If a humanist tries to make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared feelings, then director Jonathan Demme is that guy. His best films, including Melvin and Howard, Citizen's Band, Something Wild, Philadelphia, the unfairly maligned Beloved and the Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs, show unsappy compassion for the fragility of flesh and spirit. Human weakness is at the core of Demme's Rachel Getting Married, a loose, lively, unhurried and unmissable gem that refuses to sink…

Anne Hathaway hits it out of the park with a winning portrait of a young woman in crisis in this funny, sad and very truthful story of a dysfunctional family trying to come together for a wedding celebration.

Story

Shot in a nervous, intrusive style, Rachel Getting Married is a blistering portrait of a family during a tension-filled wedding weekend. The long-simmering conflicts come to the surface at an event that's supposed to be about good times. Actually, the title is a bit of a misnomer…

If a humanist tries to make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared feelings, then director Jonathan Demme is that guy. His best films, including Melvin and Howard, Citizen's Band, Something Wild, Philadelphia, the unfairly maligned Beloved and the Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs, show unsappy compassion for the fragility of flesh and spirit. Human weakness is at the core of Demme's Rachel Getting Married, a loose, lively, unhurried and unmissable gem that refuses to sink…