Harvest (2010)

A gem of a film. Three generations gather for the patriarch's last summer: he is dying of cancer, and it is the last chance for all to be together. Well, almost all: one son, who lives locally, is waiting for his father to apologize for some past transgression, and even his approaching death does little to end the anger. The other son is something of a manipulative passive-aggressive jerk, and manipulates his father into changing his will. It is the daughter who cares for their dying father and Alzheimer's riddled mother.

Great acting, really, and something of a gritty camera work make the movie unusual. This review from May 2010 captures it well: In a just world, Harvest would be getting a wide release alongside of, if not necessarily instead of, Thor. Writer-director Marc Meyers's sophomore feature is an astonishingly confident work that avoids nearly all the pitfalls of contemporary independent cinema, flirting with cloying treacle in only the handful of moments the film employs a borderline-cliché alt-rock soundtrack. The rest of the film is sterling, its modest strengths amplified by a finely tuned creative process that never overexerts its ambitions or condescends to its subjects: three generations' worth of family living together during their cancer-stricken patriarch's last summer.