Tammy's Always Dying

The second film directed by Amy Jo Johnson certainly was an enjoyable experience. The film tackles a very serious subject of addiction, suicide and death through illness. The Canada scenery was beautiful and the way things looked were fantastic. I certainly can feel for the character of Catherine as she is the main protagonist trying not have a breakdown dealing with her mother, Tammy.

While I enjoyed the film, Drama is not usually my genre of choice so the pacing of the film felt slow to me at times. Having watched the film through a screener link where I couldn't maximize the window or remove the time bar so I didn't feel like I was watching the runtime tick down, watching some of the scenes where there was no interaction or dialogue made me feeling like the film was longer than the 90 minutes advertised.

Besides the pacing (in my opinion because I am more used to action, thriller and horror genres), I did enjoy the blend of humor with the serious subject matter as well as the casting choices of Felicity Huffman and Anastasia Phillips as the mother/daughter duo.

I look forward to seeing it again through iTunes and hopefully get it to change my rating to a 10 just because I do find Amy Jo to be a fantastic director.

Tammy's got a serious drinking problem which leads to her frequently going to the same bridge and threatening to jump off. Her daughter is always having to find her and literally talk her down. This one is a good movie which shows the difficulty of the daughter's life; her having to deal with her mother, having sex with a guy (who we find out is having her as a side girl to the mother of his children) and in between, trying to pretend she is someone else or somewhere else. I would recommend this if you are a fan of I, Tonya because it is a very similar style of comedy but this is more dramatic than that. Give it a shot!

This movie had an honest feel to it. It reminded me of the 1970 Canadian classic, Goin' Down the Road with it's stark characterizations. We all know these people. The storytelling was delivered open-faced with no surprises. It was refreshingly non-pretentious. Felicity Huffman, and Anastasia Phillips played their parts straight out, and were very believable, with veteran Clark Johnson acting as foil for both women.

If you're looking for a simple drama without mind bending twists to it, this won't disappoint.

I quite enjoyed the movie even though I usually don't watch movies that go into the darker dramedy spectrum with a lot of cold colors. But it had an authentic feel to it and the storyline was very well planned and written.

I also liked the way it was shot and directed and while most of the actors gave an amazing performance, I felt like at times you could see Felicity Huffmann acting which is something I personally don't like that much, but other than that I really enjoyed the movie.

Catherine MacDonald (Anastasia Phillips) finds her drunken mother Tammy MacDonald (Felicity Huffman) sitting on the edge of a suicide bridge. Tammy is always a mess. She is diagnosed with terminal cancer and becomes a constant caretaking burden. Only the chemo seems to be working and she refuses to die.

This is a Canadian indie directed by Amy Jo Johnson. I know her mostly from Felicity and it's nice that she is able to move behind the camera. I like some of her work here although the best scenes are these two lead actresses interacting with each other. They are giving some very raw performances. Of course, Huffman has some real life troubles and she is perfectly capable of transferring them onto the screen. As for the TV show, it's weirdly both unrealistic and insightful. Most of all, I would rather not have it since it seems to disrupt the mother-daughter relationship show. I want more time with these great ladies together.