They don't make movies like this anymore: Every Day

If you're going to write and direct a movie, as Richard Levine did, entitled Every Day, you better be damn sure that the movie doesn't live down to the bland diurnal mood foretold by its title. Unfortunately, this movie does live down to expectations, despite a pretty solid cast and a low-key style and 90-minute format. More than any film I've seen in many years, this one feels like an old-fashioned Lifetime TV movie, a format largely eclipsed by the mini-series and the long-form series. I waited more than an hour for something surprising or engaging to happen, and nothing did - a truth made all the more painful in that the protagonist, Liev Schreiber in the role, is supposed to be part of a TV writing team for a show that's never made clear but seems to be a medical drama - and the head of the production team is pushing the writers for more and more outrageous and shocking material (anal is the new oral is one of several very unfunny gag lines) - perhaps this movie is meant to be the counterpoint to the TV drama so crudely satirized but you know what?, if this the alternative, please shock me. We have here yet another movie about an elderly, irascible parent disrupting the lives of a young family - and of course irascible dad who swears like a sailor for the first 30 minutes of the movie suddenly, an hearing grandson play the violin, says: you have to work on your legato. Hey, he's a sensitive musician beneath the gruff exterior! And so it goes - with gay son learning a lesson in life but finally being accepted for what he is by dad, and younger son who begins movie afraid of the dark gaining confidence and ... anyway, I can't go on. They don't make movies like this anymore. Wonder why?