2025 / Dir. Angus MacLachlan / 2025 Chicago Critics Film Festival
☆ 4/5
Watch if you like: My Girl or other sincere ‘90s family dramas, the sound of birds chirping on a summer morning, and leaving some things unsaid.
Twenty years after his feature debut Junebug made waves out of Sundance and scored an Oscar nomination for Amy Adams, writer/director Angus MacLachlan’s A Little Prayer revisits similar ground as a quiet, unpretentious dramedy that’s tightly focused on the domestic travails of a small-town Southern family reckoning with each other and themselves. Jane Levy gives a quiet knockout of a performance as the unassuming daughter-in-law, whose endearing relationship with David Strathairn’s patriarch forms the emotional anchor of the film. Between MacLachlin’s respect for his characters and a deft integration of social issues—not to mention a clarinet-led, Alan Silvestri-esque orchestration (high praise from us) guiding the story towards its bittersweet end—A Little Prayer makes you believe in the power of small movies with a big heart.
