Barney's Version

Barney's Version (2010) is a bittersweet comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM, adapted from Mordecai Richler's novel by director Richard J. Lewis. Barney Panofsky produces trashy TV, drinks too much, says exactly the wrong thing, and somehow stumbles into real love at the worst possible moment.

Paul Giamatti plays Barney across three marriages and several decades. Wife number three, Rosamund Pike's Miriam, is the woman he meets at his own wedding to someone else. Dustin Hoffman is the lovably crude ex-cop father, Minnie Driver the unbearable second wife, and an old friend's disappearance hangs over Barney as a possible crime he may or may not have committed. As his memory frays, so does our trust in his telling.

Giamatti took home a Golden Globe for the part, and Adrien Morot's aging makeup, which carries the cast across forty years, landed an Oscar nod. The film stings more than its setup lets on, and that's its real pull. Stream Barney's Version (2010) online on iFILM.