Movie

Ithaca

2015 · 96 min

A gentle, bittersweet wartime drama that quietly builds emotional weight through small-town moments and a boy's loss of innocence.

Tagline: One message will change everything.
Overview: In a small town in California's San Joaquin Valley, 14-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer, 1942, Homer Macauley delivers messages of love, hope, pain... and death... to the good people of Ithaca. And Homer Macauley will grapple with one message that will change him forever - from a boy into a man. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan's 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, ITHACA is the quintessential wartime tale of the Home Front. It is a coming-of-age story about the exuberance of youth, the sweetness of life, the sting of death and the modesty and sheer goodness that lives in each and every one of us.

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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone: melancholicstrength 3 of 3
warmstrength 2 of 3
earneststrength 3 of 3
tensestrength 1 of 3
Pacing: measured, 2 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention: engaged, 3 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes: grief
coming-of-age
family
war
death
Places: small town
home
workplace
Era: period
Audience: teen
Form: nonlinear
Content intensity: Gore none
Language mild
Violence mild
Sex none

All scales, 0 to 10

Scales, 0 to 10
Scale	Value	0 to 10
Action	2
Horror	1
Humour	3
Realism	8
Romance	2
Tension	4
Darkness	5
Complexity	4
Emotional weight	7

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Details

Genres: drama
Directed by: Meg Ryan
Written by: Erik Jendresen
Starring: Sam Shepard, Hamish Linklater, Alex Neustaedter, Meg Ryan, Jack Quaid, Tom Hanks, Nick Williams, Christine Nelson
Music: John Mellencamp
Cinematography: Andrew Dunn
Runtime: 96 min
Country: United States of America
Languages: English

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Ithaca

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