SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

jungophile I have read the first few pages of the reviews for this wonderful movie, and no one seems to notice a little touch that Geraldine Page, or perhaps the director, made at the end of this movie that made me smile.First off, though, let me just say I found out about "The Trip to Bountiful" when I was going through some old Siskel and Ebert shows on youtube to find something new to watch I hadn't heard of. I miss these reviewers so much these days; it was always a pleasure to hear them give a glowing review, to argue intelligently about some film, or to stab an awful movie with cutting remarks that always made me laugh.Anyway, as you can imagine, "Bountiful" got a two thumbs up rave review, and the clips they previewed looked amazing. I knew immediately I had to see Geraldine Page in this movie, and I was not disappointed. She nailed this part so beautifully I was just awestruck. (Another movie Horton Foote is associated with, "Tender Mercies," has this same quiet force of pure emotion and three dimensional characters that burst with life and spontaneity, and Robert Duvall deservedly won an Oscar for his performance as Mack Sledge).Now here's the kicker I mentioned earlier. Watch closely at the end when Page has her fingers in the dirt and you will see her put the government check on the ground, but fail to pick it up when she retrieves her purse and gets up to go back to the car. Isn't that a subtle piece of mischief? I bet Jessie Mae had a heart attack herself when she found out she wasn't going to be able to get those new shoes she was no doubt already scheming to buy.One final note: "A Trip to Bountiful" was remade in 2014 with Cicely Tyson in the lead role. I haven't seen this version, but it also received very strong praise. I'm not surprised; the script is flawless.

spheckma A Trip to Bountiful is in it's simplicity and superb acting a wonderful, wonderful, gentle trip, both real and metaphorically a beautiful movie. It is a tour de force for Geraldine Page. Her physicality is a thing beyond compare. Rebecca Demoney is also superb in one of her first appearances. Horton Foote has the ability to take a simple situation and make it a marvel of writing and style with a gentle touch, but considering that gentle touch and style so much as conveyed that a person comes away wondering how it was accomplished. You are given not only a feel for the people, but the wonder of the place where it takes place. Bountiful may or may not have been real, but in this story it is and to Carrie it's more real than anything else in her life and more important then anything that she get to see it one last time before her life is over. To reach this end she defies her irritating daughter-in-law who not only bow beat her, but her son; husband to the daughter-in-law. I bought this movie so I could watch the artful performance of Geraldine Page over and over again as every moment of her performance is sheer perfection. When you give an actress as great as her the words of Horton Foote you can't help, but have a magnificent performance.

Syl Geraldine Page won an Academy Award as Best Actress for her role in the Horton Foote drama, "A Trip To Bountiful," about a widowed woman living with her son and his wife played memorably by Carlin Glynn in Texas. She yearns for one last trip back to Bountiful which is a dying town. She meets Rebecca DeMornay, a fellow traveler, and they bond. The most interesting scenes are when she tries to escape her son's apartment and go to the bus station. All she wants is one trip to Bountiful before she dies. When she gets there, it's more of a ghost town or cemetery than a town itself. She has to convince others of her quest for one last trip to Bountiful before she goes.

Tahhh It's hard to rate this film, numerically, because the performance of the late Geraldine Page is so dazzling and utterly absorbing, that her glow makes it almost impossible to see the defects of the film.It's a neat, tidy, well-constructed drama, with a careful concentration on a single, simple story, and manages to make us care and worry about all the little mishaps in the plot. It's colorful, well-paced, gorgeously costumed and designed, and (assuming that you're not too cynical to enjoy a sentimental story for what it is) it's a totally absorbing and compelling two hours.Most of the characters of the drama are complicated enough to keep the film from getting too predictable, and certainly, in the hands of the great Geraldine Page, it would be hard for character NOT to be deeply interesting. Mrs. Watts is somewhat similar to Cousin "Sook" in the beautiful Truman Capote memoirs Miss Page performed in the late 1960's, but she has far richer monologues throughout the film that could not better underline her extraordinary skills.However, in spite of all this, I think the film is rather lacking in substance. It's QUITE sentimental, and while it never degenerates into a lament for the snows of yesteryear, it comes pretty close to it. Although there is some resolution of family tensions toward the end of the story, we never really get a terribly convincing demonstration of HOW the title's "trip to Bountiful" managed to bring this resolution about.For that, I tend to fault the screenplay--and perhaps I'll feel differently about it after another viewing.But that alone is characteristic: my wish to see it again at some point is PURELY because I want to admire Geraldine Page--and NOT because I found the story and film so moving. It's HER that I wish to watch, not the film.And so, I guess, as a compromise, I'll give it 8 stars...but everybody should understand I have two extra stars in parentheses for the star of the movie who could not have been a more deserving recipient of an Oscar that year.