The Shipping News

3.5/5 stars

Kevin Spacey plays an out-of-luck single parent, Quoyle, who returns to Newfoundland with his daughter, Bunny, and aunt, Agnis, to start a new life. I was worried that this was going to be another of the myriad look-at-how-bad-life-is-for-these-ordinary-people movies that I seem to have been watching endlessly over the past several months. However, this one at least picks up after the first half hour or so, and becomes a movie I actually wanted to finish (rather than one I looked forward to merely surviving).

Quoyle, his daughter and aunt move into the home where his aunt grew up with Quoyle’s father, and try to turn it into a home again. Quoyle finds a job writing the shipping news in a small, local paper, and turns his eye toward a local widow. While it felt like it plodded at times, this was a fairly good movie that I’d recommend for a video rental one night.