Outside In

Director: Lynn Shelton and writers: Jay Duplass & Lynn Shelton have created a story that goes straight to the heart & soul. Beautifully scripted, filmed, and acted "Outside In" is one of those unforgettable stories that puts tears in your eyes but a sense of hope and joy in your heart.

Jay Duplass plays 'Chris' an ex-con who comes home after 20 years in jail. We know his readjustment to everyday life will be challenging for him but too his luck there are people there who do not want to judge him for a long past crime. Love and friendship finds it's way back into his life but this brings alot of troublesome baggage with it. Chis just wants to do whats right!

This is a beautifully made film and the Duplass brothers have another star in their crown. I truly hope this movie gets the public attention it so deserves. Seek it out and watch it!

Really beautifully written story and great acting. How it feels to come back to the world after a twenty year incarceration. Feeling deep feelings of love for the only person that fought for release from prison, in spite of a huge age difference and also complicated by her marital status.

This movie certainly kept my interest and I rooted for the two main characters, who portrayed a palpable sadness. I wanted them to find happiness, and toward the end of the film, I believe they did. Just not nicely wrapped up with a bow, as life is not usually like that. So I appreciated the ending also.

Great supporting cast as well.

Don't listen to the negative reviews. The subplots were also interesting and important. If you like films that steer away from action, sci-fi, and romance, and would like to see a film about the intricacies and complications of everyday life, this is a must see.

Although Lynn Shelton's slice of small town Pacific Northwest life (pay attention Everett and Granite Falls) in Outside In is so authentic as to defy artful interpretations, it is a minimalist portrait of ambitions circumscribed and affections compromised. In other words, it elevates working class melodrama into art house heavy while retaining the hint of desperate housewives of any small town.

Almost 40-year old Chris (Jay Duplass) has been released from prison after 20 years with the aid of his do-gooder former teacher, Carol (Edie Falco). Arriving in Granite Falls, Washington State, he is faced with hitherto unsuspected expectations from the two leading ladies: Carol and her daughter Hildy (Kaitlyn Dever). A brief brush with another lady reminds us that a handsome bachelor, recently released from prison for being innocent, is fair game for romantically inclined small-town women.

Shelton's approach is to let the realism dominate without veering too sharply into contrived, ironic situations. Chris's adjustment into civilian life will be fraught with suspicion and jealousy, just as in the real world his siblings and friends have always lived.

Falco and Duplass are so believably good as two adults who need to start life over that you miss the clichés and unsurprising turns because the leads become family whose fates matter very much to us.

Outside In is not kitchen-sink drama; it is simply simple life warm, troubled, and endearing. And that acting . . . .

"There are aspects of small town life that I really like - the routine nature of it, the idea of people knowing you and your likes and dislikes." Cress Williams

A quiet piece of theatre that explodes into diverse emotions. It doesn't delve much into why Chris was imprisoned for 20 years but into how he copes with being free in a world that has passed him by. (He is amazed at what smartphones can do but he doesn't know whether he can send or receive SMS on his phone!)

Understandably, he has strong feelings for Carol, his only friend for 20 years, who helped him to become a free man. This causes problems for her, her family and himself.

Edie Falco's performance is powerful in a quiet, understated sort of way. The conflict that she has to deal with is palpable. Jay Duplass delivers magnificently on his role as a recently released prisoner with ambivalent but strong emotions. Add to these, Kaitlyn Denver's and Ben Schwartz's portrayal, and you have a powerful movie in the making.

The music is haunting: the ukelele and organ background music soars.

This movie is all about dealing with relationships, mending them, asking for forgiveness. Human drama at its best.

The more I think about Lynn Shelton being gone, the more it's a punch in the gut. Outside In is yet another simply told story about people who are just fully themselves in all their vulnerable and warm and sometimes very troubled ways. This is filmmaking where you barely feel a false note, because you can feel the person behind the camera is intimately connected with her subjects. It's like Cassavetes if it was... calmer. This is a film with such compassion without ever going out of its way to go for the easy emotions. Jay Duplass quietly makes a powerhouse performance being so natural we don't see any acting. And Edie Falco is given a splendid, conflicted person who knows her heart is in one place and not the other. It's a film about what it means to have a family in the starkest sense.