a young man than he did from middle age and beyond, definitely got scratchier and more hoarse with time. I call it Mickey Rourke Syndrome.

A Vietnam movie that has every Vietnam movie song in the soundtrack, they even play through the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil in its entirety. It's the kind of movie you'd expect to be made in the wake of a controversial war, featuring plenty of outrage and anger but not much of a real discourse, at least not until the final scenes. The film reaches for low-hanging fruit, a disillusioned and crippled veteran and the wife of a Marine that gradually comes around to support his…

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Review: In ‘Coming Home,’ a Family Rocked by the Cultural Revolution

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coming home movie reviews

By A.O. Scott

  • Sept. 8, 2015

Zhang Yimou and Gong Li constitute one of the great director-actress pairings in movie history. In the 1980s and ’90s they worked together on a remarkable run of movies — including “Red Sorghum,” “Raise the Red Lantern,” “Shanghai Triad” and “To Live” — that were central to the resurgence of Chinese cinema and made international stars of both of them. Ms. Gong, noble, fragile and indomitable, was for Mr. Zhang a muse, an alter ego and an emblem of China’s suffering and resilience at important moments in the nation’s history.

“ Coming Home ,” only their second collaboration in the past 20 years, reunites them in an intimate, politically resonant story set in the final years and the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Ms. Gong plays Feng Wanyu, a teacher in a provincial city whose husband, Lu Yanshi (Chen Daoming), a professor, has been sent to a labor camp in a purge of “rightists.” Feng Wanyu lives with their teenage daughter, Dan Dan (Zhang Huiwen), a dancer who dreams of playing the lead in the ballet “ The Red Detachment of Women .” Her father’s pariah status threatens her ambition, and she is eager to denounce him when local officials demand it.

Early in the film, Lu Yanshi has escaped and made his way home in a doomed and desperate effort to see his family again. He receives a mixed welcome. Feng Wanyu is both terrified and eager to be with him, while Dan Dan, who barely remembers her father, is worried about the disruptive effect his presence will have on her life. Her selfishness and shortsightedness, and her inability to sympathize with her parents or put aside her own needs are all perfectly normal. She’s an adolescent, after all. But in a time of political extremity, ordinary feelings and actions can have terrible consequences. Innocent people do not only suffer under a ruthless system; they become agents of its cruelty.

The first section of “Coming Home” culminates in a harrowing sequence that demonstrates Mr. Zhang’s unmatched skill as a choreographer of swift and complex action. The tension and suspense surrounding Lu’s return suddenly dissolves, giving way to a mood of gentle, contemplative melancholy. The Cultural Revolution ends. Surviving prisoners are sent home and rehabilitated. And the psychological conflict in Lu Yanshi’s family gives way to a muted drama of regret and reconciliation.

Which is not to say that relations among the three of them are any simpler, only that they become characters in a fable spun around a core of almost unbearable emotion. It’s especially poignant to see Ms. Gong, whose earlier characters were so stubborn and passionate, play a woman who (in ways I’m reluctant to reveal) is estranged from her own experience, past and present. The shadow of that earlier intensity is part of what makes this performance so moving.

And “Coming Home” itself is graceful and modestly scaled, forgoing the historical sweep and the operatic fervor of some of Mr. Zhang’s previous work. Its quiet, sentimental denouement is a bit deceptive: There is terrible pain here, and the main interest of the film is in how the characters respond to it and what their response says about China’s understanding of its recent history. Peace, this movie suggests, comes at the price of memory. Recovering from catastrophe and forgetting about it may amount to the same thing.

“Coming Home” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Brief violence and lingering bad memories.

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Blu-ray review – Coming Home (1978)

February 2, 2024 by Brad Cook

Coming Home , 1978.

Directed by Hal Ashby. Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, and Bruce Dern.

Kino Lorber has reissued Hal Ashby’s classic Coming Home on Blu-ray. The film hasn’t been restored, and the extras are the same as before, but this is still a worthwhile pick-up if you’re a fan and have been meaning to add this one to your library.

I can’t imagine that Hollywood will ever stop reminding us that war is hell, along with the fact that some wars are more hellish than others, when considering what the soldiers must go through when returning home.

Case in point, of course: the Vietnam War. There’s no shortage of classics like Apocalypse Now and Platoon to show us how awful the conflict was in that country, but 1978’s Coming Home shifts the focus to the home front.  

In fact, the only time the story leaves the United States is when the main character, Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda), travels to Hong Kong to see her husband Bob (Bruce Dean) while he’s on R&R. While Sally starts the film as a conservative, prim and proper military wife, her chance encounter with Luke Martin (Jon Voight) at the VA hospital where she’s a volunteer begins to change her perspective.

Like many of the other men at the hospital, Luke has been broken by his experiences in Vietnam and the injury that left him lying on a hospital gurney, forced to use a pair of canes to navigate the hallways. His plight connects with a sense of justice residing within Sally, and she soon befriends him.

When his rehabilitation enables him to use a wheelchair, she invites him to her home for dinner, where the two begin to fall in love. Sally tries to use her position as a hospital volunteer to advocate for Luke and the other men through her network of military wives, but they rebuff her.

She also befriends Vi (Penelope Milford), whose boyfriend has been sent to Vietnam with Bob, and the two begin spending more time with each other and with Luke. Sally begins to shed her previously uptight ways, but when Luke chains himself to the gate of a military recruiting station in protest of the war, the FBI takes an interest in him and documents his affair with Sally. Thus the story builds tension as Bob’s return from Vietnam looms over both of them, and Sally must decide how she will resolve the love triangle she has found herself in.

Coming Home was shot by director Hal Ashby in a no-frills style that lets the viewer directly confront, and sit with, the emotions he stirs up. For example, he opens the film with a scene of various men at the VA hospital as they grapple with the question of loyalty to one’s country versus whether the conflict made sense, as many people did back then.

Like William Wyler’s classic The Best Years of Our Lives , which took a similar tactic with GIs returning from World War II (widely seen as a “good war,” of course), Coming Home focuses on whether enduring the horrors of war is worth the price paid in its participants’ lives. And like that film, and other well-told stories, this one simply lets the viewer decide how they really feel.

I don’t own any previous home video editions of this film, but my understanding is that this is a reissue of the Blu-ray Kino Lorber released nearly a decade ago. There’s no indication that the print has been restored, judging by the scratches and other imperfections that pop up here and there, but the video quality should be fine for the average viewer.

Kino Lorber also didn’t commission any new bonus features for this disc, but what’s included forms a worthwhile complement to the film. The extras start with a commentary track featuring Voight, Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Voight and Wexler were recorded together and Dern’s thoughts were weaved in separately, focusing mostly on when his character is onscreen, but overall it’s a track full of worthwhile observations and anecdotes.

Since Ashby died in 1988, he wasn’t around to contribute to extra features found on discs of his films, unfortunately, but Voight, Dern, and Wexler are joined by Norman Jewison for a 15-minute reflection on his career in Man Out of Time . Ashby is one of those filmmakers who’s sometimes an also-ran when people compile lists of great 1970s directors, but he certainly deserves a spot on those lists.

Finally, there’s a 25-minute making-of, Coming Back Home , in which Voight, Dern, and Wexler return to look back on how the film came to be, from its earliest days to its release and beyond, which included eight Oscar nominations, three of which were wins.

The theatrical trailer rounds out the platter.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

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‘Coming Home’ review: A struggle to sit through

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

‘Coming Home’ review: A struggle to sit through

COMING HOME. Sylvia Sanchez in the film 'Coming Home'

Screenshot from Upstream YouTube

Adolfo Alix, Jr.’s Coming Home is an irritating conundrum. 

It is a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be and ends up more confusing than affecting.

The most apparent

Let’s start with the most apparent.

Coming Home is undoubtedly a showcase of acting talent. Sylvia Sanchez, as the matriarch who welcomes home her philandering ex-husband to the displeasure of her children, is an enduring presence here. Even the various actors who play her adult children aren’t bad, with Edgar Allan de Guzman and Martin del Rosario shining in some of their dramatic encounters.

But then one of the central figures of the film is just absolutely awful. 

Jinggoy Estrada plays Sanchez’s husband with nary an understanding as to the emotions required of his character. He is as impassioned as a rock and as charismatic as a cactus in a desert. Supposedly big moments are ruined the moment he speaks his lines with a monotonous cadence that is reminiscent of some of the standard passages in a routine hearing in the Senate. 

The result is a melodrama that is desperate to burst with promised anger, joy, sadness, and remorse, except that it couldn’t, because there just isn’t enough talent in some of the cast. However, it could also be by design, since Alix directs Coming Home with his typical austerity. He is deliberate in the pacing of the soap opera and frames most of the scenes with hardly any pomp, his camera either still or languidly panning.

Simply put, Coming Home is impenetrable. 

It wants to be artful but its efforts are plebeian. It wants to dazzle, such as when Alix in one take attempts to evolve drama out of a birthday celebration gone awry, but it only fizzles. Most of its bids at being something worthwhile end up as failures.

Worth staying for

Yet there is something in Coming Home that is worth staying for despite such tedium.

Sure, its story is nothing new. In fact, it resembles Laurice Guillen’s Sa’yo Lamang (2010), where another unfaithful husband returns to the family he has left behind to make amends. Coming Home again features a suffering woman who quickly embraces the return of her spouse but what it somewhat subtly projects is a family where the men are problematic and whose salvation is restored by the virtues of one woman.

There is one surprisingly powerful scene in the film that might have made up for the film’s constellation of problems. 

Near the end of the film, Estrada kneels and pleads to De Guzman, tearfully asking for forgiveness. De Guzman miraculously returns the favor. The other sons come forward to take part in the belated reconciliation. From afar, Sanchez looks at the tableau of conflicted men finally cracking to reveal their real emotions. The scene’s a grand gesture, one that adds an important dynamic to a genre that has been turned into a cliché by repetition.

Dated, drab, and dull

That being said, Coming Home is still dated, drab, and dull.

While Alix adds some wit and thought to the affair, the film is still a struggle to sit through.  – Rappler.com

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Coming Home parents guide

Coming Home Parent Guide

While the language barrier may make this movie appear less accessible to some, it really is worth the extra effort..

When Lu (Daoming Chen) is released from a labor camp after serving almost two decades as a political prisoner, he returns to his family only to find his wife (Li Gong) no longer remember who he is.

Release date September 9, 2015

Run Time: 109 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by donna gustafson.

Someone once said, “Love is a verb,” meaning the real definition of the word is evidenced by the actions of those who claim to feel the emotion. And such demonstration is certainly seen in the film Coming Home (original title, Gui lai ).

Set in China during the Cultural Revolution , Yu (Li Gong, whose character is called Feng in film’s promotional materials) and her daughter Dandan (Huiwen Zhang) have not seen their husband and father Lu (Daoming Chen) since he was sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner more than a decade ago. When the authorities inform the pair that the man has escaped, Dandan’s youthful loyalty to The Party makes it easy for her to agree to have no contact with him if he should happen to show up in their neighborhood. But Yu, who has more reserved feelings about the Communists, is reluctant to comply.

A few years later, changes in the government end the exile of many of those previously seen as enemies of the regime, including Lu. Now the former professor is free to return to his family. Anticipating a sweet homecoming, Lu is unprepared for the bitter changes that have occurred while he has been away. Something has happened to Yu’s memory, and she is unable to recognize her husband when arrives. Yet for all her forgetfulness Yu still has a clear recognition of Dandan’s past faults, and has closed her daughter out of her life.

Even though Lu and Dandan are mostly strangers, the father and daughter find themselves in the same situation: attempting to reclaim a place in Yu’s heart. While the journey is different for each, both paths will test the true depth of the love they have for Yu. The portrayal of the lengths Lu goes to in the hopes of reawakening his wife’s affection are particularly poignant.

If you are hoping Coming Home will help you learn more about this important this moment in China’s history, this Mandarin language film (with English subtitles) may be a disappointment. Director Yimou Zhang, who loosely based his script on a novel by Geling Yan , was careful to adhere to his country’s strict censorship laws, and does not include much background about Chairman Mao or his ideology, nor the hardship endured by those targeted during his leadership. According to a questions and answers session with Zhang that occurred at the Toronto Film Festival (included in the Special Features section of the movie’s Blu-ray release), the goal of the production was to spark discussion between parents and children, so the older generation could share their stories about events which often are shrouded in silence. As the film makes its way into global markets, perhaps Western audiences unfamiliar with this time period will also become more curious.

While the language barrier may make this movie appear less accessible to some, it really is worth the extra effort. Dealing with mature themes, the script is vague in its mentions of abuse, sexual assault and suicide, and brief in its depictions of physical altercations. Instead the film focuses on the healing of a broken family, which includes administering the medicine of forgiveness, sacrifice, commitment, and most importantly, love.

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Photo of Donna Gustafson

Donna Gustafson

Coming home rating & content info.

Why is Coming Home rated PG-13? Coming Home is rated PG-13 by the MPAA Some Thematic Material.

Violence: Characters are treated with injustice. It is implied that opinions about guilt vary over a man who has been arrested as a political prisoner and sent to a labor camp. A fugitive sneaks into an apartment building.Soldiers and police roughly handle an escaped prisoner during his recapture, and knock down a woman causing her head to bleed. Sexual assault and suicide are briefly mentioned. An angry woman yells at a man she believes is responsible for her husband’s arrest. Guns are used as props by dancers in a ballet about female soldiers. Characters feel the unspoken threats of authority figures. Rewards are promised to those who co-operate with officials. Betrayal occurs and acts of vengeance are considered.

Sexual Content: A character implies a man has violated her.

Language: None noted.

Alcohol / Drug Use: None noted.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

Coming Home Parents' Guide

Learn more about China’s Cultural Revolution .

Why does Dandan feel an allegiance to The Party that her mother does not? How does that trust affect the choices Dandan makes? How is she rewarded for her loyalty?

Yu’s devotion to her husband is obvious as she patiently waits for him to return. Yet she doesn’t recognize that Lu is already there. How might this blindness be a metaphor for life, especially as we focus on the future at the expense of appreciating the present?

What kind of sacrifices would you make for someone you loved? Would you be willing to continue to make them if you were unsure your affection would ever be returned? What do you think motivates Lu’s efforts? What resources does he use to reawaken Yu’s memory?

Each of the characters in the film has something or someone they need to forgive. Why is self-blame part of their problem? What events or insights help them let go of the past?

The most recent home video release of Coming Home movie is March 8, 2016. Here are some details…

Home Video Notes: Coming Home Release Date: 11 March 2016

Related home video titles:

Characters devotedly work with others suffering from memory loss in St. Vincent and The Notebook (although both films also contain sexual content that make them poor choices for young viewers).

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19 Best Movies New to Streaming in April: ‘Zone of Interest,’ ‘Anyone but You,’ ‘Late Night With the Devil,’ ‘Wish’ and More

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Oscar-winning dramas and box office genre hits are making their way to streaming platforms this month. Far and away the best movie set to premiere is Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” a disturbing masterwork about the Holocaust that picked up two Academy Awards last month: best international feature and best sound design. Distributor A24 inked a streaming deal with Max last year, so “Zone of Interest” now joins other must-see recent A24 films like Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned streaming platform.

For viewers looking for a much lighter offering, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s romantic-comedy “Anyone but You” arrives on Netflix this month and should be just as much of a blockbuster on streaming as it turned out to be in theaters. Opening ahead of Christmas last year, the film was a box office sleeper hit and has grossed close to $220 million at the worldwide box office. No wonder Sweeney and Powell are already in talks about what to team up for next.

Another box office hit, albeit on a smaller scale, coming to streaming in April is IFC’s “Late Night With the Devil,” a found footage horror throwback that broke the record for the studio’s biggest opening weekend ever with $2.8 million. The film is now nearing $7 million at the domestic box office and could surpass $10 million by the time it becomes available to stream this month on the horror platform Shudder.

Scroll below for a full list of the biggest titles new to streaming in April 2024.

The Zone of Interest (April 5 on Max)

THE ZONE OF INTEREST, Sandra Huller, 2023. © A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection

Jonathan Glazer’s masterpiece Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” picked up two Oscar wins last month for best international feature and best sound design. The film was also named one of Variety’s best movies of 2023 by chief film critic Owen Gleiberman, who wrote: “A movie that channels the horror of the Holocaust should hit you with the force of revelation. Yet too many movies with this subject matter do not; Jonathan Glazer’s quietly shocking drama assuredly does. It’s set in and around the stately German bourgeois home where Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), an SS officer, carries on a comfortable domestic existence with his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and children. The catch is: He’s the commandant of Auschwitz — and the concentration camp is literally right over the wall next to their garden. Glazer creates an unnerving true-life fairy-tale nightmare of evil, using the distant sounds of Auschwitz (the fire from the ovens, the screams) to evoke a monstrousness we can’t see.”

Scoop (April 5 on Netflix)

SCOOP, Gillian Anderson, 2024. ph: Peter Mountain / © Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

“The Crown” may have ended last year, but Netflix has another royal drama in store. “Scoop” is the streamer’s feature-length dramatization of Prince Andrew‘s toe-curling interview with “Newsnight” anchor Emily Maitlis. Maitlis is played by Gillian Anderson in the film, while Andrew is played by “The Diplomat” star Rufus Sewell. Keeley Hawes is also on board as Amanda Thirsk, Andrew’s former private secretary, and Billie Piper stars as Sam McAlister, the “Newsnight” producer who secured the interview with Andrew. The interview with Maitlis in November 2019 was dubbed a “car crash” after the British royal, who settled a sexual assault suit with Virginia Guiffre two years ago, said he had no regrets about his friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Strange Way of Life (April 12 on Netflix)

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE, (aka EXTRANA FORMA DE VIDA), from left: Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal, 2023. © Sony Pictures Classics / Courtesy Everett Collection

Pedro Almodóvar’s lavish Western short film “Strange Way of Life” debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last year and pairs Pedro Pascal opposite Ethan Hawke as two aging cowboys who were once secret romantic partners. They are reunited after 25 years when Hawke’s Sheriff Jake seeks out his sister-in-law’s murderer. The tension of the present and the eroticism of the past converge. 

“This is a queer western in the sense that there are two men, and they love each other, and they behave in that situation in an opposite way,” said  Almodóvar last year . “What I can tell you about the film is that it has a lot of the elements of the Western. It has the gunslinger. It has the ranch. It has the sheriff. But what it has that most Westerns don’t have is the kind of dialogue that I don’t think a Western film has ever captured between two men. And now I think I’m telling you too much.”

Anyone but You (April 23 on Netflix)

ANYONE BUT YOU, from left: Glen Powell, Sydney Sweeney, 2023. ph: Brook Rushton / © Sony Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

After becoming a surprise box office sensation with more than $215 million at the worldwide box office, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s romantic-comedy “Anyone but You” makes its streaming debut on Netflix this month, where it’s bound to keep being a big hit. The actors play former flames who reluctantly pose as a couple during a wedding weekend in Australia to keep their friends and family off their backs. From  Variety’s review:   “It’s a gloss on ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ but Will Gluck’s formula romantic comedy is most likable for the brash way it lets its two up-and-coming stars channel the age of antipathy… It is, in many ways, as prefab as a lot of the rom-coms of the ’90s and aughts, but there’s something zesty and bracing about how it channels the anti-romanticism of the Tinder-meets-MeToo generation.”

Late Night With the Devil (April 19 on Shudder)

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, back, from left: Rhys Auteri, Ian Bliss, front, from left: Ingrid Torelli, Laura Gordon, David Dastmalchian, 2023. © IFC Films /Courtesy Everett Collection

After breaking box office records for IFC Films, the horror movie “Late Night With the Devil” arrives on Shudder this month to keep the scares going. The third feature from Australia’s directing duo the Cairnes Brothers is a clever construct in which a late night network broadcast devolves into supernatural chaos on Halloween night. David Dastmalchian leads the film as the Johnny Carson-esque host, whose desire for big ratings leads to terrifying consequences when he invites an allegedly possessed girl onto the show. From  Variety’s  review:  “This isn’t the scariest movie, but neither is it entirely a self-conscious joke. The Cairnes maintain an astute balance between pop-culture irony, familiar if not always predictable thrills (including some creature/gore FX), and a kind of hallucinatory mass-media surrealism.”

Migration (April 19 on Peacock) 

MIGRATION, from left: Uncle Dan (voice: Danny DeVito), Gwen Mallard (voice: Tresi Gazal), Dax Mallard (voice: Casper Jennings), Pam Mallard (voice: Elizabeth Banks), Mack Mallard (voice: Kumail Nanjiani), 2023. © Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

From the toon studio behind such widely appealing hits as “Minions” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” comes “Migration,” a family comedy about a group of mallards struggling to find their way south. The movie was a box office sleeper hit over the holidays and should compete with Disney’s “Wish” as the top choice for families on streaming this month when it debuts on Peacock. The movie, written by “The White Lotus” creator Mike White, features the voices of Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina and Carol Kane, among others.

Wish (April 3 on Disney+)

WISH, from left: King Magnifico (voice: Chris Pine), Asha (voice: Ariana DeBose), 2023. © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Disney’s animated musical “Wish” did not exactly set the box office on fire last year, but the movie’s streaming debut on Disney+ is bound to increase viewership. Oscar winner Ariana DeBose voices Asha, who makes a wish so powerful that it is answered by a cosmic force — a little ball of boundless energy called Star. The two new friends team up to put a stop to the evil magic being conjured by King Magnifico (Chris Pine). From  Variety’s  review:  “‘Wish,’ Disney’s lavish animated musical, doesn’t look like the studio’s other animated features. The images resemble softly drawn calendar-art paintings, without the usual splashes of kaleidoscopic color — here, a more muted palette of blue, green, gray, pink, and lavender creates a pleasing storybook texture. And Chris Pine’s punchy performance certainly gives you someone to root against.”

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scavenger (April 19 on Netflix)

REBEL MOON, (aka REBEL MOON: A CHILD OF FIRE, aka REBEL MOON: PART ONE - A CHILD OF FIRE), from left: Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, 2023. ph: Clay Enos / © Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Critics be damned. Zack Snyder’s first “Rebel Moon” was widely panned when it debuted over Christmas, but the second part arrives this month in its continued CGI-heavy glory. The franchise follows a lone soldier named Kora (Sofia Boutella), whose quiet life and community on a farming moon called Veldt is threatened by the evil royal empire the Imperium. Kora’s new life is tragically interrupted and she’s thrust back into war when the menacing Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) visits her planet on behalf of the Imperium’s leader, Balisarius (Fra Fee). Kora recruits a band of fighters, including Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher), Kai (Charlie Hunnam) and a robot named Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins), to lead her resistance.

Tiger (April 22 on Disney+)

Tiger (April 22 on Disney+)

Disney is celebrating Earth Day this year with a new nature documentary, “Tiger.” Narrated by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, the film “lifts the veil on our planet’s most revered and charismatic animal, inviting viewers to journey alongside Ambar, a young tigress raising her cubs in the fabled forests of India,” the film’s synopsis reads. “Curious, rambunctious, and at times a bit clumsy, the cubs have a lot to learn from their savvy mother who will do all she can to keep them safe from pythons, bears, and marauding male tigers.” The movie, directed by Mark Linfield and co-directed by Vanessa Berlowitz and Rob Sullivan, was shot over 1,500 days of filming and combines fast-paced action with remarkably intimate moments of the tigers.

She Came to Me (April 5 on Hulu)

SHE CAME TO ME, from left: Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, 2023. ph: Matt Infante / © Vertical Entertainment / Courtesy Everett Collection

Indie comedies have often come in one of two flavors: sincere or quirky. Rebecca Miller’s ardent ensemble comedy “She Came to Me” has the off-kilter deftness to be both at once. Its central figure is a celebrated composer of operas, played by Peter Dinklage at his most broodingly magnetic, who stops into a dive bar in the morning and gets picked up for an erotic adventure by a sexaholic tugboat captain, played with lived-in charm by Marisa Tomei. What follows is a cracked bedroom farce that’s really a story of salvation. Miller’s films, in their delicate humanity, are frail blossoms that have too often gotten lost. This one is worth finding.

Girls State (April 5 on Apple TV+)

GIRLS STATE, 2024. © Apple TV+ / Courtesy Everett Collection

A spiritual successor the 2020 Texas-set documentary “Boys State,” Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s “Girls State” follow teenage girls attending a week-long democratic camp in Missouri in which they work together to build a new kind of government in their image. The synopsis for the movie from Apple reads: “What would American democracy look like in the hands of teenage girls? A political coming-of-age story and a stirring reimagination of what it means to govern, ‘Girls State’ follows young female leaders — from wildly different backgrounds across Missouri — as they navigate an immersive experiment to build a government from the ground up.”

Musica (April 4 on Prime Video)

MUSICA, from left: Rudy Mancuso, Camila Mendes, 2024. © Amazon Prime Video / Courtesy Everett Collection

Pairing internet personality Rudy Mancuso with “Riverdale” favorite Camila Mendes, the romance “Musica” is billed by Prime Video as “a coming-of-age love story that follows an aspiring creator with synesthesia, who must come to terms with an uncertain future, while navigating the pressures of love, family and his Brazilian culture in Newark, New Jersey.” The film is written and directed by Mancuso. Mendes just had a Prime Video hit with the rom-com “Upgraded,” which debuted on the streaming platform during Valentine’s Day. Prime Video is surely hoping that success bleeds into “Musica,” which will keep the rom-com views coming on streaming this month ahead of the arrival of “Anyone but You” on Netflix.

The Holdovers (April 29 on Prime Video)

THE HOLDOVERS, Paul Giamatti, 2023. ph: Seacia Pavao / © Focus Features / Courtesy Everett Collection

Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” arrives on Prime Video this month at no extra cost to subscribers after debuting on streaming last year courtesy of Peacock. The film won the Academy Award for best supporting actress thanks to the performance by Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Paul Giamatti leads the period comedy-drama as an ornery school teacher who is forced to chaperone students staying over at his prep school during the holiday break. From  Variety’s  review : “Peer beyond the perfectly satisfying Christmas-movie surface, and ‘The Holdovers’ is a film about class and race, grief and resentment, opportunity and entitlement. It’s that rare exception to the oft-heard complaint that ‘they don’t make ’em like they used to.'”

Happy Gilmore (April 1 on Netflix)

HAPPY GILMORE, Adam Sandler, 1996, golf ball

With news that a sequel to “Happy Gilmore” is in the works , is it just a coincidence that Adam Sandler’s 1996 sports comedy classic returns to Netflix this month? The comedian plays the eponymous Happy Gilmore, a hockey player with anger management issues who discovers he’s also got a talent for golf. Happy joins the golf tour circuit to win money to save his grandmother’s house and faces off against an arrogant pro named Shooter McGavin, played by Christopher McDonald. The supporting cast includes “Modern Family” favorite Julie Bowen and the late Carl Weathers. “Happy Gilmore” opened in 1996 and made nearly $40 million at the worldwide box office. The movie helped Sandler become one of the biggest comedy stars of the decade along with titles like “Billy Madison,” “The Waterboy,” “The Wedding Singer,” “Big Daddy” and more.

The Matrix (April 1 on Netflix)

THE MATRIX, Keanu Reeves, 1999. (c) Warner Bros./ Courtesy: Everett Collection.

“The Matrix” celebrated its 25th anniversary on March 31, and now it’s back on Netflix alongside sequels “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions.” Variety calls it one of the greatest action movies ever made : “Synthesizing everything from cyberpunk sci-fi to video games to Hong Kong action movies, the Wachowskis rewired what had come before, introducing a sleek new aesthetic that not only represented the future, but influenced fashion and filmmaking codes for decades to come. After ‘Star Wars,’ this is the film franchise that has come the closest to establishing a religious cult in its own image, as fans seized on the movie’s quasi-spiritual/philosophical elements.”

Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (April 2 on Prime Video)

PLEASE DON'T DESTROY: THE TREASURE OF FOGGY MOUNTAIN, from left: Martin Herlihy, Ben Marshall, John Higgins, 2023. ph: Anne Marie Fox / © Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy, the “Saturday Night Live” trio better known as Please Don’t Destroy, become movie stars in their Judd Apatow-produced feature “The Treasure of Foggy Mountain,” which arrives this month on Prime Video at no extra cost to subscribers after launching last year exclusively on Peacock. Here’s the official logline: “John Goodman narrates the adventure of Ben, Martin and John, three childhood friends turned deadbeat co-workers, who fend off hairless bears, desperate park rangers (played by Meg Stalter and X Mayo) and a hypocritical cult leader (Bowen Yang) in the hopes of finding a priceless treasure, only to discover that finding the treasure is the easiest part of their journey. Oh, and Conan O’Brien plays Ben’s dad in it.”

The Exorcist: Believer (April 9 on Prime Video)

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER, Olivia O'Neill, aka Olivia Marcum, 2023. © Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

David Gordon Green’s “Exorcist” reboot was designed to kick off a new trilogy for Universal Pictures, but those plans are now iffy after the movie nosedived with critics and at the box office. The film, which made its streaming debut on Peacock last December, will be available for Prime Video subscribers at no extra cost starting this month. The sequel follows Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), a photographer trying to find answers after his daughter and her friend go missing, only to return possessed by evil forces a few days later. Fielding seeks help from Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), who experienced a similar possession 50 years earlier. The movie also stars Lidya Jewett, Olivia O’Neill, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Ann Dowd and others.

Harry Potter Series (April 1 on Max)

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, 2002, (c) Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection

As a TV series based in the Wizarding World is in the works at Max, the “Harry Potter” movie franchise is back on the Warner Bros. Discovery streamer this month. All eight movies are now available to watch: “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone Harry Potter,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.”

Men (April 18 on Max)

MEN, Jessie Buckley, 2022.  ph: Kevin Baker /© A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection

With Alex Garland’s latest directorial effort “Civil War” set to be one of the buzziest theatrical releases of April 2024, it’s smart for distributor A24 to make their last Garland collaboration “Men” available to stream on Max this month. An eerie slice of folk horror, “Men” stars Jessie Buckley as a grieving woman whose isolated trip to the country takes a sinister turn. From Variety’s review : “The ‘Annihilation’ helmer puts the ‘men’ in ‘menacing,’ conjuring a town where the locals intimidate an emotionally traumatized woman trying to escape a bad marriage… audiences are all but guaranteed to leave this folk-horror bizart-house offering feeling disturbed, even if no two viewers can agree on what bothered them about it.”

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How to Watch Civil War – Showtimes and Streaming Status

Alex garland's latest is in theaters now..

Jordan Sirani Avatar

Writer-director Alex Garland's latest movie for A24 imagines a near-future America embroiled in a second Civil War. IGN's Civil War review called it "a heart-pounding war road-trip movie with a fascinating premise and a poignant story about the importance of journalism.

If you're wondering how and where you can watch Civil War this weekend, take a look at the info below.

Where to Watch Civil War – Showtimes and Streaming

Civil War is availalbe in theaters right now . To find when and where you can watch the movie near you, check the local showtime listings at the main theater sites below:

  • AMC Theaters
  • Cinemark Theaters
  • Regal Theaters

Civil War Streaming Release Date

Civil War will eventually be released on Max, rather than Netflix or Disney+, per distributor A24's licensing deal with the streamer.

As for a potential streaming release date, we can look to A24's recent Max releases: Zone of Interest, Dream Scenario, and Priscilla came to Max 112, 126, and 119 days after their respective theatrical debuts. Should A24 stay within that 112–126-day window, Civil War would come to Max in the first half of August .

What Is Civil War About?

Civil War is a road-trip war movie set in a near-future America engulfed in a second Civil War. Here's the official synopsis from A24:

An adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razor's edge.

Civil War Cast

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Civil War was written and directed by Alex Garland. It stars the following actors:

  • Kirsten Dunst as Lee
  • Nick Offerman as President
  • Wagner Moura as Joel
  • Cailee Spaeny as Jessie
  • Stephen McKinley Henderson as Sammy

Civil War Rating and Runtime

Civil War is Rated R for strong violent content, bloody/disturbing images, and language throughout. The film runs for a total of 1 hour and 49 minutes including credits.

Jordan covers games, shows, and movies as a freelance writer for IGN.

In This Article

Civil War

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, Owen Teague, and Freya Allan in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for a... Read all Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike. Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

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House Flipper 2 PS5 Review

House Flipper 2 PS5 Review: A Strong Console Port

By Tyler Treese

Over the past decade, I’ve found myself going from not really getting the appeal of simulation titles to quite enjoying them as a relaxing way to unwind after a long day. While most titles, like PowerWash Simulator, focus on a very specific task and have more than a layer of monotony that can be hard to push through, House Flipper 2 has quite an array of different tasks, creating a varied experience that is enjoyable and continues to feel fresh after its initial hours.

When you first boot up Frozen District’s House Flipper 2, you might want to compare it to PowerWash Simulator as you’ll be cleaning a pretty rancid fixer-upper house. However, cleaning is just one of the many different jobs that you’ll undertake while working. From putting away boxes — and getting major Unpacking vibes trying to figure out where items best go — to destroying walls and doing more complex renovation projects, there are a lot of different ways to interact with the world, which makes the levels far less monotonous and more fun to play as a result.

Now is it for everyone? Certainly not. You still have to find the idea of home renovation appealing and willing to do some repetitive tasks, such as cleaning windows and clearing out rooms filled with trash. However, if these do appeal to you, you’ll find a really great story mode (filled with some fun text and tales in the background) that will keep you occupied for over 12 hours.

One of the coolest aspects of House Flipper 2 is that there is a sandbox mode, which allows you to build your dream home rather than just renovate the houses of others. There’s a shocking amount of options at your disposal, which makes it the most complicated but also fulfilling mode. It can become a bit overwhelming at first and is best approached after the story mode as a result. It’s also the one time that the console version shows some slight limitations, just because it’s far easier to go through the menus and select options with a mouse than it ever will be with a controller. However, it’s a fun time still and shows just how much you can do in the game. It’s quite impressive how far the team took the idea of house flipping and expanded upon it.

Whether you just want to turn a wreck of a house into a much nicer one or are looking to flex your creative chops and design your dream home, there’s so much you can do in House Flipper 2. It’s one of the most varied and in-depth simulation titles you’ll find. The console port is a strong one as you get the full experience (even if sandbox mode is easier to navigate with a mouse), and the story mode is a joy to make your way through.

SCORE : 8/10

As ComingSoon’s  review policy  explains, a score of 8 equates to “Great.” While there are a few minor issues, this score means that the art succeeds at its goal and leaves a memorable impact.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a PlayStation 5 copy for our House Flipper 2 review. Reviewed on version 2.000.000.

Tyler Treese

Tyler Treese is ComingSoon and SuperHeroHype's Editor-in-Chief. An experienced entertainment journalist, his work can be seen at Sherdog, Fanbyte, Rock Paper Shotgun, and more. When not watching the latest movies, Treese enjoys mixed martial arts and playing with his Shiba Inu, Kota.

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The Reflector News

Featured stories, ‘civil war’ is both timely and prescient.

“Civil War” is a film that will enter the canon of the greatest movies of this decade. The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, was released today (April 12, 2024). I feel privileged to have experienced an early-access screening last night because it allowed me to get a head start on both processing and praising it. Even though the first thing I said when the credits rolled was, “That was literally traumatizing,” I loved “Civil War . ”

Garland tells the story of journalists navigating a dystopian America, where a civil war between the U.S. government and rebel forces is reaching its peak. Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny deliver the standout performances, with Dunst playing Lee, a seasoned war photo journalist, and Spaeny as Jessie, the young novice who tags along on a journey to Washington, D.C., where they hope to interview and photograph the president before he is killed by the rebels. Alongside fellow journalists Joel (played by Wagner Moura) and Sammy (played by Stephen McKinley Henderson), they document the horrors occurring throughout the country. 

At the end of the hour and 49 minute run time, I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Most of the scenes in the film are tense and disconcerting. However, “Civil War” is ultimately worth the discomfort.

“Civil War” is more than a thrilling war movie or a provocative journalism movie. It’s a film that feels both timely and prescient in many ways. It is not uncommon to hear Americans comment on how divided the country seems to be the past few years. Whether the U.S. is more divided now than it has ever been is besides the point—a general “us” versus “them” attitude is present socially, politically, etc. “Civil War” reflects the possible reality of these divisions escalating into violence.

The film’s depiction of journalists on the front lines of violence is another aspect that brought current events to mind. I couldn’t help but think of the journalists lost in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war; 95 journalists and media workers have been confirmed dead, according to Comittee to Protect Journalists . Garland does a beautiful job showing the sacrifices war journalists make to document important events, striking a balance between displaying bravery and terror. The effectiveness of these scenes can be attributed to the immense talents of the leading cast (Dunst, Spaeny, Moura, and Henderson). 

The technical details were impressive as well. The excellent cinematography, sound editing and production design were all essential to the final product. A movie about war is going to be loud. While I am not someone who necessarily enjoys shooting sounds in movies, I found myself appreciating how the film handles its loudness. In regards to visuals, there were scenes where the photos taken by the characters would appear on screen, allowing the audience to see the image that would hypothetically be shown in publications. I thought this was a great touch, as it satisfied my curiosity as to the result of the photographers’ efforts and let me consider what effect the image would have within the movie’s universe. 

Additionally, I found myself reflecting on the ethics of photojournalism. “Civil War” seems to ask the audience unanswerable questions: What images need to be captured? Are all of the photographs journalistic? When is it okay to capture someone else’s pain? 

I highly encourage anyone reading this to go and see “Civil War” if at all possible. While it is an anxiety inducing experience, it is also moving and thought provoking. I truly believe that one day you will be able to brag to future generations of moviegoers about seeing this movie in the theater when it came out.

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Coming Home Again Reviews

coming home movie reviews

Throughout the film both Chung and Chon have been captivating as two people doing their best to put on a brave face to encourage each other.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jul 29, 2021

coming home movie reviews

Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again is a heartfelt story of a first generation Korean-American grieving as he takes care of his mother as she dies of cancer.

Full Review | Nov 21, 2020

coming home movie reviews

Neither self-aggrandizing or sugar coating in its presentation of overwhelming grief, Coming Home Again is a painstaking reminder of Wang's supreme talents.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 27, 2020

coming home movie reviews

If it weren't for Spencer and Hathaway, this would be an altogether forgettable film. Luckily, their performances make this a fairly enjoyable watch just in time for Halloween.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 27, 2020

coming home movie reviews

Moving family drama about a young man who discovers the healing power of caregiving.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 26, 2020

As is so often the case, cultural specificity begets a very recognizable universality in this depiction of parents and children, love, death and grief.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2020

coming home movie reviews

Coming Home Again, along with telling an excellent heart-breaking story of loss, is designed to make you feel and empathize-not just from the story and acting but also from its cinematography.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Oct 25, 2020

There are occasional bouts of monotony as we watch Chang-rae cook in silence for minutes at a time. It's intended to be elegiac, since Korean food plays such a crucial role, even if it often comes off a bit stagnant.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 24, 2020

coming home movie reviews

Chung's understated performance is a fitting center for a movie almost always operating at whisper-level.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 24, 2020

coming home movie reviews

Wayne Wang of Chan Is Missing and Joy Luck Club serves up memorable tale of family, food and grief.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Oct 23, 2020

coming home movie reviews

Coming Home Again doesn't sanctify the image of the mother, but instead aims to truly capture the full-bodied personhood of the woman Lee put on the page.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 23, 2020

An elegant chamber piece that deals with big issues - life, death, family, guilt, grief - in a beautifully austere way, "Coming Home Again" rarely raises its voice, but it cuts deeply.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2020

coming home movie reviews

Some will appreciate the pace as thoughtful; others not so much. It's still worth your while to spend 90 minutes contemplating the complexity of family relationships.

coming home movie reviews

"Coming Home Again" looks at the impending loss of a loved one through the prism of the immigrant experience.

coming home movie reviews

It's a tough haul, but this sad testament to caregiving and familial grief - which is based on a moving essay from Chang-Rae Lee - is delectaely told and acted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 21, 2020

A collaboration between a Chinese-American director and a Korean-American writer, 'Coming Home Again' is an exemplar of minimal styling that shows what is essentially human surpasses the boundary of what is ethnic and cultural.

Full Review | Nov 26, 2019

coming home movie reviews

It's a profound experience, and by the end of Coming Home Again, we feel at home, ourselves, and transported by the visit.

Full Review | Oct 21, 2019

The restrained, austere filmmaking of the latest picture from Wayne Wang belies the emotional depth of this sober picture.

Full Review | Oct 6, 2019

coming home movie reviews

Chung's performance here is incredible.

Full Review | Sep 23, 2019

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Based on his own experience, director/writer Wayne Wang creates a very humbling and humanizing story in a low-budget, small-cast movie that is powerful.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 17, 2019

IMAGES

  1. Coming Home movie review & film summary (1978)

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  2. Coming Home

    coming home movie reviews

  3. Coming Home (2015)

    coming home movie reviews

  4. Coming Home (2012)

    coming home movie reviews

  5. Coming Home wiki, synopsis, reviews

    coming home movie reviews

  6. Coming Home

    coming home movie reviews

VIDEO

  1. Coming Home (2017)

  2. Coming Home (2017)

  3. Coming Home (1998)

  4. Official Trailer

  5. Nightcore✦Coming Home✦(Movie)

COMMENTS

  1. Coming Home movie review & film summary (1978)

    That is the Sally Hyde at the beginning of Hal Ashby's "Coming Home," an extraordinarily moving film. The Sally Hyde at the end of the film -- about a year later -- is a different person, confused in her loyalties, not sure of her beliefs, awakened to new feelings within her. She hasn't turned into a political activist or a hippie or any of ...

  2. Coming Home

    Movie Info. The wife of a Marine serving in Vietnam, Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) decides to volunteer at a local veterans hospital to occupy her time. There she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), a ...

  3. 'Coming Home' (1978): An Understated Brilliant Film About After Effects

    Coming Home (1978) was nominated for eight Academy Awards including nominations in all six major categories. It would win Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay, losing Best Picture and Best Director to The Deer Hunter (1978) a grave injustice that has become apparent through the years.

  4. Coming Home

    Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 22, 2022. Michael Ventura L.A. Weekly. A beautifully acted love-story -- Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern are memorable and then some, but the ...

  5. Coming Home (1978)

    User Reviews. RELEASED IN 1978 and directed by Hal Ashby, "Coming Home" is a drama taking place on the shores of Southern California about a lonely Captain's wife (Jane Fonda) who befriends a bohemian, Vi (Penelope Milford), when her husband (Bruce Dern) is deployed to 'Nam in 1968. She volunteers at a Veteran's hospital where she meets a ...

  6. Coming Home (1978)

    Coming Home: Directed by Hal Ashby. With Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Penelope Milford. In 1968 California, a woman whose husband is a Marine officer fighting in Vietnam falls in love with a former high school classmate who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the war.

  7. Coming Home (1978 film)

    Coming Home is a 1978 American romantic war drama directed by Hal Ashby from a screenplay written by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones with story by Nancy Dowd.It stars Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Penelope Milford, Robert Carradine and Robert Ginty.The film's narrative follows a perplexed woman, her Marine husband and a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran with whom she develops a romantic ...

  8. Coming Home

    Coming Home (1978) Director: Hal Ashby Cast: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern Run time: 126 minutes Release Date: 15th July 2019 Format: Blu-ray 9/10 ... Apocalypse Now and Coming Home all attracting cinema-goers in large numbers and gaining mainly positive reviews from critics. Coming Home opens with a scene where a group of vets in ...

  9. Coming Home

    Generally Favorable Based on 9 Critic Reviews. 61. 33% Positive 3 Reviews. 67% Mixed 6 Reviews. 0% Negative 0 Reviews. All Reviews; ... Coming Home succumbs to the same American lust for romance and heroism for which it implicitly condemns its doomed Marine captain. ... Find release dates for every movie coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming ...

  10. Coming Home (1978)

    Hal Ashby's 1978 movie Coming Home is one of the most compelling to explore the aftermath of the Vietnam war for its veterans and their loved ones.It stars Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde, a military wife who decides to volunteer at a local military hospital when her Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern) leaves for Vietnam.

  11. ‎Coming Home (1978) directed by Hal Ashby • Reviews, film + cast

    And a woman who believed in both of them! The wife of a Marine serving in Vietnam, Sally Hyde decides to volunteer at a local veterans hospital to occupy her time. There she meets Luke Martin, a frustrated wheelchair-bound vet who has become disillusioned with the war. Sally and Luke develop a friendship that soon turns into a romance. Remove Ads.

  12. Review: In 'Coming Home,' a Family Rocked by the Cultural Revolution

    Peace, this movie suggests, comes at the price of memory. Recovering from catastrophe and forgetting about it may amount to the same thing. "Coming Home" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly ...

  13. Coming Home (1978)

    Coming Home, 1978. Directed by Hal Ashby. Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, and Bruce Dern. SYNOPSIS: Kino Lorber has reissued Hal Ashby's classic Coming Home on Blu-ray. The film hasn't been ...

  14. Coming Home

    A former political prisoner (Chen Daoming) tries to help his wife (Gong Li) regain her memory and rediscover their love for each other. Rating: PG-13 (Some Thematic Material) Genre: Drama, Romance ...

  15. 'Coming Home' review: A struggle to sit through

    Coming Home is undoubtedly a showcase of acting talent. Sylvia Sanchez, as the matriarch who welcomes home her philandering ex-husband to the displeasure of her children, is an enduring presence here.

  16. Coming Home Movie Review for Parents

    The most recent home video release of Coming Home movie is March 8, 2016. Here are some details… Home Video Notes: Coming Home Release Date: 11 March 2016. Coming Home releases on home video (Blu-ray) with the following special features: - Toronto Film Festival Q&A with Yimou Zhang - Commentary with Director Yimou Zhang

  17. Coming Home

    Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets ... Coming Home 1h 28m

  18. Best Movies Streaming in April 2024: Anyone but You, Zone of Interest

    19 Best Movies New to Streaming in April: 'Zone of Interest,' 'Anyone but You,' 'Late Night With the Devil,' 'Wish' and More. Oscar-winning dramas and box office genre hits are ...

  19. How to Watch Civil War

    Civil War will eventually be released on Max, rather than Netflix or Disney+, per distributor A24's licensing deal with the streamer. As for a potential streaming release date, we can look to A24 ...

  20. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

    Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: Directed by Wes Ball. With Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, William H. Macy, Dichen Lachman. Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

  21. House Flipper 2 PS5 Review: A Strong Console Port

    SCORE: 8/10. As ComingSoon's review policy explains, a score of 8 equates to "Great.". While there are a few minor issues, this score means that the art succeeds at its goal and leaves a ...

  22. Coming Home in the Dark

    Watch Coming Home in the Dark with a subscription on Netflix, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV. Rate And Review.

  23. 'Civil War' is Both Timely and Prescient

    Garland tells the story of journalists navigating a dystopian America, where a civil war between the U.S. government and rebel forces is reaching its peak. Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny deliver the standout performances, with Dunst playing Lee, a seasoned war photo journalist, and Spaeny as Jessie, the young novice who tags along on a journey ...

  24. Sweet Dreams (2024) Movie Reviews

    SEE ALL OFFERS. Forced into rehab at SWEET DREAMS recovery center, Morris (Knoxville) struggles to confront the wreckage of his life. But when their house goes up for auction, he reluctantly agrees to coach their misfit softball team of recovering addicts to win a cash prize and prove that everyone, despite their past, can hit a home run.

  25. Coming Home Again

    Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jul 29, 2021. Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again is a heartfelt story of a first generation Korean-American grieving as he takes care of his mother as she dies ...