Labor Day

A lonely divorced mother lives with her thirteen-year-old son in a small New England town, largely withdrawn from the world since her husband left. One Labor Day weekend, the boy encounters an injured stranger and brings him to his mother. The man has escaped from custody and is being sought by police, and he forces the pair to shelter him in their home. Over the days that follow, the three settle into an uneasy domestic routine, and a bond forms between the mother and her fugitive guest. What the family does not know at first is the seriousness of the crime for which he was convicted, and the arrangement grows harder to conceal as the search closes in.

Jason Reitman directed and wrote the screenplay, his fifth feature after Thank You for Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air and Young Adult. Kate Winslet plays Adele, Josh Brolin plays Frank, and Gattlin Griffith plays Henry, with Tobey Maguire appearing as the grown Henry, Tom Lipinski as the young Frank and Maika Monroe as Mandy.

Made for roughly eighteen million dollars, the film took in about twenty million worldwide, a modest return. On IMDb it holds 6.9 out of 10 from around fifty-six thousand votes, and on TMDB 7.1 out of 10 from a much smaller sample of about 1,400; a critics' rating of 5.2 out of 10 from two hundred reviews sits noticeably below both audience scores.