1 Mile to You

I gravitate to films about grief, and this one handles it surprisingly well, with some great acting performances to back it up. There's a bit of fluff and it's not always terribly stimulating, but what the film does right more than makes up for what it does wrong. Cinematically, it's all but perfect. Overall the film is a unique artistic achievement. It would be a mistake to dismiss this as another throwaway teen romance film. It's not. It's a story about grief, and that affects us all.

Choppy teen drama feels like a victim of hasty editing (or re-editing); many plot points outside of the central narrative either don't make sense or are underdeveloped (especially the burgeoning relationship between Liberato and Rogers). Mystical supernatural flashbacks are also puzzling. However, taken within the underdog sports movie formula, it is a modest success, with Crudup especially fine and endearing as a 'Mr Chips' figure. A shame Roth appears briefly and disappears too quickly!