Junebug: A

Home-spun Dixie neurosis. Quiet comfort and affection. These are the two ideas with which Phil Morrison makes a movie. A wonderous, hilarious, and touching movie.

There is a cultured, friendly art dealer named Madeline (Embeth Davidtz) who is newly married to a southern man named George (Alessandro Nivola) and has agreed to meet his family while on a buisness trip to North Carolina to woo one very wierd folk painter (Frank Hoyt Taylor). Enter Peg (Celia Weston), the wary eyed mother-in-law and chain smoker, and father-in-law Eugene (Scott Wilson), who hids his personality away from the constant stress of the nothing of his household, and George's little brother Johnny (Ben McKenzie), who acts as if he's been nursing his anger since the Civil War, and Johnny's wife Ashley (the dazzling Amy Adams), the other outsider, who is pregnant, and the only one who is welcoming to Madeline when she first comes to the family.

There are many many shots of lots of ambience and little dialogue where we are supposed to draw from it what we may. Same goes for the characterization of Johnny's character. Why is he angry? Because his brother left for 3 years without a word? Or because he's stuck living with his parents and a pregnant wife? Or because no one, and I mean no one, appreciates him for him? But if you're willing to think just alittle (and honestly how much more could have fit being shoved down our throats?) not only will you enjoy a phenomenal movie, you'll also enjoy a phenomenal cast. Everyone from Ben McKenzie, (making me seriously doubt his cast spot on The O.C. after this) with his moody looks and frequent and erratic bursts of good-intention and rage, to Amy Adams, who gives the best female performance all year hands-down. She is the naieve young wife we are shown she is, with her sweet and touching rambles about anything, and her desperate and heartbreaking need to never be alone. This movie is funny (true), but it's also one of the most slowly-building and slowly-heartbreaking movies I've seen all year.

The South like this doesn't get any better.