It is baffling to me how little attention this film has garnered since its release. ZERO nominations from the Golden Globes OR the Academy Awards? I'm not arguing that this film absolutely deserves to win best picture over all other films released this year, but it is undoubtedly better than some of the films that actually were nominated for Best Picture. If not Best Picture, the film deserves a nomination from at least ANY of the categories such as cinematography, original score, or acting. This is a fantastically poetic and emotional journey of an outlaw's desperate effort to reunite with his family and fix his life. On the downside, the film is definitely not for people who cannot handle a deliberately slow-paced film structure. One personal complaint (though it's definitely not applicable to everyone) from me, and I have this complaint for many blu-ray releases, is the limited options for subtitles. Because I do not have additional speakers aside from the ones attached to the HDTV, it is often times difficult to balance out the volume of dialogue with other sound effects, which makes it a chore to comprehend dialogue at times, and so a non-SDH English subtitle track would make life easier for many people. But I digress. All in all, a wonderful film and definitely one of my favorites of all time.

This is one of the best movies I've seen all year (2013). I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned with the likes of Prisoners and Wolf of Wall Street. The film is a quiet, simple story about a man sent to prison and his pregnant girlfriend stays behind to wait for him, and the years in between. After he escapes 4 years later, he comes back home to reclaim his life. Wonderful.