Nell

In the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina a woman is found living alone after her mother's death. Nobody knew she existed. The language she speaks is like no other: a mixture of her mother's aphasia and a private language she shared with her dead twin. A doctor and a researcher try to bring her into society while having to protect her from people who want to put her on display. Michael Apted directed. Jodie Foster plays Nell and Liam Neeson plays the doctor. Foster won the first ever Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and was nominated for the Oscar and the Golden Globe. On a 24.5 million dollar budget it took 106.7 million worldwide. The reviews were mixed. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 57 percent. One critic wrote that Foster was far grander than the film itself and found the screenplay predictable. Roger Ebert called it an effective film, and a moving one. Who it is for: viewers who like drama built on a single performance, and Jodie Foster. Who it is not for: anyone uneasy with a character presented as a case. The film constructs Nell less as a person who speaks than as a puzzle to be solved, and that is where the criticism sits.