THE SAVAGES Tributes

Wendy (Laura Linney) is a struggling playwright, surviving on temp jobs while enduring a bad relationship with a married man. Her brother John (Philip Seymor Hoffman), is a university professor forever delaying the finish of his PhD thesis and struggling with commitment issues.

With the sudden physical decline of their estranged father (Philip Bosco), brother and sister are thrown together and all sorts of nee s, grudges and recriminations that have festered between them for decades come out of the woodwork.

Writer/director Tamara Jenkins ( SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS) and her brilliant trio of actors, mix comic and tragic tones with such deftness and agility, that THE SAVAGES becomes a memorably unique and satisfying experience: An honest, at-times painful, film a out coping with the death of a parent that actually makes you laugh.